The uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) is very careful in using terms like “enemy” to describe those in other parties, says senior party member Dali Mpofu.
Such rhetoric has resulted in many deaths in the past, and the MKP required its members to desist from responding to provocation.
He was addressing the media, and had been asked about comments by the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, that MKP was its primary enemy. Mpofu has been a high-ranking EFF member. The EFF has recently endured a spate of defections to the MKP.
“But we will not be falling into that trap. Where we are now, those of us are old enough to have been in this space in the 80s, will know that in this place here, we are standing on the blood of people in this particular area and that thousands and thousands of people died for nothing because of so-called political rivalry,” Mpofu said.
He added: “We shall never participate in forming that kind of history and we will never regard any organisation – let alone a progressive one – as the enemy.”
The term “enemy” was a powerful one, to be used only when (unspecified) “certain things” were intended. No black person would be declared an enemy, since all black people had been oppressed.