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Secondly, communism also had a brutal and horrifying side to it. It demanded allegiance to a central party that crushed any questioning of its authority. Furthermore, the major league champions of communism glorified their own images and became the new oppressors: Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Kim Il-sung and Fidel Castro all embraced ruling doctrines that were characterised by tyranny and paranoia.
In Cambodia, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge espoused a particularly virulent form of communism that demanded the emptying out of the cities and the forced relocation of people into the country — called agrarian collectivisation — in an attempt to return the country to a supposedly egalitarian agrarian economy.
This positively brilliant bit of thinking, combined with the resultant starvation, shocking medical care, collapsing economy and Pol Pot’s penchant for lining up anyone who remotely resembled an intellectual and executing him, resulted in the deaths of over a quarter of the entire Cambodian population.
Stalin was another poster boy for modern communism. He also embarked on a forced policy of collectivisation of agriculture. This wasn’t to bring wealth to the peasants; it was to bring the peasants under the control of the state and to make the taxation of these peasants more effective.
When his return estimates weren’t met, Stalin naturally accused those of better means (sound familiar?) and proceeded to round them up and ship them off to penal labour camps.
Other enemies of the state, such as people who were frequently absent from work or who told “anti-government jokes”, soon joined them. Nice one.
People who questioned Stalin’s decree were “purged” — imprisoned, tortured and executed. Although historical figures differ, it is safe to say that Stalin and his particular interpretation of communism killed at least three million of his own people.
North Korea’s Kim Il-sung was one of Stalin’s biggest fans. He adopted many of Stalin’s policies and practices, including agrarian collectivisation, the violent purging of potential rivals and the elevation of himself through a personality cult that exalted him as the “great leader”.
Castro — that eternal thorn in the side of the United States — although not as violent at Stalin, was no stranger to violent oppression. He demanded his people idolise him and never, at any stage, contemplated sharing control with anyone else. There’s a word for that: megalomania.
Out of this ideological mould steps our very own South African Communist Party (SACP), which shares a bed with the dominant party in South African politics, the ANC, and sees itself as a credible and influential authority in national affairs.
This is obviously surprising to anyone who knows that South Africa embodies two things communism vehemently opposes, namely democracy and a free-market economy. In a way, it’s like vegans being on the board of an abattoir — you’re suspicious of their intentions and you just know that sooner or later they’re going to throw a serious spanner in the works.
The SACP would have you believe that it has the rights of the workers at heart when, in fact, in terms of its own philosophy, it would far prefer a one-party state with itself at the helm, everyone subservient to it and any challengers purged and crushed.
As such, it should not be allowed to infiltrate the minds of those entrusted with protecting our fragile democracy. It should no longer be aligned with the ANC. If the ANC truly believes in democracy and a free-market economy, the SACP should be an opposition party. After all, it’s the enemy.
If the ANC insist on sleeping with this enemy, history has shown that one day they will come home to find the locks changed. Peering through the curtains, they’ll see the communists pottering around in the ANC’s pyjamas and slippers, feeling comfortably at home and in charge. And starting to rearrange the furniture.
