SOUTH AFRICAN Communist Party leader Blade Nzimande led members and allies today in paying tribute to his predecessor Joe Slovo who died 20 years ago.

Standing alongside his forerunner’s grave in Soweto’s Avalon cemetery, he mocked “our detractors and other renegades” who affect to celebrate former leaders’ lives “in order to condemn the current leadership of our movement.”

Mr Nzimande (pictured) suggested that the party “tell the story of Joe Slovo in order to train an even better cadre for the SACP and our movement as a whole.”

He pointed to the former party leader’s roles as a founder member of the Congress of Democrats, chief of staff of the liberation movement’s armed wing, an ANC national executive committee member and housing minister in South Africa’s first democratically elected government.

“Comrade Slovo was a living embodiment of our alliance,” he declared.

“All those thoroughly grounded in the politics of the Congress movement know that there is no contradiction in playing these roles, much as occasional tensions are always there in any alliance.”

Mr Nzimande pointed out that it was “through unity with the ANC-headed alliance in the forefront of our national liberation movement that we dislodged the apartheid regime” and he argued that it was dangerous to gamble with unity, especially in the organised workers’ movement.

“Organised workers and the working class in general must build maximum unity both at work through strong (revolutionary trade union federation) Cosatu affiliates that serve workers’ interests and in the community through activist participation in the ANC and the SACP,” he stressed.