29.08.1996

Kiss and make up

As part of the South African project of nation-building under capitalism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Cape Town has been hearing apologies for past abuses from both the National Party and the African National Congress.

Thabo Mbeki, the likely successor to Nelson Mandela, admitted on behalf of the ANC that the organisation’s armed wing had committed “excesses”. In its 300-page submission to the commission the ANC lists 34 executed dissident members - some after falsely being accused of spying - in Angolan training camps. It further “accepts collective responsibility for all operations” (The Guardian August 25). Mbeki correctly stated that there was a great difference between the violence of the oppressor and that of the oppressed. Nevertheless he offered to “provide the commission and the country with the necessary information, while encouraging those members and supporters of our movement where necessary to apply for amnesty”.

FW de Klerk, former president of the apartheid regime, gave a more muted apology: he acknowledged he was responsible for the conditions which allowed the atrocities to occur, but denied he had ever been party to any decision which authorised them. He did however admit that his government had adopted “unconventional strategies” against the revolutionary forces.

It seems that all the blame for the crimes of apartheid are to be laid at the feet of former police colonel Eugene de Kock, who has been found guilty of scores of killings. De Kock headed a police unit responsible for carrying out the former regime’s dirty tricks, but it now appears certain that nobody of higher rank will be brought to account.

The organisation which has undoubtedly played a key role in facilitating the process of reconciliation in the interests of stability is the South African Communist Party. An ally of the ANC, it stands squarely behind the government’s capitalist Reconstruction and Development Programme. The SACP has played a leading part in dampening the revolutionary ardour of millions of militant workers through its attempts to persuade them that their interests are being served.

It came, therefore, as something of a surprise when Reuters reported that SACP general secretary Charles Nqakula had called on the country’s miners to “destroy capitalism”.

However, the actual text of his speech showed a subtle difference. “Our struggle for national liberation is not yet over,” he told a rally.

“Hundreds of our people are homeless; millions have been confined to squatter camps; unemployment is rampant; hunger and disease continue to play havoc with our people. The situation is not going to change unless and until capitalism has been defeated by the working class and its allies” (my emphasis).

What the SACP means by ‘defeating’ capitalism is winning at least a few crumbs for the workers from the ANC’s investor-friendly ‘macro-economic framework’, unveiled in June. “Let us support a macro-economic policy that will better the lives of our people and not pander to the whims and manipulation of the bosses and neo-liberals,” said Nqakula.

South Africa, alongside Brazil, has the highest income inequality in the world. The majority of the population can be compared to the citizens of the very poorest countries in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, adult illiteracy and access to safe water. No inroads have been made into this situation during the ANC’s two years of government.

No wonder SACP leaders feel obliged to put on a revolutionary face in their speeches. But to understand what they really think you have to read what they write.

Over the last decade the Party has ditched its commitment to revolution and adopted full-blown parliamentary reformism. Central to this has been its dropping of the term, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. In The African communist 143 (first quarter 1996), EC member Jeremy Cronin discloses how it was “deliberately omitted” from the Party programme, The path to power, at the 7th Congress held in Cuba in 1989. Some members objected only to the term, while others were already arguing that the concept should be abandoned. “All agreed that the term ‘dictatorship’ was a propaganda gift to our opponents,” writes Cronin.

He carries the argument further: counterrevolution-ary forces have been “marginalised”, so organising a ‘dictatorship’ against them would be counter-productive.

“Dictatorship against all those more or less unhappy with the present situation could lead to a united front of disparate forces - from striking nurses and land-hungry people illegally occupying land, through parliamentary opposition parties to the worst third-force and warlord elements” (my emphasis).

The fact that it is precisely the workers and peasants he mentions who need to exercise their dictatorship does not occur to Cronin. For him they are a threat to the new bourgeois constitution which he defends. “Lenin’s weakness,” according to Cronin, was “the tendency to think of the socialist revolution as something that is prepared (organisationally, institutionally) outside of capitalism.” Lenin foolishly believed that “parliament, and other institutions found in a capitalist society, are not genuine sites of working class transformational struggle for class hegemony”.

This arch-reformist even has the audacity to criticise Lenin’s “very mechanical approach” from a ‘left’ angle:

“The most important error in arguing for a simple correspondence between bourgeois rule and parliamentary democracy is the assumption that the bourgeoisie has some natural and burning vocation to bring the gift of parliamentary democracy to us all.”

Cronin correctly points out that bourgeois democratic rights have been won through struggle, but then goes on to assert that what is needed is “a major transformation of these legislatures, making them user-friendly, answerable and transparent”. As if workers could ever exercise direct, democratic rule through parliament.

When we call for the dictatorship of the proletariat, we mean the exercise of working class power through thousands of local bodies, forged by workers themselves as part of their revolutionary struggle. Delegates to such bodies need to be subject to instant recall, not voted onto some remote talking shop and forgotten for five years.

The leadership has not been able to have all its own way, with many firmly opposed to the dropping of the term, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. However, a criticism of Cronin’s position which was published in the next edition of The African communist (no144, second quarter 1996) was hardly inspiring. Xolani Mbundu, chair of an SACP branch in the vast Khayelitsha squatter township near Cape Town, writes that the dictatorship of the proletariat is about “working class leadership of the national democratic revolution for an uninterrupted socialist transformation and ultimately the building of a communist society”. That cannot be faulted, but he goes on to say: “In our country it is about preserving and defending the working class bias of the Reconstruction and Development Programme and making it a stepping stone for the building of socialism.”

Comrade Mbundu adds: “For me the DOP is not incompatible with parliamentary democracy.” In practice his position is “not incompatible” with Cronin’s.

South African communists need to grasp that the victory over apartheid has led to the temporary consolidation of capitalist rule. While still mouthing their commitment to socialism, the former leaders of their heroic struggle are in reality now defending the bourgeois order.

Jim Blackstock