‘Zanufication’ of ANC: what Cronin said

In an interview with Irish historian Helena Sheehan recorded on 17 April 2001, SACP deputy general secretary and ANC NEC member Jeremy Cronin remarked on the ‘Zanufication’ of the ANC under Thabo Mbeki. This week, in his second Facebook perspective on his presidency, Mbeki accused Cronin of lying about the suppression of debate during that period. Cronin has responded, saying he stands by his words. This is an extract from Cronin’s 2001 interview:

Helena Sheehan: Was there much of an atmosphere of analysing this, what had happened in the rest of Africa, and reading Fanon and so on ? Was there much of an atmosphere of that in the movement ?

HS: Then in Zimbabwe there’s been the Maoist remobilisation of the movement for specific purposes.

JC: I’ll come to that. Post-independence, probably you have to demobilise and incorporate in some way a peasant army, but it’s not that easy to do the same to a trade union movement, even if that’s what you want to do, stupidly perhaps you might want to do that for whatever reason, or to demobilise a student movement or civics or women’s organisations or whatever or the press, traditions of progressive campaigning journalism and so forth.

So those energies are still present. They’ve been dispersed. They’re confused. Often they get suppressed by the very forces that they aligned themselves with originally, the broad ANC and so on, but it bubbles through a great deal. I think therefore there’s a lot of fluidity still in the situation, which should be neither underrated nor exaggerated. There are levels of disorganisation, demobilisation, disappointment, demoralisation. I personally don’t think it’s all played out at all.