Discussion on the
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986
SOUTH AFRICA ARTICLES ON THE DEBATE Duncan Innes: "Workers' politics and the popular moment, Work in Progress' No 41, April 1986
Karen Jochelson, Glenn Moss and
Freedom Charter
Ingrid Obery: "Defining working-class politics", Work in Progress" No 41, April 1986.
Tony Karon and Max Ozinsky: "The working struggle class in national democratic No. 42, May 1986. 'Work Progress'
Alec Erwin: "The question of unity in the struggle", 'South African Labour Bulletin' Vol. 11, No. 1, September 1985.
Duncan Innes: "The Freedom Chart-
IN RECENT years, a series of independent magazines have appeared in South Africa devoted to describing and analyzing the anti-apartheid mass movement and in particular the independent Black trade-union movement. At the same time as reflecting the commitment of a current of radical intellectuals, this independent press is also a forum for certain political debates over the problems encountered by the mass movement.
Work in Progress, and South African
In two of these magazines,
Labour Bulletin, a debate occurred recently over the specific role of the workers' movement in the fight against apartheid and the struggle for socialism. (See box.)
This discussion is of interest to far wider circles than those directly involved, who are generally intellectuals working with the trade-union movement, on its fringes or involved in the people's movement. Both groups rather faithfully reflect the political points of view that exist in the mass movement. These magazines have published articles, moreover, that are read by hundreds of trade-union activists and leaders and by leaders in the various community associations.
While the immediate political impact on the mass level of such a public discussion should not be overestimated, it is interesting to study the reasoning and the arguments put forward in order to get a better idea of what is happening in the country.
PETER BLUMER
This discussion has essentially taken the form of a debate over the present programmatic reference of the African
National Congress (ANC). It has also given its name to the Chartist current working in the mass anti-apartheid movement, which includes a majority of the
United Democratic
Front
(UDF) and some unions belonging to the Congress of South African Trade
Unions (COSATU).
The Freedom Charter's advocates have generally argued that it is useful on two levels. First, they maintain, it can serve as an instrument for focusing popular democratic and national demands that should serve as a basis in the immediate period ahead for unifying mobilizations and achieving of all the political and the unity social components of the movement of oppressed.
But the
Freedom the
Charter is also often presented as an governmental marizing the main measures taken by a regime coming to power in the wake of the overthrow of the and beyond the discussion demands, some of the document's critics reveal that they have an assessment which differs in a more general way from the orientation supported in the mass movement by the Chartist current. often termed "nationalist" or "populist" in order to contrast it with an orientation that is claimed to be more focused on defending the interests of the working class. The critics of the Charter
In all the arguments put forward by those who have a critical approach to the Freedom Charter, some general common features can be distinguished.
er and workers' control", 'South African
Labour Bulletin' Vol. 11, No. 2, October
1985.
Jeremy Cronin: "The question of unity a reply", South African Labour
Bulletin' Vol. 11, No. 3, January 1986.
Bob Fine: "The Freedom Charter, a critical appreciation", 'South African
Labour Bulletin' Vol. 1i, No. 3, January
1986.
David Lewis: "Capital, trade unions and the fritin L liberationist te.
'South African Labour
11, No. 4, February 1986.
David Lewis: *Recession and the working class", 'South African Labour
Bulletin' Vol. 11, No. 5, May 1986.
Rolan White: "Towards assessment of the strategic value of the consumer boycott", •South African Labour
Bulletin' Vol. 11, No. 5, May 1986.
Hugh McLean: "Capitalism, socialism and the Freedom Charter" 'South
African Labour Bulletin' Vol. 11, No. 6, June 1986.
Jeremy Seekings: *Workers and the politics of consumer boycotts", 'South
African Labour Bulletin' Vol. 11, No. 6.
June 1986.
First of all, stress is placed on the historically outmoded character of a document adopted in 1955, in view of major economic and social changes that the country has undergone and of the changes in the configuration of the mass movement itself since that time.
