What
many consider to have been one of the most historic elections in
Post-Apartheid South Africa is finally over. Over the last decade it
has become clear that South African politics is still very much
defined by a struggle over the issues of race and class. This
election demonstrated that fact more than ever.
Even
before Mbeki took over the helm from Mandela both the ruling party,
the African National Congress and the two main opposition parties at
the time, the New National Party and the Democratic Party, pushed for
a neo-liberal agenda of structural adjustment and privatization. The
first casualty of this shift to the right was many of the ANC’s
struggle slogans, including the Freedom Charter promise that “the
wealth of the country shall belong to the people”,
followed by the social democratic Reconstruction and Development
Programme which was replaced by the self-imposed structural
adjustment represented by the Growth with Equity and Redistribution
Programme (GEAR).
Once
in power Mbeki endeared himself to global capitalism by “talking
left and walking right” (Patrick Bond, 2004). Mbeki’s Government
carried out pro-capitalist policies while at the same time trying to
create a layer of a “black bourgeoisie”. From pursuing a presence
in the main global financial and economic summits and structures, to
appointing an Economic Advisory Council composed of the CEOs of major
global multinationals and ‘deploying’ senior ANC people not in
government into the fraction of mining billionaires as part of the
ANC’s black economic empowerment programme.
Mbeki
further pushed the neo-liberal New Economic Partnership for Economic
Development (NEPAD) onto the rest of Africa. Opening up the African
hinterland to South African and global mining corporations. Mbeki
immersed himself so much in ‘international affairs’ that locals
soon began to joke that he was the president who most frequently
visited South Africa.
Back
in South Africa Mbeki began to push his neo-liberal right wing agenda
onto the ANC. With his trusted lieutenants Terror Lekota, Alec Erwin,
Essop Pahad, Trevor Manuel and Manto Tshabalala Msimang he turned ANC
conferences into red bashing and red baiting events. Mbeki was
liberally supported by the neo-liberal media in South Africa who
cheered his intentions to privatise state enterprises, while aspirant
black bourgeois elements licked their lips in anticipation of the
tasty morsels coming their way. Of course privatisation meant
job-losses through down-sizing, right-sizing and given the current
political climate possibly capsizing! These policies led to tensions
and divisions within the ANC and between the ANC government and
leadership and the other organisations in the Tripartite Alliance,
COSATU and the SACP. COSATU called a series of general strikes
reflecting the anger of workers and the poor against the capitalist
policies of the government they had elected. Within the SACP there
was also strong criticism towards the policies of the ANC government
but the ANC leadership continued to cling to the discredited
two-stage theory of the revolution. This states that first there will
be a “National Democratic Revolution” which will overthrow
capitalism, and then, later on, once this question is solved then we
can raise the question of socialism. The leadership of the SACP
insisted that the “deepening of the NDR” would somehow lead to
socialism. But as a matter of fact, there was nothing to deepen,
since the ANC in government was pursuing openly capitalist policies.
To make matters worse, SACP members were sitting in parliament as ANC
MPs voting for Mbeki’s policies and some were even ministers in his
government carrying these policies into practice.
In
trying to entrench the shift to the right the Mbeki government
allegedly began a process of using the structures of the state such
as the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the judiciary, the
National Prosecuting Authority and of course the Office of the
President to effect a purge against left-wing elements in the Ruling
Party and in Government. This took the form of compromising those
opposed to Mbeki. Thus an attempt was made to taint the leader of the
South African Communist Party, Blade Nzimande by alleging that he
corruptly pocketed a SAR500,000 donation from a corrupt businessman
meant for the SACP. It now appears that this was a sting in which the
businessman was promised a reprieve from charges of corruption if he
laid charges of corruption against Nzimande. Then there were the rape
charges against Zuma; it is alleged that the unfortunate mentally
unstable girl had close ties to the NIA and the National Intelligence
Minister Ronnie Kasrils. Finally there was the corrupt arms deal,
where Zuma’s lawyer client confidentiality was abused in an
Apartheid style raid that targeted both his home and the offices of
his lawyers. No one in the media mentions that the architect of the
Arms Deal was Mbeki. The deal emanated from his office as Deputy
President. All the transactions had to be authorized by the Minister
of Finance Trevor Manuel who has a reputation of being a bean
counter, while the economic trade offs were the responsibility of
Alec Erwin. Despite there being rumours of back-handers involving
tens of millions of dollars, only Zuma was ever investigated for
allegedly receiving a pay-off of a paltry half a million. The energy
in which the Zuma investigation was being pursued by both the NPA and
the media clearly demonstrated an agenda other than good governance.
