'Leave Hani out of this'

SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande has warned against invoking the name of assassinated communist party leader Chris Hani to criticise today's leadership.

Speaking at an SACP 90th anniversary lecture in Philippi on the Cape Flats yesterday, Nzimande defended his deployment and that of other senior communist party leaders to parliament after the April 2009 elections.

Speaking largely in Zulu, he said comrades in the ANC and the tripartite alliance who were critical of their deployment wrongly assumed that Hani, who was assassinated in 1993, would have refused to go to parliament when the ANC took over in 1994.

"They say Chris Hani wouldn't have gone to parliament.

"We would have taken Chris to parliament; I know because I was in the central committee at the time.

"People must stop this thing of using the dead to fight the living," Nzimande said.

Cosatu has been vocal in criticising the decision by Nzimande to take up a seat in parliament and in cabinet, as minister of higher education.

Nzimande told about 200 people in the hall at Intsebenziswano High School that the SACP's positioning as a party in the vanguard of the working class meant that it continually fought for the representation of workers in all aspects of society, including in government.

"Let's build workers' power so that the workers' voice is heard. Let us build workers even in government, because this is our government. We voted for it, didn't we?"

He said the SACP's main goal was to bring down what he described as an "evil" capitalist system driven by profits made through the exploitation of workers.

Under a socialist system, he said, workers would receive decent salaries while remaining company profits would go towards paying for free education, healthcare, housing and transport.