These authors note, for example, that the Freedom Charter could not take account of the growth of the Black proletariat that occurred in the last decades and which has provided the basis for the emergence of a new workers' movement, formation of big industrial unions in the 1970s. (1)
it has been pointed out, and properly so, that any democratic program today has to give a substantial place to the working-class demands independent trade-union movement. And the Freenot do this, at It has to be recognized also that in the most recent examples of unity in action of the various components of the mass movement, these working class demands have found explicit
For instance, at the beginning of October the UDF, COSATU and the National Committee on the Educa-
1. Alex Erwin, op. cit. [See box for references.]
17
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986 tional Crisis announced the launching of a united national campaign against apartheid and the state of emergency. They did this on the basis of a tenpoint platform which included, along with general democratic demands such as freedom of expression and association, others that were more specifically linked to the trade-union movement, such as the demand for a decent wage for workers, an adequate system of social security and the right to strike. (2)
While these points in fact reflect the consensus that has developed -because they include specific contributions from the three components that initiated this appeal - it is necessary also to note the place of working-class demands in this platform. This is the direct reflection of the real role that the organized working class, mainly COSATU, is playing in the struggle and the unification process.
The point of view of the Charters' critics can be summed up by the formula used by one of them, Duncan Innes, who maintains that a "working-class vision of the future requires more than the Charter offers."
For most of its critics, the Charter is designed, in the nationalist tradition, to achieve the broadest possible unity, without any great concern for defending the long-term interests of the most exploited masses, the Black that would take the liberation struggle up a blind alley.
Against this, the critics argue that the specific demands of the workers' movement have to be accorded their full importance right now. And, if such demands are to be the objectives of the mass struggle, it goes without saying that this will in a way shape the sort of class alliances that are made within the people's movement.
It is at this point that one of the main criticisms of the Charter emerges: the social front must be clearly dominated by the working class. But the Freedom Charter, by seeking the lowest common denominator for all the oppressed classes and layers, favors the hegemony of petty-bourgeois sectors over the mass movement.
At this point, two elements are introduced into the debate. One is the example of the UDF, whose "multi-class" nature and the petty-bourgeois social composition of its leadership are often noted. The other is the very opportunist attitude of some Black petty-bourgeois and bourgeois layers that are trying to hide behind this form of anti-apartheid unity and take advantage of certain forms of action by the mass movement to satisfy their own economic interests. Thus, some see the boycott of white stores as offering business opportuna critical analysis of the social content of the various measures proposed by the Charter. One of the points often stressed in this debate is the question of the nationalizations called for by the Charter.
The Chartists' document is accused of having a vague formulation that fails to raise the question of workers' control and of the nature of the state that would carry out these nationalizations.
For example, Duncan Innes says: "Only when nationalization is linked to democratic workers' control of nationalized industries can workers' interests be safeguarded."
At the end of the day, the Charter would not set the mass movement on the road of struggling for socialism. The place of the working class in democratic struggles
Some of these authors, however, do not reproach the ANC program for being only a minimum democratic program. They are, in fact, aware of the need for a program summarizing the democratic and national demands of the popular masses. But they consider that the general orientation of the Charter is in fact in line with the workers. That, they sayipopulism"
leads inevitably to a sort of
An arrest under the pass laws in the late 1950s (DR)
EGAS
18 ities for Black merchants. (3)
The arguments advanced involve conceptions of class alliances and objectives simply of a national democratic revolution that would bring no decisive improvement in the fate and role of the exploited masses in the future society.
This first part of the debate is generally over the real place that the workers' movement must assume in the emancipation struggle. Is the problem simply to include working-class demands in a program for democratic revolution? Or is the problem to give the working class a role of social hegemony and political leadership in the movement as a whole? That is what is up for discussion.
This discussion obviously has not dropped from the sky. Its origins are rooted in the sociological changes that have taken place in recent years,
2 See International Viewpoint' No. 108, November 10, 1986: "New Campaign launched".
In this regard, Jeremy Seeking writes: "Consumer boycotts also necessarily bring organizers and township capitalists into relations of increased mutual dependence. The former require the latter to make boycotts viable.. capitalists in turn depend on organizers for maintenance of sales levels as well as to promote their explicit demands and implicit interests. The more mutually dependent they become, the more responsible they become to each other's 'needs or interests. Whilst this means that traders become more supportive of progressive positions, it also means that progressive organizations can become more tolerant of the position of traders. "
FREEDOM CHARTER
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986 and in particular in the spectacular growth of the trade-union movement.
The growth of the trade-union movement is the result of the numerical growth of the Black industrial working class over the past 20 years and the emergence of a trade-union leadership that has made a series of choices about building the movement and spreading its roots that have proved beneficial and effective.
A new type of South workers' movement was born in the previous period, and its activity is the background to this debate. its political expression properly speakremains limited to trade-union At the start, the main trade-union leaderships deliberately focused on building roots in the workplaces in order to stabilize their organizations as defenders of the workers' immediate economic interests on the basis of concrete gains won in struggles.
