But stoked it has been since the leader of the SACP, Blade Nzimande, was denied a visa to visit Palestine in April by the Israeli government. Israel justified the denial by saying that Nzimande had repeatedly demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from South Africa and that he had actively supported the severance of relations between the University of Johannesburg and BGU. Nzimande has a considerable sense of self-importance and he returned home with a burning determination to hit back.

The immediate result was a meeting of the ANC, Cosatu (the Congress of South African Trade Unions), the SACP and BDS (with the SACP in a majority in at least three of these groupings) which called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, a ban on travel to Israel by any public employee, an end to automatic visas for Israeli visitors and all such visitors to be interrogated as to their links with the Israeli Defence Force, the prosecution of any South African Jews who serve in the IDF, and the expropriation of any Israeli investments in South African agriculture. This would be tantamount not only to a breach in official relations with Israel but to a ban on Israeli tourists, for almost all of them will have had some connection with the IDF. Given that there has always been an easy flow of people between South Africa and Israel, this would also amount to punishing South African Jews who would like to invite their Israeli cousins to visit them. The events at Wits and DUT have followed this script, with the student leadership signing on to the whole list of demands above.

This represents a new low, even for the SACP. Under Nzimande it has become almost completely rudderless and opportunistic. Having previously advocated the nationalisation of industry, it reversed itself once Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters took up the same call. It has taken a hyper-militant position in defence of every blunder or indiscretion by President Jacob Zuma, even staging demonstrations in favour of his use of state funds on his palatial residence at Nkandla which it attempted to depict as “rural development”. The party’s May Day statement again calls for “the defence of workers’ democracy” — yet it sided against union leader Zwelinzima Vavi’s denunciation of the “predatory elite” and firmly refused Vavi’s procedurally correct call for a special trade union congress to discuss the issue. But in pushing its BDS front organisation to target quite openly the local Jewish community, it has plumbed new depths.

The SACP’s current antics would have been anathema to the party’s previous generation, whose leadership was largely Jewish, just as today’s ANC would be an object of shame for the likes of Albert Luthuli or Mandela. Why is the SACP behaving in this disgraceful way ? The short answer is political desperation. The party has depended on Cosatu for its funding and even for its premises. Now, not only has the party failed to pay its rent but Cosatu has split, is much weaker — and can less afford the luxury of propping up the SACP. Worse still, Malema has walked off with most of the party’s natural constituency. The result is curious. Instead of rotting like a fish from the head down, the party has crumbled from the bottom up and is now left only with its top layer of leaders (including many MPs and government ministers). Many of these leaders have become fully-fledged members of the predatory elite and, whatever they may say, their behaviour suggests that their relationship to socialist values is tenuous at best. It is a strange way of dying. But death comes to us all. Disgrace need not.