Although never unequivocally communist, the ideological and strategic outlook of the ANC was over the decades strongly influenced by communist ideas. Both Soviet and Chinese communism provided clear guidelines to the ANC. The great twentieth-century figures of communism, notably Lenin and Mao, have always been bright lights on the path of the ANC.

Several present ANC luminaries are avowed communists, and the South African Communist Party (SACP) is still, together with the trade union movement Cosatu, in a tripartite alliance with the ANC. The SACP still serves as an important ideological brains’ trust for the ANC.

During its armed struggle against the erstwhile white government, the ANC was internationally also actively supported by several communist regimes, specifically the Soviet Union, (Communist) China, East Germany, North Vietnam and Cuba. The charm of stark socialist examples, regardless of the miserable failures they may have been, be it the Soviet Union and East Germany of old or contemporary Venezuela, shows no sign of subsiding.

ANC comrades are still enchanted by the supposed learned Leninist nomenclature and the ideal of the "national democratic revolution" (NDR). The ANC’s goal refrained in its five-yearly strategy and tactics documents, featuring prominently at its national conferences, is still to establish a totalitarian state, in which all levers of power and authority, in the state structure, private sector and civil society are firmly under the discipline of the party-controlled state.

That is why the ANC is still unequivocally committed to cadre deployment, being the mechanism that provides the party with the tentacles to ensure its omnipresent control.

The ANC is still engaged in incessant revolutionary war. That is why it is always keenly aware of power relations - the balance of forces - between itself and any actual or perceived enemies - "contradictions", as it likes to call them - in trite communist and pseudo learned terms.

These are the contradictions of bourgeoisie neoliberalism and neocapitalism. And in its war, the ANC is of course always warily on guard against the dreaded lurking danger posed by the "national question". This question – danger – arises when people experience their cultural communities more precious to them than their supposed "real" identity according to the communist "true consciousness", namely their class identity, which must be the great progressive driving force, with which the global revolution is being pursued.

Now, however, the ANC, after it could muster only 40.2% electoral support in the May 29 election, formed a multi-party government (MPG) with forces on its right, specifically the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the Patriotic Alliance (PA) and the FF Plus (FF Plus). It was explained in Part 1 that the primary reason for this is that these parties, especially the DA, must help the ANC recover the lost tools government the state suffered under the ANC's misrule over the last three decades. (https://www.netwerk24.com/netwerk24/stemme/menings/koos-malan-kan-die-verlies-aan-regeringsvermoe-herstel-word-20240802) The DA can to an impressive extent do this, as evidenced by its proven ability to govern in the Western Cape and the municipalities under its control.

How could the ANC transcend its core ideological character to form a multi-party government with its ideological enemies - its contradictions?

In the ANC's experience, the DA is the very embodiment of pernicious white capitalist forces which the ANC so deeply distrusts, and which it wants to subordinate to its power. For their part, the IFP, the FF Plus and the PA are precisely incarnations of the peril of the detestable national question: Zulu nationalism, Afrikaner nationalism, and a brown "national consciousness".

The mystery of how the ANC could bring itself to the point of cooperating with the DA deepens in view of the fact that the ANC seems to have devised a prepared plan of cooperation with the DA already at the first signs of a bad election result during the first days after 29 May.

What could have happened? Has the ANC after decades of tenacious commitment before and since 1994, now suddenly decided to abandon its very raison d'être and historical mission to establish a total socialist state? Has it now forsaken its much-cherished NDR and transformationism? Did the election result cause the ANC to undergo a Damascus experience, to the extent that it is now fraternising with abominable (white) capitalists of the DA and three current agents of the national question, the IFP, the FF Plus, and the PA?

The answer is unequivocally no. We are still dealing with the same ANC. It is still inextricably bound to its harmful ideological goals - to the party-controlled state, over which the ANC must exercise comprehensive command. Finally, economic and cultural activities must still be state-departmentalised under party control.

The actions of the current affable, apparently pragmatic, and cooperative ANC that formed an MPG in no way signals an ideological reversal. It simply involves a calculated tactical manoeuvre enabling it to recover its balance after the startling recent election result and owing to the serious loss of instruments of government over many years.

The ANC needs to get the state functioning again in order to execute the revolution.

As explained in part 1 and 2after its partial loss of office as well as its and the state's loss of tools of government, as Machiavelli would have prescribed, the ANC has temporarily exchanged the guise of the brutal lion for that of the cunning fox.

However, the ANC does not primarily have Machiavelli in mind, but rather Lenin, because it still gets its strategic guidance, just like its ideological direction, from the manuals of Bolshevism.

Following Lenin, the ANC accepts it may suffer temporary setbacks. These compel it to retreat strategically and in so doing temporarily enter into partnerships with enemies and accept policies that are at variance with its own ideology – temporarily maintaining tactical peaceful coexistence with enemies.