This became especially apparent when Mbeki stepped in to protect
Jackie Selebi the chief of police who kept rather unsavoury company,
and the Deputy President Ngcuka who allegedly took her pals and
family members on a spending spree to Dubai.
In
the mineral rich provinces the peasantry faced a land grab from
mining companies, many of whom have prominent members of the ANC and
key civil servants under Mbeki as shareholders. In many cases rural
communities who received their land back as part of the land
restitution and redistribution programmes of the Department of Land
Affairs just as quickly lost their land as the Department of Minerals
and Energy issued prospecting and mining licenses to mining companies
in bed with senior politicians and civil servants. Anglo Platinum
proudly boasts of providing training in “human rights” for the
police in platinum rich Limpopo province. To the right is a picture of the
face of Sammy Ledwaba an activist from Motlhotlo village after the
local police meted out some ‘human rights’ to him for resisting
the expansion of an Anglo Platinum mining operation that means the
relocation of his house, tilling fields and grazing land.
Given
the huge boom in mineral commodity prices one would expect
communities living in the vicinity of mines and in particular
mineworkers to have experienced some improvement in their lot in
terms of housing and wages. Yet many mineworkers find themselves in
squatter camps; the Orwellian sanitized name used by government and
the media is “informal settlements”. These squatter camps are
cesspools of substance abuse, sexually transmitted disease, TB and
HIV/AIDS. Thabo Mbeki’s denialist attitude further alienated the
working class and the poor.
Given
this rightwing shift and the prolonged pressure being brought to bear
on the working class and the poorest of the poor during Mbeki’s
tenure it is not surprising that the rank and file members of the ANC
lost patience with the leadership of the organisation under Mbeki.
The day of reckoning for the Mbeki clique came at the ANCs Polokwane
Conference in December 2007. The resounding defeat of the Mbeki
clique at Polokwane and his subsequent recall as president led to the
resignation of his entire cabinet. The same clique then formed the
Congress of the People (COPE) to great pomp and ceremony in the media
and opposition parties who hoped that this ‘split’ would
irreparably harm the ANC and the tripartite alliance and destroy the
ruling party’s ability to run an effective election campaign. It
was hoped that the left-wing populists would be taught a lesson in
the 2009 election. After all, Mbeki had received nearly 40% of the
votes at the Polokwane conference. By splitting the ANC the ruling
class hoped to destroy its electoral domination and maybe form a new
coalition government between the newly formed COPE and the DA, or at
the very least form a strong opposition which would neutralise any
danger of a leftward moving ANC government.
COPE
ran a campaign which claimed that they were the true custodians of
the Freedom Charter (the definitive script of the liberation
struggle); that they were the voice of middle class reason, and that
their members were above corruption. This despite the fact that
COPE’s president Terror Lekota was Minister of Defence during much
of the arms acquisition that became the arms scandal. Lekota was also
caught out in 2003 for not declaring business interests to
parliament.
Given
these publicly known skeletons in Lekota’s cupboard and his
reportedly abrasive, dictatorial personality, COPE wisely decided not
to make him their presidential candidate for the 2009 elections.
Instead they appointed the Reverend Mvume Dandlala, a priest eager to
exchange the pulpit for the pillbox. Dandala found another priest in
COPE, the Reverend Allan Boesak who spent time in jail for
corruption. There are persistent rumours of divisions and leadership
struggles in COPE. Apart from Lekota’s ego it is a party of
“Chiefs” with very few “Indians”. COPE is funded by amongst
others Mbeki loyalist and billionaire Sakkie Macozoma.
