31.07.2002

SACP rebellion

Held last week in Rustenburg, the 11th Congress of the South African Communist Party saw the leadership desperately trying to hold the fort against a rebellion from the rank and file. Ordinary members are up in arms against continued SACP backing for the African National Congress government's Thatcherite programme of privatisation and cuts. Two leading SACP members of the ANC government were turfed off the party's central committee and replaced with comrades from the trade union left, while president Thabo Mbeki wisely decided to stay away rather than deliver the fraternal address on behalf of the ANC. Mbeki claimed he had to attend a cabinet meeting, although there were SACP cabinet ministers in the hall at the time he was due to address congress. A "presidency source" was quoted as saying that Mbeki was not willing to "risk his political reputation and be ridiculed and booed" (Johannesburg Star July 24). His fears were not without foundation, for his replacement, defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota, had the greatest of difficulty in making himself heard. A large section of delegates sang: "Makuliwe, uMbeki akafuni sithethathane" - "Mbeki won't talk - we will fight." It is traditional for speeches at party gatherings to be interrupted by revolutionary songs, which are sometimes adapted to fit the occasion. Thus, last week, one popular refrain called for some leading party members to be "lashed" and others to be kicked out. General secretary Blade Nzimande, representing the conciliating centre of the party, claimed there was "no ideological gap" between what was contained in official policy documents before congress and what was heard on the floor. Nzimande said that media reports were detracting from the unity of the congress, and appealed to delegates not to act in a manner that confirmed such reports. However, SACP disunity is now so ingrained it can no longer be concealed. It arises from the searing contradiction that the party itself has become - on the one hand, its six government ministers are among the most loyal and reliable neoliberal practitioners; on the other, the party dominates the Congress of South African Trade Unions - which called a general strike against the government's accelerated privatisation programme for October 1-2 just two days before congress began. The party left concentrated its fire on three of the six ministers - although two others are also in the forefront of the government's latest anti-working class drive. The prime target was Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who, as public services minister, is charged with holding down the wages of government employees and ensuring that strikes led by her Cosatu 'comrades' to defend the conditions of public sector workers are defeated. Fraser-Moleketi - aware that a humiliating defeat was staring her in the face - did not seek re-election to the SACP central committee. She apologised for her absence from congress, which, she explained, was not intended as a snub - her presence was, after all, required in New York for an important meeting of the Committee of Experts on Public Administration. Two of her fellow government 'experts' did not have such foresight. Public enterprises minister Jeff Radebe - who in March announced that the administration's programme of privatisation, for which he is responsible, would be speeded up - was voted off the central committee. Essop Pahad, Thabo Mbeki's 'enforcer', who works in the president's office, suffered the same fate. But trade and industry minister Alec Erwin - an obvious candidate for expulsion, let alone demotion - along with water and forestry affairs minister Ronnie Kasrils - was re-elected. Kasrils just could not understand what the fuss was about: "If you are a communist and become a member of parliament under the ANC and you become a minister appointed by the president, you cannot expect that the MP or the minister is simply going to articulate party policy." No, not your sort of "communist", comrade. The sixth SACP minister in the ANC-led government is no less a figure than Charles Nqakula, the party chair. Nqakula, as safety and security minister, is in charge of crime prevention and policing. Last month he led the chorus of condemnation - echoed by other ANC spokespersons and opposition Democratic Alliance and New National Party politicians - directed at the militant tactics of members of the South African Municipal Workers Union, who were on strike for increased wages: "The government will not tolerate any action - such as the destruction of property, the trashing of streets and the intimidation of others by striking workers - that tramples on the rights of citizens." Nqakula certainly knows which side of the class divide he is on: that day, a Samwu striker was shot in the stomach by an 'intimidated' scab in Cape Town. In the run-up to congress Nqakula had been giving out contradictory signals as to whether he would be seeking re-election. National Union of Mineworkers general secretary Gwede Mantashe was nominated as a replacement chair, but she was persuaded to withdraw when Nqakula decided he would stand after all. In the end he was unopposed. Comrade Mantashe was elected to the central committee with 767 votes out of 832, while Cosatu president Willie Madisha, a consistent and outspoken left critic of the government, topped the poll with 790 votes. Before congress Blade Nzimande had expressed support for Nqakula as a "popular choice for national chairman", although he had been noticeably more reticent about Radebe and Pahad. He denied there was a mood in the party to punish members of the government. That would be "meaningless", he said, since more than 80% of SACP elected officers were also part of the government machine at one level or another - in parliament or on provincial or local councils. This statistic says a lot about the post-apartheid