One of the most important factors in determining the course of the ANC - and thus of South Africa – since 1994 has been the shifting relationship between the SACP and the ANC within the Tripartite Alliance.
The relationship may now be in trouble. In an interview last week with SMWX – the podcast of Dr Sizwe Mfolo-Walsh - Solly Mapaila, the Secretary–General of the SAPC, more or less declared war on the ANC. Speaking of the ANC’s decision to establish a Government of National Unity that included the Democratic Alliance, he said it was “a gross error, a serious mistake”.
“Our leader, our political elite, committed this criminality of joining forces with the DA. This was a political choice. I think they will be judged harshly by history – and I call on history to judge them badly for the betrayal of our people. This is a betrayal. It cannot be entertained in any political decoration. It cannot be placed in any other form. It’s a sell-out of the people’s aspirations.”
Two days later, Fikile Mbalula, the ANC Secretary-General, responded. He said at a press conference that Mapaila’s statements were “unfortunate”. “GNUs and coalitions, by their very nature are constituted worldwide by parties that are not ideologically aligned.” Instead of “name-mongering and putting labels on issues”, the SACP should have engaged politically with the ANC. Before accusing the ANC of being a sell-out, Mapaila should have considered the context – including the Statement of Intent and what the ANC sought to do in the GNU. Defining ANC president, Cyril Ramaphosa, as the leader of a “faction of neo-liberal people” was “an insult to an ally.”
Significantly, Mbalula added at a subsequent press conference that “We are not locking ourselves into a GNU permanently – that GNU will change over time.”
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The relationship between the SACP and the ANC is as significant as it is long.
In 1928 Comintern – the international branch of Soviet Communism - instructed the Communist Party of SA “to transform the ANC into a fighting nationalist organisation” and to develop “systematically the leadership of the workers and the Communist Party in the organisation.”
The SACP faithfully carried out this instruction. It played a decisive role in all the ANC’s major ideological initiatives including the 1955 Freedom Charter; the 1961 decision to embark on the armed struggle; the 1962 concept of “colonialism of a special type”; and the 1969 adoption of the National Democratic Revolution ideology.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s virtually all the members of the ANC’s National Executive Committee were also members of the SACP and the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, was under the effective control of the Party.
However, in 1996 the SACP’s influence suffered a huge blow when the ANC decided to abandon the socialist Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and to replace it with the much more orthodox – and free-market orientated - Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy (GEAR).
GEAR was remarkably successful and achieved economic growth of 5,4% between 2005 – 2007. South Africa’s debt to GDP ratio declined from 48,9% in 1996 to 26% in 2008 - freeing up billions of rands for social programmes. Most importantly, GEAR helped to cut unemployment from 30,2% between 1996 – 1998 to 22,4% in 2008.
All this was, however, anathema to the SACP and COSATU who, for 11 years, were excluded from the policy loop in a process that they called the “1996 Class Project”.
In 2006, at COSATU’s 9th Congress, the SACP and COSATU decided to a launch a battle for the ‘heart and soul’ of the ANC. They resolved, among other things, that
• “the working class must re-direct the NDR towards socialism and jealously guard it against opportunistic tendencies that are attempting to wrest it from achieving its logical conclusion, which is socialism; and that
• we adopt an official position that rejects the separation of the NDR from socialism and asserts that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the only guarantee that there will be a transition from NDR to socialism.”
At the ANC’s National Conference at Polokwane the following year, what was called the “coalition of the wounded” - including the SACP, COSATU and Jacob Zuma - achieved victory by seizing control of the ANC – and ousting the GEAR policies of President Thabo Mbeki and Trevor Manuel.
It was the most significant – and catastrophic – development since 1994.
The SACP quickly moved into top ANC leadership positions. By 2013 members of its Central Committee held key posts in the ANC and the Presidency – and important ministries and deputy ministries dealing with economic policy and property rights, including Trade and Industry, Agriculture, Public Works, Mineral Resources, and Economic Affairs.
By 2013 the SACP had also succeeded in steering the NDR to a position where “elements of socialism could be introduced even before the final success of the NDR”. It also boasted that its perspective of the NDR was “shared by our entire alliance. The perspective is now at the centre of the programme of our government.”
Among its most notable successes were the evisceration of the National Development Plan and the launching of the “radical implementation of the second phase of the NDR”. They also included the cancellation of bilateral investment treaties with European countries and the introduction of legislation aimed at diluting property rights - such as the Promotion and Protection of Investments Bill; the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Bill; the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act; and the Private Security Amendment Bill.
