State interests or ss hegemony?
* South Africa The task of government is to govern. In other words, the ANC can't avoid getting its hands dirty. Enforcing bourgeois law and order includes bull-dozing squatter camps, protecting private property against the Land Grab Movement, beating up strikers and shooting protesters. It also requires less obvious, but more significant assaults on the working classes, like the implementation of monetarist policies and the promotion of neo-liberal economics; the framing of labour laws which curb strikes, seek to introduce labour market flexibility and propose wage restraint; or opening up the economy to speculative foreign investment and promoting export production in order to integrate South Africa into the global economy.
Although it came to power as a liberation movement, whose constituency was predominantly the urban working class and rural poor, and whose mandate was to reconstruct the country in the interests of the majority, the ANC is obliged to perform as other bourgeois parties would, since it is in charge of a capitalist economy and a bourgeois state machine. Not only does the daily responsibilities of state erode what is left of the ANC's liberation politics, it also seduces the ministers and MPs of the ruling party into the service of capitalism. As well as the thousands of movement cadre who entered the civil service, and the countless others who staff the regional and local government structures. Some directly, others indirectly. Some more. some less.
Working within the framework of international law also means honouring the apartheid foreign debt: R90 billion (US$20 bn.) and paying billions in interest (R41 bn/$9.1 in 1996/7) to service a national debt which exceeds 56% of the total value of goods and services produced in South Africa each year.
While the ANC continues to draft broadly progressive social legislation, it cannot radically redress the legacy of apartheid in land reform, job creation, housing and social services. Because market-driven reconstruction costs money and, not wanting to appear fiscally irresponsible and populist, the government must rely on "trickle-down" development from capitalist growth. Tension inside the ANC
This bourgeoisification of the ANC-ingovernment brings it into conflict with the material interests of its constituency, and accounts for the ideological struggles taking place within the Alliance. But the ANC still has a virtual monopoly on political life in the 22 International Viewpoint
African townships around the country (except in Natal). And despite rising popular disappointment and dissatisfaction at the slow pace of transformation, frustration is not yet intense enough to generate anger to vote against the ANC. Largely, perhaps, because no viable alternative exists.
The ANC notion of a "rainbow nation with common national interests" means inthe interests of social classes and strata whose class interests conflict with those of the dispossessed majority. This demand to act for all South Africans" drew the ANC-in-government further and further away from the ANC-asorganisation. It also created a tensions between regional governments and regional ANC structures - unleashing a series of ugly authoritarian incidents in which the ANC national structures undemocratically interfered in regional elections, imposing "official" candidates. This produced significant rank and file revolts in KwaZulu-Natal, the Orange Free State, and the northern Transvaal. Interference in elections in the western and eastern Cape was more discrete, but just as real. Central government has also been imposing its legislative policies and administrative decisions on the regional governments, and curbing the attempts of local government to redress poverty.
Over and above the lack of promised transparency and accountability, this also shows the tensions inherent in the ANC's transition from liberation movement to governing party; and role of the ANC-ingovernment as parliamentary executive to a bourgeois economy and state. thereby relinquishing its role as voice of the masses. The new black elite
The class base for this shift is the rapidly growing black bourgeoisie, and a new black elite - encouraged and assisted in every way by government and big business. These new social layers interlock with a new army of middle-layer black civil servants, enjoying their first taste of bourgeois society, and the rise of party apparatchiks who staff the top echelons of power, and help run the ministries. The merging of the old apartheid bureaucracy with new recruits from the ranks of the black petty bourgeoisie has effectively nullified any progressive influence those recruited from the struggle organisations could bring
The organisations of the mass democratic movement (trade unions, civic associations and ANC branches) have been severely handicapped by the co-opting of their cadre into the structures of government and the business world. The most serious of these negative influences is the successful luring of the unions and civic associations into business operations as partners of big capital.
Activist ranks have also suffered from numbing effects of growing mass unemployment, the low cultural levels resulting from the apartheid era, the consequent explosion of violence and crime, and the continuing retreat of the leadership as it falls prey to capitalist triumphalism.
The lack of an alternative radical leadership is a real tragedy. Several of the small left groups have been revisng their strategies and programs but are hobbled by their limitted organisational capacity and political viability. This shortfall could be broken by judicious response to the shifts taking place within the unions and the Alliance, particularly around COSATU's call to re-galvanise the mass The right response
Other political forces have responded more promptly to the changes taking place. The National Party, whose rule was unbroken from 1948 - 1994, is in the midst of a major shake-up, following its departure from the Government of National Unity. The restructured Nationalists hope to spearhead a political re-alignment before the end of the year. They are prepared to disband their present form into a unified right opposition, via an electoral alliance between the National Party, Inkatha, the Democratic Party and smaller parties. This is a high-risk move for the Nationalist Party. And there is still no good reason to believe that an anti-ANC coalition of old apartheid-era parties will constitute a serious challenge in 1999.
More significant, but no more likely to succeed, is the move by homeland boss turned ANC leader Bantu Holomisa to form a new black opposition party by building on frustration against the AÑC-in-government.
There will be no viable left opposition to capitalism in South Africa until the ANC loses its hegemony on black politics. This is unlikely unless COSATU and the SACP seriously challenge the bases of their alliance with the ANC. There is little prospect of this happening before 1999.
In other words. the radical left faces a long period of regrouping and redefinition. In the difficult and fast-evolving South African context, it is essential to focus on the challenges of the current situation, rather than past alliances. *