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Yesterday, 3 May the Gupta media title, The New Age requested an interview with the First Deputy General Secretary of the SACP Comrade Jeremy Cronin. The SACP declined the request because there was something wrong with it. The request was personalised towards Comrade Cronin. It reflected an angle and therefore an intention to isolate and individualise to his person with distortions a part of the SACP’s May Day message. Instead of granting the interview with Comrade Cronin, the SACP took collective responsibility and gave The New Age the clarification and information they requested. Our reasons for rejecting the request by The New Age for an in interview with Comrade Cronin were proven correct today in the newspaper’s story headlined “Cronin at odds with SACP on banks” – nothing but a deliberate distortion of facts.

For the record, below is a direct quotation of what the SACP and Comrade Cronin said – it must be emphasised that the message was also given in writing to The New Age:

“The Guptas and their supporters are, of course, trying to blame the banks, brokers and auditors for this situation. But these same banks, brokers and audit firms were very happy to be making money out of Gupta transactions for many years, for as long as they could get away with it. But the smash-and-grab, hit-and-run greed of the Guptas has become so reckless that the banks have been warned that they are exposing themselves to international sanctions and even to losing their local operating licences if they continue dealing with these parasites. That’s the reason for what is happening – not some imperialist plot that those who are in bed with the Guptas claim. The Guptas are not patriotic, they are parasitic.

“We can’t effectively deal with established monopoly capital, we can’t defend our South African national sovereignty in the face of an external imperialist agenda if the parasites inside our economy have weakened the South African Revenue Services, or undermined the developmental mandate of an Eskom, or an Armscor, or an SAA, through their plunder-preneuring activities. The struggle against corporate capture of our democratic state is a necessary struggle to defend our people, our democracy, our constitution in the face of imperialism and monopoly capital. It is not a question of supporting the Ruperts and Oppenheimers against the Guptas, or supporting the Guptas against the Ruperts and Oppenheimers. We have to fight capitalist exploitation in all its forms.”

Our First Deputy General Secretary has done very well in representing this position and all other positions of the SACP without any contradiction.

In addition, the SACP is on record calling on the banks, in the public interest, to make a full disclosure of the reasons for the decisions they have taken to terminate their relationship with the Guptas. The SACP has made it clear to The New Age that the Party is opposed to all forms of exploitation of workers by the Guptas. It is wrong for The New Age to exploit workers to justify the brazen smash-and-grab private accumulation agenda of the Guptas, to distort our content and try and sow divisions in the ranks of our movement.

Issued by SACP