Dale McKinley
CROSSFIRE
South Africa is a strange place to be if you count yourself as a political activist and/or commentator. It often seems as if this sizeable sector of our population is caught in a linguistic time warp, what with echoes of vain, glorious, nationalist verbiage ringing in our Southern African ears, resistant strains of ethnic and racial melodies lulling the vulnerable and blasts of sectarian left- speak conjuring up images of litmus-test battles for ideological fealty to this or that “revolutionary” school of thought.
Finding myself on the left of the South African political panorama, it is the latter with which I have had most experience. Having been called an “ultra- leftist”, a “Trotskyite” and a “fake communist” by some within the organisation I belong to (the South African Communist Party), a “misplaced whitey” and “foreigner without a clue” by self-proclaimed left nationalists, I now have the honour of being labelled a “Stalinist left-wing opportunist” by the Mail & Guardian’s resident Mr Left Field, Ebrahim Harvey (“SACP shares Cosatu’s faults”, June 2 to 8). Maybe I should feel privileged by all the attention, but being a stubborn leftie I tend to think that such labelling is not a sign of endearment.
The evident basis for my “Stalinist left-wing opportunism” (I must admit that I’m not quite sure exactly what it means) is that I made a “deliberate, false and disingenuous omission” by not “mentioning” the SACP in my “contradictory and dishonest” Crossfire piece on the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s recent strategy and tactics.
Whew! And I thought I was actually making a genuine critical contribution, just like the host of other pieces I have penned over the years that try to present critically informed arguments about the policies, direction and character of the SACP, the African National Congress and other “liberation movement” players. An experienced and informed leftie like Harvey should know better than to try and single out this latest contribution as a straw man to then hoist on to the petard of a guilt-by-omission argument.
Harvey is well aware, as are those who have access to other mainstream media outlets and various progressive publications, that I have critically and openly dealt with all of the things about the SACP that I am now accused of ignoring. Indeed, Harvey knows all too well that such contributions have landed me in much hot water and that I have always been willing to face the “consequences” that he accuses me of running away from.
No self-respecting member of the SACP, or of any other left formation for that matter, will try and argue that there are not serious problems and contradictions confronting the organisation or the workers’ movement more generally. Whether they are equal in their treatment of such is another matter.
It is simply too easy and convenient for Harvey to use “Stalinism” and the SACP (propped up by a misdirected personal attack) as the whipping boys for why working-class forces in South Africa have failed to sustain a powerful and influential socialist struggle in the cut and thrust of the “transition” politics.
Among the varied reasons is the general weakness of other socialist forces in South Africa (particularly intellectuals) to translate their critiques of both capitalism and the effects of “Stalinism” into practical organisation, with and among, the working class and poor.
Harvey has talked much about “now being the time” for the “real left” to build a “new revolutionary party”, but when it comes to explaining why the many attempts to do exactly that have failed, all he can say is that the SACP and “Stalinism” are to blame. It would appear as though the extent of such politics, much like its flip-side that revels in political witch-hunts for “ultra-leftists”, can only go as far as its repetitive critique and labelling.
It is simply not good enough to state (suggest) the need for something without having a concrete idea about how that suggestion is going to be pursued and built upon in the messy and convoluted world of South African mass politics. That applies to all of us, regardless of what self- comforting labels are unnecessarily tagged on.