There were some members of the African National Congress who feared a working-class political takeover of the country, according to the party’s chief strategist Joel Netshitenzhe.
Netshitenzhe was speaking at the Joe Slovo Memorial Seminar, organised by the South African Communist Party in Johannesburg.
He said fears of a takeover underpinned recent problems in the ANC’s alliance with unions and communists.
Several ANC leaders, including President Thabo Mbeki, last year attacked the ”ultra-left”, including leaders of the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, for undermining the ANC-led government.
Netshitenzhe said ANC members believed there was an attempt to force the party into becoming ”socialist” and to prevail on the government to adopt socialist policies. Socialism was not the historical mandate of the ANC.
Netshitenzhe, a professed Marxist-Leninist, said socialist principles could only be adopted in South Africa once it had reached a suitable stage in the revolutionary process. This was a reference to the ”two-stage theory”, which holds that the ANC can only bring about socialism after apartheid imbalances have been corrected.
The debate took an even more candid turn when the ANC’s former deputy secretary-general Thenjiwe Mtintso, a communist, asked Netshitenzhe: ”Where does that fear [of a worker takeover] come from? The ANC is not here to pursue capitalism.”
Mtintso maintained the ANC has always had a ”working-class bias”. She said it was time that ”programmes of socialism were revisited” by the ANC.
SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin then took on Netshitenzhe, asking him to clarify ”the historical vision and mandate of the ANC”. Referring to several ideological positions taken by the ANC since its formation in 1912, he asked which was the accepted one.
Responding to Netshitenzhe’s complaint that there were moves to force the ANC into socialist policies, South African Communist Party leader Blade Nzimande said it was the SACP’s task to pursue a socialist agenda. If that was wrong, the SACP and the ANC should amalgamate.
”Should we lose our identity and tail behind the ANC because the global and domestic conditions are not there [for the establishment of a socialist state]?” Nzimande asked.
He dismissed the two-stage theory as ”too mechanical”.
The debate also centred on the inclusion of the black bourgeoisie as one of the ”motive forces for transformation” in the ANC’s strategy and tactics documents. Cronin argued that the bourgeoisie was ”a small part” of the motive force.
In his input Thulas Nxesi, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union general secretary, expressed concern that the culture of debate had weakened within the alliance.
He said that ”issues such as Gear, tactical alliances with Inkatha and the NNP were never fully debated within the movement.
”It is ironic that this open debate in the movement — as exemplified by Comrade Slovo — was perhaps more in evidence during the repressive conditions of the apartheid regime.”