Mapaila says the SACP will not be participating in the protests organised for Tuesday.
South African Communist Party (SACP) General Secretary Solly Mapaila. Picture: X / @SACP1921
General-Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Solly Mapaila has come under fire for comments that appeared to undermine South Africa’s sovereignty.
Mapaila was booed at the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) 13th National Congress in Boksburg on Saturday after he told delegates that Africans are not foreigners in South Africa.
He said his party will not be participating in the protests organised by March and March on Tuesday.
Some in the gathering saw these statements as promoting illegal immigration.
“No African is a foreigner in his own continent. Can this be understood? We are Africans, how can we hate ourselves? How can we push the agenda of the colonisers and the imperialists?”
Mapaila instead argues that the only crisis that South Africa is facing is white monopoly capital.
“Capital is the problem and not the African people.”
A senior Nehawu leader intervened, calming the delegates who had become disruptive while Mapaila was on the podium.
Malema blames capital for SA’s problems
Mapaila is not the only politician who believes that South Africa’s problems are a result of white monopoly capital and not illegal immigrants. EFF leader Julius Malema uttered similar statements during the funeral service of a senior member of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) recently.
“Why is there a strike to fight for spaza shops, but there is no strike to block roads and claim the mines, and say these people who are mining here are the same as those who own spaza shops, they are not from here.
“Let the mines, the strategic means of production, be returned into the hands of the rightful owners,” he said.
Malema suggested that Western powers are silent when illegal immigrants are being targeted.
“Why are there no sanctions when we fight each other on the basis of jobs and in the name of xenophobia? Go to Cape Town, take them out of their posh houses, and say to them, “Show us your passport.”
“Go to Sandton and say to them, show us your passport, let’s see what Israel is going to do to you, let’s see what America is going to do to you.
“There is no international response because we are concentrating on each other. They are making us lose the bigger picture,” he said.
ActionSA blames ANC failures
However, ActionSA National Chairperson, Michael Beaumont, told The Citizen on Sunday that reducing South Africa’s problems to white monopoly capital is simplistic.
“If we need to reduce the problems in South Africa down to one matter, it is the legacy of the ANC, including the SACP, and its broken governance record. One hallmark of the tripartite alliance government has been uncontrolled illegal immigration into our country.
“Anyone who says this is not a problem is out of touch with South African women giving birth on hospital floors because the hospital beds are occupied, or seeking economic opportunities that are occupied by people who ought not to be in our country,” said Beaumont.
He also said he is not surprised by Malema’s utterances on immigration since his party has policies that are in favour of a borderless South Africa.
“The EFF is the very last party that should speak on this matter given their record of openly encouraging unlawful immigration into South Africa,” he said.
Malema has long advocated for a “borderless Africa” but has said that all Africans travelling across the continent should be documented.