The partnerships enable it to regain its balance, or as it likes to say, to consolidate.

Once that has happened it can advance – attack – again. Accordingly, it continues the strategic enmity against the erstwhile temporary partners with a view of destroying them.

It would therefore terminate temporary policy concessions, whereafter it can unequivocally dedicate itself to the implementation of the NDR – the establishment of a totalitarian, socialist state under full-fledged party control.

However, it may rightly be asked whether the outline above is at all credible. Isn't it perhaps outdated – just an abstract application of an old Leninist model to the ANC? Isn't this just mere fanciful theorising without concrete evidence?

The answer is again an unequivocal no. There is overwhelming evidence that the ANC is indeed acting in accordance with the Leninist framework. Its policy documents, strategy and tactics documents, over the decades spell out that it is precisely acting according to a Leninist model. Numerous analyses, of which Anthea Jeffrey in Countdown to socialism – the national democratic revolution in South Africa since 1994 is probably the best, explain how the ANC in government over the past thirty years is on a fixed course towards its party-controlled totalitarian socialist state. The most recent legislation on ANC initiative such as the NHI, the National Small Enterprise Amendment Act, and the Public Procurement Act provide further evidence of this.

However, what senior spokespersons of the ANC say about its current strategy regarding the multi-party government is the most insightful. Particularly relevant is the exposition of Mmamoloko Nkhensani Kubayi, (minister of human settlements, member of the ANC's national executive committee and of the national working committee). In an article, which without a doubt bears the approval of the leadership of the ANC, A strategic retreat by the ANC to advance its cause in the Sunday Times of 18 August 2024, Minister Kubayi explains precisely the ANC's decision to form the multi-party government together with the DA, IFP, FF Plus, PA and others, with reference to the strategic doctrine off Lenin and Mao.

In trying conditions for the parties – the Bolshevists in the USSR and the Chinese communists – both Lenin and Mao decided to consolidate their parties through strategic retreats, so that they could consolidate and thereafter to pursue their ideological goals with new revolutionary zeal, thus to achieve their historical missions for establishing totalitarian socialism - and to annihilate their enemies.

Kubyai approvingly quotes how Lenin and Mao explained their actions. Lenin and the Soviet communists decided in 1921 to cooperate with their enemy, the capitalists, in the New Economic Policy (NEP) to overcome the severe economic defeat the communists suffered. (Kubayi, of course, fails to say that this "defeat" was the result of the Communists' own economic follies.)

Under the leadership of Mao, the Chinese communists acted similarly. They teamed up with their enemies, the Chinese nationalists, in the war against Japan. Kubayi refers approvingly to Mao's On contradiction in which he explained that in this period the Communists were at the same time engaged in an alliance as well as a struggle with the nationalists. After the successful conclusion of the war against Japan, the Communists continued the full-scale war against the nationalists and finally destroyed them.

This mode of thinking of Lenin and Mao in the USSR and China is directly applicable to the ANC in the current situation. Kubayi explains:

"These examples demonstrate that entering a political coalition with political opponents for a specific purpose is not anathema in carrying out a revolution."

The ANC has no illusions that the DA is ultimately a stumbling block in the way to the implementation of the revolution. Evidently, the ANC is continuing its revolutionary struggle against the DA as its MPG partner. It is confident that it will triumph – just as the communists in the USSR and China triumphed – and in the process that it will also eliminate its enemies.

Far from abandoning its revolutionary mission, the ANC calculatedly retreated to consolidate in order to advance – to continue the revolution and at the same time destroy its current MPG partners as well as others, especially the organised civil society and the private sector.

Against this background, therefore, let us not doubt the ANC's continued revolutionary drive and its strategy to realise it. After all, the ANC makes no secret of it.

Of course, this does not mean that the DA, IFP, PA, and FF Plus should not have joined the MPG. In fact, it was a decision from which there may be much benefit.

However, let us not be naive about who and what the ANC still is and what it intends.

Of course, the ANC's intentions do not mean its success is guaranteed. In fact, its "strategic retreat” clearly shows that the ANC itself is well aware of its weakened position.

But the DA and other mentioned parties in the MPG must treat the ANC for the ideologically and strategically malign force it is and work for its further weakening.

The civil and business community must also do this and, moreover, have an even more significant capacity to work for the further weakening of the ANC – and must take up that responsibility for the sake of themselves and the public in general.

We are by no means in a situation in which, because of the arrival of the MPG, it can be believed that we are now dealing with a truly benevolent and reborn ANC. Rather, the MPG ushered in the period in which skilful work must be done to decisively neutralise the ANC.

Professor Malan is constitutional jurist from Pretoria

This article was published previously in Afrikaans on Netwerk 24.