Blade Nzimande is stepping down after 24 years as the leader of the SA Communist Party, and I for one would like to take a moment to celebrate the immense achievement that will no doubt define his legacy.
This week I’ve read at least one pundit argue that that legacy isn’t quite as terrible as you might assume.
I mean, yes, Nzimande did compete with Julius Malema to be Jacob Zuma’s favourite and loudest cheerleader on his march to the presidency, playing a pivotal role in saddling South Africans with the worst ANC president to date.
And yes, in 2009, the tireless fighter against the decadence and inequality of capitalism did allow the department of education to buy him a luxury BMW for his personal use.
And yes, he chose race-baiting over honest government when he tried to dismiss media reports on Nkandla in 2014 as “white man’s lies” being told by journalists “for their white owners”.
And yes, he did take almost a decade to speak out against the Guptas’ undue influence on the Zuma’s cabinet, having first started worrying about it in 2008, before finally denouncing state capture in 2016.
And yes, once the state capture story was too big to deny or ignore, he did initially insist that, while Zuma should distance himself from the Guptas, there was no evidence linking them.
It was on Nzimande’s watch that the SACP managed to avoid contesting not one, not two, but five general elections, thereby saving itself — and Nzimande’s retirement portfolio — from certain obliteration at the hands of SA voters.
Still, compared with some of the people he helped prop up and keep in power, the man was a boy scout. And I have to say I still don’t see anything wrong with that BMW 750 he scored: in allowing the labour of the proletariat to buy him an extremely luxurious capitalist toy, he was simply emulating the greatest heroes of socialism, from Stalin and Mao to the Kims of North Korea and the Castros of Cuba.
In the final analysis, however, all of these are mere footnotes. Nzimande’s legacy is already secure, not only as the greatest ever servant of the SACP, but as one of the greatest servants of communism anywhere in the world. Because it was on Nzimande’s watch that the SACP managed to avoid contesting not one, not two, but five general elections, thereby saving itself — and Nzimande’s retirement portfolio — from certain obliteration at the hands of SA voters.
Had Nzimande not stepped up to keep SA communism safe from the ravages of free and fair elections, the SACP would have gone the way of the PAC and COPE.
But he did, putting his body and soul on the line; feeling the upsetting warmth of those BMW seats heating up his bottom as if he were a martyr being put to the flames; watching his ministerial salary get deposited every month, knowing those six evil figures had been spawned by filthy capitalists.
He took those blows, over and over again, so his party could live. Or at least live in the stomach of the ANC. Or be sort of undead in the colon of the ANC.
Still, it beats working for a living, right?
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