THE FIRST GENERATION OF THE LEADERSHIP OF UMKHONTO WE SIZWE – THE PEOPLE’S ARMY
The long-standing tradition of complementary independence, we agreed, is not to be confused with either mechanical conformity or chronic oppositionism to each other.
From this, it is obvious that despite what was said in 2008, there was no
agreement to reconfigure the Alliance such that it becomes “the strategic political centre” of the NDR!If the ANC were to agree to this proposal, it would have to prepare that a properly constituted National Conference adopts the necessary Constitutional Amendment
to give effect to the relevant exercise of authority by the said “strategic political centre”.
The reality is that no ANC National Conference has taken any decision for the Alliance to be transformed into a “strategic political centre of the NDR”. There is no likelihood that any ANC National Conference will adopt such a position. (QUOTED FROM PART 3 OF THIS PAPER)
ORGANISATIONAL EXPRESSION OF ALLIANCE
All this also suggests that we should say something about the important
matter of the organisational expression of what the 2007 ANC Strategy and
Tactics document described as:
the three streams of the national liberation
struggle in our country – the revolutionary democratic, the socialist and the
trade union movements – (which) have found common cause in pursuit of the
objectives of the NDR as commonly understood…
The ANC and the trade union movement, the latter represented by the South
African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), found such ‘common cause’
during the 1950s. The Alliance expressed itself in the form of the ‘Congress
Alliance’.
During some of this time the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) had
dissolved itself and therefore ceased to exist, and its successor, the South
African Communist Party (SACP) had not effectively communicated its
underground existence. When it did, by the beginning of the 1960s at the
latest, it had confirmed that it was part of the ‘common cause’. This reality
was confirmed by the publication of the SACP Programme in 1962, ‘The Road
to South African Freedom’.
By the beginning of the 1960s the ANC had largely outgrown the anti
communism which had been a prominent feature of its thinking for a number
of decades.
It was in these circumstances that the alliance between the ANC and the
SACP could find organisational expression. For instance, it manifested itself
by the agreement between the two organisations to form Umkhonto we Sizwe
(MK) under the political leadership of the ANC.
During the years of illegality of the ANC, the SACP pursued a strict policy that
it would not impose SACP decisions on the ANC. It therefore prohibited that
there should be SACP positions on matters that would serve on the agenda of
the ANC NEC or other senior bodies. SACP members in such ANC structures
therefore participated in them without representing any SACP mandates on
any issue under discussion.
Neither did the ANC, SACP and SACTU hold formal meetings with each side
represented by a delegation. Rather, the Presidents/Chairs of the
organisations could meet on a bilateral basis as need arose.
Effectively, the organisational format of the three allies, later joined by
SANCO, of formal meetings of delegations, is a matter of the period since the
unbanning of the ANC, SACP and other organisations in 1990.
This short history on the organisational expression of the reality of different
formations ‘having found common cause in pursuit of the objectives of the
NDR as commonly understood…’ says that such organisational expression
can assume many forms, depending on the circumstances.
To support its argument for a reconfiguration of the Alliance, the SACP has
based itself on various false propositions. Below we list some of these.
A LITANY OF MISDIAGNOSIS
Here are some examples of this.
The SACP Programme, ‘South African Struggle for Socialism’, says:
The Zuma Presidency of the ANC, and subsequently of the state, created a
more favourable space for the SACP (and COSATU)…(and) the space opened
up for the Party from 2007…
The counter-revolution intervened in the 2007 ANC 52nd National Conference
in part to influence the outcome of the elections during the conference. Much
of what happened after that Conference had to do with implementing the
agenda of the counter-revolution.
This is what has accounted for the generally negative evolution of our country
since 2009.
It seems particularly monstrous that the SACP should claim that it benefited
from the counter-revolution. Alternatively, this sends a particular message
about this organisation which designates itself a Communist Party!
Of course, the other side of this coin is that the SACP has allowed itself to be
used to convey the deliberate misinformation that the December 2007
counter-revolutionary intervention in the ANC was in fact so progressive that
it created space for the SACP which had not existed in the period of the NDR
since 1994!
Again the SACP Programme says:
In other quarters, a measure of defeatist reformism set in. There was a loss
of faith in the prospects for socialism, or even for the serious socio-economic
structural transformation of South Africa’s distorted political economy.
Among those taking this line were some formerly in the leadership of the
SACP itself. It included two future ANC and national presidents, elected to the
Central Committee in April 1989, who quietly resigned from the Party a year
later…
Not long after the unbanning of the ANC, the SACP and other organisations in
1990, the Central Committee of the SACP met in Lusaka to discuss the
consequences of the unbanning, including the forthcoming negotiations with
the apartheid regime.
