Depending on one’s viewpoint, they are the embryo of a “global citizens’ movement” in South Africa, or President Thabo Mbeki’s ultra-left nightmare. They include the “loony” organisations Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils has accused the labour movement of befriending.
They are an extremely loose constellation of left-leaning, community-based social movements that vary enormously in focus, size and influence. Most are minuscule. What unites them is a shared desire to help the poor and downtrodden, and, in varying degrees, a common antagonism to hierarchies and bureaucracies, the profit motive, the unfettered market and corporate power.
They are, at the very least, independent of the government and the ruling African National Congress. Some, like the Treatment Action Campaign, are not necessarily anti-ANC, but have clashed with the government. A hard core see themselves as ideological opponents of the post-1994 South African state, which they regard as anti-poor and subservient to domestic and international business interests.
Most would be opposed to corporate globalisation and emotionally partisan to the countries of the South. Some view themselves as part of what the ANC calls “the Seattle Movement” and have links with grassroots activists in Third World countries like Brazil.
Under the umbrella of the Social Movements Indaba, the latter made their presence felt during the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
The movements focus on townships, squatter camps and rural settlements, generally organising around discrete issues of concern to the poor — HIV/ Aids, evictions, power and water cut-offs, land and jobs/privatisation. This often brings them into conflict with the authorities, particularly local councils.
Loose-knit and fluid, many have overlapping leadership structures, with the same names cropping up in different contexts. The leading lights include Marxist unionists or ex-unionists associated with the “workerist” rather than “nationalist” union factions in the 1980s, and radical anti-apartheid activists disenchanted with the ANC and its partner, the South African Communist Party.
An almost universal feature is a tactical attitude to the law — the movements will use it if it is to their advantage; flout it if they consider it unjust. Forms of defiance range from calls for the repudiation of apartheid debt and peaceful civil disobedience, through to violent protest and the invasion of land.
In this respect, they can be seen as the offspring of the anti-apartheid resistance of the 1980s. The taste for “direct action” further links them with the Seattle anti-globalisation campaigners.
Given the small size of most social movements in South Africa, Mbeki’s attempt to demonise them seems odd. In part, it may flow from resentment at the moral sanctimony of much left opposition, exacerbated by the fact that many of its shrillest ideologues are non-Africans.
The ANC justly complains that the demand for instant economic justice, given the apartheid legacy, is droompolitiek. It has a point when it says some of the activism is opportunistic and self-defeating. Blocking the relocation of chronic bond defaulters, for example, merely fuels “redlining” by banks.
But “vanguardist” pretensions are also a factor: the ANC seems outraged by a competing claim to its poor black constituency. It has reacted in two ways: by calling for “ultra-leftists” to be isolated and defeated; and by suggesting that the new movements should be brought under its “leadership”. Hence the moves to breathe life into its moribund ally, the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco).
One can see the movements in another way — at worst they are a minor nuisance, at best an attempt to give ordinary people a voice and some control over their daily lives.
With the ANC now the political establishment, Sanco an empty shell, and NGOs weakened by the state grip on funding, politics for most South Africans increasingly boils down to making their cross every five years.
Treatment Action Campaign
Launched in December 1998, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has been one of South Africa’s most effective and active civil society groups. Founded by, among others, current chairperson Zackie Achmat and national secretary Mark Heywood, its aims include ensuring access to proper, affordable treatment for Aids sufferers, preventing and eliminating new HIV infections and fostering HIV/ Aids treatment literacy.
The TAC has used a shrewd mix of civil disobedience, marches and court actions to force the hands of the government and international drug companies. Its branches nationwide use volunteers in campaigns.
Members are from diverse political backgrounds — Achmat is a loyal ANC member — and the movement is not aligned to any political party, basing itself on a culture of universal human rights. It has close links with more than 170 local and international organisations, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and MÃ