South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande says the alliance of the official opposition Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party represents the most backward elements created by apartheid.
In an open letter to IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Nzimande said the alliance — known as the Coalition for Change — ”gives us a deeper insight into the extent to which sections of those who benefited from apartheid and its bantustan system are contradictorily located in the new democratic dispensation”.
Buthelezi is a former leader of the non-independent homeland of KwaZulu in Natal — which is now part of KwaZulu-Natal, where his party is predominant.
”These two parties represent not only the interests of beneficiaries of apartheid but are reluctantly part of the new order,” Nzimande said.
”They seek to retain as much of the elements of the old order, without being seen to be rejecting our new democracy. In essence the alliance is an attempt to create enclaves of old apartheid-class alliances, power and privileges within a new democratic dispensation.
”In essence the alliance between the DA and the IFP is an alliance between the elite of the IFP and DA, which increasingly represents the most backward [racist and class] elements fostered and created by the apartheid order.”
Using Marxist tools of analysis, Nzimande said: ”It is an alliance that has less to do with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the black majority, but more to do with a marriage between an IFP elite and sections of a white petty bourgeoisie [in the DA] that is scared of losing its class privileges accumulated under apartheid.
”It would however be wrong to simply project this coincidence of class interests as seeking to return to an old apartheid order. These parties know it is not possible now and in the foreseeable future to turn the clock back, and therefore they are seeking to create spaces for maintenance of apartheid-type power relations and privileges within a new democratic dispensation.”
He noted that during the SACP’s ”Red October” campaign, the party had marched on a ”racist” white farmer in Bergville.
”Our grievance was that this white farmer prevented an elderly black woman to be fetched by the local ambulance, or by his son [who had a car] to be taken to hospital for cancer treatment.
”He prevented all cars entering his farm, and instead insisted that a wheelbarrow take her to the gate of the farm [a few kilometres from her mud house owned by the white farmer], from where she could be picked up by either the local ambulance or his son’s car.
”During our march the IFP-controlled local municipality refused to give the SACP marchers permission to march through the centre of the town to the white farmer’s house, as this would have conscientised and possibly led to the farm workers and the mass of the people of Bergville joining the march.”
This collusion between the IFP-controlled municipality and the DA-aligned white farmers was a classic illustration and eye opener to the real class basis of the DA/IFP Alliance.
The reality in Bergville and in most white-owned agricultural areas is that the majority of the still oppressed and super-exploited black farm workers belong not only to the ANC but to the IFP as well, Nzimande said. — I-Net Bridge
Special Report: Elections 2004