There was a real concern for organizing the trade-union movement in a democratic way. This gave rise to big unions in the main industries networks of shop stewards experienced in fights for immediate demands
At this stage of its development, new workers' movement intervened in the political field speaking through united campaigns with the civic associations and through many statements, interviews, resolutions of union congresses should also add the internal work of educating trade-union activists. (4) vanguard has come out of the trade-union movement. Up until now it has been the crucible in which the class consciousness of the most advanced sections of the proletariat has been forged. Could this working-class vanguard have come directly from working-class political organizations rooted in the class? Given the recent history of this workers' movement and the characteristics of its development, this seems unlikely.
At this point it is useful to note the present state of the trade-union movement's reflection on this question of the place of workers' demands in the struggle. Maxwell Xulu is president of the metalworkers' union, which belongs to COSATU. In the September issue of his union paper, Umbiko we Mawu, he said:
"A long time ago, some people used that there was no need for a workers' program, because we have a Freedom Charter. Well, all I want to say about this is that the Charter was drawn up 30 years ago. And many things have changed since then. Now we have a very large and highly developed working class. We also have
Freedom Charter was adopted on
June 26, 1955 by the People's Congress representing the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress,
South African Congress of Trade Unions and the Congress of Democrats.
We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and white, unless it is based on the will that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty founded on injustice and inequality;
that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief;
Black and white together adopt this Freedom Charter.
until the democratic changes set out here
THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN!
woman shall have the All people shall be entitled to take The rights of the people shall be ties shall be replaced by democratic big companies - monopoly capitalists like the Anglo-American Corporation, Barlow Rand and so on.
"There are thousands of workers in trade unions. are pushing to make the working class stronger. One very great step forward for the struggle is this workers' program. It will also speak of what kind of society workers want to
The present limitation of the political expression of the South African movement, however, places certain limits on the political debate.
In South Africa today, the working class, in the broad sense of the term, cannot be reduced to the industrial proletariat actually in work in the industries that make up the backbone of the independent Black trade-union movement. An important part of the population of the townships (women, unemployed, youth) whose precarious can broadly be considered to form part of the proletariat. When these layers are organized it is through the civic
There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races.
All people shall have equal rights to develop their own folk culture and
All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and
The preaching and practice of nationcontempt shall be a punishable crime.
THE PEOPLE SHALL SHARE IN THE wealth of our shall be restored to the people.
mineral wealth beneath banks and monopoly industry
AMONG THOSE WHO WORK IT!
banish famine
„CO
ALL SHALL ENJOY HUMAN RIGHTS!
ship and to educate their children.
their country now say, as we say here:
sint we have tour berty our associations where they live.
The unity of all these components of the working class cannot be achieved simply through the extension of trade- union activity into the townships, even though that is essential. This problem objectively poses the question structured relationtrade-union movement and the community movement, two complementary forms of mass organization.
that can build bridges between the union movement and the township associations. This obliges the trade- union movement to widen its program of demands beyond those expressing
Some authors wonder about the
Duncan Innes says for example:
the working class movement from the mass strikes of around wages and working conditions. While no true working- class movement can afford to neglect these issues, neither can it confine itself to them.
*ED TERNATIVE TOWNSHIP
THERE SHALL BE WORK AND SECURIT
ALL SHALL ENJOY EONAL HUMAN
RIGHTS
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986
MAVE the social nature of the nationalizations to be carried out and of the future state that is to put them into operation? McLean answers this criticism in the following terms:
"For them, this omission and others which they regard to be crucial render the document ambiguous. The bulk of their criticisms are to do with the sections they regard to be incomplete or limited in their conception of the new society. However, there are many demands the Charter does not make: it does not demand an end to legal and social discrimination against gay people; or an end to pollution; or an end to nuclear power. Also there are many details that the Charter does not give about the makeup of the future society. This is because the Charter is not a thesis or even a program for change. The Charter is a set of minimum demands, rooted in the grievances and aspirations of the working class.... The Charter is not written in stringent socialist rhetoric, but the endorsing of
A delegation to the ANC's 1955 Congress, which adopted the Freedom Charter (DR) the aspirations of the industrial section of the proletariat. This is what COSATU wants to do by organizing the unemployed, the agricultural workers and domestics.
Proletarian hegemony cannot be achieved by the isolated action of that section of the industrial proletariat presently organized in the trade-union movement, even if that in a sense represents the vanguard.
Another problem is the difficulties of calling for political hegemony for the workers' movement without fully taking account of the specific features of this movement's present trade-union form.
