In SACP and Cosatu parlance we are now on the verge of dislodging the 1996 class project represented by Thabo Mbeki.
Or are we?
This is an opportune time for the left to confront some hard questions — and they should start with interrogating the allegedly progressive, democratic and transformative policy credentials of a Jacob Zuma-led ANC.
Without a doubt the succession battle has created conditions for a more democratic ANC. But how deep is this process, how long will it last and just how progressive is it? Is political space being sought only for a new elite of alliance leaders, or for people at the grassroots?
Stephen Friedman has observed that it is normal for changes in the Presidency to be limited to the next level of the political elite. As the SACP and Cosatu, we must demonstrate how our anti-Mbeki, pro-Zuma project will prove to be different. Have democratic and pluralistic practice flowered or suffered in the SACP and Cosatu during the pro-Zuma mobilisation?
The fact is, despite its ”democratic” colouring, the anti-Mbeki challenge has not been consistently driven by a progressive politics.
The left needs to reinvigorate the traditions and practices of popular democracy and mobilisation that can truncate anti-democratic capitalist relations. We need pluralities of democratic power: if the Presidency or Parliament fail, our hopes and aspirations must not collapse alongside them.
Going beyond personality-driven drama, holding political office needs to be thought of as a revolutionary task in a wider, transformative process of social and economic change that champions popular interests.
Yet to a large degree the anti-Mbeki challenge has been about what Jeremy Cronin critiqued last year as a ”counter-politics of demagogically glued-together grievances, and of … messiahs”.
The politics of grievance inevitably spirals up to plots, counter-ÂÂconspiracies, hype and sensation, all driven by the need to deliver the next blow against the other side. The end result of such a detour is systematic political demobilisation, loss of democratic values and undermining democratic impulses in broader society. Politics becomes a kind of theatre in which the people are disempowered spectators with the periodic illusion of choices: which show to watch, when to applaud, failing which they can grumble in protest or fall asleep.
This story line foretells the death of progressive democratic politics.
Progressive politics demands that the SACP and Cosatu should be held politically, organisationally and ideologically accountable by the constituency we claim to represent. In this way, we can test the popular applicability of our strategic and tactical choices, including whether we have a radical programme to confront a socially and ecologically disastrous economic system. Only in this sense — and not through insider trading — can we really shift policies.
This brings us to the hard and patient task of rebuilding a political and organisational base to contest power relations on the basis of what we are for, not merely what we are against. Could the neoliberal project not have been more sustainably challenged on this principled basis? Why on a questionable Zuma horse?
What difference will a Zuma presidency make? How can Zuma overcome the structural constraints imposed by the liberal democratic framework on the sweeping economic and social transformation that South Africa requires? That is, of course, assuming he wants to embark on such a course — an assertion for which there is no evidence. In his current seduction of business Zuma is clearly affirming the continuity of the 1996 class project. It is therefore doubtful whether a Zuma-led ANC can rupture the axis between the state and capital.
The succession race has been marked by claims of an ANC shift to the left since the June policy ÂÂconference. But what evidence is there for this assertion where it counts the most — in the daily lives of the majority? How will the resolutions address structural unemployment, water cut-offs, the housing crisis, the failing public health system, the crisis of public education, and the completely absent public transport system? How different will the state be from the current neoliberal model?
The draft resolutions seem consistent with a capitalist developmental state. In the interests of its own preservation, such a state recognises increasing socioeconomic inequality and political dissatisfaction among the poor. So we have seen greater infrastructural spending, slight increases in social grants, incremental increases in public-sector salaries and some rhetorical critique of the ”free market” by Mbeki himself. Yet in the absence of evidence of a substantive shift, the alliance left has to demonstrate what policy differences will emerge under a Zuma-led ANC.
South Africa also requires leadership to challenge the anti-democratic impulses in our socially conservative society — to mobilise against sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, racism and ethnicity. We have to face up to the reality that a Zuma-led ANC holds the prospect of reinforcing much of this backwardness.
Our current strategy strongly suggests a serious drive to rebuild a radical, democratic and left-oriented ANC. This is advanced as the only possible strategy. But ironically, it was not just the 1996 class project that isolated socialist struggles. Our own strategy must share a portion of the blame.
Whatever happens in Polokwane, our strategy opens us to the risk of co-option (deliberate or not) into what may be a better ANC, but one that merely aspires to reform, not revolution.
Mazibuko Jara, a member of the SACP Cape Town district committee and co-managing editor of Amandla Publishers, writes in his personal capacity