Nationalisation was an attempt by the ANCYL to save black economic empowerment "elements in crisis", and would not help the poor, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said on Tuesday.

"The call for nationalisation by elements within the ANCYL, whose intention is to save these BEE elements in crisis, and not to address the interests of the workers and the poor in the country," he told Cosatu's central committee at Gallagher Estate in Midrand.

Putting privately-owned assets in the hands of the state was not "inherently progressive" as it depended on which class interests were being advanced,

"We want to make it clear that the call is not a genuine call to actually empower the workers and the poor.

"Nationalisation has been undertaken by Hitler," he said, adding that it was also conducted by the nationalist apartheid government.

"Ten years from now there will be a renewed call for privatisation."

Nzimande said the ANC's elective conference in Polokwane in 2007 saw a wide array of forces lined up to oppose the "previously hegemonic bloc", led by former president Thabo Mbeki.

"This wide array of forces... was constituted essentially out of an unholy alliance... between broad left forces opposing in principle the strategic and tactical line of the 1996 class project, on the one hand, and other forces who were essentially frustrated personal accumulators and populist demagogues articulating a sense of anger and alienation particularly among the youth sector," he said.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Communist Party and the ANC Youth League joined forces to support President Jacob Zuma to oust Mbeki at the Polokwane conference.

Nzimande said the latter grouping, consisting of "frustrated personal accumulators and populist demagogues", exposed itself at the ANC's national general council in 2010.

The advances of this grouping were not effectively rejected and, as a result, "this dangerous demagogic 'vanguard' has acquired new life, resourcing and arrogance.

"Yes, that's a vanguard, but a vanguard for tenderpreneurs, not a vanguard for the workers and the poor. That is why it is important to know that being a vanguard is not like a tender award, one for you, one for me, but it is earned in struggle, on the ground," he said.

Nzimande also defended ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, who the ANCYL wants to replace with Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula at the ruling party's next elective conference in 2012.