In certain special circumstances and up to a certain point, unions can express the specific needs of the working class, including its political needs. However, given their distinet nature and mode of recruitment, it is much more difficult for them to play at all times and in all places the actual role of a political leadership of the struggle. That has been seen notably in certain townships, owing to the gap between the levels of consciousness and themes and methods of action proper to the various components of the population.
In this discussion, all those who have come out in defence of the Freedom Charter have done so while also calling for account to be taken of the special interests of the working class. Hugh McLean, for example, has said that the Charter is "to be understood as a set of minimum demands of the South African working class which provide the basis for the construction of a socialist program."
The majority also think that in 20 the criticisms made of the Charter there is a clear underestimation of the most immediate demands of the popular masses concerning housing, education and culture. This reproach does not, however, seem founded if you look at the place given to these elementary demands in COSATU's program, which is taken as the reference point by the critics of the Charter. Definitions of the workers' and people's movement
In reality, the main argument put forward in defence of the Charter has to do with the definition of the workers' and peoples movement. From this point of view it would indeed be wrong and "workerist" to let it be understood that the mass movement today is a populist movement dominated by the Black pettybourgeoisie. McLean says, therefore, that in his view: "These classes must be won to the mass movement on the strength of a socialist program that will guarantee their rights to work the land and industry »participate in small trade and
Jeremy Cronin also specifies: "Workerism, while correctly calling for the leading role of the working class, fails to see that this leadership must be exercised on all fronts of the struggle, and not just in narrow 'pure' working class shopfloor issues."
"However, if the differences lie essentially at this level, how can defenders of the Charter explain that this document offers no indication of its working-class demands and their championing by the mass movement makes the Freedom Charter a necessary basis for building socialism."
Thus, according to this viewpoint, it would be unfair to criticize the Charter for being a vague and strictly nationalist program. Such criticism would be profoundly sectarian and would lead to rigidity within the mass movement. It would prevent us from seeing how such a democratic approach could manage to convince the petty-bourgeois layers to fight alongside the workers. For example holders of this view maintain that, contrary to certain analyses, the boycott of white businesses showed that the Black merchants could associate themselves with the movement and be persuaded not to take advantage of it to increase their prices in the townships. (6)
The broad united movement assembled on the basis of the Charter, they argue, is after all dominated by the working class, and therefore can put in place instruments of people's control and pose the question of power.
The unity proposed, therefore, is based on political and economic convergences, as is indicated by Jeremy Cronin, who says:
"It should be noted that common interests are not all political, and the divergent interests are not all economic in a popular, multi-class alliance.
See McLean, op. cit.
6. See R. White, op. cit: "One of the most important objectives and effects of the consumer boycott has been to alienate further the Black commercial petty-bourgeoisie from the state, and to consolidate an alliance between this class and other classes/class fractions of the oppressed."
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986
In South Africa, for instance, while oppressed Black traders and Black workers have common political interests (the removal of group areas, pass laws, etc.) they also have certain common economic interests (the strugmonopoly domination, for instance)."
while all these contributions defend the Freedom by talking about an actual hegemony of the working class over the popular masses grouped behind this document, none specifies the political content and the concrete organizational means for exercising this hegemony.
No doubt few in South Africa are unaware of the need for unity of all the question that is generally raised in this regard is the political content of such an alliance and its organizational
On this point, Tony Karon and Max Ozinsky, two partisans of the charter, accuse those on the other side of the debate of failing to understand that "unity in the struggle is not principally based on mutually accepted concepts, nor, ultimately on a shared dependent on a willingness in different organizations to struggle together in the field for the achievement of mutual objectives despite programmatic and conceptual differences.
These authors argue that programmatic questions should not be "only with reference to the task of reconstruction in a society liberated from minority rule." Otherwise, one would neglect "to confront the questions, both programmatically and practically, of reaching that stage of liberation."
Karon and Ozinsky maintain that the critics of the Charter fail to grasp the importance of a broad democratic encompassing all the social forces with an interest in national liberation. Moreover, they think that working class's immediate While it is not in itself a socialist program, in their view, it is programmatic base for a stage leading toward socialism.
Replying to a critical analysis made by certain contributors to the debate struggles in other parts of the world (the Spanish civil war, Allende's Chile and others), these two authors state: "Although there have been a number of instances of popular fronts suffering defeat, there has never been an instance of working-class victory without the working class having engaged in popular alliances."