Nobody at this meeting expressed any ‘defeatist reformism’ or ‘loss of faith in
the prospect of socialism’. The allegation in the Programme that some people
“formerly in the leadership of the SACP itself, including two future ANC
Presidents” were in this so-called ‘defeatist’ or ‘faithless’ group is completely
false.
The most hotly debated issue was whether the SACP should develop as a
mass Party or as a vanguard Party. Both sides in this debate were very
interested that the SACP should succeed in its task to lead the struggle for
socialism and were discussing the question – what was the best
organisational form the Party should assume to achieve this objective.
The Central Committee was also concerned that in constituting its delegation
for the negotiations, the ANC might choose comrades the majority of whom
might be members of the SACP. The CC thought this would be unfortunate as
it would communicate a wrong and undesirable message that the ANC was
dominated by Communists.
It therefore decided that especially some of those comrades who knew or felt
that they would be in the leading ANC negotiating committees should resign
from the Party so that when serving in the said ANC committee, they could
truthfully say that they are not members of the SACP.
The CC went further and said it would leave this matter to the individual
members rather than say who should resign.
The ‘two future ANC Presidents’ acted on this CC decision but did not resign
from the Party. Rather, they allowed their membership to lapse.
There are people who were in the SACP CC in 1990 or attended the Lusaka
meeting we have mentioned.
It is puzzling why the SACP did not check its facts with these comrades,
choosing, rather, to propagate blatant falsehoods!
In 1986, the apartheid Bureau of Information published a booklet entitled
‘Talking with the ANC…’ to discourage the strong flow of delegations and
personalities travelling from South Africa to Lusaka, Zambia to talk with the
ANC.
The booklet contains a graphic presentation of the ANC NEC
elected at the 1985 Kabwe Consultative Conference. As you will see, the
apartheid propagandists claimed that only seven (7) of the thirty-member (30)
NEC were not members of the SACP.
What the apartheid propagandists said was not necessarily wrong!
It was this situation which informed the decision of the SACP Central
Committee, meeting in Lusaka in 1990, that some of the SACP members should
resign from the organisation to avoid inadvertently communicating the
false message that the SACP controlled the ANC.
The SACP Programme also says:
The degree to which there was a shared strategic perspective within the
leaderships of the ANC and SACP is even more graphically underlined in the
ANC’s internal document (known as the “Green Book”) which reported back
in 1979 on a major ANC leadership visit to Vietnam…It was this strategic perspective shared by the ANC and the SACP that made
possible (and was fostered by) the way in which the SACP was able to successfullyaddress its practical tasks, its organisational approach, and key
related issues like recruitment and cadre development in this period. While
the difficult conditions of illegality and exile played a part, it is important to
underline this shared strategic perspective (at THAT time, and in that
specific reality…)” [Emphasis in the Programme].
Part of what is then quoted from the Green Book is this paragraph:
It should be emphasised that no member of the Commission (which drafted
the Green Book) had any doubts about the ultimate need to continue our
revolution towards a socialist order; the issue was posed only in relation to
the tactical considerations of the present stage of our struggle.
This particular view of the individual Green Book Commissioners was never
put to the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) when the Commission
constituted by the NEC tabled the Green Book to its principals, the ANC NEC.
The ANC NEC never took any decision saying that it had no ‘doubts about the
ultimate need to continue our revolution towards a socialist order’.
There is nothing either in the Green Book paragraphs it cites, or the Green
Book as a whole, which justifies the false conclusion the SACP Programme
arrives at, that there ‘was a shared strategic perspective within the
leaderships of the ANC and SACP about the ultimate need to continue our
revolution towards a socialist order’.
The SACP Programme throws up this fabrication as part of the desperate
effort by the SACP to argue that the ANC has adopted policies in the past
which reinforce the need to reconfigure the Alliance as the ‘strategic political
centre’ of the NDR.
It cannot be correct that the South African Communist Party resorts to
untruths to advance its policies and programmes.
