Solly Mapaila, SACP: Oneenduring aspect of the apartheid regime's offensive against the national liberation movement was that of attempting to silence communists.

One can't help but be reminded about this when reading Pierre de Vos's attacks on the general secretary of the SACP, Blade Nzimande ("Skewering Blade, August 31).

One of the very first pieces of legislation passed by the apartheid regime after its ascendancy to power in 1948 was the Suppression of Communism Act, making the SACP the first organisation banned by that regime.

As the apartheid regime became more desperate, especially during the 1980s - at the height of our people's intensified mass offensive - it started planting agent provocateurs, often posing as combatants of our struggle, aimed at sowing divisions and confusion among our ranks.

The campaign to divide and weaken the liberation movement did not end in 1994. In recent times there has been a renewed right-wing offensive, often disguised as the liberal defence of our Constitution.

One of the leading ideologues of this struggle is De Vos, a right-wing, anti-communist and anti-ANC crusader, whose vitriol against Nzimande in your newspaper is nothing more than a personification of his right-wing agenda.

He tries to sow divisions - in typical apartheid agent provacateur fashion - between the ANC and the SACP, as well as the SACP and President Jacob Zuma's Cabinet, by trying to portray the SACP's unapologetically principled support for public-service workers' struggles against deepening inequalities in society as a challenge against Cabinet.

Since when has Cabinet taken a decision against the legitimate right of workers to strike? Since when has a principled position taken by a Cabinet minister, in his role as a political leader of a political party, for narrowing the wage gap, become a violation of our Constitution?

Is the legitimate workers' struggle for a housing subsidy in contradiction with the Cabinet's positions over the years? Or is De Vos's argument aimed at trying to isolate our general secretary from the rest of his Cabinet colleagues?

Our general secretary and the SACP long ago addressed the question of a vehicle acquired for doing government work as well as the distorted story of a claimed waste of public money in hotels.

The participation of communists in Cabinet can never be regarded as the abandonment of the SACP's principled support for legitimate working-class struggles. For that matter, at no stage will communists sell their soul just because they are in government. After all, South African communists are not serving in an enemy government, but in one they helped bring about.

The SACP will never allow itself to be lectured by right-wingers parading as liberals!

Our principles are not for sale, especially to those who never lifted a finger in the struggle against the evil apartheid regime.