A Centre for Development and Enterprise report proposes a major reconfiguration of our political landscape, argues Jeremy Cronin
‘Caesar, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, Cromwell … compile a catalogue of the historical events which have culminated in a great ‘heroic personality’,” Antonio Gramsci noted to himself, as he languished in an Italian fascist prison.
“Caesarism,” he reckoned, occurs when “the forces in conflict balance each other” and thus mutually block effective transformation in a situation crying out for it. “Caesarism … always expresses the particular situation in which a great personality is entrusted with the task of ‘arbitration’ over a historico-political situation” – but it can be progressive or reactionary.
That was Gramsci some 70 years ago, and now, behold, the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), a business-aligned research institute, has also been mulling indiscreetly over the prospects of a South African Caesar to unblock what it takes to be the present impasse in our transition.
In its latest report, Policy-Making in a New Democracy, sponsored by South African Breweries, the CDE repeatedly emphasises: “the country needs strong leadership”; “What the country needs is a new centre of gravity for the African National Congress as the leading political party in South Africa’s government”; “the role of its top leadership is vital to how the ANC will respond …”
Central to all of this is the new President, Thabo Mbeki. The CDE becomes self-appointed praise-singer to its own particular caricature of our president – the leading growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) strategy proponent, the fearless castigator of “elements within the alliance”, the man who referred to “radical teachers” as “traitors and criminals”. How the report drools in sycophantic delight at all of this.
Although its title promises to focus on policy-making, this is not what the report is fundamentally about. It is much more radical in its ambitions. It is advocating nothing less than a major reconfiguration of the South African political landscape – a made-over ANC leading a new alliance of forces, with the CDE’s extreme neo-liberal version of Gear “the hub around which all other policies” have to revolve.
This new ANC-led bloc is to be made up of “the large business sector” (“government’s most important allies for effective economic reform”), emerging black business, provincial leaders, and, for numerical weight, the rural and urban poor, members of the Zionist churches, “people who [the report notes with great approval and condescension] are not experts in the toyi- toyi or first in the queue for entitlement”, “disciplined and hard- working” folk – the dumb, useful masses.
To achieve this radical realignment, a Caesar is required to smash the historical core constituency of the ANC, recalcitrant left-wing radicals, trade unions, public sector workers. The new Caesarist leadership must resist the temptation of “conflict avoidance” inside the alliance, “competition” (within the alliance) must be expunged in the name of “competition” (on the market). The public service must be “radically downsized”, township non-payment for services must face “unequivocal firm action”.
But the gamble of fostering Caesarism is that the strong leader may turn against you. And so, while the CDE calls for an iron fist against the ANC’s own core constituency, it is at great pains to advocate kid-gloves for others. The prospective Caesar is packed off to Swiss finishing school for lessons in etiquette to handle, for instance, “minorities” (read whites). Minorities must “really feel an important and needed part of South Africa … This means not just saying it but meaning it. It means watching for the body language, the emphasis and tone of how ministers and senior leaders deal with the matter” – the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.
The “Caesarist” bloc in its restoration version, according to Gramsci, typically involves big capital, conservative rural masses, rootless urban lumpen proletarians and an imperial guard, held together by the “heroic” persona of a leader. Most of these forces are putatively present in the CDE model – except that the role of the Cossacks now gets to be played by the “market”, whose iron laws and ruthless disregard for jobs and social spending will be unleashed unregulated, right-sizing sabres drawn, on to our streets.
In its introduction, the CDE report quite rightly notes that “the move to freer markets in developing countries across the globe does not magically solve the problems of poverty and underdevelopment”. Robert Klitgaard is pertinently cited: “In much of South Asia, Africa and Latin America, neither state nor market have lived up to the expectations of their enthusiasts.”
But the report soon forgets this more tempered view, advocating “every imaginable freeing up of the economy”, and warning that there is “no alternative to raising investor confidence”.
Although it apparently confers a great deal of power on a new ANC (shed of its major constituency), in fact, the real power behind Caesar will be those who are powerful on the market. Weaned from being a mass movement, the ANC will be turned into little more than an ad agency for the “free market”, staffed by business school graduates. “The ANC itself needs to become an instrument for marketing and selling the new approach. We are not suggesting that modern revolutionaries in the global village should all have MBAs, but this is a useful analogy …”
In its indiscretions, the CDE report helps to remind us that the principal strategic battle-line in our country is no longer between the liberation movement and a conservative, openly anti-ANC bloc dreaming of a return to an apartheid past. The principal opponent of the liberation movement is now a powerful and oh-so- charming group of forces that seek a radical transformation of the political landscape, not least of the ANC, the better to unleash its modernising, neo-liberal project.
This can be confusing. Even more confusing is the fact that some of what is advocated is probably right – we do need, not a Caesar, but a coherent and determined leadership capable of inspiring, harnessing and mobilising all resources for a major growth and developmental effort. This will require a disciplining capacity, which will have to be directed at a number of quarters, including where the CDE least wants it. Charm is not enough.