16.05.1996

ANC runs capitalism alone

With South Africa’s new constitution agreed, the former mainstay of apartheid, FW de Klerk’s National Party, has decided to pull out of the multi-party governing coalition. This leaves the African National Congress, with its clear parliamentary majority, governing alone - apart from the token presence of the inept Inkatha Freedom Party.

There is of course another important organisation which operates up to and including government level within the ANC - the South African Communist Party. But the NP’s withdrawal certainly does not mean that the government will now start to promote the interests of the working class and the black masses. President Mandela confirmed that when he said that the ANC’s capitalist reconstruction and development programme was already premised on the ‘needs of the people’, and so there was ‘no need’ to change his policies. And the SACP’s head-down, near invisible stance has all but ruled out any possibility that it can be rescued from its liquidationist course.

In fact the government realignment is now important for the South African ruling class, despite the temporary nervous blip on its stock exchange. The honeymoon period of the ‘new South Africa’ has ended. Trade unions have moved into action to press for improved wages and conditions and against proposals for anti-union legislation, while the rightwing Freedom Front has been gaining ground among whites, concerned at the NP’s failure to maintain all their entrenched privileges.

There is therefore a need to move as quickly as possible to the creation of a standard two-party bourgeois democracy, even if at first this means partially reverting to the old black-white divide. The ANC will appeal to black workers to support ‘their’ government, while de Klerk’s first task is to win back his white dissidents.

The National Party’s aim in the longer term will be to win over large numbers of conservative and middle class blacks. The experience of the Western Cape has shown that this is possible. The majority of ‘coloured’ voters - the largest population grouping in the province - voted NP two years ago.

In very sporting fashion de Klerk offered to keep his ministers in place until June 30 to give Mandela enough time to make a smooth transition to single-party rule. For his part, the president said the move represented South Africa’s “coming of age”, and he was fulsome in his praise for de Klerk’s role in dismantling apartheid.

However successful the two main parties may be in providing some short-term stability, the contradictions of capitalism - primarily the enormous gulf between the privileged minority and the millions of impoverished blacks - mean that new revolutionary possibilities could resurface at any time.

Jim Blackstock