The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) intends to grasp the opportunity that the ANC’s policy and national conferences provide to campaign for a programme that will advance the cause of the workers and the poor.
We will judge the ANC’s 13 draft policy documents by the degree to which they promise real improvements in the lives of the majority, and how well they advance the demands of the Freedom Charter and the national democratic revolution.
The draft strategy and tactics document sets the tone for all these discussion documents. Unfortunately, it is full of obscure concepts and language alien to our movement and its traditions, including the misuse of Marxist jargon that disguises fundamental deviations from key policies behind revolutionary rhetoric.
Although the national democratic revolution was not strictly socialist, it envisaged a fundamental transformation of social and economic relations, including measures to curtail monopoly capital. It aimed to extend the role of the state radically, and position the working class particularly, alongside other historically oppressed sections of the population, to play the leading role in transformation.
This strategy and tactics document suggests, however, that 13 years after democracy, despite the key centres of economic power remaining largely intact, we have arrived at our final destination: a new, classless concept called a “national democratic society”, vaguely defined as being “based on the best in human civilisation in terms of political and human freedoms, socio-economic rights, value systems and identity”.
This ignores the historical evolution of the democratic movement’s programme as developed in the Freedom Charter, the Morogoro and Kabwe strategy and tactics documents, the Green Book, and the ANC’s 2005 National General Council. All these defined the national democratic revolution as a radical concept to achieve economic, class and political liberation.
According to draft document, “the approach of the liberation movement to private capital, including monopoly capital, is informed by our understanding of the national democratic society as a market-based system that encourages competition, promotes labour-absorbing activity, discourages rent-seeking in the form of super-profits arising from monopoly control and other selfish advantages and so on.”
It implies there is nothing inherently wrong with market-driven capitalism so long as capitalists are encouraged to behave ethically and not seek “selfish advantages”. However, this contradicts the very nature of capitalism, which is based on self-interest, even more so in South Africa’s racially based capitalism, which has always entailed the economic subjugation of the oppressed majority.
“A thriving economy in a national democratic society,” says the document, “requires as efficient a market as possible, shorn of the racial and gender exclusions that characterised apartheid colonialism, and freed from the barriers to entry and competition that the economy endured under colonial capitalism.”
This suggests the problem with apartheid was that it distorted the market, and that removing “the barriers to entry and competition” will allow for a level playing field and deracialised capitalism. But if we still pursue the inherited apartheid growth path, the economy will still rest on the super-exploitation of black workers and perpetuate the marginalisation of black communities.
This will not disappear of its own accord but requires radical measures to break up historical structures of economic power and ownership.
The term “national democratic society” downplays the centrality of class conflicts. The document says: “We do acknowledge that, at times, the narrow self-interest of a particular class or stratum or group may not necessarily coincide with that of other motive forces. In some instances, as with the working class and the bourgeoisie, these interests may even be contradictory …”
The draft argues that, “in a national democratic society class contradictions and class struggle, particularly between the working class and the bourgeoisie, will play themselves out. As such, a national democratic state will be called upon to regulate the environment in which such contradictions manifest themselves, in the interest of national development.”
The implication is that in such a society, class conflicts should be exceptional, an aberration caused by the “narrow self-interest” of different classes. It denies the fundamental fact that greed, corruption and exploitation are integral to capitalism.
The notion of “unity” between the national democratic society and private capital, particularly the focus on “providing an attractive climate for capital”, has underpinned the government’s economic strategy post-1996 and has failed spectacularly to achieve results. What modest gains have been made, particularly post-2000, have largely relied on state investment and intervention through fiscal policy.
But this document relegates the government’s task to that of a referee, mediating equilibrium between labour and capital. That is why the document’s definition of the motive forces of the revolution, as those who “benefit” from it, is so problematic. This would make monopoly capital the most significant motive force, as it has undoubtedly benefited more than the workers and the poor since 1994!
This “benefit” definition of motive forces is contrary to all previous analyses of our struggle, which identified the dominant force driving social change as the working class. Now the draft strategy and tactics defines black capital as a motive force, for which “the continued advancement of the revolution, particularly the necessary deracialisation of ownership and control of wealth and income, is in their objective interest. In this sense they are part of the motive forces, with great potential to play a critical role in changing the structure of the South African economy.”
“However,” the document concedes, “because their rise is dependent in part on cooperation with elements of established white capital, they are susceptible to co-option into serving its narrow interests — and thus developing into a comprador bourgeoisie …”
Although we cannot mechanically lump emerging black capital with white monopoly capital, nor can we uncritically accept them as a “motive force”. The fact that they “stand to benefit” from transformation does not mean they can consistently pursue the national democratic revolution. They have no record of having done so at any point in our history.
The document gives the ANC itself no proactive role in driving and developing strategy and policy, but limits it to “monitoring and evaluating” government. “The ANC,” it says, “should remain steadfast to principle, and guard against attempts by any force to turn it into a hostage of narrow sectoral interest.”
As the majority, the working class cannot be dismissed as pursuing a “narrow sectoral interest”. Conversely, the ANC must resist a disproportionate influence by capital, black or white, in the organisation, or government.
The characterisation of the international situation is also overly static and pessimistic. While paying lip service to emerging possibilities, its tone exaggerates the limitations that the global environment places on our revolution.
The unqualified assertion of “capitalist dominance in a unipolar world”, while true at one level, does not do justice to important international developments that open up space for a radical project — the growing mobilisation for democratising global governance, the upsurge of progressive forces in South America and the emergence of a powerful bloc of nations in the South.
The international situation is certainly not an excuse for a lack of progress in advancing our revolution.
The document talks about measures to manage capital in the interests of the poor, but does not advance any coherent programme to do this. Nor does it explain why this has not happened in the first 13 years of democracy.
The draft strategy and tactics pays lip service to the ANC’s traditional bias towards the workers and the poor while in reality, behind the thin disguise of a “national democratic society”, it provides a theoretical justification for the accommodation and strengthening of capitalism, and all the exploitation and inequality that it breeds.
We urge the ANC’s overwhelmingly working-class and poor membership to reject this position and return to the traditional transformational policies of our movement.
Zwelinzima Vavi is general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions