"Free at last!"
"You have shown such a calm, patient determination to your own and joy that you can proclaim from the reclaim this country as changed - that the democratic gains which have been won, even if limited, are of no their eyes and imagine this is not the case, or to pretend that very little, in reality, has COSATU), nor of the smaller revolutionary left. It would be foolish for anyone to close of the left of the ANC-Alliance (principally the SACP and the trade union federation, is ales. of that here shout be no dowsr. But the new postagated Soulf Africa has not emerged according to the best-laid plans of the Left; neither those HE recent elections in South Africa were a victory for the Black working class and following the results of the election Nelson Mandela in optimistic mood As our articles in this issue reveal, there is no time for wish-fulfilment; rather, there are
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994 rooftops:
"Free at last!"
The economist, Patrick Bond, opens our dossier by identifying the central themes and issues which will, rightly, preoccupy the Left for the immediate future. In a second article he explores in greater detail both the contradictions of the ANC-approved
Reconstruction and Development Programme (a document which, while suffused throughout with neo-liberal premises, contains an important radical component), and its centrality for the Left (the necessity to push the programme's radical component to
PATRICK BOND*
Johannesburg, 28 May 1994
The article by Carl Brecker is based upon a document which, during the election itself, was widely distributed on the South African Left by a number of individual revolutionary socialist militants. The document has already met with real interest, and, from some quarters, a genuinely positive response. Faced with a class-collaborationist government, Brecker argues, the over-riding task for the Left is to regroup its scattered
N the heady days following the forces (the critical left in the ANC, SACP and COSATU being of particular importance)
election, few African National if it is to meet the new challenges with as united a response as possible. Brecker takes
Congress (ANC) militants worissue with those who, while their intentions may be honourable, believe that a new ried about the semi-liberated mass workers' party can be built by proclamation. Rather, a new party will be built nature of the Government of National through the process of regroupment and by demonstrating to those forces who would
Unity (GNU), with its plethora of oppohave to be won away from the ANC-Alliance, that concrete alternatives not only exist sition figures in important ministerial positions - Home Affairs, Finance, and
For many years the land question and the need for radical reform were central the Reserve Bank. Nor would they have demands of the national liberation movement. However, as Brian Ashley explains, it worried about Nelson Mandela's extrais only recently that a comprehensive programme for reform has begun to be spelt out.
ordinary admission that he was greatly
It is a political terrain which could quickly see a new rise in militancy in the rural areas.
relieved that the ANC had not reached
Indeed, many activists have already warned the ANC that they expect significant sixty-seven percent of the vote, consichange within the next five years —and no later.
dering the fears which had been
Finally, two sets of interviews return us to many of the themes elaborated by Bond and generated over re-writing the conser-
Brecker. Langa Zita, a metal workers organiser and leader of the SACP left, looks forvative Constitution.
ward to the Conference of the Left later this year, saying that it is not only an opportuni-
Nor about ANC-condoned ballot ty to re-affirm the necessity (and desirability) of the struggle for socialism, but to also fraud and traded votes which prepare the ground for greater Left unity. In our second interview militants from the
Cape Town Executive of the SACP agree that the battle for the life and soul of the brought them down from the two-
ANC has begun and explain the relevance of their Party's debates for the wider mass thirds mark to sixty-three percent.
Nor the moderate slant of the ANC
Ministers. Nor the persistence of
In South Africa today the Left has no time to take breath. It must make a balance of its apartheid State bureaucrats history and past expectations at the same time as it prepares for the new struggles
(under the provisions of the Sunahead. International Viewpoint and our supporters in South Africa will keep you inforset Clauses) until at least 1999 med. Roland Wood O
Nor the federal-style provincial system (contrary to the call for a "unitary state" when the ANC was in exile). Nor even the heavily
White-weighted local government elections still to come.
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SOUTH AFRICA I real consequence. more urgent tasks to be undertaken. DOSSIER but are also realisable.
thousands of committed, militarily-trained Whites can easily form small cells and conti- THE ultra-right is in near-complete disarray as a social force. But the many tens of nearly two-hundred small Platteland towns under the leadership of the far right Conser- nue sporadic bombing and assassination campaigns. Nevertheless, Whites in the vative Party (CP) split over whether to participate in the election. Right-wing "citizens" Ultra-right in disarray
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994 the election that there "was not a single word about nationalisation" in the RDP (another mistake) and that "no Marxist ideology" had penetrated the document (many would disagree).