The SACP document ‘Towards a Reconfigured Alliance’ as published in Bua
Komanisi says:
The economic policy entitled Growth, Employment and Redistribution
(Gear), introduced by government in 1996 and then declared to be non-negotiable,undermined the democratic political process that was followed in
the development of the RDP as well as its progressive policy content. It was
through Gear that the imperialist driven wave of neoliberalism was
domestically imposed. This unravelled the policy cohesion that the Alliance
(and the broader MDM) had consolidated through the adoption of the RDP,
which was our platform for the first general election held in April 1994.The Alliance was consequently plunged into a crisis of policy tussles. The
SACP faced an attempt at booting it out of the Alliance unless it stopped its
opposition to Gear. This played itself out during the ANC’s messages to the
10th Congress of the Party held in 1998. The Congress stayed the course,
reiterated the SACP’s opposition to Gear, called for an appropriate
macroeconomic framework and to this end directed the Party to continue
engaging the government…This conjuncture (just before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union) saw
several different tendencies opening up within the ranks of the SACP…This
second current, in the mid-1990s was to emerge as the ‘1996 class project’,
as the SACP at the time characterised it. Led by former communists, this anti
Party tendency was strongly influenced by right-wing Western social
democratic forces at the time…
Contrary to this very negative assessment of the GEAR policy, the SACP
issued a very supportive Statement when the GEAR document was released
in June 1996. Here is a copy of this Statement.
SACP STATEMENT ON GEAR
Growth, Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy 14 June 1996
The South African Communist Party welcomes the government’s Growth,
Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy. We fully back the
objectives of this macro-economic strategy and note, in particular, the
following key features:Contrary to certain attempts to use the macro-economic debate to shift
government away from its electoral mandate, the strategy announced today
firmly and explicitly situates itself as a framework for the RDP.Resisting free market dogmatism, the strategy envisages a key economic role
for the public sector, including in productive investment.On the restructuring of state assets, the strategy reaffirms and reinforces the
bilateral (between government and unions) National Framework Agreement
process.On labour markets, the new macro-economic-strategy envisages the
extension of a regulated market and it introduces an innovative approach to
flexibility. It rejects laisser-faire market-driven flexibility and instead call for
negotiated regional and sectoral flexibility.The most important contribution of the strategy is its consistent endeavour to
integrate different element of policy and, in particular, it provides a clear
framework within which monetary and interest rate policy must work.The SACP, in the context of our tripartite alliance with the ANC and COSATU,
intends to take forward discussions, elaboration and debate on this path
breaking macro-economic strategy. All the questions of detail and of
implementation require ongoing scrutiny. We have every intention of making
an ongoing and constructive contribution to this process.
SACP Welcomes Growth, Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy
It is clear from the negative response also from the SACP, as quoted above,
which among others identified a ‘1996 class project’, that there were some
within the Party who not only disagreed with the position taken by the SACP
HQ, but also set out to reverse it.
As part of this negative response, the SACP sought to kill the SACP HQ
Statement by not actively distributing it.
But more important, as we have just said, some people in the leadership of
the SACP deliberately set out to denounce GEAR, and therefore the SACP HQ
Statement as well, describing the policy as a reactionary neo-liberal ‘1996
class project’.
This was not done through the Party structures to start with.
Rather, a small hand-picked group was gathered and addressed by a senior
official of the SACP, whose name we know. This official persuaded this group
to support the thesis of the ‘1996 class project’ and therefore repudiate the
SACP HQ Statement.
The position stated by the SACP official then appeared in a COSATU
publication even though no structure of the Federation had even discussed
the position advanced by the SACP official.
This is how the ‘1996 class project’ thesis first saw the light of day.
It did not originate from the structures of either the SACP or COSATU but from
a hand-picked cabal, some of whom did not understand the real essence of
the intervention by the senior SACP official.
The fact of the matter is that this official and his colleagues could not
scientifically prove that GEAR was the neo-liberal monster they claimed it
was. This remains true to this day.
The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the policy
framework of the national democratic movement as it contested and won the
1994 General Elections, said that after the Elections, this Movement should
work on the relevant ‘macro-economic balances’ consistent with the RDP
policies.
There had been not enough time to work on these ‘balances’ by the time the
RDP had to be adopted by the Movement and released to the public.
GEAR is about these ‘macro-economic balances’. Accordingly, as the SACP
HQ Statement said correctly, GEAR “situates itself as a framework for the
RDP.”
The senior SACP official who cooked up the notion of a ‘1996 class project’
was not in any way interested in the truth. What he was concerned about was
that the important GEAR initiative of the ANC-led government should be
discredited in the public mind, and thus also present the ANC to this public, in
a negative light.
It has taken many years for the national democratic movement to understand
the role the organised counter-revolution has played to try to defeat this
Movement.
Whatever the reasons were for the SACP official to set about repudiating the
correct position taken by his own Party on GEAR, what he achieved by getting
some on the left to swallow hook, line and sinker the false ‘1996 class project’
thesis certainly helped the counter-revolution, whose strategic objective was
and remains the defeat of the NDR.
