The party said it would craft a manifesto rooted in socialist principles, with a focus on equitable service delivery and local accountability. (File photo/MG)
As South Africa prepares to focus on the 111th anniversary of the ANC on Sunday, 8 January, there seems to be no escape from talk of factions in the party.
And commentary on the elections for the new national executive committee (NEC) has tended to focus on the fortunes of the so-called “reform” and “radical economic transformation” factions, which should more accurately be termed the “neoliberal” and “kleptocratic” factions.
Of course, this battle within the ANC is important and all right-thinking people will be relieved that the kleptocratic forces suffered a significant defeat at the party’s December elective conference.
But there are three major factions in the ANC, not two. There is also the ANC left, mostly comprising the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
The ANC left was, in a significant development, excluded from the NEC. This would have been almost impossible to imagine even a few years ago. As a result, the recent internal ANC elections mark a decisive defeat for the left and a decisive victory for the neoliberals — a victory from which the black minorities have been excluded as the ANC collapses into the sort of crude racial chauvinism that must have Steve Biko rolling in his grave.
But, importantly, Cosatu has close to 1.8 million members, the SACP has 340 000, and the ANC has only around 600 000. The ANC still has its hands firmly on the levers of state power and so can still offer the patronage that keeps the party together. And membership of a union does not automatically translate into support for its political programme.
But organisations are, by nature, well placed to organise their members and now that the left has run out of road in the ANC it is possible that Cosatu and the SACP could seriously consider trying to build a left alternative outside of the ANC.
There are signs that a shift is underway. Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe was recently booed off stage by Cosatu members and the federation did not support Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent campaign for re-election as president of the ANC. It has indicated that it is considering whether to support the ANC in the 2024 elections.
If Cosatu and the SACP do, as logic dictates, decide to build a left bloc outside of the ANC this could represent an important shift in our politics. This would never have been possible while the SACP was under the stultifying and self-interested leadership of Blade Nzimande. But with a more dynamic leader in Solly Mapaila, there are understood to be real possibilities for renewal.
If Cosatu and the SACP do leave the ANC they might find that life outside the party is less lonely than inside it. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), which was expelled from Cosatu in 2014 for opposing then-president Jacob Zuma’s rabidly corrupt government, has somewhere close to 400 000 members. Abahlali baseMjondolo, the socialist shack dwellers’ movement, which has been in bitter conflict with the ANC for close to 20 years, has 120 000 members.
This means that, added together, the four major left organisations in the country have over 2.5 million members. If they started working together there would be a clear organisational base for the development of a left alternative to the ANC.
But, as the experience of Numsa’s failed political party shows, numbers don’t magically translate into political support. Building political support requires years of day-to-day organisational work. But with sufficient commitment, these four organisations could form the basis for a real renewal of the left.
This project will not be able to get off the ground if the SACP and Cosatu remain in the grip of the ANC. Numsa has made it clear that it sees the ANC as irredeemably captured by the neoliberals and Abahlali baseMjondolo has been clear that it will not even meet, let alone collaborate, with any organisation that refuses to condemn the ongoing assassinations and arrests of its members. The ball, therefore, is now firmly in the court of Cosatu and the SACP.
In the past, they were able to justify their presence in the ANC on the grounds that they had some power in the party and could shape policies to some extent. It was argued that if they were not there, the turn to neoliberalism that began in 1996 would have been even more destructive. Now that the left no longer has any representation in the NEC these arguments hold no water.
If Cosatu and the SACP remain in the ANC as it heads towards the very likely prospect of being unable to win the 2024 election outright, they could well lose significant trust among their members. This fact should concentrate their minds on the need for new thinking as the ANC steadily becomes unelectable.
And when the ANC does go under 50%, which now seems almost certain to happen in 2024, it will need coalition partners to govern. Even modest success by a new left party could give that party real power to shape ANC policy from outside as a coalition partner. Having trade unions, the SACP and social movements as coalition partners would be new terrain. Much more analysis of this would be required but this could be groundbreaking terrain for the left.
Ironically the left is far more likely to be able to shape ANC policy from outside the ANC than from inside the party.
There would be challenges. For example, the politics of the SACP and Numsa is quite different to the radical humanism of Abahlali baseMjondolo and its bottom-up approach to decision-making. Getting these two forms of leftism to work together would not be easy but it can be done. Making it work would go a long way to taking our politics forward.
Crisis is also an opportunity and the time for the left to act is now. As we know from the experience of the failed Numsa experiment, setting up a party on the eve of an election is a recipe for failure. It takes time to build party structures and trust in a new party.
If the SACP and Cosatu wish to renew the left they will need to move fast to finally break with the ANC and begin to make overtures to Numsa and Abahlali baseMjondolo. Time is of the essence.
Dr Imraan Buccus is a senior research associate at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute and a post-doctoral fellow at the Durban University of Technology.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.