For some in the Communist Party councils" were meant to formally replace existing CP local governments. But more than a dozen important CP councils balked and instead joined Freedom Front (VF) leader,
Gen. Constand Viljoen, in his attempt, through the election, to prove that there was
The VF strategy was attacked by CP leader Ferdi Hartzenburg, and by Eugene
Terre'blanche of the neo-nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). (At the last-
White support for a "Volkstaat".
minute the CP attempted to rejoin forces with Viljoen, but were rebuffed.) The VF, ANG and the outgoing government consequently signed an agreement setting out a process
However, many on the far right are convinced that the ANC will never grant an Afrikaner homeland, and they view Viljoen as naive -even a traitor - for attempting to which could conceivably lead to a Volkstaat.
negotiate. On the other hand VF supporters point to the futility of the AWB's military approach, citing the damage caused to the right's cause in Bophuthatswana in late
March, when AWB troops were forced to retreat from what appeared to many observers as a "kaffir-killing" expedition. O
There is, however, a residue of illwill in KwaZulu/Natal following egregious logistical break-downs in the electoral machinery. The Independent Electoral Commission looked the fool in the eyes of the even the most uncritical observers, thanks to its inability to contain widespread fraud, mismanagement, evasiveness, constant rulechanges and overall incompetence.
More worrying still are looming confrontations with Inkatha — not only in KwaZulu but also on the violent East
Rand (outside Johannesburg) - and with Afrikaner "volkstaat" supporters, who fell far short of the 800 thousand votes they sought. Only a few dozen of the far right wre temporarily locked up, with another round of bombings, sabotage and assassinations expected if wrangling mover the existence, boundaries and powers of a volkstaat gets out of
And confusion reigned in Cape
Town's new National Assembly and in the nine provincial legislatures, as many of the new parliamentarians appeared more concerned with salaries and perks than with taking the struggle forward
President Mandela's after-tax income was pegged at R400 thousand per year
(US$111 thousand), with Ministers pulling in R300 thousand. Petty-bourgeois class formation was already well underway during the campaign, barely dented by valiant efforts to cut the salaries.
No matter about such strife, which no doubt will be resolved in the muddling-through manner which emerged as mutually agreeable during four long years of negotiations.
What, though, of the more durable problems of economy, class, gender and ethnic relations which bedeviled every victorious nationalist movement in Africa? What concrete policies are on offer from what must be the most generouslysupported liberation force in history? Is there in South Africa a more general set of lessons for Left strategy and tactics?
"We have emerged as the majority party on the basis of the programme which is contained in the Reconstruction and Development (Programme)", Mandela attested on that splendid night of celebration. "That is going to be the cornerstone, the foundation, upon which the GNU is going to be based. I appeal to all leaders who are going to serve in this government to honour this programme."
The hundred and forty-seven page Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), much commented upon in the press, is actually relatively unknown in detail and implication. The Economist, for instance, noted with glee that minimum wages were left out and obvious that neither is correct. Mandela himself told the press immediately after
(SACP), Mandela's harsh and probably unnecessary words came as a surprise blow. Langa Zita, a leading young intellectual on the left of the SACP, reacted thus: "With those words Mandela is chopping out a huge section of the ANC constituency."
### Red-baiting
The red-baiting also reflected, perhaps, election-eve efforts to halt a spate of wildcat strikes, land invasions and other forms of mass action - this time it was not the iron fist of the security forces, but rather the the feeble pleas of SACP chair, Joe Slovo, former mineworker's leader Cyril Ramaphosa, and the transitional pre-election government administration. Predictably, attempts to splash cold water on the hot emotions failed. The public sector and the giant mining houses remained targets in late April and early May, with civil servants demanding immediate pension pay-outs, and Goldfields under strike by 10 thousand mineworkers following a walkout by 8 thousand Rusplats platinum miners. Industrial relations consultants predicted a six-month period of heightened working class activity.
As was demonstrated by Mandela's call for a fourteen-year old voting age, which the ANC National Executive Committee rejected last year, the new President's erratic streak — one day "no compromise" on meeting basic needs, the next, a fan of World Bank intervention — does not really affect the underlying struggles within the struggle. Indeed in many respects the Left views government and a repositioned civil society with more grounds for optimism than the ANC moderates. True, there are continual reversals of progressive thinking by the pragmatic Trevor Manuel (now Trade and Industry Minister) and Tito Mboweni (Labour Minister) of the Department of Economic Planning, and also by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Ramaphosa at the highest echelons
Nevertheless the ANC Left can claim within the party's top twenty Members of Parliament (MPs) at least three independent voices: the intellectual publicity secretary, Pallo Jordan, former COSATU general secretary, Jay Naidoo (now Minister with responsibility for the RDP),
International Viewpoint #257 June 1994 and former metalworker and community leader Moses Mayekiso. Other MPs in the top ranks of the SACP - who number sixteen of the top fifty ANC deputies - including Slovo (now Minister of Housing and Welfare), Party stalwarts Blade Nzimande and Tenjiwe Mthintso, and trade unionists Sidney Mufamadi (now Police Minister) and Chris Dlamini.