Instead
of splitting the ANC vote, Cope split the middle class and
fundamentalist Christian vote, and while the party fared poorly
nationally it has become the official opposition party in four
provinces taking support away from parties such as the United
Christian Democratic Party (UCDP), the African Christian Democratic
Party (ACDP), the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Democratic
Alliance (DA) in those provinces with very small white populations.
However, Nationally COPE only managed to garner 7.43% of the vote.
They failed to get any support from the working class and the poor,
reconfirming the defeat of their leadership in the ANC nationally.
The workers and the poor, once again, turned out massively to vote
for the ANC, but this time an ANC that they saw as representing a
change of policies, a shift to the left. As a matter of fact, even
though the percentage of the vote for the ANC was slightly down, the
actual number of votes went up (despite the split) to 11.6 million
(as compared to 10.8 million in 2004 and 10.6 million in 1999, though
still short of the historic 12.2 million of 1994).
Bringing
us back to the hysterical anti-ANC white vote. The Democratic
Alliance (DA) is celebrating a victory on the grounds that they
managed to obtain 16.66% of the national vote. They are further
celebrating the failure of the ANC to get a two thirds majority, a
central tenet of their oppositionist election campaign built around
white fears of black government and of the possibility of communist
influence on that government. The DA failed to present the populace
with an alternative vision to that of the ANC, and most voters will
remember their posters which read “Stop Zuma!” and “Prevent an
ANC two-thirds majority!” Today Afrikaans newspaper banners
proclaimed, “South Africa stopped ANC two-thirds majority!” The
ANC won 65.9% of the vote, just less than one percent of a two thirds
majority. Given these statistics it would be more accurate to say
that South Africans rejected neo-liberalism and religious
fundamentalism of all sorts.
The
DA did win slightly more than 50% of the vote in the Western Cape
Province confirming the combined and uneven nature of issues of race
and class in South Africa. The Western Cape is acting like a magnet
for white South Africans, a Great Trek in reverse so to speak to the
colonial days prior to 1834 when whites started penetrating the
interior of South Africa beyond the Ghariep (Orange) river for the
first time. Coloured voters in the Western Cape associate with the
white population there and the area is still feeling the impact of
the old Group Areas Act which made the province a ‘coloured
preferential area’ as far as work opportunities and residential
status was concerned. Many from the coloured community feel
threatened by the increasing numbers of blacks seeking employment
there and fear that an ANC provincial government would give
preferential treatment to blacks as far as jobs, housing and services
are concerned. Apart from the Western cape the ANC won all other
provinces resoundingly.
The
white electorate are told by opposition parties including the DA in
just about every election that the ANC would change the constitution
of the country should it win a two thirds majority. This despite the
fact that the ANC has never campaigned with a manifesto that calls
for any changes to the constitution. Almost all the opposition
parties including the DA have campaigned around calls to change the
constitution including bringing back the death penalty, criminalizing
homosexuality, bringing back corporal punishment, curbing freedom of
speech and expression through censorship, revoking labour rights, and
changing the manner in which the president is elected. Just about the
only part of the constitution that most parties to the right of the
ANC do not want changed is the “Property Clause” which protects
private property.
Currently
the media and opposition parties are brining great pressure to bear
on the ANC to exclude left-wingers from the alliance from ministerial
positions and to continue with Thabo Mbeki’s neo-liberal policies.
Scarcely
hours after the announcement that the ANC, with the help of its
alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the
Congress of South African Trade Unions, received an overwhelming
mandate from the electorate, 65.9% nationally and 66.31%
provincially, the voices of the capitalist class – the various
investment agencies and Media – are warning the ANC not to shift
policy to the left. Before the election the neo-liberal interests
held a gun to the temple of the South African Electorate threatening
that a two thirds majority for the ruling party would be bad for
investment. Now they are hysterically trying to influence government
economic policy away from the election manifesto for which the South
African population voted so overwhelmingly. In other words the
capitalist class wants to, yet again as with every previous election,
steal victory from the working class and the poor by either scaring
the leadership of the ANC with the threat of an investment strike, or
through buying off that leadership. In the meantime the neo-liberal
media are trying their best to demonise and ridicule the left in the
ANC Alliance, on SABC one commentator went so far as to say that
“there is not a single example on the planet of where communism has
succeeded” (SABC3).
