Cracks in consensus

JACOB ZUMA, WHO was expected to become the next President, outside the court in Pietermaritzburg on September 20 when charges against him were dismissed. - MARK WING/AP

Strains develop in the Tripartite Alliance that rules post-apartheid South Africa.

"DESPITE many advances made by our democratic government and the working class over the last 12 years, the SACP is of the view that there has now emerged a new class consensus of the elite (both black and white) to pursue the economic path of restoration of capitalist profitability and seeking to consolidate the capitalist system as if it were ordained for our country.

"This, of course, is not going unchallenged, as illustrated by, amongst other things, the growing number and militancy of working class struggles over the last two years. At the heart of these class struggles is the question of whether the National Democratic Revolution [NDR] should have a capitalist character or a socialist orientation. In our view as the SACP, an NDR that is capitalist-oriented ceases to be an NDR, as it is hopelessly incapable of addressing the crises of underdevelopment and of widening poverty and inequality in our society.... It is a shame that much as South Africa was liberated by a movement whose strategy and tactics was informed by this philosophical outlook (historical and dialectical materialism), only capitalist ideology is taught in our schools." (From the address of Blade Nzimande, general secretary, South African Communist Party (SACP), to the Congress of the South African Democratic Teachers' Union, August 31).

"It is this breakdown ["strategic rupture"] of a commonly shared perspective [around the imperative of a socialist orientation within the NDR] that has significantly shaped the direction of our transition over the last 12 years. There has been a shift away from this shared perspective, with a dominant (but not unchallenged) group within our movement arguing that the key strategic task of our liberation movement is to manage capitalism." (From the address of Blade Nzimande to the 9th Congress of the Congress of South African Trade Unions or COSATU, September 20).

"Contrary to Blade Nzimande's extraordinary arrogance, which leads him openly to despise our movement, the SACP's 2002 Constitution lays down an approach towards fraternal organisations whose spirit and intent Nzimande clearly does not respect."

(From Notes For Political Overview presented by African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki at the ANC's national executive committee meeting on October 7).

The Tripartite Alliance in South Africa comprises the ANC, the SACP and the SACP-dominated COSATU.

The phenomenon of a bourgeois political party striving for national freedom from colonial rule coming together with a professedly Communist party whose objective is socialism and eventually communism was not unique in colonised countries. One of the most well-known debates on whether the struggles against colonial rule should focus on national freedom or revolutionary transformation of society was between Vladimir Lenin and M.N. Roy in the Second Comintern Congress.

This debate was not abstract for it was related to the kind of strategic and tactical alliances that the `nationalists' and the `communists' had to forge in their common struggle against colonial rule, though they continued to differ over what kind of society was to be built at the end of colonial rule.

There was a brief experiment of building such an alliance during the Indian freedom movement in the form of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), comprising mainly of Communists as well as socialists and some Congressmen with a `left' orientation, with a view to working within the Congress party and generally nudge it towards a socialist orientation.

The arrangement collapsed, with the prospect of national freedom not even in the distant horizon, when the CSP members, barring those who unequivocally accepted full membership of the Congress, were expelled.

The unique feature of the Tripartite Alliance in South Africa is that it was an alliance born in the course of the struggle, sealed not in backroom deals between political and labour bosses but forged in the crucible of that struggle against apartheid. The primary task of removing the apartheid regime ("[T]here is only one target, and that target is to remove the racist regime and obtain power for the people" - Joe Slovo) overrode all other contradictions.

And yet, because of these very factors, the partners of the alliance are also constantly engaged in debates about the strategy and tactics of what is known in the literature as the NDR, its present stage and future direction. It is not as if these polemics are a post-liberation phenomenon, now that the glue that bound the alliances in struggle is absent. Such polemics were a vital part of literature produced in exile as well.