The SACP put itself in an invidious position when it allowed one of its senior
officials to succeed in a manoeuvre which repudiated its earlier correct
positions and served the purposes of the counter-revolution, happy to repeat
a false mantra about a ‘1996 class project’.
It must decide whether it will continue to allow its errant senior officials to
decide what it means to be the South African Communist Party.
The SACP Programme, the ‘South African Struggle for Socialism’, contains a
sub-section headed ‘The Capitalist Crisis in South Africa’. Among others this
Section says that various exogenous factors, such as the Global Financial
Crisis which started in 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia/Ukraine
conflict, and other events, have impacted negatively on South Africa. It then
goes on to say:
But none of these external or internal factors should disguise the fact that
our country has precisely been made vulnerable to these external shocks and
to state capture plundering by two-and-a-half decades of neoliberal
restructuring of our economy—the liberalisation of capital flows, the failure to
implement prescribed assets, privatisation and corporatization of key public
utilities, the pursuit of macro-economic policies that favour the banking and
financial sector oligopoly, and by the general illusion that private sector
investment is the golden solution.Faced with our current crises, the current dominant tendency within
government, under the hegemony of the Treasury and the Reserve Bank, is
more of the same.“This is the challenge that the SACP confronts in the present conjuncture.
What is to be done?”
Earlier in the same sub-section, the Programme says:
As we approached 30 years of a post-apartheid South Africa, everywhere the
interlinked crises of capitalism and their impact upon the majority of South
Africans are apparent.Unemployment levels are at horrendous world record
levels. Social distress in terms of food insecurity is worse than ever.A staggering 79 recorded murders a day in the last reporting year (2021)
There is further unravelling of social cohesion…Large numbers of under-resourced
and often poorly managed municipalities are in seeming terminal decline.
Strategic state-owned enterprises and public utilities like Eskom, Transnet
and Prasa have largely lost the capacity to drive a people-centred
development process strategically.
All this is correct.
However, we need to say a little more about the evolution of the socio
economic situation in South Africa during our 30 post-apartheid years. Our
former President of the Republic, Thabo Mbeki, discussed this important
matter when he spoke at Freedom Park on April 30, 2024, to mark the 30th
Anniversary of South Africa’s Democracy.
We will therefore borrow some of the facts and figures he provided,
essentially to make a very important point.
Hard facts and figures communicate the message that our democracy did
quite well during the first 13/14 years up to 2007-2008 and then started on a
downward path from 2008 onwards.
During the first period, for instance:
- GDP grew at an average rate of 3.6%, reaching over 5% between 2004 and
2007; - average GDP per capita increased by almost 40%, from under R65 000 in
1994 to nearly R80 000 towards 2008; - the number of people with jobs increased from 8 million to 14 million;
- the public debt levels inherited from the apartheid administration at just
below 45% of GDP were cut to a low of nearer 23% by 2007; - although South Africa has made progress in reducing poverty since 1994,
the trajectory of poverty reduction was reversed between 2011 and 2015,
threatening to erode some of the gains made since 1994; - there were the very first sustained budget surpluses since the formation of
the Union in 1910; - the final Constitution was adopted in 1996 and various State institutions,
such as the Constitutional Court and others, as well as the various laws and
policies we defend today were enacted and put in place.
During the second period, however:
- for the period 2008 to 2022 the average GDP growth rate was a lackluster
1.2%; - during the same period, GDP per capita declined by R1 600, as people
became poorer in real terms; - the number of people with jobs increased by barely a million over a period of
14 years, while the population grew by 10 million over the same period; - the unemployment rate has crept up over the years, from 19.39% in 2007 to
32.1% during Q4 in 2023; - In 2007 the poverty rate was 12.5 percent of the population, but grew to
21.6% in 2023; - the business confidence index registered above the 50 mark in seven out of
14 years of the first period, on a rising trend, but has been below 50 every
single year since 2008; - gross fixed capital formation as a share of GDP climbed during the first
period, reaching a level of 21.6% in 2008, before declining in the second
period, dropping to as low as 13.1% in 2022; and. - while the total amount of electricity produced rose from 170TWh in 1995 to
253TWh in 2007 during the first period – an increase of 49% – it declined from
there to barely 209TWh in 2022 – a drop of almost 18%.
The critically important question which arises in the context of the facts and
figures above is – what happened between the first and second periods during
which there was a consistent upward curve during the first period and the
opposite, consistent downward curve during the second?
The puzzle in this regard is that the ANC was the Governing Party during both
periods, during which it led the country to behave in diametrically opposed
ways.