An
editorial in the London-based Independent was very clear in its
“advice” to Zuma:
“He
should confirm that now by reappointing the ANC’s widely respected
finance minister, Trevor Manuel, who has steered the economy through
40 consecutive quarters of growth until the end of last year. He
should offer a third term to the governor of its central bank, Tito
Mboweni, one of the most respected economic officials in emerging
markets. He should keep the former ANC Youth League leader Fikile
Mbalula and the Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande,
well away from any posts that might unsettle investors. And he should
resist all temptation to reach for his infamous machine gun.
Government is no place for the songs of opposition.”
(Leading article: South Africa’s new beginning)
Given
that the South African media is owned and controlled by corporate
capitalist interests there is very little room for alternative
viewpoints reaching the public. Even the public broadcaster, the
SABC, slavishly repeats the mantra of neo-liberalism warning that the
ANC will not be able to realize its election manifesto once in power
because “the tax base is only 6 million taxpayers strong, while 23
million people registered as voters and the total population equals
50 million” (SABC 3, 24 April 2009). What the public is not told is
that every South African pays 14% VAT on any purchases, including
basic foodstuffs. Education, water, health, housing have all been
commodified, and in order to create “conditions conducive for
investment” the government has prostrated itself before corporate
interests over the last 10 years, thus corporations pay a fraction of
the price that ordinary consumers pay for utilities such as water and
electricity, not to speak of a variety of other incentives offered by
the Department of Trade and Industry. No wonder that South Africa has
one of the biggest gaps between wealth and poverty in the world.
The
poor have in fact subsidized the neo-liberal project advanced under
the regime of Thabo Mbeki over the last decade. Corporations have
shifted the costs of their environmental impact, their social impact
and even the costs of exports onto the poor. Thus mineworkers live
largely in shacks without potable water and electricity in places
such as Rustenburg. Communities who have historically used stream,
well and borehole water stream water in Limpopo province can no
longer do so as mining operations have poisoned these sources of
water. The same mining corporations now purify the water and sell it
as a commodity back to the same water users – the water has been
turned into a commodity through first poisoning it, then purifying it
and selling it as a commodity. The principle of polluter pays has
been subverted into the polluter is paid!
Jacob
Zuma is trying to reassure capitalist interests, but this, as we have
seen in the last 15 years, can only be done by attacking the workers
and the poor. This is even more the case as South Africa has entered
into recession and the country has its largest budget deficit in a
decade. One cannot serve two masters. If the new ANC government wants
to please big business it will soon come into collision with the
workers and poor which will express themselves through COSATU and the
SACP.
The
task of Marxists in South Africa is to reach out to the most advanced
elements within these organisations and start a serious struggle to
put them on a clear socialist programme, one that is based not on
some “National Democratic Revolution” but firmly on socialist
revolution. If one thing has been clearly demonstrated by the last 15
years of bourgeois democracy and ANC government it is that the
problems faced by the masses of workers and poor in South Africa,
overwhelmingly Black, not even those related to racial discrimination
or access to the land, housing, education and healthcare, cannot be
solved within the limits of capitalism. Only the expropriation of the
means of production, “the wealth of the land” that the Freedom
Charter says should belong to the people, can lay the basis for a
democratic plan of production that can start to address the problems
of homelessness, poverty and unemployment which millions of South
Africans still suffer from.
Sources:
Patrick
Bond (2004) Talk Left Walk Right, South Africa’s Frustrated Global
Reforms. University of KwaZul Natal Press: Pieter Maritzburg.
{Thanks to www.marxist.com for this article}
