In Edwin Muir’s mythical poem The Combat, a ”crested animal in its pride” eternally savages ”a soft round beast as soft as clay” — but cannot finish it off.
Muir’s ”killing beast that cannot kill” is an apt metaphor for elements in the African National Congress who would like to oust or silence left-wing critics in the ruling alliance.
They include President Thabo Mbeki, who at the opening of last week’s ANC policy conference lashed ”ultra-left factions” that made common cause with the right by waging a struggle against the national liberation movement from within. ”I am convinced we must pay particular attention to the principle: better fewer, but better,” Mbeki said.
The ”shut up or ship out” message is paradoxically coupled with accusations that there are moves afoot to hive off and form a left opposition party. This is not new. During the furore over the ANC’s ”briefing document” on the ultra-left threat — released a year ago — it was suggested that Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) leaders were following in the footsteps of Morgan Tsvangirai, the former unionist who heads Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change.
In other words, the ”ultra-left” is simultaneously accused of infiltrating and splitting, of being the enemy within and the enemy that wants out.
Communists appear to have broached, in a highly tentative way, the feasibility of a left party and the issue of how to ensure the left has an independent voice. One suggestion is that the South African Communist Party field its own municipal candidates, who would then forge alliances with ANC councillors.
But this is only slated for formal discussion in 2004. The fact is that there is little prospect of the alliance splintering, at least before the next general election, and no evidence of a serious move by the left to go it alone.
ANC leaders seem aware of this, however outraged they may be by Cosatu’s anti-privatisation strike. Mbeki’s ideal of ”fewer but better” was significantly counter-pointed, at the close of the policy conference, by Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s call for unity.
Dismantling the alliance would mean ending the system of dual membership, which was mooted by the ANC right last year but never flew. It would require the unscrambling of the alliance at local level, where SACP and Cosatu activists are frequently the driving force in ANC branches.
There is no sign that the acrimony in the alliance on the national plane has filtered to the ground. The purpose of last year’s ”briefing document” was to ”isolate and defeat” dissident union leaders by appealing over their heads to the rank and file. When it was taken to the ANC’s regional general councils, the response was loud and clear — we want the alliance; it works for us; settle your differences.
Among Cosatu’s leading lights, the dominant view is that ”we must fight for our ANC”, as one put it. Left and right have always done battle for the soul of the movement, the argument goes, while Cosatu’s influence is essential in countering the powerful pressures exerted by business now that the ANC holds power.
Interestingly, unionists interviewed this week appeared more relaxed about Mbeki’s onslaught than previous rounds of mud- slinging. In part, this has to do with the diminishing impact of the ultra-left charges, which have now been on the table for a year.
But it also reflects their belief that they are, slowly but surely, having an impact on the ANC’s economic stance.
As evidence of this, they point to the policy conference, where almost every socio-economic resolution shows marks of compromise aimed at mitigating poverty and joblessness.
The ANC may have reaffirmed its policy on ”restructuring state-owned assets”. But it emphasises the role of privatisation in ”enhancing the developmental nature of our state” and gives priority to job creation and retention.
Mere weeks ago, the government seemed to be withdrawing from the National Framework Agreement, which guarantees labour a say on all restructuring plans. The resolutions restate its importance, and call for its extension to all spheres of government.
Government may have rejected the idea of a universal income grant. But the resolutions envisage large concessions on social welfare, including the raising of the age limit for child grants and the expansion of school feeding programmes.
It calls for ”urgent and sustainable measures” to shield the poor from food inflation, and for short- and long-term measures on jobs, including ”a major extension” of public works. Inflation targeting is reaffirmed — provided ”targets are consistent with our overall economic objectives”.
”If they really do all this, there would be no fights in the alliance,” remarked one union official.
So why is Mbeki attacking Cosatu? Why the gathering urgency this year about jobs and poverty, also reflected in the deliberations of the recent Cabinet lekgotla? It seems a far cry from Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s soothing assurances to the ANC national executive a year ago of ”stability in overall employment levels”, with a declining trend in the old formal sector and the new formal sector — including the service industry — showing increased employment.
The answer, labour commentators believe, lies in the looming national conference of the ANC, and the very real possibility that mounting popular discontent over jobs and prices may force a leftward lurch in the election of national leaders — and particularly the 60-member national executive committee.
Cosatu’s anti-privatisation strike was about much more than the narrow question of whether to flog the family silver — it was broadly about poverty, and the state’s role in relieving it. The current ANC leadership feels exposed on this front, and is known to be uncertain and anxious about the conference outcome.
Their tactical response appears to be twofold: to re-appropriate the left-wing project, and to brand union and communist critics objective enemies of the revolution. Centrally, Mbeki’s speech involves the claim that the ANC is the left, and that Cosatu’s wrath should be directed at the ”neo-liberals” of the Democratic Alliance.
His analysis is not convincing. His rearrangement of the ideological spectrum leaves out of account the DA’s hearty endorsement of government macro-economic policies, including privatisation.
The ultra-left charge is hurled at a transparently reformist labour movement whose leaders talk vaguely about socialism, but which is not calling for a worker state or the nationalisation of private industry.
But truth is not the issue. Mbeki and his supporters are doing what politicians do everywhere — they are fighting their corner. It is power, not the future of the alliance or the integrity of the national democratic revolution, that is really at stake.