The SACP Programme blames the negative socio-economic features which
characterise our country on “two-and-a-half decades of neoliberal
restructuring of our economy”.
In other words, without making any distinction between the two periods we
have mentioned, the SACP Programme says that the socio-economic ills
afflicting our country are due to wrong neo-liberal policies implemented by
successive ANC governments during a period of 25 years, that is since 1999.
However, the reason for the downward trend we have indicated relating to the
second period since 2008 is very different from the partisan, politically-driven
explanation given by the SACP Programme.
The reason for the sharp difference between periods 1 and 2 is that the
counter-revolution intervened to ensure this downward slide.
Unfortunately, some senior members of the SACP actively supported at that
conference the rise of a culture not previously known in the ANC.
This was detrimental not just to the ANC but to the whole country in various ways.
What the counter-revolution sought was to ensure that in many ways and
directions, among others, the country falls victim to the socio-economic crisis
exemplified by high rates of unemployment and other negative features, which
the SACP Programme has correctly mentioned.
This presents the SACP with what, perhaps, is a peculiar challenge – the
challenge finally to recognise the hard fact that the national democratic
movement is confronted by the task to undo the damage caused by the
counter-revolution as well as finally to defeat this counter-revolution.
To get there, the SACP will, at last, have to recognise publicly the reality of the
counter-revolution and finally liberate itself from the pernicious habit regularly
to find explanations for negative social developments which perhaps
inadvertently draw attention away from the counter-revolution.
This document seeks to address principally the matter of the proposed
reconfiguration of the Alliance. However, we have just dwelt on this litany of
misdiagnoses on the part of the SACP because they constitute an inalienable
element in terms of what the SACP bring both to the Alliance and to society at
large.
CONCLUSION
We hope that this document with help all the members of the Alliance as they
grapple with the important matter of the role, place and functioning of the
Alliance. We trust that in doing so, they will continue to be guided by this
understanding as relates to the political parties in the Alliance that:
- the strategic imperative facing the ANC is to lead all relevant motive forces
for the victory of the National Democratic Revolution; - the strategic imperative facing the SACP, as truly a vanguard party of the
proletariat, is to lead the processes aimed at the formation of the proletariat
into a class, (the) overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, (and) conquest of
political power by the proletariat; and, - the Alliance has the urgent task to consider what it must do to defeat the
counter-revolution, cognisant of the fact that this will affect all immediate and
current aspects of its work.
In addition, the members of the Alliance will have to answer all relevant
questions relating to the Alliance, bearing in mind their responsibilities to the
masses of people they lead or aspire to lead.
EPILOGUE
A ‘Draft integrated discussion document’ prepared for the 2024 SACP 5th
Special National Congress, made this important statement that:
It is also abundantly clear that SACP needs to change and do things
differently now, i.e. consciously leaving behind any old business-as-usual
approach. Now we have to focus on our independent role, in recognition that
we are no longer in alliance with a majority ruling party, acknowledging the
fact that we still do not have a reconfigured Alliance. And the fact that we
have, for now at least, lost the route to state power that we have had at our
disposal over the past 30 years.
This important matter of the SACP ‘route to state power’ had previously been
discussed in a September 2008 SACP document entitled, ‘The SACP and
State Power’, with the sub-title ‘The Alliance Post-Polokwane – Ready to
Govern?’
This document began:
As the NLM movement prepares for elections in the first half of next
year…the question of state power and the role of the SACP in this regard have
become even more critical… The SACP has a major role to play in the current
context and much depends on our ability to rise to the occasion.The present discussion on the Party and state power can be dated back to
2005 and two important interventions by the SACP – the “Medium Term
Vision” document, and the 2006 CC discussion document. In these
interventions the Party advanced the thesis that, in the first decade after
1994, despite many advances on a number of fronts, the new democratic
state had been progressively hegemonised by the bourgeoisie…The strategic alliance between monopoly capital and an emergent fraction of
capital linked closely to elements of the ANC/state leadership lay at the heart
of what the SACP has called the “1996 class project…In opposition to the 1996 class project’s strategic agenda, the SACP’s MTV
document called for the second decade of freedom to be a decade in which thehegemony of the working class in all key sites of power would be realised.
Elsewhere in the document, the SACP writes about “our medium term vision
(MTV) of building working class hegemony in ALL sites of power (including the
state).”