These were victories that the SACP preferred to conceal. In his address to the 13th Congress of the SACP in 2012, Gwede Mantashe warned of the importance of not “claiming to have shaped the course of things”... “as opposed to being a mature Marxist/Leninist Party that can play a vanguard role without labelling it as such”.
However, before the SACP could complete its own programme of state capture, the state – to its chagrin – was captured by President Zuma and the Guptas. Before long, the SACP became one of the main centres of opposition to President Zuma within the Alliance.
In a speech to the ANC’s National General Council on 9 October 2015 President Zuma spelled out the respective roles of the Alliance partners.
“The ANC, the leader of the Alliance, is a multiclass national liberation movement advancing the NDR, the primary objective of which is the establishment of the National Democratic Society, which is united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous (which would include a private sector and the principle that everything would be distributed on the basis of racial demographics). ”
The SACP on the other hand was “the vanguard party of the working class with the objective of advancing a socialist revolution to create socialism with the dictatorship of the proletariat… “ He added in IsiZulu that “They are now shy to say this in public - but that’s fine”.
According to President Zuma, the objectives of the SACP and the ANC were nevertheless “facing in the same direction”. ”That’s why we are walking this path together as partners on the same route…”. However, the ANC would leave the NDR railway track at the National Democratic Society station while the SACP proceeded down the line to a communist state.
The key point in the railway analogy is that the ANC controls the engine. As Solly Mapaila must know, the SACP have always been passengers and depend entirely on the ANC for the considerable power and influence that they continue to enjoy – without having ever won a single vote under their own name.
In 2005, following the curtailment of the Party’s influence by the “1996 Class Project”, the SACP appointed a commission to consider whether the Party should attempt to win state power (“the central question of any revolution, including the South African NDR…”) by contesting national elections as a separate political party. The commission reported, with disarming frankness, that, “internationally, capitalist dominated societies are an extremely unfavourable electoral terrain for Communist Parties. There is not a single example of a Communist Party, on its own, winning national elections within a capitalist society – let alone using such a breakthrough as the platform to advance a socialist transformation.”
The SACP reached the conclusion that “although elections are important, there is not a pre-determined singular route for the working class to hegemonise state power.’
The SACP realised that electoral politics might not be an essential path to state power because, without having to win a single vote, it was already being given up to 30% of the ANC’s parliamentary seats.
The other route to ‘hegemonising’ state power was through ‘entryism’. The Political Report of the SACP’s 12th Congress in June 2007 quoted with approval the 1928 Comintern instruction to infiltrate the ANC and drew specific attention to the need for an entryist approach: “we repeat: ‘developing systematically the leadership of the workers and the Communist Party in this organization.’”
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The current tension between the SACP and the ANC is of crucial importance to the future – not only of the GNU – but of South Africa. At the recent ANC Lekgotla President Ramaphosa repeated his commitment to the achievement of the National Democratic Society – but he also stressed that “our apex priority for the 7th administration is relentlessly to pursue inclusive economic growth and job creation.”
The ANC will not be able to reach this goal if the SACP continues to influence national policies in the manner that it did following the Polokwane conference. If the ANC wishes to achieve success for itself and for South Africa, it will have to revert to the kind of policies that were implemented by President Mbeki and Trevor Manuel before 2007 – when the SACP was in the political wilderness.
Trump or Harris for Africa?
With the United States (US) presidential election now two months away, the mainstream media, both in America and South Africa, have already picked their preferred candidate for next US President. They support Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party, a “woman of colour” of course.
On Business Day recently, fellow South African columnist Claire Bisseker, argued that the Trump presidency will be bad for the world since Trump wants to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. Her argument was weak.
Joe Biden has carried on with tariffs on Chinese goods. In fact he has carried on with most of Trump US China policy. Last week, Biden was expected to announce “significant tariffs on some Chinese imports”, NPR reported. “The taxes are a continuation of Donald Trump's tough-on-China trade policies. Both men have touted these kinds of tariffs as a way to protect American jobs.”, NPR reported. This week, Voice of America reported that the Biden administration has delayed the announcement of these tariffs on China. So, tariffs on Chinese goods are not just a Trump policy, Biden and Kamala Harris also favour tariffs on Chinese goods.
Let’s wish the mainstream media luck. They will need it. It seems they never learned anything from the 2016 Clinton-Trump presidential campaign.
The US’s Africa policy has always been bipartisan in recent decades. There are virtually no disagreements on Africa policy in Washington DC. Unlike policies on Europe, the Middle East, Korea, Cuba, where there are often contentious debates. I doubt there’ll be any significant change on US Africa policy.
