The South African Communist Party’s failure to define its strategic role in the new South Africa is destabilising the ruling tripartite alliance, says Jabu Moleketi, Gauteng acting premier and a member of the African National Congress’s national executive.
Launching an attack on the SACP, of which he remains a member, Moleketi told the Mail & Guardian that last weekend’s ANC lekgotla had called for discussions on the communist party’s role.
Speaking this week with a candour rare in senior politicians, Moleketi fired one broadside after another at the SACP, which, he said, was merely “tailing” the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Moleketi said that Cosatu and the ANC were on track in terms of the roles prescribed by “Marxist-Leninist analysis” or “the classics”, as he also describes his guiding political texts.
They were properly playing out the roles and relationship defined for a trade union and revolutionary party. But, he said, the role of the SACP was “not clear”. This was “a critical problem confronting the tripartite alliance”.
The SACP’s “ideological and political positioning is causing confusion”, said Moleketi, the man said to be the most likely candidate for chair of the ANC in Gauteng when the ANC structures in the province go to the polls in the second half of this year. He is already widely believed to be running the province on behalf of Premier Mbhazima Shilowa.
Moleketi’s unhappiness stems from the fact that, unlike communist governments such as those in China and Cuba that have stretched themselves to adapt to the globalised economy while maintaining their Marxist foundations, he believes the SACP is stuck in a time warp.
“You look at some of the issues we take up as a communist party oppose privatisation. You just go to China. The Chinese are privatising there is nothing anti-communist about that. Basically the broad target is to get the economy going and to ensure that the resources continue to increase the income of the people.”
He also cites Cuba’s adoption of the United States dollar as its main currency, in spite of its historical relationship with the US. “They had to take this difficult position to protect the revolution and the incomes of the people. What stops the communist party [in South Africa] from applying its mind to this issue? They [the SACP] can’t just tail the Cosatu leadership. They must take positions.”
As a communist, Moleketi seems to have slid with ease into his portfolio as MEC for finance and economic affairs in Gauteng, where he advocates privatisation and restructuring, and supports the national government’s conservative macroeconomic policy. It is this position and his efficient handling of his portfolio that, while earning him enemies within the SACP, has won him friends in economically conservative circles in the Gauteng ANC.
“We have to take some difficult positions. But the key thing is that these positions are not taken for self-interest but for the benefit of society. I think people must read that it isn’t a rosy road,” says Moleketi, who is also a member of the ANC’s economic transformation committee.
Much of his ire is directed towards the role of critic that the SACP seems to have carved for itself within the alliance. “You [the SACP] cannot just articulate your role to be critical … or just the voice of Cosatu.” The SACP, he feels, must represent the working class which is broader than Cosatu’s membership as it includes the unorganised, the poor and rural people.
Besides its position as the “leader of the most advanced element of the society”, the SACP can’t play a mere “intermediary role between Cosatu and the ANC”. “They [the SACP] must become an NGO if they want to mediate they must not call themselves a party.”
Moleketi, in line with his Marxist-Leninist outlook, also attacked another “confusion” among South African leftwingers. It was an illusion, he argued, to imagine that a trade union federation could become a political entity capable of leading society. “Cosatu is a school of workers it prepares workers for class battles … but trade unions, as Lenin said and I believe it can’t lead society. They can’t lead a revolution because by their very nature they are reformists. Labour battles are around negotiations it is never about taking over [power].”
He said he did not believe, however, that Cosatu harboured any such ambitions, adding that it was doing a “good job as a federation”. He rejected those who labelled the ANC “neo-liberal” or “revisionist” because of its economic policy. He claimed that ANC policy on the economy was, instead, in line with that of a revolutionary movement as laid out by Lenin.