Adam Habib: CROSSFIRE
There have been a number of innovative and controversial contributions in this column and other sections of the Mail & Guardian about our failure to develop a people- centered democratic transition.
First we had John Pilger’s analysis indicting the African National Congress government for taking care of the “haves” and forgetting the “have-nots” (“The betrayal of South Africa’s revolution”, April 17 to 23).
Then we had a series of articles by Jonathan Steinberg, Jeremy Cronin and Kuseni Dlamini lamenting the death of a left vision, with Cronin and Dlamini suggesting how this vision might be revived (Crossfire, May 8 to 14, May 15 to 21 and May 22 to 28).
These contributions are useful as they are beginning to generate a public debate about where we are, what has gone wrong, and what needs to be done. But they have not got to the root cause of the crisis that confronts those committed to developing a left agenda.
Left-leaning scholars and activists (particularly in the South African Communist Party and the ANC) were instrumental in realising a programme that can broadly be defined as a manifesto for a people-centered democratic transition – the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) and the research reports of the Macro-Economic Research Group that preceded the RDP.
Neither the RDP nor the research group was without problems. But both reflected a vision fundamentally different from the National Party’s normative economic model, and the ANC’s current growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear).
That vision was one of a people-centered transition in which ordinary South Africans would participate in the political process, and the government’s policies would be directed to dismantling the inequities generated by 300 years of white rule.
Why was that vision jettisoned, especially when the ANC had used it as the basis for its election platform in 1994? Some in the left outside the ANC and SACP have suggested that the abandonment of the RDP is the result of a betrayal by the ANC leadership.
This may be true of one or another individual, but it is not a convincing explanation for the capitulation of an entire leadership. It does not explain why erstwhile leaders in the ANC, SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) would suddenly abandon the vision they had so long fought for .
Perhaps a more useful explanation of the ANC’s abandonment of the RDP lies in an understanding of the relations of power in the national and global setting.
Steinberg, Cronin and Dlamini recognise that our transition is occurring in a different world environment. The Cold War has ended and developing countries can no longer wring trade and other economic concessions from the advanced industrialised world by playing one superpower off against another.
Capital is now more mobile, and this mobility enhances its power vis–vis national governments. The power relations at national level are also decidedly in favour of business.
The ANC has premised its plans for economic rejuvenation on an increase in private-sector investment, and this enhances the power of business. Moreover, pressures on the ANC in Parliament emerge from the right, and there is as yet no coherent parliamentary party to the left of the ANC.
The result is an ANC government constantly responding to the pressures subjected on it by big business and political parties representing those interests.
Two options confront us in this case. First, we could argue that the relations of power are such as to make alternatives impossible. Or we could acknowledge that political and socio-economic constraints exist, but make strategic interventions that could make a difference in terms of changing the political and socio-economic environment in the long term and of creating space in the short term.
The latter route would involve us recognising the need to enhance the powers and leverage of the working class and unemployed so that their concerns can receive some of the attention of the government.
The first step in this process is to release the organisations of the working class from the bonds of the tripartite alliance.
The alliance played a crucial role in unifying all classes within the black population in the struggle. But since 1994, it has become one of the mechanisms through which the government smothers the working class and constrains it from taking the offensive.
Instead of organising and mobilising the working class against Gear, Cosatu and the SACP vainly attempt to arrive at a “gentleman’s” agreement with the ANC. Instead of enhancing the power of the working class, they nullify that power.
The result is that the ANC government no longer feels compelled to make concessions to working class interests, for it knows that whatever it does, and despite all the protestations of Cosatu and the SACP, both organisations have no option but to remain tied to it.
The emergence of a coherent, well-organised black parliamentary opposition party to the left of the ANC would go a long way to challenging the prevailing relations of power in South African society.
Should such a party advocate a vision similar to the RDP, and should it constitute the official opposition with a sizeable minority support within the black population, the ANC would feel compelled to deal with this electoral challenge by implementing economic and social policies more sympathetic to the interests of the poor.
Often political commentators suggest that electoral opposition politics is a wasted exercise because of the sheer strength of the ANC. But a viable left parliamentary opposition could, through the logic and momentum of the electoral process, force a strategic political shift on the part of an ANC government, and thereby facilitate a move towards a more people-centered democratic transition.
Far-fetched? Perhaps. But these strategies are premised on an understanding that the shift away from a people-centered democratic transition in South Africa is the result of the prevailing relations of power in society.
The solution is to transform these relations of power by maximising the leverage of the working class and enhancing its power vis– vis other social classes.
It is about changing the mindset of people so that they think less about what is inevitable, and more about how we can utilise the space to enhance the capacities of the working class.
Dr Adam Habib is senior lecturer in the department of politics at the University of Durban-Westville