Chinafication or rampant populism: The post-Polokwane political landscape

Paul Trewhela in his interesting piece on the ANC and the nationalisation of the mines "debate", puts his finger on the truth when he identifies the dominant characteristic of the new look ANC as populist (see article). Unfortunately, he is still busy chasing Stalinist and Maoist ghosts though, and this detracts from his otherwise razor-sharp analysis.

The real issue is, as he identifies, the paucity of analysis of the current post-colonial, post-apartheid and now the post-global economic crisis situation. Trewhela's description of the exclusion of certain groups within the ANC post-Polokwane and the subsequent formation of COPE does not adequately address the full scope or the entire support base of this new organization.

Not even a half-way adequate Marxist analysis is provided by the "Left' in the ANC. Neither is there any sense of direction from even social-democratic forces in the ANC. Even the once powerful national democratic discourse that led the drive for change in South Africa no longer comes from the ANC.

Whatever the latter's radical limitations, this project was able to hold together a real united front against the apartheid regime. The crisis of this project has been its failure to coherently offer direction after the democratic breakthrough of 1994. Trewhela hints at this reality, but does not follow through.

The ghosts of socialist Christmases past; Stalin, Mao and the one he does not mention, Trotsky, unfortunately make Trewhela's contribution guilty of the very thing he charges others with; it is stuck in a past paradigm. Claims that "Stalinists" wrote the Freedom Charter or controlled the Congress of Democrats, or that Mao influenced or did not influence South African political leaders does not give answers to what has happened to the revolution in South African post 1994.

The fact the someone with the same surname as Ben Turok, maybe even a relative, suffered at the hands of Stalin's murderous regime adds nothing to the debate. The reality is that at the time the Freedom Charter was drafted, nationalisation was a policy held in high regard all over the world, in developed and developing countries, in the north, south, east and west. The state had a legitimate role to play in running enterprises in all countries, even the USA, though they would never call it by its name then or even now as banks have been taken over by the central government to mitigate against the effects of the global financial crisis.

The question is: what is the relevance of a policy of nationalisation today and can it advance the interests of the majority of poor, unemployed South Africans? It is quite clear that such a debate is sterile. The issue is not whether to nationalise or not, but what role the public sector can and must play in providing essential goods and services where the market fails.

But before addressing that, some of the useful insights that Trewhela does bring to this debate need consideration.

Firstly, he is right in his assertion that Polokwane was a watershed. It dispatched a whole section of the ANC, closer to 50%, into the political wilderness. Many of these did not join COPE, precisely because COPE was not formed by the Mbeki "faction" of the ANC.

A number of forces were there at the foundation of COPE; some disillusioned ANC members, both from the right and the left, some people who had never been in the ANC or even a political party and even some opportunists. Let's face it, every party has them.

What was significant about the post-Polokwane moment was that people stood up to resist what Trewhela rightly calls the reduction of the ANC to a "no nuthin" party and, importantly, the fact there had been no other party with any unifying, popular, non-racial vision for the future.

Trewhela is right when he states that the ANC is now entirely populist, devoid of any substance. This is partly because of the similar collapse of the SACP and COSATU from being organisations who offered, however limited, some vision to South Africans to being simple appendages of the new populist ANC. This phenomenon is not dissimilar to the Peronist movement in Argentina; populism that has captured the imagination of the working class.

Trewhela's point about the ANC not being a real parliamentary party and the parliamentary system not being truly democratic is crucial. The arrangement post 1994 was fine for one election, but the failure to create a proper constituency based system has robbed the electorate of the country of any real influence, other than to elect a head of state, who as we have seen, can then be removed by his colleagues if they don't like him!

This is why many people, including those in COPE, have been arguing so strongly for electoral reform. Trewhela and others may well not like the outcome of a constituency based system, for there is no guarantee it would produce a better parliament in terms of the general quality of members. But if the constituency system elects fools to serve the nation, they would at least be fools that were democratically chosen as opposed to those selected by other fools in a smoke filled room.

As for the "Chinafication" of the ANC, it is clear there are those who would relish this. There have been moves to centralize power, create a super-cabinet; a self-selected inner cabinet of Zuma's most loyal supporters, his kitchen cabinet. Such moves have been defeated, partly because of the sociology of the new ANC - it is about personal ambition and accumulation, not collective leadership - and partly because the loose conglomeration of forces that produced the Polokwane result, do not trust each other.

There may be some variant of a type of socialist among them, but real socialists are an endangered species in the ANC. They have all been forced to accept the market, global financial and trade rules and practices and a relationship of subservience to capital. The oligarchs of the ANC who mediate between capital and the poor masses are extremely powerful. They fund the ANC, COSATU and the SACP, so we now see a COSATU that is disciplining workers to accept salary negotiation offers they do not want. The SACP, previously inciting the kinds of protests seen recently in municipalities and in supermarkets, now calls such activities counter-revolutionary.

In reality, the post-Polokwane period has seen a new deal between sections of capital, the leadership of organized labour and the political leadership of the ANC and SACP. It is one premised on a fundamental disbelief in the possibility of socialist or even social democratic transformation of our society. The SACP, after Joe Slovo's famous critique of the failures of "really existing socialism" in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, adopted the view that socialism could only come about through the thoroughgoing democratization of our society.

It is clear that it has abandoned this view and now that there is an accord between the leadership of the ANC, SACP and COSATU on the post-Polokwane project. The Communist Party has mortgaged the working class and the poor to this project for the sake of a few cabinet posts.

The new deal from the tri-party alliance is simple; massive expansion of government expenditure on political appointments, the continued injection of funds in to inefficient state-owned enterprises and agencies, bloated local and provincial government who in turn employ private consultants to run these and the continued super-profits of monopoly finance capital, who have weathered the global crisis better than all of us due to the protection given by the remnants of apartheid trade and industrial policies and legislation.

This capital in turn, protects itself by pulling the new oligarchs around it, who pretend they are entrepreneurs but in practice are simply rent-seekers, paid to do nothing but sit on boards, lobby for government tenders and play the occasional round of golf with their old-new masters. One way in which this scenario resembles China is the huge cost of this project for our society.

Rent seekers never produce, they simply appropriate. The working class, the poor, the middle class and professionals in South Africa are being taxed twice, just as the Chinese people are by their government and the CPC. We pay taxes to the government and taxes to the ruling political elite. In both cases it is squandered.

The difference is that in China the scale is so massive, what the political elite takes as tribute is miniscule. In South Africa this looting is blatant, hence the protests in municipalities, strikes by workers in the public and private sector and rumblings among those sections of capital not included in the post-Polokwane deal.

The only way this project can be defeated is to mobilise all South Africans to:

• Understand and defend the constitutional dispensation won by the people of South Africa after a protracted struggle. This includes completing the democratisation of the country, including constituency based elections for parliament.
• Fight corruption, maladministration and wastage of resources in all its forms and ensure decent services are delivered to all.
• Open up the economy so that all people have the opportunity to set up enterprises or look for work.

That this has to be done under a new flag and in a new organization has been clear for a while. The old one has been captured, not by Stalinists, Maoists or any other left wing bogeyman, but by right wing, anti-democratic populists who are there to apply the lubrication for the continued exploitation of the poor, the working class, the men, women and children of our country who have been betrayed by the greed of a political elite that has ceased to serve the people and now only serves itself. In this scenario, public enterprises could never be run efficiently, since what determines their success or failure is the clean, efficient and effective management.

Phillip Dexter, MP, is the Congress of the People's national spokesperson

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