The ANC, holding the majority of seats in the National Assembly, is the ruling party. The SACP, whose members have participated in the elections under the ANC symbol, is a part of the ANC parliamentary caucus. However, it maintains its separate political identity, flag and symbol. Top leaders of the SACP are part of the government and hold key portfolios such as Intelligence, Safety and Security, the latter indeed held by the chairperson of the SACP.

Though formally they are in government as ANC members, their SACP affiliations are no secret. Indeed, almost every member of the SACP is also a member of the ANC, though the equation does not work the other way.

COSATU, the country's largest trade union federation, is closely allied to the SACP and the ANC, with almost all its members being members of either or both the organisations. Founded in 1985, it came into being through the mass struggles within the country in the 1980s, following the Soweto uprising, a period of intense politicisation of the masses.

The ANC-SACP relations go a long way back in history. Founded in July 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa, the CPSA dissolved itself, following its outlawing in 1950 by the triumphalist apartheid regime that had assumed office in May 1948. There was opposition within the CPSA to such self-liquidation; and less than three years later, the party was revived as the South African Communist Party, underlining its continuity from the CPSA.

It was during this period of illegality, especially after 1960 when the ANC too was banned, that the alliance in struggle was forged. Both the parties remained illegal until February 1990, when they, along with other peoples' organisations, were unbanned.

Barring a very brief aberration in its infancy when it failed to locate the real nature of oppression in the country, the SACP has consistently maintained that its primary task is to ensure the liberation of the black majority, in particular the African majority, from colonial oppression. The ANC in turn has always acknowledged the profoundly creative role that the party has played in the liberation of South Africa, in particular the SACP's characterisation of apartheid South Africa as a theoretical formulation that in course of time became "the property of the movement as a whole". The opening passage of a current ANC polemic puts this history in perspective. That this preamble is followed by a very harsh ("robust", in the parlance of the polemicists) criticism of the SACP's positions does not diminish the intensity of the emotion behind the recapitulation of these historic facts.

"The relationship between the ANC and the SACP has stood the test of time... . Our relationship was forged in the struggle against apartheid, and now, on the terrain of democracy, we share common goals and programmes towards the elimination of poverty and unemployment.

"Over more than eighty fighting years, the Communist Party has established itself as an honoured and leading force within South Africa's democratic movement. The moral conduct and intellectual pedigree of communist cadre, and the manner in which they conducted themselves within the liberation movement has earned the Party a unique and central role in the ANC.

"From the ANC's point of view, therefore, we have always valued the fact that to our left on the political spectrum is the SACP, which is friendly to the ANC and is ready to share programmes with the ANC to achieve common objectives.

"In the course of that history, the SACP has through its input and through the conduct of its members, who are also members of the ANC, helped shape the ANC itself. The ANC still regards the Party as a great teacher. Through the positions it has taken, the Party has enhanced the ANC's ability to lead the struggle of our people for freedom."

The ANC, along with the SACP whose members identify themselves, for purposes of government, as ANC members, has been the ruling party since 1994 when for the first time all adult South Africans were able to vote in a national election. The alliance is also in office in all the nine provinces.

This was not the case after the first democratic elections in April 1994 when the Inkatha Freedom Party secured the majority of seats in the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Assembly and the National Party in the Provincial Assembly of the Western Cape. However, two more elections down the line, and the ANC is now in office in all the provinces as well as of course heading the national government.

The old National Party, the architect of institutionalised apartheid, is now history. Many of its leading members, including its erstwhile Leader (political parties that operated during the apartheid regime did not have presidents or chairpersons and other similar democratically elected office- bearers but Leaders, with a capital L, rather along the lines of the Fuhrerprinzip), moved away into other political parties, including the ANC. This has enabled the old Democratic Party, now reinvented as the Democratic Alliance, to occupy its natural political space, the true inheritor of the old National Party.

