SACP boss slams corruption

LEADERS with a clear conscience who know they are not corrupt thieves will never be shaken when accusations to that effect are hurled at them, unless such allegations are true.

This is what SA Communist Party national chairman Senzeni Zokwana told more than 1 000 SACP members on Sunday at Kanyamazane, outside Mbombela in Mpumalanga, in what appeared to be a veiled attack on Mpumalanga premier and ANC provincial chairman David Mabuza.

Zokwana said if a person was labelled a dog and he knew he had no tail, that person had no reason to take offence.

“If you ’ re accused of being a corrupt thief and you know you ’ re not, then why are you angry?” he asked to loud applause.

Zokwana was delivering a public lecture in memory of former SACP leader Chris Hani when he launched a tirade against those who had disrupted a previous SACP memorial lecture “on behalf of their master ” on January 25.

That day, a group supporting Mabuza and wearing ANC T-shirts barged into the hall and disrupted the event.

Tension has long been high between former premier Mathews Phosa and Mabuza, with Phosa even going as far as submitting to Luthuli House a dossier purporting to prove Mabuza was an apartheid spy.

Mabuza is also at loggerheads with the Mpumalanga SACP, whose leadership has been calling for him to step down while also accusing him of corruption.

Zokwane said the SACP [in Mpumalanga] was “under attack ” from leaders who chose not “take up their own fights ” but instead opted to use others to fight battles on their behalf.

Zokwane said the leaders were so ambitious that they even wanted “a third term ”, a clear reference to Mabuza, who was recently endorsed for a third term as provincial ANC chairman.