To back up their statement, they do not hesitate to rewrite the history of the international workers' movement to suit themselves. Thus, with regard to republican Spain, they say: "If the working class had abandoned the Popular Front and proceeded with a socialist program, brought the collapse of the republic a few years forward. The defence of the republic was the most immediate and vital task of the Spanish proletar-
As regards the Chilean experience under the presidency of Allende, they note: "Random worker occupation of small and economically unimportant business was promoted by the ultraleft, who were unhappy at the pace of nationalization undertaken by popular unity government. This contributed directly to the alienation of the petty-bourgeoisie from the popular strengthened support for imperialist intervention."
general condemnations of "ultra-leftism," these authors do not fail elsewhere to make some far-reaching statements about the conduct of the struggle in South Africa, speak of the working class allies in its struggle acknowledges that while these allies share some of the interests of the working class, they also have important differences in outlook. The working class seeks these allies because it is unable, on its own, to complete tasks which are vital to its advancement. If we accept that the unity of the different classes in the national democratic struggle is not an identity of interests, how can we propose that unity be based program of the working class?"
But precisely because there is not an absolute identity of interests among the various oppressed social classes struggling against the regime, the need for working out a national democratic program common to the movement as a whole does not exclude program.
In a parallel way, seeking alliances in day-to-day struggles does not eliminate the need for a working-class vanguard fighting for socialism. Are not these essential elements for asserting the role of the working class in the mass movement, which all of those involved in the debate claim to support, in one way or
It is easy to understand the reasons why this discussion is turning around
Freedom Charter and the interpretation of this document. Banned in South Africa, the ANC is present primarily in the form of a very broad popular movement, whose banner is
On this basis, notably, the UDF reflects the adherence of a section of the civic organizations to the program of the ANC.
For all those who want to debate the ANC's political line, it seems quite proper from a pedagogic standpoint to start by taking up the Charter. But then such a discussion can take a rather abstract form. National consciousness and class consciousness
The defenders of this program are not unaware of the fact - often they even stress it - that the Charter has at least the "defect" that it was written 30 years ago. It is possible to defend the general method but hard to say today that every line of it corresponds to the present needs of the masses.
To take only one example, contemporary capitalist development in South Africa makes carrying out the economic measures projected by the Charter itself a far more complex matter. Homelessness in Cape Town (DR)
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986
However, if the Charter is an outmoded program, how can we explain the unswerving adherence to it declared by the AN and by a major current in the mass movement? To understand this, you have to look at the particular use the ANC makes of this document. In its eyes, it has a function over and above its actual content as a symbol of the ANC's continuity and historical legitimacy.
Charter expresses a history, of the struggles of the 1960s. By using it today as a symbol, the ANC wants to highlight a continuity and present a certain legitimacy to the mass movement as a whole. As the "natural program, " the Charter is supposed to implicitly a natural, spontaneous hegemony of the ANC in all the sectors involved the authors cited here who defend the Freedom Charter do so while evoking the special role of recognize the social changes that have taken place in way, they ward off an objection. Why
"People's Congress" like the unions, community movements and so on in revising the Charter?
La discussion of updating the democratic program in focus the activity of the present mass open up the way for new and rich debates.
offer an invaluable opportunity for increased politicization of the masses, the public exercise of workers' democracy and a confrontation of political points of view in a democratic framework.
of the workers' movement has posed two new sorts of problems that the activists of the 1950s may have been unaware of but which are unavoidable today, therefore must be discussed. The first is the place of demands for workers' control over industrial production and over social and economic
The second concerns the role of the toiling classes in general in the formation of national consciousness. In other words, what is the relationship between class consciousness and national consciousness in advancing toward a democratic and non-racial South Africa?
In the 1950s, this debate already existed. At that time, the ANC was firmly committed to a position that there were several distinct national questions corresponding to the different racial communities (the Coloureds, Indians, Africans and whites). 22
It therefore proposed a political solution of a federal and plurinational type. In this context, the ANC saw itself representing the Africans.
those who, at the time, had. a less formalistic view of the national question could not thereby over the average level of consciousness of the various sectors of the oppressed population. The divisions in the mass movement along the lines of the racial classifications were not only the result of the apartheid policy of the government brought to power in 1948 by the election victory of the Nationalist Party. These divisions also rested on old prejudices firmly anchored in the entire colonial history of the country.
Today, despite the persistence of such prejudices, a national consciousness is forming gradually in the ex perience of day-to-day struggles that bring all the oppressed communities closer together. The converging mobilizations of recent years are the reflecANC has evolved from its original positions
But from this standpoint, Charter continues to bear the imprint of the atmosphere prevailing when it was drafted. If it had been necessary to give it legal and statutory expression then, it is not at all certain that this would have led to non-racial governmental institutions. On the contrary, a form of multi-racial federalism could have followed very easily from the Charter's formulations.