Over a decade into political office, the ANC now enjoys unassailable supremacy within the parliamentary structures at the national and provincial levels. This, however, does not mean that it does not face political challenges. Given the nature of the struggle against apartheid and the "negotiated and consensual revolution" that ended the apartheid regime, with most of its structural features relating to the economy however remaining intact at the time of the transition (and many remaining so even now), it was natural that the only serious political and ideological challenge that the democratic dispensation has faced since the transition has been from within the Tripartite Alliance.

Having been part of the struggle and a party to the unusual transition, the constituents of the alliance consider it part of their revolutionary duty to interrogate themselves constantly and debate these issues among themselves.

This, however, does not mean that these differences bear an absolute one-to-one correlation with the components of the alliance. For instance, the SACP's criticism of what it characterises as the "1996 Class Project", that is, the adoption in June 1996 of GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), the neo-liberal macroeconomic plan informed by an acceptance of the orthodoxy of the market, jettisoning (government leaders insist, "incorporating") the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), a more visionary document prepared before the ANC assumed office, has support from within the ANC.

Similarly, the "robust" criticism of the SACP's line about the primacy of socialist revolution, that the ANC too must play its role in this task instead of being complicit in building capitalism and helping a black capitalist class to grow and entrench itself (a crude summation) has supporters from within the SACP.

These debates (the quotations at the beginning of the essay provide a hint of their flavour) are indeed "robust", sometimes to the point of being rough with no holds barred. Those unfamiliar with the culture of the South African struggle may wonder if such harsh exchanges are possible between persons who continue to consider themselves as comrades. Indeed, the proceedings of every congress of the components of the alliance are marked by even more "robust" exchanges between and among the fraternal members of the same political formations, united and divided with passion and elan, exuberant embraces in the corridors and merciless dissection of each other's points of view within the conference hall.

However, even the most robust of exchanges did not descend to abuse. Thus, for the Young Communist League, Thabo Mbeki is a "dictator"; it took exception to Mbeki's criticism of the SACP general secretary's "extraordinary arrogance". This bespeaks a bitterness that goes beyond mere robust criticism. Such virulence has to be seen in the context of other developments that seem superficially like a power struggle within the ANC, but have been invested with an "ideological dimension".

Which brings us to the strange affair of Jacob Zuma, deputy president of the ANC and (now ex-) Deputy President of the country, a veteran freedom fighter, a most popular political leader with wide support across the country, one who is expected to succeed Mbeki seamlessly as ANC president at the party's forthcoming national conference (end of 2007) and eventually also as President of the country in 2009, when Mbeki would have completed two terms as President, just as Mbeki had succeeded Nelson Mandela as ANC president and eventually as President of South Africa.

This smooth trajectory seemed to have been derailed when, on June 14, 2005, Zuma, was "relieved of his position" as Deputy President of South Africa by Mbeki. The announcement was made in a speech in Parliament.

A week earlier, the Durban High Court had convicted Schabir Shaikh, a Durban-based businessman with close family links to the ANC, on charges of fraud and corruption relating to his role in the multibillion-rand arms deal, a most complex affair whose ramifications are yet to be unravelled, according to its critics, and sentenced him to an effective 15 years imprisonment. Some of these charges allegedly involved his dealings with Zuma. In the course of the investigation of the role of Shaikh in the arms deal, the National Director of Public Prosecution (who has since resigned) had said that though there was a prima facie case against Zuma, he would not be prosecuted because the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) did not have a "winnable case".

However, while convicting Shaikh, the Durban High Court Judge (a former Minister of Justice in the illegal Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe) noted, as if in passing, that there was a "generally corrupt relationship" between Shaikh and Zuma, though Zuma was not on trial and was not called to testify.

Soon after the Durban High Court judgment, the NPA, now headed by another official, announced its decision to prosecute Zuma on two counts of corruption. This was on June 20, 2005. The case was to be heard by the Pietermaritzburg High Court. On September 20, the High Court "struck the case off the rolls", refusing to sanction yet more time for the prosecution to prepare its case. The general opinion, supported by legal experts, was that the NPA really had no case and was merely fishing for evidence of corruption.

