SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande has accused former president Jacob Zuma of confusing people with his recent comments on state capture.

Last week Zuma hit out at the state capture commission of inquiry, insisting that no arm of state in SA had been captured and that it was just a “politically-decorated expression”.

“A state is composed of three elements: The legislature, executive and judiciary… that constitutes the state,” Zuma told students toward the end of his address on free education at Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha, in the Eastern Cape last Wednesday.

“Does it mean that these three arms are captured? Is it true?” he asked.

“My view, and I am not disagreeing with anyone, [is that] these are politically-decorated expressions. There is no state that is captured. Some people were doing things with [other] people,” said Zuma.

READ: ANC, ministers threatened Standard Bank to force it to keep Gupta accounts open, state capture commission hears

‘Liberal analysis’

But, during his address at Cosatu’s 13th national congress on Tuesday, Nzimande described the former president’s comments as a “liberal analysis” of a state.

“You can’t say: ‘If one arm of the state or one component of the state is corrupted, therefore there is no state capture and we must wait until the totality of the entire state is corrupted,'” Nzimande said.

“As the SACP, we are saying you are not going to help by confusing young people with things that are wrong.”

READ: Zuma, Guptas bring legal muscle on first day of state capture inquiry

Nzimande also noted recent claims of an alleged campaign to unseat current ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa and said the SACP had already made pronouncements about this in May.

He described the alleged plot as a “false version of radical economic transformation” and said it was synonymous with a campaign to defend parasitic networks and all those attached to them.

The SACP general secretary said the campaign was not just aimed at Ramaphosa and the ANC, but at the working class of SA.

“The alliance as a whole must look into this matter and also satisfy itself that such actions are exposed and defeated,” he said.

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