Such an outlook is no longer at all in line with the dominant orientation in the mass movement today. The demand for a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa is accepted virtually unanimously by the various political currents.
Aside from some sectors coming from the Black consciousness movement, who still advocate a type of African nationalism, come over to non-racialism - a social scheme in which any racial or religious classifications, even if proposed in the name of democracy, would be banned. beliefs of various communities is indeed an element in the democratic program. But guarantees cannot be precisely the feature of the apartheid system that is being combated
The ANC has also evolved from its non-racialism, and no longer poses the national question in the same terms as in the 1950s. Other currents have followed a similar trajectory. But the impetus toward the ripening national consciousness came from elsewhere. It came from the factories.
This evolution in the consciousness of the South African popular masses is not therefore simply the result of a debate over ideas among political currents and leaderships. It is changes in the South African social formation that have been the driving force in this ideological evolution.
Of course, the scheme of a unitary, democratic and non-racial society has existed for a long time in the programs of small political groups. But it really took on flesh in the workers' movement, in the trade-union movement in particular with the emergence of organizations such as the Federation of South African Unions (FOSATU). (8)
It is not difficult to understand the reasons for this. In particular in regions such as the Cape province and Natal, the workers movement had to unite Coloureds, Indians and Africans in order to be able to build its influence and wage its strug gles for immediate demands. Independent class-struggle unionism could only be also non-racial unionism. It is this in practice that has launched a long cultural revolution which will continue. It involves the forging of a new national consciousness, a South African or Azanian identity, without reference to skin color.
Practice has shown that this development of national consciousness is not independent of the development of class consciousness. More than any other social stratum of the oppressed, the working class is thus the crucible in which the unity of the oppressed masses is being forged, including on the level of their national consciousness.
The UDF reflects this process in a different way. This front includes a substantial part of the civic associations that have formed on the basis of place of residence. So, because of the housing discrimination systemcoordinates structures follow the lines of racial classification. This may only be a transitory thing, if you think that it is possible to extend relations rapidly among all
See in particular the resolutions of the Metalworkers' congress, MAWU. In reporting the congress, MAU's newspaper, 'Umbiko we Mawu,', of July 1986 wrote; "MAWU is totally committed to the principle of worker control. This is non-negotiable. But workers must not only control their union - they must also lead the struggle for liberation in South Africa. If workers are not at the head of the liberation struggle, then there is no guarantee that the Botha, government will be replaced by socialism.
For the main unions that devel oped at the start of the 1980s, in particfor FOSATU, the question of racialism was a fundamental programmatic question.
of the oppressed population. But the problem is different once you take up the question of the associations of Black merchants or small bosses whose sources of income and accumulation are rooted within the narrow limits of their own racial community.
Some authors have pointed to the problems that have arisen in Natal between Indian and Zulu profiteers defended by Chief Buthelezi's party, Inkatha.
In these circumstances, we are seeing a process inverse to the one described above for the working class. In this case, class consciousness that is bourgeois class consciousness -poses an obstacle to the development of a de-racialized national conscious-
The Freedom Charter is a program that gives a concrete political horizon to the democratic struggles. The national question in South Africa makes it necessary to offer the mass movement an action program whose immeobjectives national in character. From this standpoint, it would be wrong to criticize the Charter on the grounds that it does not explicitly say that it is necessary to fight for socialism.
Making the Charter the target of criticism designed more generally to express differences with the ANC's strategy thus has certain disadvantages. Some of the Charter's critics, in this context, have perhaps tended to discuss essentially what forms the future society should take, and, in so doing, to underestimate a problem of some importance - taking power. But it is precisely in the context of such a perspective that a unitary and democratic programmatic approach is absolutely indispensable.
some truth in the criticism made by Karon and Ozinsky. It is not enough to debate what forms the future society can or should take. The question of taking power has to be resolved. this problem can only be solved by assuring the support democratic front for the
Of course, for the future of the struggle whether this front is led by the working class. Nor is it necessary to about the social nature of the future state that is to be built. But political credibility in the mass movement today depends on formulating concrete strategy posing the question of power. However, the debate over the Charter bears mainly on the future society. This does implicitly pose the question of socialism, but it offers little to those who are looking for advances in developing an immediate revolutionary project.