While awaiting his trial on corruption charges, Zuma had to pass through another ordeal, a "trial by media", which almost unanimously pronounced him guilty of rape, an accusation brought against him by a 31-year-old woman, a friend of his family. The woman who, for her safety, even now officially remains unnamed and has apparently been assisted by the NPA following the outcome of the trial to make a home abroad, accused Zuma of raping her when she was a guest at his home in Johannesburg on November 2, 2005. Though he first denied the incident, Zuma later admitted in the Johannesburg High Court that heard the case that he did have sex with the woman, but that it was consensual. The High Court accepted Zuma's contention, ruled that he had been falsely accused and acquitted him of the rape charge on May 8.

His supporters maintain that he was "set up", inveigled into a compromising situation from which there was no escape. Though no names are mentioned, the inference is clear: that it is all part of the succession struggle within the ANC; that after entangling him in the corruption case that even legal experts said had little chance of success, these "conspirators" were out to get Zuma by getting the woman to bring charges of rape against him.

The accusation, the hearings before the High Court, the brutal cross examination of the complainant and, above all, the reporting by the print media that was marked by prurience together constitute the peculiarly South African phenomenon of vicarious relish and hypocritical disapproval of seamy sex and promiscuity happily coexisting.

The most notable feature of the Zuma affair from Day One is that the SACP and the COSATU, as well as the ANC Youth League, consistently supported him. Indeed, a COSATU statement released on June 6, 2005, the day when Schabir Shaikh was convicted with the telling "throwaway" observation by the judge about "a generally corrupt relationship" between Shaikh and Zuma, had this to say:

"The events of the past week confirm a long held view by COSATU that the trial of Schabir Shaikh was nothing but a political trial of the Deputy President in absentia. The choice of a long retired judge who is a former Justice Minister of the then Rhodesia indicates the extent to which the country have not succeeded to transform its judicial system.

The manner in which this whole trial was ran for years, not just for the official duration of the Schabir Shaikh trial, indicates and exposes a systematic campaign to assassinate the character of the Deputy President. This, amongst other things, includes the leaking of information during strategic political periods.

"In our view this is not just a total miscarriage of justice but also an onslaught on our revolution itself. It is in this context that COSATU would defend, not just Jacob Zuma, but the office of the Deputy President, the integrity of our judicial system, our revolution and the movement as a whole.

"We stand firmly by the Deputy President in this hour of need and join the growing chorus of the progressive forces to defend his integrity in the face of a clear political onslaught. We shall continue to pledge solidarity with him."

The SACP has been equally forthcoming in its support to Zuma; the youth wings of the SACP and the ANC rather intemperately so.

Interestingly, these differences over Zuma have acquired, or have been given, an "ideological" dimension, with Zuma projected as a leader who would be more responsive to investing the ANC with an explicit socialist orientation, than Mbeki, now seen as part of the "1996 Class Project", though at that time Nelson Mandela was President and vigorously defended GEAR at the SACP's Congress in Johannesburg in July 1998, where it was put in the dock.

So, is there an ideological dimension or is it all part of the usual power struggle? The fact is that given its history and the existing reality, power struggles in South Africa invariably have an ideological content. Arguments that only by encouraging productive forces and facilitating greater Black empowerment can distributive justice be achieved ring hollow for a people for the majority of whom life continues to be violent, brutish and short. What can one say about so rich and powerful an economy as South Africa's, whose rate of savings, according to a report in the Johannesburg financial daily Business Day (October 7) is less than 20 cents out of rands 100 (less than 0.2 per cent)? This is perhaps not surprising since 70 per cent of the disposable income of South Africans goes towards repayment of debt.

