Anyone who argues for socialism will find allies in the ANC, the party’s secretary general said this week
Jaspreet Kindra
African National Congress secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe this week committed the party to the cause of socialism and said South Africa should follow the Chinese and Cuban socialist models of economic policy.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Mail & Guardian, Motlanthe also reiterated the party’s support for the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) strike action.
Motlanthe last week endorsed the one-day strike at a May Day rally, calling on union members to “intensely hate capitalism and engage in a struggle against it”. His endorsement directly contradicted the government’s condemnation of the strike, while his comments about capitalism and economic policy in general flew in the face of the government’s investor-friendly macroeconomic policies.
Motlanthe this week stood by his May Day speech, saying the unions should hold the capitalist system’s transnational units accountable for the job losses in the country – not the ANC or the government.
“You cannot hope to become a peaceful trade union federation with capitalism existing today in its globalised form,” the secretary general said, adding he often told unions that the first thing transnational units did in any country was to enforce “half to three”.
“They reduce the work force by half and triple their profits – this results in job cutbacks.”
Asked whether President Thabo Mbeki had raised any concerns about his speech at the May Day rally, he said: “Why should he? I am not saying anything different. There is no need to have discussions.”
Responding to queries on the party’s seemingly contradictory positions on the country’s investor-friendly macroeconomic policies and socialism, he said: “The ANC in itself is not a bourgeois organisation. The country’s leading socialist minds are in the ANC. Anyone who argues for socialism will find allies in the ANC.”
Motlanthe said these socialists within the party are “grappling with socialism” while trying to strike a balance between “theory and practice”.
ANC representative Smuts Ngonyama last week said Motlanthe’s May Day comments constituted a party position taken outside the government. Other party members in the government expressed surprise at Motlanthe’s comments.
Motlanthe said the theory of socialism “cannot be a sterile theory, it has to be tempered by practice. Look at China. It took them 50 years [to realise that their experiment had failed]. It is a mammoth sign of the task ahead of us.”
Motlanthe said the country was set on following the Chinese and Cuban examples.
“The Chinese believe in 100 years’ time they will have the base to build a true socialist state – this is what could happen here – you will have access to free health, education, there will be no differentiation between the rural and urban areas.”
The ANC official explained: “In 1997, after 50 years of existence, the Chinese Communist Party admitted they had failed to build a socialist state as they had attempted to bypass the primary stages of socialism.
“They realised that they would be unable to generate the needed capital to heighten the overall education and skill levels from within the state.
“The only way they could access capital was to open up free-trade zones. Today the world’s biggest construction site is in Shanghai.”
Asked how the ANC’s decision to pursue the privatisation of municipal services could be reconciled with its socialist ideology, he said the party realised it needed capital to run such services and was therefore willing to endorse partnerships with the private sector.
He dismissed concerns that such a stance might antagonise investors: “Look at China, which is a communist state. All the capitalists are investing in it. Investors don’t care about that – they don’t care whether you love them or not, as long as you create conditions for them to invest in.”
Explaining the party’s stance on Cosatu’s strike action he said: “What I was trying to say to them was that there are those who doubt the ANC’s commitment to dealing with these issues – those who doubt do so because they undermine the determination of the counter-revolution to succeed.
“The government is central. If you hate the ANC, who else is on your side ? By hating the government they were exposing themselves to the capitalists.”
Motlanthe said he had told the Cosatu members at the rally to hate capitalists because “once you hate capitalists, you will put in the effort to study it and question it.”
Dwelling on the contradiction between the party’s stance and the government’s conservative policies he said: “It is very fashionable for people to say that the macroeconomic policy of the country was dictated by the IMF [International Monetary Fund] or the World Bank. These people [who make these remarks] have not even made a study of South Africa’s economy.
“We are not accountable to the IMF or the World Bank, as we have not borrowed from them. The reason why we are adhering to a course of strict fiscal discipline is not because we are accountable to the IMF or the World Bank.
“There are those who take instructions from them because they owe them. In fact, South Africa [and] Malaysia are the only two countries from the developing world who can speak their minds in their [IMF and World Bank] presence.”
Asked why, if the party was committed to socialist principles, the ANC’s alliance partners were unhappy, Motlanthe responded: “We are always talking, we encourage them to raise any doubts in their minds.” He said the alliance partners were holding a strategy conference at the end of the month to smooth differences.