Pallo’s analysis of ANC policy gets flak from within party

Former ANC Cabinet minister Pallo Jordan is being criticised within the party for presenting a “flawed interpretation” of historical ANC policy positions in his opposition to former president Thabo Mbeki’s paper on ANC land policy.

Former Umkhonto we Sizwe member Ike Moroe said Jordan, in his response to Mbeki’s paper criticising the ANC’s deviation from non-racialism in its current policy of land expropriation without compensation, said Jordan’s response had no “discernible argument” to refute Mbeki’s paper.

Instead of differing with it, Jordan had actually supported it except that he misrepresented the ANC’s historical position, he added.

In criticising Mbeki’s stance that the ANC is deviating from its policy of non-racialism, Jordan wrote that no white minority governments had concealed that they were pursuing the sectional interests of whites.

Jordan further implied that taking land from whites for Africans was justified as “the ANC’s support continues to be predominantly African”.

Taking Jordan head-on, Moroe said that unless he mistakenly believed the ANC should do “what white racist parties did”, he was wrong in his assertion.

He added that the ANC’s “strategic perspective” had always been to unite South Africans against racism and for democracy.

All the people of South Africa were the motive force for the revolution and “any policy amendment could only occur through the will of the people. Therefore, one supports the recommendations of Mbeki’s paper that all decisions of the ANC about the land question must respond simultaneously to the national question, with these considered together”.

Moroe added that the manner in which Jordan made his claim bordered on rejecting that the ANC had to be serious about its policy position on non-racialism.

“It portends that the ANC uses non-racialism as a tactic rather than as a policy position … Others view Pallo’s response as a personal attack on Mbeki, I view it as a flawed interpretation of ANC historical policy positions.

“That flawed interpretation of the ANC position on non-racialism is not new. It’s a blindside that can overwhelm the best brains when social strife paralyses us into racial-thinking cocoons.”

Moroe said the ANC had always formulated positions within the context of diversity and not African exclusivism.

“Our non-racial society objective is not a tactic, it’s a reality all ANC members should work for, striving to resolve complex challenges from that basis, including the land question.”

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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