Whatever assessment you make of the present tempos of mobilization, it is necessary to respond to what is already the expectation of decisive sections of the mass movement. Failing to do that would amount to saying that you are in fact putting off any idea and any discussion of a revolutionary crisis to an indefinite future.
The problem is not simply to analyze the various democratic programs issued in South Africa since the start of the century. Despite ambiguities pointed out by the various sides, the Freedom Charter in its method is no more "right wing" or "left" than other programs of this type. Like such programs, its formulations and certain of its demands show the marks of time.
It is important not to reduce the discussion to a mere interpretation of the Charter, and to that end of the document has surely to be avoided. The ANC leadership itself uses the Charter more often as a symbol than as a concrete poli-
In itself, a program referring explicitly to proletarian revolution and offer no absolute guarantee about the future of the struggle. When you have to take a position on any action program or problem lies elsewhere - in the nature of the political leadership that puts it into practice. But on this point, all those involved in the debate, regardless of the side they take, run up against a problem.
Those who defend the Freedom Charter in the name of the working. class struggle, consider that the left criticisms of the Charter are sectarian and that in reality this document is the primary link in the democratic struggle of the proletariat. They argue that the Charter is a minimum democratic program. But they have difficulty citing a more complete program or any more concrete social project either in the documents of
A shantytown in South Africa (DR)
The Botha government steps up its repression (DR)
of however, in a watershed period in
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986 the ANC or the South African Communist Party. cratic struggle is the path necessarily followed by the struggle for socialism
Africa." It is clear that in this framework, for them, the Charter has an essential role in achieving the unity of the popular masses that is indispensable a revolutionary victory. But if it were only a question of relying on a minimum democratic program to unify the mass movement, then the transition to a socialist perspective that they leadership that has been won to this program popularizing this strategy. how they analyze the ANC, no longer as a mass movement but as a political leadership. And they then unavoidable ANC or a part of it the working-class leadership? What should be said about the South African Communist Party and its own activity?
However, on these precise points example, Hugh MeLean writes about the mass movement's level of consciousness: "This militancy is reflected in the revolutionary songs and chants at mass funerals and meetings and the display of Congress and South African Communist Party flags. The popularity of the South African Communist Party and the red flag are to be understood in the widespread association of symbols with revolution workers' control, however inaccurately may represent the SACP's posi-
In their article, Karon and Ozinsky
"The Charter is the common program of all the classes in the national liberation struggle.... This is not to suggest that the Charter 24 working-class leadership in the national liberation struggle. Working-class leadership in that struggle has to be charter cannot be guaranteed by any repression obviously makes this debate complicated and faltering within South Africa's borders. There it is impossible to have a free and open discussion of such general questions as the political structuring of the mass movement. Organizations such as the ANC and the Communist Party banned. But this problem cannot be simply reduced to that. The question of political leadership
Those authors who criticize the Charter, on their side, run up against the same question. Contrary to certain assertions by Chartists, it cannot be said that they are just a bunch of ignorant ultra-leftists. They know well enough that in South Africa you have to have an of elementary slogans to unite the mass movement. The real discussion is not over the need for such a program but over the the leadership putting it forward. So, over and above their criticisms of the basic document of the Chartist current, they are faced political alternative can they propose and how can they forge it on the organizational and programmatic level? unionists publicly raised the idea of the need to build a workers' party, indicating the real stakes in the debate. But the process is extremely complicated. As a mass movement, the ANC represents in a way the average level of consciousness prevailing among the bulk of the Black population. We are, which political consciousness is evolving in tempo with manifold day-toexperiences. Nonetheless, question of a workers' party remains an eminently propagandistic one
For its part, the South Communist Party is trying within the support for the Freedom Charter and for the AN leadership with putting forward the need for a vanguard leadership, which it claims to represent (See box.)
When the question of a workers' party was raised in 1982-83 from the ranks of the trade-union movement, this idea could only be put forward in the perspective of forming a mass party based on the factories and the popular neighborhoods. This question is far from settled, because such a political leadership would in all likelihood not emerge by gradually substituting itself for the ANC. It would appear as an alternative to it, as political leadership. The ANC leadership, moreover, is quite conscious of that. It knows that the question of COSATU and of the industrial working class remains decisive for anyone who wants to establish hegemony over the vanguard of the debate within the indepenleading role that should be accorded to the proletariat. The idea is in each struggle to push the working class
9. In its March 1986 issue, the ANC organ 'Sechaba' explained: "The formation of COSATU represents the strengthening of the legal, above ground structures of the trade-union movement. While the majority of the working class of our country recognize this relationship [between the trade-union movement and the ANCI, some imperialist forces and armchair revolutionaries are seeking to undermine it. They do this in order to help develop an alternative force to the ANC the leading force in our liberation struggle.
