Before South Africa went to the polls in 1994 (to vote the African National Congress into government), most members of the Tripartite Alliance, formed in 1986, believed that an ANC's economic policy would be based on those of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe or Cuba. (Thabo Mbeki and The Battle for the Soul of South Africa, by William Gumede).
However, President Nelson Mandela and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki stamped on this idea and accepted instead the centrist economic policies that would serve the ANC up to the present day (20 years), as these same policies had served all earlier governments (including the apartheid one for its 56 years).
The debate on the economy rages on (or rambles on), and may even dominate next year's elections: should the economy be shaped by the Right or the Left - or just locate itself naturally in the centre? All sides are vocal, but - on economics - usually incoherent.
The Alliance consists of the ANC, the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SA Communist Party. The ANC was dealt a shattering blow in 1960 when the apartheid government banned all black organisations, causing some thousands of ANC supporters (and others) to spend the next 30 years in exile .They returned to SA only in 1990 when Nelson Mandela walked free from Pollsmoor prison.
Maybe they believed in an economic transformation, but that's not what they got. The Alliance, now under Jacob Zuma, may be weakened by infighting, but - and this is a prediction - if Zuma is returned to the presidency in the 2014 national elections, the signs are that he will continue with centrism.
He may well adorn it of course with so many amendments, addendums and caveats, that it could end up looking like an over-decorated Xmas tree, with no one able to say whether it is of the Right, Left or Centre. On this moderately upbeat note, SA could proceed into the future.
Gumede explains the situation as it prevailed in the early 1990s. "Never before had a government-in-waiting been so seduced by the international community. Both the World Bank and the IMF sought to influence the ANC's economic policy". Gumede heads this chapter, "Was the ANC trumped on the economy?"
In his latest book, External Mission: The ANC in Exile 1960-1990, Stephen Ellis explains the lack of coordination that apparently afflicted the ANC in exile. It was "struggling to stay in touch with African realities and to understand the changes taking place in SA society...There was almost no effective communication between the ANC internationally...Activity in SA was close to zero." The ANC had few networks there.
Also, ANC cadres were "frustrated and bored." The ANC had elevated armed struggle to a central principle of its existence, "relying heavily for its legitimacy on an armed struggle that was failing to materialise." Generally, the ANC in exile in 1960-1990 was weakly centralised and "contested by people who had carved out for themselves fiefs in the various countries in which the ANC had a substantial presence."
Two influences could have been at work here. Bored cadres could let their thoughts stray beyond allowable ANC parameters; while those who had visited Russia or East Germany could weigh up the merits/demerits of Sovietism. It was not surprising that many of them journeyed back to SA inspired by ideas of what a sovietised economy should look like.
Included in the 1960-90 exiles who returned to SA were also exiles from the 1976 pupils' uprising in Soweto township. Gumede says leaders of this uprising had joined the ANC in exile, "while hundreds of radical young cadres joined MK" (Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing), influenced by the writings of Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon, through Steve Biko's Back Consciousness Movement.
In Comrades Against Apartheid, Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba estimated that "as many as 4,000 men and women had left South Africa by early 1977." The Soweto crop, and many other exiles, eager to return with Kalashnikovs to seize power in SA, added to the confused chemistry of exile life.
Meanwhile, in Robben Island prison (says Gumede) the radicals questioned the "truths" of the ANC, challenged its elder statesmen, and watched the emergence of "a new generation of religious black leaders" and of "revolutionary expectations." Yet, "Washington still saw South Africa as an important ally and bulwark against communism." The paramountcy of economics?
Mbeki was the forerunner of some unexpected thinking. Ellis writes: "True to his Marxist training, Mbeki believed that SA was undergoing a bourgeois revolution, and he did everything to encourage the growth of a black bourgeoisie in conformity with his understanding of this historical phase...Almost immediately, liberalisation was actualised as a drive for conspicuous consumption...it created veritable cults of consumption...frenetic Saturday night parties where dancing culminates with the burning of expensive brand-name clothing and shoes...The ANC youth leader Julius Malema became the political epitome of this radical-chic style."