SACP. Insisting that the main task for communists is to consolidate the "national democratic revolution" (NDR) which replaced apartheid, the SACP tops have openly supported class collaboration, whilst couching this practice in the language of revolutionary Marxism. This was admitted in the party quarterly African Communist: "In many respects the last five years within SA have been marked by a strategic convergence between all forces committed to some kind of post-apartheid change in our country (ranging from the US state department, big capital inside SA, through to the liberation movement). This strategic convergence has been useful (indeed crucial), in that it has given us breathing space to consolidate the victory over apartheid, and to isolate the most reactionary forces completely opposed to even limited democratisation and deracialisation" (2nd quarter, 1999). In this way the SACP leadership justifies its continued participation, along with Cosatu, not only in the ANC-led tripartite alliance, but in Mbeki's Thatcherite administration. The SACP may occasionally bleat its opposition to the effective abandonment of the social democratic 'reconstruction and development programme' (1994), meekly protest at the ANC's attacks on workers and wring its hands at soaring food prices and the continuing rise in unemployment (last week Mbeki attempted to blame the unemployed themselves, who, he said, do not have "the skills the economy needs"). But the SACP remains part of the administration which oversees this state of affairs - all in the name of "advancing, deepening and strengthening the NDR". Not surprisingly, ANC leaders, as former comrades in the liberation struggle, have learnt to employ SACP-style jargon. Last year the ANC national executive issued a briefing paper which accused unnamed communist and union leaders who opposed their neoliberal policies of a "counterrevolutionary plot". In recent weeks there has been some controversy over an interview given by SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin, who represents the party's right wing. Cronin complained about loyal ANC supporters like himself being sidelined by the "bureaucratisation of the struggle", leading to the establishment of a Zimbabwe-like elite. ANC head of presidency Smuts Ngonyama reportedly told a media briefing that Cronin was "being unfaithful and spreading deliberate lies", to which the SACP responded: "This unfortunate statement plays directly into the hands of capitalist media and other counterrevolutionary forces in our country, which are unhappy that the SACP has grown and consolidated since its 10th Congress." In fact such forces are far from "unhappy" with the SACP's role. True, the bourgeoisie and international capital would like to wish away the fighting tradition of the South African working class and its continued attachment to a party which calls itself communist, but the SACP's role in dampening the masses' revolutionary combativity should not be underestimated. If anything, the party enjoys the heartfelt, if unspoken, gratitude of such forces. That is why talk of a counter-purge of the SACP at the ANC congress in December is almost certainly misplaced. As The Guardian points out, "Mr Mbeki does not want to see the alliance fall apart, because that would probably lead to the formation of a rival party to the left of the ANC, where it is most vulnerable" (July 25). Although after Lekota's address to the SACP congress the rank and file took up another song daring the ANC to retaliate by getting rid of SACP members from leading positions in its own organisation, Mbeki is unlikely to accept their challenge. However, the 11th Congress demonstrated once again that the current situation is untenable for the SACP leadership. Not even the most naive member now believes that there is the remotest possibility of an apartheid comeback - the excuse implicit in the leadership's NDR logic for holding back in the fight for workers' interests. Sooner or later Nzimande will try and lead a carefully managed break from the ANC-led alliance or risk a damaging split outside his control. That would open up the possibility of an independent working class organisation with a revolutionary leadership - a nightmare for the present incumbents. A break led by Nzimande would seek to minimise the inevitable defections, especially at the top, and establish a more stable reformist party to the ANC's left. It goes without saying that revolutionaries should aim to thwart the achievement of such an outcome. An SACP forced to make the break by its left wing would be a very different organisation from one where the current leadership has effected an orderly departure. The SACP left, while more visible, remains largely unorganised and inarticulate. Nostalgia for the common liberation fight under the ANC umbrella leads many to accept the party's official attachment to a continuing and unbreakable alliance - the rebellion consciously limited itself to booting out the three SACP ministers responsible for implementing the most open anti-working class policies. Yet splitting the SACP first and foremost by expelling the right and right-centrist leadership must be the strategic aim of all genuine communists - this is the key that can open the way to winning over the mass of the working class to the leadership of a revolutionary party. It is astonishing then, in this period of crisis for the SACP, that the Socialist Workers Party's sister organisation, Keep Left, after officially 'disbanding' in 1999 in order to enter the SACP, turned on its heels and walked out after less than three years. Just as there was no open theorisation of this entryism, so there has been no public explanation, as far as I am aware, of the reasons behind this latest about-turn. Our engagement with mass organisations must be based on the strategic need of our class as a whole, not on recruiting to one's own sect. Peter Manson