This perspective is repeated in the SACP Programme, The South African
Struggle for Socialism, adopted in 2022, which says:
…within our South African reality, unless the working-class builds its
hegemony in every site of power, and unless socialist ideas, values,
organisation and activism boldly assert themselves, the NDR will lose its way
and stagnate…
This Party Programme goes further to say:
At the centre of this multi-class (national democratic) movement needs to be
the working-class. But it is a working-class that must exert its hegemony
through, in the first place, forging national democratic ties with the great mass
of urban and rural poor, and impoverished black middle strata. But a working
class hegemony over the NDR must be more ambitious than even this.
Emerging strata of capital, and even established capital, must be actively
mobilised into the transformational agenda.
It is clear that here we are dealing with two matters or concepts. These are:
- SACP access to state power; and,
- ‘working class hegemony in all sites of power, including the State’, as put
by the SACP.
As presented in the 2008 SACP document, ‘The SACP and State Power’, the
issue of SACP access to State Power is quite simple and straight forward.
It amounts to the SACP presenting its own Election Manifesto to the
electorate, like all other Parties, and persuading the electorate to vote for it
and its candidates on the basis of the promises in its Manifesto. The SACP
would campaign as a party of the NDR and not as a party of Socialism.
This is very clearly from the many detailed proposals contained in the
document relating to the various Departments of State, including local
government.
This is also confirmed in the 2024 document ‘Draft integrated discussion
document’, which says:
By standing in the elections accordingly, the SACP seeks not only to assert its
influence in shaping local government policies but also to advance the NDR
as a national, anti-imperialist, democratic revolution in pursuit of non
capitalist development.
As we have already reported, this latter document also explained this access
to state power where it spoke of “the route to state power that we have had at
our disposal over the past 30 years (when the ANC was the governing party).”
It is also in this context that we must understand the sustained agitation by
the SACP for the reconfiguration of the Alliance. At the heart of this is access
of the SACP to state power and its use of that access.
To indicate the latter, the SACP goes so far as to lay down some prescripts
about what would happen to SACP members in a situation of a reconfigured
Alliance. In the document ‘The SACP and State Power’ it says:
That SACP cadres who are deployed as ANC elected representatives, or as
public servants must continue to owe allegiance to the Party and cannot
conduct themselves in ways that are contrary to the fundamental policies,
principles and values of the SACP. The same principle applies to SACP cadres
in other deployments, including within the trade union movement, community
organisations, etc.
With regard to the matter of the SACP access to State Power, the position of
the Party is quite clear. It is that whether there is a reconfigured Alliance or
not, the SACP insists that its members, wherever they are deployed, must be
accountable to the Party. It is only in this way that the Party would make an
impact on matters relating to the democratic State, consistent with its
policies and programmes.
Obviously, the SACP is perfectly entitled to take this position, i.e. to campaign
as yet another independent Party of the NDR.
However, it must understand that this means that it would cease to be a
member of the current Tripartite Alliance.
Where does the matter of working class hegemony in all sites of power, as
advocated by the SACP, stand with regard to the issue of its access to state
power?
Unfortunately, we have as yet not found a definition or detailed explanation of
what the SACP means by ‘working class hegemony’.
In Marxist-Leninist terms such hegemony by the working class means
hegemony by ‘a proletariat that has formed into a class’, to use the
terminology of the Communist Manifesto, what we have referred to as ‘the
proletariat for itself’, as opposed to ‘the proletariat in itself’.
Accordingly, in terms of Marxism-Leninism, or historical materialism, the
‘proletariat in itself’ cannot exercise the kind of hegemony in all sites of power,
including the State, which the SACP has been talking about.
Relevant to an understanding of this matter of proletarian hegemony, in 1911
Lenin wrote an article entitled ‘Marxism and Nasha Zarya’ in which he said:
From the standpoint of Marxism the class, so long as it renounces the idea of
hegemony or fails to appreciate it, is not a class, or not yet a class, but a guild,
or the sum total of various guilds…It is the consciousness of the idea of hegemony and its implementation
through their own activities that converts the guilds as a whole into a class.
Of course, here Lenin is basing his statement about ‘class’ and ‘guild’, relating
to the working class on what the Communist Manifesto demands about the
“formation of the proletariat into a class”.
In a 1911-12 series of articles headed ‘Fundamental Problems of the Election
Campaign’, Lenin once more addresses the issue of proletarian hegemony
and says:
He who confines the (working) class to an arena, the bounds, forms and
shape of which are determined or permitted by the liberals, does not
understand the tasks of the (working) class. Only he understands the tasks of
the (working) class who directs its attention (and consciousness, and
practical activity, etc.) to the need for so reconstructing this very arena, its
entire form, its entire shape, as to extend it beyond the limits allowed by the
liberals.Wherein lies the difference between the two formulations? In the very
fact, among other things, that the first excludes the idea of the “hegemony” of
the working class, whereas the second deliberately defines this very idea (of
working class hegemony); the first is the modern, latest variation of old
Economism (“the workers should confine themselves to the economic
struggle, leaving the political struggle to the liberals”), whereas the second
strives to leave no room in the minds of the workers either for the old
Economism or for its new variety.