How left, though, is the ANC Left? Slovo, author of the Sunset Clause compromise, which in late 1992 signalled the end of mass action politics and entrenched the White male bureaucracy, further unveiled his moderate philosophical stripes by redefining "revolution" on a television election debate as "something which goes from the past to the future." Another indicator: even COSATU's long-serving Jeremy Baskin, head of its research think-tank and author of the union history, Striking Back (Verso, London, 1991), today promotes "corporatism" and simply laments that capital is not sufficiently organised to do the deals required.
democratic practice and accountability of leadership." Thus, rather than accepting the logic of capital - leading COSATU post-fordist David Lewis even attempts to impose the logic of capital on racial, backward South African business! — the increasingly influential Zita seeks to "transfer certain areas of econothe market to society." Likewise, in the words of the most vocal leftist amongst the COSATU MPs, former health workers general secretary, Philip Dexter: "We need to find ways to ensure alternatives to capitalist markets; for example, by decommodifying certain resources and services."
### Fruitful
This is likely to be a relatively fruitful search, as unions and the civic associations of thousands of townships and villages gain sustenance from the RDP's explicitly non-capitalist first gaining access to resources. The RDP promises: "Social movements and Community-Based Organisations are a major asset in the effort to democratise and develop our society. Attention must be given to enhancing the capacity of such formations to adapt to partially changed roles. Attention must also be given to extending social-movement and CBO structures into areas and sectors where they are weak or non-existent."
As Moses Mayekiso tells his supporters in the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO), "We have the right to expect funding for our basic organisations work. Of course, we must ensure that this does not lead to dependency and machine-politics." Indeed, notwithstanding a history of intense tactics, such as the feared home mortgage "bond boycott" (entire communities refusing to pay the bank for defective homes), SANCO sometimes displays the
"We need to find ways to
Social democratic ensure alternatives to
The shift to a decidely right wing capitalist markets; for social democratic posture by a declining fraction of the SACP - sterile Stalinists and a grouping of overly-intellectual logic within the realm of housing: "Mechanisms (such as time limits on resale, or compulsory repayment of decommodifying certain "workerists" (as the COSATU trade unionists were known a decade ago) — resources and services." bumps rather uneasily against the tougher, street-smart radicalism of advanced shop-stewards and the trade union Left. One point of contention was a lock-out clause in the constitution, for which Slovo apologised to a mass demonstration of workers outside the multi-party negotiations last November: "When you wear a suit, comrades, you sometimes change your ideology."
And the COSATU strategy of "postfordism" promoted by former workerists - characterised by faster integration into the world economy, niche markets, Japanised shop-floor relations, social contracts and so forth — is being rejected in important sectors (for example, auto, metals and paper products) by workers themselves.
Instead, one current of Left thinking with the ANC-Alliance has sought, in more nuanced form, what John Saul in New Left Review has termed "structural reforms". In the upcoming Socialist Register, Saul cites metalworker's leader Enoch Godongwana's approach to "restructuring which is informed by a socialist perspective and which is characterised by working class politics and subsidies upon transfer of property) must be introduced to prevent speculation and downward raiding." Thus, Dexter proposes "communal access to economic resources. Housing, for example, could be provided through associations, and be offered as non-sellable property rather than rented or privately-owned units." Zita calls for land trusts and people's development banks. Civic movement intellectual Mzwanele Mayekiso advocates a "socialist seedbed" of community development initiatives located squarely within "working class civil society", which is Mayekiso's characterisation of popular organisations quite distinct from the mushy liberal notion more common an anti-statist centres such as the US State Department.
This approach, according to leading SACP ideologue, Jeremy Cronin, sits quite comfortably within the RDP itself. Cronin's own role in the RDP was substantial, and his contributions to the chapter "Democratising State and Society", allows civil society radicals to "engage, as socialists, in the RDP" by same corporatist orientation which appeared so attractive to many COSATU staff during a recent period of severe recession in which just surviving was an accomplishment for many mass formations.
Like urban social movements in many semi-peripheral societies, SANCO could be different, however, because it acts as a representative of a fairly consistent community-based phenomenon sitting squarely across the great divide of urban workers, and the urban and rural poor. Throughout the world, this structural location is proving to be the most vigorous site of opposition to the neoliberalism of World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programmes. *
*Patrick Bond, author of "Commanding Heights and Community Control: New Economics for a New South Africa' (Ravan 1991), works with community groups and trade unions in South Africa and Zimbabwe
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