The leader of one political party accusing the leaders of another political party of doing grave and deleterious harm to a country’s democracy, as th Congress of the People’s (COPE) Terror Lekota claimed about the African National Congress (ANC) recently, is pretty much par for the course in South Africa and globally. The real surprise would be if such accusations were not commonplace. But when leading members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) accuses the media and other members of the intelligentsia of waging an “un-remitting and extremely hostile” ideological offensive against the ANC and its alliance partners, one can at least see why Lekota might be a bit paranoid.
The SACP is, after all, a longstanding, and given recent political shifts in South Africa, recently strengthened, member of the tripartite alliance that makes up the governing party. These days when an SACP spokesman makes a statement it is not unreasnable to think that it carries with it some form of support at the highest level of government.
