/ 18 August 2000

Setting the ‘free-thinker’ free

Jeremy Cronin Crossfire

Last Friday the Mail & Guardian ran an emotive banner headline, “SACP to grill free-thinker”. A long article by Khadija Magardie evoked the same heretic burning imagery (“SACP to grill outspoken McKinley”).

On April 12 there was, indeed, a disciplinary hearing; it considered articles written in local and international newspapers by Dale McKinley. The hearing had to assess whether the views in these articles were compatible with South African Communist Party membership. There was certainly no “grilling” of McKinley. He read, for almost an hour, from an extensive prepared submission. He did this without any interruption. McKinley argued the charges against him were “completely unfounded”. He accused other SACP leaders of being the guilty ones. He characterised the hearing itself as an act of “organisational hypocrisy”. At the end, a few questions of clarification were asked and answered. After careful deliberation, the disciplinary committee recommended the termination of McKinley’s party membership. The central committee agreed. We know there will now be accusations of an “authoritarian silencing of dissent”. Since we certainly have no intention of giving solace to those who would like to see debate in the SACP or alliance suppressed, let’s explain exactly what we are doing. In the first place, we are not silencing McKinley. If anything, the “free-thinker” is now free. Unencumbered by party discipline, McKinley will be even more journalistically hyperactive. That is his right. A range of commercial media will certainly be liberal with their space. McKinley is entitled to air his views. His views may even be right. But they are not compatible with the principles of the SACP – that is the nub of the disciplinary hearing’s finding. Moving beyond the detail of the hearing, let me explain what I think lies at the root of McKinley’s strained, seven-year sojourn within the SACP. First, he believes passionately that the leadership of the African National Congress will inevitably “sell out”. He writes of “the predictable evolution of the ANC”, of the “ANC leadership’s historic class agenda”. He asserts that the “concept of class power the majority of the leadership of the ANC has always held is defined by the capi-talist class they have aspired to join”.

If you take the trouble to read McKinley’s writing (and he is very much like his sparring partner, Ebrahim Harvey, in this regard) it is dominated by what the literary critic Elleke Boehmer has neatly called the “foreclosure of the frozen penultimate”. Every policy pronouncement by the ANC, every comma and hyphen, is a portent of the inevitable “sell out”, which, like the Second Coming, is imminent, always-already among us. But if McKinley felt like this before joining the party, why did we let him sign on in the first place? Because we try not to live, ourselves, in the foreclosure of the frozen pen-ultimate. Individuals, like history, can be influenced, can change and develop. Sadly, McKinley’s views have remained frozen. Secondly, related to this, McKinley has never accepted longstanding SACP practice in regard to fraternal organisations. Much to the regret of Tony Leon, and despite real strains from time to time, our alliance with the ANC has persisted and strengthened over 70 years. One essential ingredient has been respect for each other’s organisational integrity. Some non-communist ANC members may not like the present, elected SACP leadership. That is their right. But the SACP would expect the ANC to discipline any of its members who launched persistent public attacks against the leadership of an allied formation, not for this or that mistake, but on the grounds of a pre-ordained flaw in our political make-up.

But that is what McKinley has been saying of elected ANC leadership. Likewise, he does not accept that communists working in fraternal organisations should respect the integrity of these formations. A Cabinet minister or a Congress of South African Trade Unions official, who happen also to be SACP members, cannot be expected, when they act in their government or trade union capacities, to flout the policies of those structures. When McKinley calls for the disciplining of communists in the Cabinet who are not publicly disagreeing with present macro-economic policy, he breaks with a longstanding SACP approach. The growth, employment and redistribution strategy is a policy of the government. I regret that it is. The SACP can, and does, express strong disagreement on this matter as a party, addressing itself not to individuals, but to the government and the ANC. We hope to influence and change what we think are wrong, but collectively mandated, policies.

McKinley does not accept this way of working within an alliance. For him there is a higher communist calling, a superior morality; it is a total, non- negotiable package, it must simply trump and displace all else. All that is different or diverse must be expunged. And this is the third underlying reality that has led to the parting of ways – his zealot’s, all-or-nothing mindset has made it very difficult to work with McKinley in an organisational context. This raises a much broader issue. Left intellectuals like McKinley and Cronin need to be self-reflective. Are we going to learn anything from the grave flaws exposed in certain left traditions in the course of the 20th century? Do we really foster a culture of free discussion and fearless debate; do we contribute to working class self- emancipation; do we enable rural women comrades to feel comfortable in discussion forums – when our own styles of intervention are abrasive, intolerant, bristling with machismo and intellectually arrogant? McKinley has the right to publish what he wants. The SACP has the right to decide whether what he publishes is compatible with being a party member.