We are again entering another cycle of ritual contest for positions within the ruling party, a process simply misunderstood by the media.
Instead of pointing out how the ruling alliance functions to reproduce itself, the analysts, including university professors, are colonised by the discourses manufactured by the contending factions. We need to move beyond meaningless labels such as “the left” and “nationalists”.
The present public workers’ strike, the escalating “radical” rhetoric of Julius Malema and Co, including the South African Communist Party’s belated call to freeze the salaries of senior public servants and ministers, are the latest tricks in an old tug-of-war the alliance plays year in and year out.
Two central issues escape our analysts. The first is that the struggles within the ruling party are not about different ideologies or policy positions but about who will gain access to state power to benefit which faction. Second, the battles within the alliance provide the best mechanism to give legitimacy to the ANC in the eyes of the voters. This second point, of course, is not always grasped — even by the actors themselves.
What we have in the alliance is a neocolonial elite proper, as seen by Frantz Fanon in his Pitfalls of National Consciousness. Fanon warned that the post-colonial elite that fought against white settler colonialists took power only to occupy the same positions as the defeated colonialists. Nigerian scholar Chinweizu says black leaders in power become “black colonialists”.
It’s hard to think of how the ANC in the past 16 years has been different from other black colonialists on the African continent. In a sense, what’s going on is a battle between black colonialists for the share of colonial plunder, nothing more. They eat well while they build the poor RDP houses — if at all.
The road to Polokwane that led to the ousting of Thabo Mbeki’s faction was just another ritual to power. However, the contending forces, for obvious reasons, manufacture discourses that suggest that what is at stake is something noble and always for the benefit of the oppressed and excluded. In the case of Polokwane the Mbeki faction was accused of driving the “1996 class project”, which apparently turned South Africa into a neoliberal state that benefited the elites and punished the poor through the Gear policy.
The new contenders to power coalesced around Jacob Zuma and formed what others called “a coalition of the wounded” — they claimed to represent the interests of the poor and sold Zuma to the masses as pro-worker and “a man of the people”. He danced and sang and it all looked convincing. To round it off they claimed to be for a “developmental state”. In the eyes of the media the “left” had won.
Once the Polokwane victors ascended to the Union Buildings, the spoils were shared. Blade Nzimande got away with a ministerial position, Fikile Mbalula a deputy minister’s post and Zizi Kodwa became a senior civil servant. Others in the media, such as Jon Qwelane, got nice postings in faraway lands. Overnight Malema become a millionaire.
But there was always a need to expand the accumulation path to maximise benefits for themselves. It must not be forgotten that the Mbeki faction also used the state effectively for self-enrichment and at times was crudely defended for doing so, such as in the Jackie Selebi case.
To get a slice of the mineral-energy complex that benefited the Mbeki faction so handsomely, Malema fired the first salvo for nationalisation of the mines. This strategy had been tried before with huge success — it led to the emergence of the first black mining moguls, through BEE deals facilitated by the old white mining bosses. It’s blackmail writ large — give it to us or we will take it!
Now Malema has returned from kissing the boere to wanting land expropriation without compensation and, of course, the nationalisation of mines is again part of that rhetoric.
Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi comes into the mix through his flexing his muscle as a representative of the oppressed workers.
What appears at first as a super-brawl to the death is actually a mere game. As a Soweto youth said the other day, the intra-alliance battles are like TV’s World Wrestling Smackdown. Of course there are real casualties, but the outcomes are predetermined, by and large, and the sanctity of the alliance remains intact. Only the uninitiated believe that the “Undertaker” really hates “Jonsina” in the make-believe world of wrestling.
What is important about the alliance battles is that they crowd out real questioning of how they collectively run the government. No one takes responsibility — instead we get new rounds of battles and promises. Sixteen years after 1994 the ANC alliance has not ended racism or made a real difference in the lives of the majority. The contenders are now hard-pressed to raise the tempo of their rhetoric. These promises of “radical” change will be forgotten as soon as the winners enter the Union Buildings. The voting masses are rendered powerless and their representatives live large at the expense of the state.
At the next elections the alliance will canvass for votes as one united front. Predictably, nothing of significance happens to alter the socioeconomic condition of the people and then they turn themselves into an internal opposition. A disaffected worker, led by Cosatu, will, in the next election, again be asked to vote for the ANC alliance. The threats are meant to convince the voting public that, in fact, in Vavi and Malema we have the real representatives of the people. All that is required is to give them another chance.
What is often not understood is that without these internal battles, the ANC alliance would simply die, exposed for what it really is. It is these internal battles and manufactured discourses that keep it going. As long as these battles are contained as family feuds, the hegemony of the ANC is guaranteed and real alternatives are crowded out. This is so because the epicentre of politics of governance, corruption and opposition reside within the same entity.
At the end of the day there is no left or nationalism in the ANC alliance; there are only losers and winners. The winners go on to run the ANC’s project of neocolonialism. No land will be redistributed and, if nationalisation (or whatever version of it) happens, it will be about benefiting the politically connected.
It’s about time we moved beyond alliance rhetoric and see it for what it is. I doubt if analysts will have the intellectual creativity and rigour to pierce the veil of meaningless labels.