However, the ideological spin around Zuma does not carry conviction. Even at the time when he seemed beleaguered, Zuma never distanced himself from the political and ideological formulations of the ANC. Further, in the polemical exchanges (the principal documents are cited at the end of the essay) Mbeki seems to have scored all the points.

This is not simply because of his mastery over the subject or his familiarity, as an insider, with the ideological issues surrounding the NDR, and Marxism-Leninism and related subjects.

Just one of the several telling instances of such mastery is the way in which he employs the justly celebrated past history of the SACP and its own sound earlier formulations against what he views as the ill-informed demagoguery of its present leadership. He mockingly asks why so many of the best cadre of the SACP have left the party and are now occupying high positions in the ANC.

This is a phenomenon with which Thabo Mbeki is quite familiar, having been himself some sort of a lapsed communist, who moreover has not lost his intimate understanding of Marxism-Leninism.

The following passage from the ANC document, which clearly bears the Mbeki touch, is just one of the telling refutations of the SACP's admonition and appeal that the ANC should take on the task of socialist transformation of South Africa. Thus, Blade Nzimande, in his address to SADTU:

"Despite the many advances made by our democratic government and the working class over the last 12 years, the SACP is of the view that there has now emerged a new class consensus amongst the elite, forged around pursuing a path of restoration of capitalist profitability and that a capitalist market economy is the only route to go in our country. This is not going unchallenged, as illustrated by, amongst other things, the growing number and militancy of working class struggles over the last two years.

"At the heart of these class struggles is the question of whether the national democratic revolution should have a capitalist character or a socialist orientation. In our view as the SACP an NDR that is capitalist oriented ceases to be an NDR, as it is hopelessly incapable of addressing the complex challenge of underdevelopment and widening poverty in our society."

Refuting point by point these and similar formulations, the ANC document says that the SACP is transferring on to the ANC the task of building socialism, a task that is properly that of the SACP. This only means that the SACP wants to liquidate itself, not to speak of even more dangerous outcomes:

"Arising out of all the foregoing, and to put the matter in its stark reality without any equivocation or diplomacy or pursuit of "unity at all costs", the strategic proposals conveyed by Comrade Nzimande, ostensibly on behalf of the SACP, whether intended or not, amount to a serious provocation that would result in the:

liquidation of the South African Communist Party and the defeat of a genuine left agenda, among other things by shifting the tasks of the socialist revolution onto the shoulders of the ANC;

the destruction of the African National Congress and the rest of the democratic movement by provoking them to attempt a socialist transformation, based on the thesis that "imperialism is not invincible"; and,

the consequent capture of political power by the combined forces of domestic and international counter-revolution, which remain determined to limit and frustrate the potential of the National Democratic Revolution to serve the interests of the masses of the working people in our country, in the rest of Africa and the wider world.

We must engage in a determined ideological and political campaign within the movement to educate our membership of the serious danger posed by these positions.

At all times, we must pose the question - whose interests do these positions serve."

Do such "robust", perhaps, over-robust polemics mean that the crisis that the alliance is admittedly facing will inevitably lead to the collapse of the alliance? Further, it is not clear if, and to what extent, the Zuma factor has overlapped into these polemics, the unspoken issue informing the ideological debate. These issues will continue to animate the political debate in South Africa over the coming year, and may find some kind of a resolution at the forthcoming ANC National Conference.

The end of the Tripartite Alliance has been forecast several times. Such analyses and forecasts appear even when there are no objective factors to justify such prognosis, suggesting that these are, in most cases, instances of the wish preceding thought. Moreover, the Tripartite Alliance, forged during the struggle against apartheid, has a deep resonance among the majority of the people. None of its components can afford to be seen to walk away; and none can be seen as pushing another out.

Hard as it may seem to believe, such robust polemics may, in the long run, strengthen the alliance. As life and experience pose fresh challenges, the NDR too has become both a project and an objective that has to be constantly renewed, for the task in South Africa for the foreseeable future is a Sisyphean struggle.