Blade Nzimande lashes Mnangagwa's govt for pursing anti-people policies

 Blade Nzimande lashes Mnangagwa's govt for pursing anti-people policies
Published: 06 October 2019
THE South African Communist Party (SACP) has come out guns blazing, accusing the Zimbabwe government of pursuing anti-people policies through unleashing violence against its people instead of concentrating on resuscitating a 'dead' economy.

Speaking at the launch of the party's 'SACP Red October Campaign 2019-2020' launch in Mthatha, South Africa, the SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, also castigated the repression by the Zanu-PF led State of trade unionists in Zimbabwe.

He said the repression and economic challenges that Zimbabwe was going through had forced thousands of its citizens into forced migration in search for means of livelihood or fleeing political repression.

"The best way to deal with this situation is to build solidarity with the victims, in essence 'economic and political refugees', and confront the causes and driving forces behind the push factors resulting in forced migration," Nzimande, who is also South Africa's Higher Education Minister, told thousands of SACP members at the launch.

He said he once confronted senior Zanu-PF officials over the political repression in Zimbabwe and was told the government was dealing with agents of imperialism.

"I told them; 'but they are the same people who were with you in the trenches'," said Nzimande in reference to the liberation struggle that brought independence to Zimbabwe.

"It is a problem with you as Zanu-PF. We cannot have solidarity on the basis of wrong things. The SACP strongly condemns the violence by (Eswatini King) Mswati's dictatorship and repression of trade unions in both Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Over and above the economic collapse, the State in Zimbabwe is still having the tendency to unleash violence against sections of its people."

Nzimande said former liberation heroes had become the new oppressors of the people adding the SACP strongly condemned those fighting against the victims, and called for solidarity to tackle looting and repression in Africa, and drive the African revolution.

He also called for democratisation and development of the Sadc region.

"In order to succeed, this African revolution must be intensified to uproot the domestic looting class, the predatory elite, tyrannies and repressors in every African country. They have digressed from the African revolution and are complicit in forging post-colonial predatory states.

"Associated with all of these is the rise of the securocrat features of the predatory State, unleashing repression against sections of the people. We need to unite, forge peaceful co-existence and together carry out the African revolution to fix and develop our region and continent," the tough talking Nzimande said.

The SACP leader said the challenge of African leaders in failing to run the economies of their countries had left South Africa battling to feed the whole continent.

"Now unlike prior to 1994, labour from the rest of Southern Africa is occupying the very same informal settlements occupied by South Africa's largely unemployed labour, as a shared social reproductive space. It is also to be found in overcrowded spaces in major cities," he said.

This, Nzimande said, had pitted the poor against the poor, and the working class against the working class.

"This has increased pressures on housing, schools and the public healthcare sector, among other areas of government services and programmes. Increasing forced economic and political migration from other parts of Africa and elsewhere is also adding its own impact.

"This is deepened by the tendency of many unscrupulous employers who are exploiting migrant workers as a source of super-cheap labour, by paying them absolutely close to nothing, taking advantage of the situation that forced them out of their respective countries," he said.
- newzimbabwe
Tags: Mnangagwa,

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