Ebrahim Harvey
left field
What do Cabinet ministers Alec Erwin, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Sydney Mufamadi and Jeff Radebe have in common? They are all senior members of the South African Communist Party who see no contradiction between advancing the government’s capitalist economic policies (which have worsened poverty and unemployment) and declaring a commitment to socialism.
Can these ”communist” leaders be both friends and enemies of the working class at the same time? This anomalous situation is presenting more difficulties for the party and demands a resolution one way or another.
As part of their commitment to the growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) strategy (that has increased the suffering of the poor since 1996) they are responsible in their respective ministries for driving policies and processes that tear into the heart of socialism.
Their responsibilities include privatisation of state assets and basic social services, severe cutbacks in these services, the rapid reduction of trade tariffs that has led to job losses and greater poverty, and conservative wage restraint all while they themselves enjoy huge salaries and many perks.
Their continued membership, and particularly their leadership, of a socialist party is untenable. Poverty is more widespread than at any time since 1994 and these ministers continue to attack the working class. They supported the R43-billion arms deal while millions are jobless and hungry. As communist leaders the cruel irony of this situation cannot escape us. It is within this context that the dismissal of Dale McKinley from the party last year was so hypocritical.
The ministers have also gone beyond speaking left and acting right. They are in fact increasingly both speaking and acting right.
This situation stems from the predicament in which the government’s adoption of Gear and these individual, ministerial responsibilities have placed them.
Since the SACP has always recognised the African National Congress as leader of the national liberation movement and because the SACP therefore plays second fiddle to it in the ruling alliance these individuals cannot or dare not take up the cudgels on economic policy. The fact that some of them are also members of the ANC’s national executive committee increases pressure on them to toe the government line.
How can they support and carry out the privatisation of state assets and basic social services when the general secretary of the SACP attacks the ”evils of privatisation”?
Let us look at what this situation has meant for the working class. During last year’s public sector wage strike Fraser-Moleketi, Minister of Public Service and Administration, accused the unions of what Vladimir Lenin called an ”infantile ultra-leftist disorder” because they demanded a decent wage increase for workers who have been among the lowest paid. She had the nerve to invoke Lenin’s name in chastising the workers and urged them to accept her wage offer in the broader interests of ”transformation”.
Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin, the erstwhile Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) unionist, gave the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa a lecture on Gear at their congress last year. He said that macroeconomic policies are not easily changed and that the fundamental orientation of Gear was not only correct but irreversible. While he spoke about the ”hard choices” that had to be made, he didn’t say a word about the even harder consequences of those policies for workers and the poor.
Strange how things work out when you move from the unions to the government or big business. Erwin knows that Gear was not even discussed with the unions, let alone negotiated.
Last year he said something I remembered because it was so odd. He said: ”I have never been a Utopian socialist and never joined a Utopian communist party. The methodology of Marxism is most powerful for me, but the most important thing for us is to deal with the realities.”
But what are the realities? Are there any realities starker than that of terrible poverty? Than, in countless ways, profits being put before the basic needs of people? Than Erwin and the government being keener to satisfy the interests of big business than of ordinary people?
A key element in Marxist methodology is to deal with realities from the standpoint of the needs of workers and not to subordinate these to the interests of big business and a state that is, in terms of its economic policies, hostile to the working class.
Then we have Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe, who is responsible for various forms of privatisation of state assets, misleadingly called ”restructuring”. Many jobs have already been lost and many more will follow by the time this process is finished in 2002/3.
Radebe has promised that if job losses cannot be avoided because he knows they can’t there will be a ”social plan” for those affected. But this plan has done little for workers and is a miserable concession that cannot compensate for the harmful effects of job losses.
And finally, Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi, a former Cosatu leader. Mufamadi who is responsible for implementation of local government restructuring plans, such as iGoli 2002, which has earned the wrath of municipal workers has, despite his strong union background, not listened to workers’ concerns, needs and interests.
In all these cases there is a clear strategic purpose that has emerged. President Thabo Mbeki’s purpose is to strengthen the SACP’s ability to exercise executive control over Cosatu on behalf of the government. Mbeki has tied up the party to this end. As a result, the SACP has been central to carrying out the programme of neoliberalism in South Africa.
With such communist leaders the working class does not need capitalist enemies.