International Viewpoint 22 December 1986 forward bit by bit into the front lines and to enable it to play its role as the real leading force in society.
However, this process is neither spontaneous nor natural. Proletarian hegemony cannot be established by proclamation. It has to be built in the course of the struggle in which tactical choices play an important role. (10) For example, it is necessary at times to be able to mount actions of strictly working-class unity but at others to broaden out a front of the oppressed
For even, for example, to be able to maneuver with some sections of white liberals in the Progressive Federal Party. These examples, of course, should not be put on the same level, but they are all included in the gamut of tactical options that are possible at a given moment.
In order to be able to exercise such tactical options and draw polialso has to be a political leadership
La national implantation and well-defined political project. people put forward the question of the need for working-class hegemony over the mass movement, mention the corollary of this, that is,
Position of the SACP IN A RECENT interview published in Marxism Today, a journal of the British Communist Party, the chair of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Joe Slovo, who is also a member of the national executive of the ANC, answered a question about his party's
"The answer in one sentence is because there is a need in South Africa to work the ultimate achievement of a socialist South ultimate because the main content of the immediate struggle is centred what our programme describes as the national democratic revolubroad demands of the Freedom
"In regard to these immediate tactics connected with their achievebetween the African National Con-
"But despite this similarity of as a party have a special responsibility, both in relation to the immediate struggle and
We regard ourselves we have a special historic responsibility that this class, plays its rightful part in the alliance of class forces which the immediate struggle demands. It's necessary to ensure that the working class and its aspirations are not swamped see liberation as consisting solely one in the seat of exploitagroups within and among the Black oppressed, and is now even whites who are prepared to make common cause with it. The ANC cannot, and should not, tie itself to the aspirations of a single class,
And it is the party's to assert and jealously safeguard the role of the working class in the alliance at this stage, not in some future millenium.
"But apart from this there is still the socialist perspective, which agenda of the struggle, cannot be filed away until the so-called first stage has been reached. As far as concerned as communists, there is no Chinese wall between the first stage, so-called, second stage, so-called. The revoluprocess, and it is our task to make that even at this stage continuously working people the long-term perconcept of national liberation and social emancipation." vanguard of working class, remained silent the independent Black trade-union movement in South Africa. by a statement of Joe Slovo in an article published in issue No. 197, quarter of 1986, SACP's journal, African Communist.
"It should also be stressed that participation of workers (whether the national movement itself and the role played by an independent radical trade-union movement like much part of the process of asserting the role see the shop floor as the only terrain of class struggle who counterpose the Party and the trade-union movement as tical leadership of the working
We are at one with Jay COSATU, when he said: Organized workers (in the trade-union movement) are not representatives of the working class as a whole, but they weapon, (South African Bulletin, April 1986, p. 39.) The representative of the working class as a whole is a political vanguard which we claim to be; a title which is of course earned by the calibre of leadership on the ground and not by mere proclamation."
the need for giving form to a political capable of serving as the only by reasons of caution linked to the repression or to risks incurred. It is also explained by the fact that the practical answer to this question is extremely complex and the possible responses have not yet ripened.
The advocates and the critics of the Charter are all in the same boat when it comes to the central question, which is what political leadership is to put into practice a democratic program to promote working-class hegemony. (11) Those who reject on the Charter that they consider sectarian or formalistic end up facing the same question: Can you have a correct proletarian democratic program without a proletarian
It is important to note that in the debate I have described programs, social movements and forms of action are discussed in the name of socialism. This discussion is therefore incomparably richer than that which is generally offered outside the country.
The importance of this ideological debate also lies in the fact that it is directly linked to the problems that have arisen in various social movements in the most recent period, whether the schools boycott, boycott of white shops or the general
This discussion emerges naturally from a body of new social and political experience. It is no that it is taking place in the columns of independent magazines that for several years have taken great care to recount, detail and study the various struggles unfolding
10. Among the most important examples of the role of tactics, I could mention the attitude of the main unions to the registration rules and industrial councils imposed by the state. There were important debates on these questions around 1982 and 1983. It was subsequently demonstrated that the flexible attitude taken toward these questions were not a "berayal" of the working clas
11. The neea for a workers charte or a workers' program has been mentioned several times. See Duncan Innes' op. cit., and the MAWU journal for September 1986.
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