It was Mbeki who signed up to SA's massive arms deal which in turn led to the country's saturation in corruption. The effect was two-fold: the creation of an embittered majority of the excluded; simultaneously, many among the excluded aspired to join the bourgeoisie. The same situation prevails today, more acutely.
Gumede: "One of the first indications of dramatic change in the ANC's economic policy was the release in 1996 of The State and Social Transformation, a discussion document inspired by Mbeki. It sought to explain that a cooperative relationship between business and the government was the most important precondition for success in the ANC's struggle for democracy and economic equality." This debate on private capital as a partner for development and social progress continues today, as fiercely as ever.
Whereas Africans were caught in the population swirl of 1960-90, whites were caught in the swirl that started in the mid-1990s. Between 1995 and 2005, some 850,000 whites emigrated from SA (Packing for Perth); the rest, if they stayed, placed their faith in the Democratic Alliance, or revealed surprising self-reliance in building new businesses and lives for themselves - while they awaited the future.
In 1994 whites held 44 percent of all posts in SA's civil service, but by the beginning of 1999 they were down to 18 percent. As Dr. Jan du Plessis writes in his monthly bulletin Intersearch, the result of this and other factors was the "decline and decay of governing capabilities." Dismissed whites left behind "increasingly dysfunctional structures...a kind of governing paralysis." From which, one might add, SA has never recovered.
High hopes are being placed in Helen Zille's DA, which has made small breaches into the black barrier that ring-fences the ANC, and now in next year's elections wants to make a big breach. The problem, as an analyst has observed, is that "many Africans seem to regard the ANC almost as a family, to which one retains a residual loyalty even when it is dysfunctional. Even voters utterly frustrated by the ANC's performance in office seem reluctant to vote for any other party".
In view of the Alliance's status at an upper level of the homecoming ANC, why did Cosatu and SACP not abide by centrism? Tuck its replacement away for a more opportune time? The SACP, master of the two-stage procedure in economics ("socialism is the next phase"), would have set the pace.
Cosatu, with its 21 affiliated unions and their 1.8 million membership, has been a powerful force in the Alliance, but it is seriously split now between those who support Zuma and Cosatu's president, S'dumo Dlamini, and those who support the anti-Zuma general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi. There is vague talk of Vavi breaking away and forming his own "party"; but this is easier said than done.
The resources of the Zuma cabal should not be under-estimated. They have had long years to select and position their placemen. At the top, most know that if they contribute to Zuma's downfall they contribute to their own downfall. And of course out there in populous KwaZulu-Natal...
The Alliance supported the ousting of Thabo Mbeki in 2007 and his replacement by Jacob Zuma; and then spent the next few years undermining Zuma. This is where Vavi positions himself today - as Zuma's nemesis. It might be noted here that the ANC's "top six," under Zuma, are split down the middle, and that the ANC's next layer of power, the 80-member National Executive Committee, is also split, although in a more jagged way. In recent months, Zuma has hovered over a frail Nelson Mandela, seeking urgently to relate to that iconic spirit.
Just when it seemed safe to venture into the political waters again, up came Julius Malema with his EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters), although how many fighters he will have when the 2014 elections begin is still to be seen. Meanwhile, he is militarising the EFF: he is not its President, but Commander in Chief, and his support staff includes 18 "commissars." What pretentious nonsense. The EFF's aims are familiar: land expropriation without compensation, nationalisation of mines, banks, etc.
It seems that the paper setting out the aims of the EFF was written by a reasonably literate member of the SACP. Malema neither thinks this way nor can write this way. Nor did he experience sovietisation.
Zuma seems to have the ammo he needs to keep the centrist train on track, but comrades are engaging with other comrades in the ever-ascending infighting for political power. Some of the comrades are rich, others have morphed into Mbeki's desired middle class; the rest continue to engage with the old enemy, poverty. What a spectacle SA politics could become next year.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
