Blade warns students against factions, capture

Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has warned the ANC-aligned leaders of Sasco against corruption, factionalism and corporate capture.

|||

Durban - Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has warned the ANC-aligned student leaders of the South African Students Congress against corruption, factionalism and corporate capture.

He was speaking at Sasco’s poorly organised policy conference at the Mangosuthu University of Technology in uMlazi, Durban. More than half of the delegates shunned the minister’s speech and stayed outside despite it starting two hours late.

Nzimande warned Sasco against businessmen who used them to further their interests and score university tenders and contracts.

Sasco president, Thabo Mlotshwa, decried poor leadership from the members and said the event would go on with or without those outside the venue.

Mlotshwa also scolded students for drinking late into the night, and said this had affected Wednesday’s programme, because it had resulted in them arriving late for breakfast.

Nzimande, in his discussion on corporate capture, factionalism and the depoliticisation of the student movement, said he was speaking in his capacity as the general secretary of the SACP.

Nzimande did not mince his words and also hit out at factionalism in the ANC - seemingly at the pack of provincial leaders known as the Premier League - and said the party was faced with the same problem of divisive factionalism as it had been almost 10 years ago, when former president Thabo Mbeki was voted out of office.

“Our movement (Mass Democratic Movement), as a whole, is faced with three ­dangerous organisational challenges: corporate capture - the danger of our organisations being bought by monied people - factionalism and depoliticisation.

Strike

“All our organisations face that problem, not least Sasco. You know some of the student leadership get approached by people who own apartments at nig; and then there is a strike and students want to move from this apartment to this apartment.

“When we check, we ask ourselves how can students demand to move from a better apartment to a terrible apartment. That is because the owner of that terrible apartment had woken up at night and spoke to some leaders, that is corporate in your terrain; you must fight against this thing,” he said.

He said these businessmen had no interest in the students and corporate capture of Sasco would lead to the death of the organisation.

On factional politics, he said those leaders who wanted to appear as kingmakers placed “the interest of a faction above the interest of the organisation”.

“That we must fight. That is a danger facing our movement. As SACP we have been saying this, the ANC is faced with the same problem, including the ANC’s inability to hurdle leadership transition.

“Ten years ago, when Mbeki was on the way out, there were lots of problems; again, we are faced with the same problems and some people position themselves as kingmakers,” he said.

Nzimande said the organisations under the MDM were not owned by leaders in power at a particular time, and said factionalism would kill.

“Movements have lost power because of factionalism… We need to deal with depoliticisation of our members. Our politics is being eroded; in some of our organisations there are people who no longer want people with political education because people who are smart, you cannot manipulate them,” he said.

“If we allow these things to happen in our youth organisations, then our country has no future. We must defeat this in the entire Progressive Youth Alliance. If we fail to defeat the struggle to be bought by money, we might as well say goodbye to our revolution,” he said.

Daily News