the ANC’s shadow
Ebrahim Harvey
A SECOND LOOK
The role of the South African Communist Party in the African National Congress- led alliance must rate as one of the most intriguing questions in the history of the South Africa liberation movement. There cannot be a harder act to follow.
How is it that while proclaiming to be the vanguard of the working class, the party has always subordinated itself and this class to the ANC?
The answer to this anomaly lies in the fact that the party has followed the mistaken Stalinist “two-stage” policy which has, since 1928, determined its strategy.
Critics of this strategy, like Sydney Bunting, were expelled from the party. This strategy dictated that the ANC must play the leading role within the alliance because black people in general had to first attain national liberation before the struggle for socialism, in the second stage, could be waged under the leadership of the party.
The immediate objective was the dis- mantling of the apartheid system and the end to white domination.
In essence it is upon this collaboration that the alliance was both founded and cemented.
While the SACP relegated its leadership of the working class on a socialist programme to the period after national liberation, it dismissed the left, inside and outside of the alliance, who maintained that apartheid and capitalism were so inextricably intertwined that the struggle for national liberation and socialism were indivisible and simultaneous.
Yet while the party rejected the fore- most socialist character of the struggle, it continued to see the black working class as the leading force of the struggle for national liberation.
So while this class was fit to play the leading role, its own interests were subordinate to the limited goals of the anti-apartheid struggle. Party organisation, programmes and strategy hinged on this false conception.
In the light of this the party considered the Congress of South African Trade Union’s (Cosatu) socialist slogans of the 1980s, a common sight at strikes and demonstrations, premature.
The party also contemptuously dismissed, before and after the 1994 elections, discussions among the left outside the alliance on forming an alternative mass workers’ party, which included people in Cosatu who were unhappy with the role and direction of the party.
Yet the consequences of this two-stage approach can be seen clearly today. With the capitalist system intact, the material conditions of the working class and poor have worsened to an extent not seen before.
Since 1994 we have had an unabated increase in poverty and unemployment.
This is the heavy price that the two- stage strategy has had for workers and the poor.
However, have we not now completed the first stage of the national democratic revolution? Apartheid has been dismantled and many democratic freedoms have been ushered in.
No, the party says that it needs to now “consolidate” this democratic revolution. With the second post-apartheid election having passed, when do we enter the second socialist stage?
In the face of the desperate poverty and hardship afflicting the class that the party claims to lead, one has to ask the question: “Is there something sinister and cynical about this sophistry (first the nonsensical ‘two stages’ and now ‘consolidation of the democratic revolution’) when, even were we to grant theoretical and strategic credence to the two-stage approach, we are clearly supposed to be in the second stage?”
But is the party now leading the working class and the alliance on a clear socialist programme? No, it is not. Why?
Here is the answer: nowhere has the application of the two-stage approach led to socialism in the “second stage”, simply because there is no such stage.
The two-stage approach is a plainly deceiving Stalinist fallacy which has held back and compromised the struggles of workers and poor peasants in many countries of the Third World.
The SACP has not openly and strongly challenged the government’s growth, employment and redistribution strategy, which it agrees is inappropriate and responsible for increasing poverty and unemployment. A true vanguard party would have done that and more.
Instead the party continues, at this critical moment, to lamely play second fiddle to the ANC.
More bizarrely, the party claims that the alliance is needed now more than ever before and that the alliance is stronger than ever.
One does not need to be a political scientist to see through this deceiving nonsense. Average intelligence will do.
But it is only by keeping the organised working class within the alliance that the party can best fulfil its policing and constraining role over it. Just imagine the nightmare for the party and the ANC if Cosatu left the alliance and formed its own party.
Obviously workers can be better contained and controlled within than outside the alliance. This is the underlying reason why, despite all evidence to the contrary, the SACP claims that the alliance is stronger than ever.
Pulling wool over the eyes of the working class is typical of the Stalinist tradition, a tradition which, as much as the party has tried to distance itself from it, is still dominant.
It is a well-known fact that the party was one of the most loyal supporters of the Stalinist Soviet bureaucracy, even during the darkest days of repression, notably the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian and 1968 Prague mass uprisings. The party has yet to explain this blighted past to workers.
Can the party break the stranglehold which the ANC has over it within the alliance?
It is unlikely that the party would wage, and much less succeed in, a concerted battle against the ANC, which overwhelmingly dominates the alliance.
Besides, it appears that the weight of tradition and history is simply too much for the party to overcome in order to really fulfil the role of vanguard of the working class.
Yet today, unlike the days of exile, the party can no longer hide behind the ANC.
The present social crisis, which primarily affects the working class, the poor and unemployed, is dragging the party into the crucible of struggle and demanding that it take a clear and leading stand on many critical issues.
Alliances are not born in perpetuity and cannot be forcibly held together by bureaucratic measures.
Notwithstanding protests to the contrary, the alliance has clearly outlived whatever useful purpose it may have served in the past. There are numerous examples to show that, instead of advancing workers’ struggles, the alliance has become a dead weight on the working class.
Can the party boldly step out from the long shadows of the ANC and for the first time really be the leading party of the working class? I doubt it.