In an article entitled ‘Lenin and Hegemony: The Soviets, the Working Class,
and the Party in the Revolution of 1905’, the Marxist academic, Alan Shandro,
wrote correctly:
Lenin’s core thesis, that Social Democratic consciousness must be
introduced into the spontaneous working-class movement from without,
might now be reformulated as the idea that the working-class movement
cannot, absent the organised intervention of Marxist theory in its struggle,
generate revolutionary socialist consciousness.
Of course, we can refer to other Marxist-Leninists texts to address the
important matter of working class hegemony. It should not be necessary to do
this. However, it is necessary to state some conclusions about this matter.
Marxism-Leninism understands class hegemony as the exercise of dominant
and voluntarily accepted leadership by a class over part or the whole of
society.
For the working class to exercise such hegemony requires that:
- it must be a ‘proletariat for itself’, informed and inspired by revolutionary
socialist consciousness; - it must exist in large numbers and therefore be able to reach out
physically to all or various sectors of society throughout the country; and, - it must have the organisational discipline to be able to engage in
whatever action is required to exercise or express the required leadership.
The 2008 SACP document on ‘The SACP and State Power’ says that its 2005
Medium Term Vision (MTV) stated that “the second decade of freedom (must
be) a decade in which the hegemony of the working class in all key sites of
power would be realised.”
Obviously, the working class exercised no such hegemony in our second
decade of freedom, 2005 – 2014.
The same is true during the third decade of our freedom, 2015 – 2024.
It is obvious that during both decades, the SACP had not done enough work to
enable the working class to exercise the hegemony visualised by the SACP
MTV, which would have required the accomplishment of the conditions
detailed above.
In its 2008 ‘The SACP and State Power’ document, the SACP says:
The SACP’s 12th Congress quite deliberately sought to influence and impact
upon the critical 2007 ANC 52nd National Conference – not in a narrow
electoral contest manner, but, above all, in seeking to re-open democratic
space within the ANC and our alliance, and in seeking to impact positively on
policy resolutions. Indeed, in the Central Committee’s analysis these
objectives were broadly achieved. The 1996 class project’s political and
ideological supremacy within the ANC has been (at least provisionally)
broken. Many important positive resolutions were adopted at Polokwane, and
there is generally a much improved policy-making engagement within the
Alliance…We are, therefore, at the cross-roads in the history of our revolution. The
conjuncture is full of real space for consolidating an effective, progressive,
programmatic approach to state power. However, the space opened up by
Polokwane can also be squandered and the opportunity lost.
The SACP therefore saw the outcome of the 2007 ANC Polokwane National
Conference as a great victory. In addition, this ‘victory’ was scored during the
first decade when, according to the SACP, the working class would exercise
hegemony in all areas of power, including the State.
However, the hard reality was the exact opposite of the ‘actual and impending
victories’ which the SACP was celebrating.
Exactly in the period after the 2007 52nd ANC National Conference, to date,
the counter revolution, emerging out of the old apartheid forces, went on a
very destructive rampage purposefully intended to reverse the gains of the
NDR, weaken the ANC and other formations of the national democratic
movement and create the conditions for their final defeat and the defeat of
the NDR.
This very aggressive counter revolutionary intervention played a critical and
central role in condemning our country to the general crisis gripping our
country.
It is notable that the SACP has said absolutely nothing about this counter
revolution.
Instead, as we have said, it has renewed its insistence on the reconfiguration
of the Alliance. Here it is worth quoting part of what the 2008 ‘The
SACP…Power’ document said:
- The alliance requires major reconfiguration if the NDR is to be advanced,
deepened and defended, and if we are to achieve the SACP’s medium term
vision objectives of building working class hegemony in all sites of power,
including the state.
“2. That this reconfiguration of the Alliance must include the following
elements:
a. the Alliance must establish itself as a strategic political centre;
b. this political centre must develop a common capacity to drive strategy,
broad policy, campaigns, deployment and accountability.
“3. At the same time, this reconfiguration of the Alliance must respect the
independent role and strategic tasks of each of the alliance partners.
