Mr. Floyd Shivambu's political pedantry: A reply
Ordinarily I would not respond to Mr. Shivambu for a variety of obvious reasons. Chief among these is his propensity to use profanity as a disarming missile against those he differs with. I am not the one to normally engage with such crude and excessively vulgar individuals. The other reason is that Mr. Shavambu is a suspended member of the ANC who believes that the ANC, out of its collective wisdom, erred in suspending him because it was blinded by its desire to silence him and his close political buddies.
But I have decided to depart from the norm because I felt that as a person who was a member of the ANCYL at the same period that Mr. Shivambu was, I could not let his paucity of reasoning to be a weapon used to vulgarize and distort the fundamental philosophical and scientific views of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine to justify his insults to senior comrades of the movement. So I hope Mr. Shivambu will indulge me with his patience to interrogate his political tirade against comrade Jeremy Cronin.
Seeing that he commences his letter to comrade Jeremy Cronin with a number of disclaimers, let me start this response with some of my own. First, I wish to state categorically that I hold the South African Communist Party (Party) in high regard given the role it played and continue to play in the struggle for freedom in South Africa. However, I have as yet never been a member of the Party. I could have joined the Party of my own free will but I decided I should not. I decided against this because I felt that I was not capable of grasping the Party's stance and home-grown methods towards the South African version of Socialism.
As such I was unable to reconcile the methods suggested by the Party towards Socialism in South Africa with my fundamental predisposition and inclinations towards a revolutionary democratic rule. Not that I did not understand the evolving nature of the concept of scientific socialism, I just felt the dominant current in the Party was (is) the old Soviet line of thinking. Time will tell if I still feel the same about the Party today.
Second, I also have never been a member of the Young Communist League of South Africa (YCL). Yes I was part of the re-launching in 2003 at Vaal University of Technology. I had thought the Party's objective in re-launching the YCL was partly to make it a base from which to geminate new and fresh ideas around the South African version of Socialism. Seemingly I was wrong because it became clear during that launch that the SACP wanted a tightly managed YCL that tows its line at all material times. As a revolutionary democrat in outlook, I felt I would politically suffocate if I were to join.
Now that we have dispensed with the disclaimers, let's get to the business of interrogating Mr. Shivambu's verbosity. Let's start with his understanding of the ZANU-PF being the ‘most trusted ally of the ANC'. It should be said here that Mr. Shivambu has a very mechanical understanding of political alliances and allegiances among the African Liberation Movements in that he believes reactionary and dangerous tendencies within these Liberation Movements must be glossed over just for the mere fact of these Movements being ANC allies.
The liquidation of a liberation movement to a group of party securocrats whose main preoccupation is to get rich fast and at all costs is to Mr. Shivambu an attractive model that needs defending whatever the costs. The crushing by violent means of any opposing force in Zimbabwe under the pretence that they are western sponsored stooges is at best poor understanding of the ever changing social phenomena, and at worst the planting of seeds for a protracted civil war that will destabilize the entire region.
When this happens the ANC, the oldest liberation movement in Africa, would have failed in its political and moral responsibilities to engage and criticize (and sometimes be brutally critical of) its ‘trusted ally' with the sole intention of reminding them of their political tasks at a particular historical juncture. That is an honest political relationship of trusted political allies. Not Mr. Shivambu's sweetheart understanding of this relationship.
Let's now deal with the second, and most crucial, of his ideological deficiencies regarding the state and capitalism. For a person who proudly boasts that he was approached by the Party in 2007 to become its Head of Policy and Research due to his ‘ideological consistency'(whatever that means), Mr. Shivambu commits a cardinal sin by carelessly declaring that ‘in all class societies, the state is nothing but an instrument of the ruling class for class oppression'.
This is exactly what Lenin warned against in many of his writings on Scientific Socialism and the new phenomenon of Social Democracy. A zero sum game that treats every state, including revolutionary democratic States, in class societies as a reactionary enemy of the working class that must be fought at all costs along the two regimented streams of capitalists on the one side, and the working class on the other side, is nothing but a purist ‘Left' fantasy.
Mr. Shivambu's understanding of State lends itself to the mistaken conclusion that revolutionary democratic states are nothing but useless bourgeoisie states that serve the sole interests of capitalists at the total expense of the working class and the poor. The South African ANC led State that emerged out of that decisive political breakthrough of 1994 is to Mr. Shivambu an instrument of the ruling class for the oppression of the working class. What absolute nonsense!
Mr Shivambu has no notion whatsoever of the strategic and tactical alliances, based on minimum programmes, that must be formed between the working class and certain progressive elements of the democratic state for the advancement of its struggle, under the political leadership of the vanguard Party, towards Socialism. For instance in a democratic state like ours, the working class has no choice but to form these kind of alliances within and outside the ANC as the leading party in government, in order to win more democratic and economic gains for itself to be able to advance the struggle faster towards Socialism.
These democratic and economic gains achieved by the working class in a democratic state are no less important because they are necessary conditions that will nudge the working class closer to its fundamental objective of realizing socialism via the shortest route possible. These gains will not be delivered on a silver platter to the working class. The working class must fight for them in the crucible of class struggle as an organized class force. Even the capitalists do not just get everything they want. They have to fight for it under the stiff resistance from the working class. That is the nature of class struggle until one class is finally defeated, leading to the fundamental reconstitution of society along the political and ideological objectives of the victors.
A cursory look at the South African state immediately reveals a revolutionary democratic State - with all its weaknesses - that is evolving into a developmental state with a revolutionary government that consciously intervenes in the economy for the benefit of the working class and the poor. Accordingly, how does one justifies labeling this democratic state as led by the ANC purely as an instrument of the ruling class for working class oppression? Only indolent populists and vulgar opportunists will do that.
This is not to suggest that there is class equilibrium and class tranquility between the working class and the capitalists within our current democratic state. If that were the case, then there would be no need for a struggle towards a more just and equitable social order that has the best interests of the working class and the poor at the heart of its programmes. The point to emphasise here is that we have a state and government led by a disciplined force of the left (ANC) pursuing a project of fundamental social transformation largely for the benefit of the working class and the poor, both in word and deed.
In the pursuit of this fundamental social transformation project, the ANC and its left Allies in COSATU and SACP do so under the economic conditions largely not of their own choosing. The dominant world economic system that affects every country, whether by choice or force, is largely capitalist. This means the ANC, in its pursuit of this fundamental social transformation, will from time to time be resisted through a litany of world capitalist economic rules that threaten to destabilize our economy if ignored. So under such circumstances, we have no choice but to be pragmatic and radical at the same time.
As I conclude, I wish to point out to Mr. Shavimbu that the ANC is not pursuing socialism as its political objective. It would be impossible to do so for an organization like the ANC, whose character is multi class and multi strata. Its left credentials are by no means a ticket to pursue socialism as its main political objective.
There are organizations that have socialism as their main objective. It is therefore a lazy political adventurism to want to blame the ANC for a disorganized and populist left approach in exercising influence over a class contested ANC led government. This is a serious class battle, not a sweetheart class pact, with the ANC as its holy guardian.
Therefore for Mr. Shivambu and his ‘left' minded fanatics to stand on the side and shout about a South African state that is an instrument of the ruling class to oppress the working class, is nothing more than just a pure contest of howlers who have very little appreciation of the practical prosecution of class struggle under conditions of freedom.
Mzukisi Makatse is a member of the ANC writing is his personal capacity
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