In the end, the SACP has taken the decision that it must contest elections as
an independent Party of the NDR, not Socialism, regardless of what happens
regarding the reconfiguration of the Alliance.
As such an independent Party of the NDR, it will compete against all other
Parties and presumably use whatever capacity it gains through democratic
elections, to continue working so that it achieves its long-standing objective
of ‘building working class hegemony in all sites of power, including the state’.
Time will tell how the electorate will respond when the SACP runs for election
as an independent Party of the NDR. In the same way, time will tell whether
the SACP will succeed during the fourth decade of our freedom to create the
conditions for the working class to exercise hegemony in all sites of power,
including the State.
Only once since 1994 have we had a Marxist-Leninist Party contest the
National and Provincial Elections in our country. This was in 2019, and the
Party concerned was the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP). Its
formation was driven by the leadership of the major trade union, the National
Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, NUMSA.
The inaugural Congress of the Party took place in Johannesburg on 4-6 April 2019.
It was attended by over a thousand delegates from all our provinces, as
well as fraternal delegates from such countries as Zambia, Argentina, Brazil,
Sweden, Morocco, and Nepal.
Reporting on the launch. The Nigerian Socialist Workers League said:
The “NUMSA moment” has now reached a crescendo, with the
establishment of SRWP. This is not a party limited to electoral politics. The
SRWP is a Marxist-Leninist Party fighting for the establishment of a classless
society. It thus puts the struggle for socialism squarely on the agenda.
Speaking at the Inaugural Congress, the President of NUMSA, Andrew Chirwa,
said:
This is not a party for reform. This is a party for communists. We are serious
about the Revolution. We are a party for SOCIALISM and nothing else.
In a Statement he issued after a December 2018 pre-launch Conference, the
SRWP National Convenor, also the General Secretary of NUMSA, Irvin Jim,
said that “the Interim National Leadership will create a 2019 Elections
Commission to organize and prepare us to contest the upcoming elections.”
And, indeed, the SRWP participated in both the 2019 National and Provincial
Elections.
It managed to get 24,439 votes for the National Assembly (NA), amounting to
0,14% of votes cast at this level. It did not win any seat in the NA.
It is ironic in this regard that during the same year, 2019, NUMSA said its
membership stood at 339 000!
Thus, the NA votes the SRWP received constituted a mere 7.2% of the NUMSA
membership!
Its performance at the Provincial level was not much better.
For instance:
- it obtained 0.24% of the votes cast in the Eastern Cape;
- it obtained 0.13% of the votes cast in Gauteng;
- it obtained 0.12% of the votes cast in KZN; and,
- it obtained 0.15% of the votes cast in the Western Cape.
It did not win any Provincial seat.
Not long after the Elections the SRWP issued a Statement which said, in part:
The SRWP leadership met on 9 May 2019, to reflect on the 2019 National and
Provincial Elections…In our examination and analysis of the elections, we were
consistent with our attitude that the bourgeois electoral system is not the
solution to our problems, nor the route to Socialism but a necessary terrain of
struggle for the working class in our struggle for Socialism…In these elections, the SRWP faced not only the combined might of the South
African capitalist class from all racial groups and their political mouthpieces, but also an entrenched right-wing ANC with its equally right-wing South African
Communist Party and right-wing leadership of the Congress of South African
Trade Unions…We are not surprised that the ANC and the four or so main capitalist parties are
carelessly overlooking the overwhelming evidence of extreme fraud and faults in
the electoral machinery and processes…Against this background, we find that it
is impossible for us to scientifically accept the accuracy of the results of these
elections…Further, in the light of the evidence available and our own knowledge of our
weaknesses and strengths as the SRWP, we reject, quite contemptuously, the
figures of the votes ascribed to us…We call upon all the working class in this country not to be drunk with either the
bitterness of loss or the false euphoria of victory in these elections. Let us unite
as a class and confront the challenges of struggling for a Socialist South Africa
as the only country in which our class interests will be dominant.
We have cited the case of the SRWP not to suggest that the other Marxist
Leninist Party in our country, the SACP, would suffer the same fate at the hands
of the electorate.
Obviously, there is no equivalence between the two organisations, given the long
history of the SACP in the revolutionary movement and struggle, and the esteem
it has accumulated in the eyes of both the working class and the population as a
whole.
However, the SWRP case tells a story about how the working class has
responded to some who asked for its support because they stood for socialism
and therefore working class hegemony over society as a whole.
That said, it is worth repeating, today, what the SACP said as it celebrated its
2007 ‘victory’ at the ANC Polokwane Conference:
“We are, therefore, at the cross-roads in the history of our revolution.”
END
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