Before Polokwane

It is impossible for any serious post-1994 political analysis of South Africa to ignore the 1994 democratic breakthrough.

The South African working class in general, and the black and African working class in particular, must answer the question: how far did the 1994 democratic breakthrough go in advancing workers’ rights and the advance to socialism in South Africa?

A complete answer cannot be given without answering a related question: how well prepared were the South African working class in general, and the black and African working class in particular, to exploit the potential class content of the 1994 democratic breakthrough? 

Clearly the democratic breakthrough in 1994 was secured on the back of the black and African working class, which was not, on its own, organised and ready to advance immediately to socialism.

Rather, recognising the working class content in the national, racial and gender struggles, the black and African working class combined with other anti-apartheid and democratic forces led by the ANC to defeat the apartheid regime. 

The 1994 democratic breakthrough thus secured for all the peoples of South Africa and those who pass through it a most liberal democratic dispensation. 

Naturally, 1994, while marking the end of the apartheid regime and signalling the beginning of the death of the National Party, also marked the unmasking of class struggles in South Africa, as white racist capitalist South Africa mutated into “liberal democracy” and codified its protection of private property in one of the world’s most celebrated liberal constitutions. 

Were the masses defeated by the white capitalist establishment through the new liberal constitution? In many ways, they were. 

In 1994 South Africa became a country in which private property was sacred and this was solidly enshrined in the new constitution, making it virtually impossible to address in a revolutionary fashion the historic economic and social injustices English and Afrikaner capitalism had meted out to the black and African peoples in general, and the working class in particular. 

Any class analysis of the period from 1994 to the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007 reveals how the liberation movement led by the ANC, now in government, was mainly concerned with proving that it could manage a “modern capitalist economy”. 

Under the cover of the era of neo-liberalism, we saw the heavy blows dealt to open work in the liberation movement towards a Socialist Republic of South Africa by both the white and emerging black and African capitalist classes in South Africa. 

We saw how the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy suddenly replaced the RDP and democratic and popular control over macro-economic policy.

We have seen in the past 16 years how South African capitalism has been rehabilitated not only on the African continent, but globally. 

Thabo Mbeki will be remembered by the black and African working class as a most anti-working class president who regarded it as his class duty to rehabilitate South African capitalism. 

Inside the ANC-led Alliance we witnessed open class warfare. The right wing of the ANC often invited the SACP and Cosatu to move out of the ANC and create their own political formation. 

As South African capitalism became more profitable, the working class, despite their newly won liberal freedoms to organise in unions and some of the best workplace rights in the world, soon learnt that they cannot eat liberal workers’ rights. 

In the past 16 years, South African workers have been massively exploited by capitalists of all kinds and colours, while the share of national income which goes to the capitalists has continued to grow. 

Cosatu has correctly noted that the new democratic dispensation has benefited South African capitalism the most. 

South Africa capitalism has seen one of the fastest geographical expansions in the past 16 years.

There are very few African countries where South African capital is not present. 

In its efforts to restore its profitability, South African capital has not shied away from reaping super-profits through the super-exploitation of our brothers and sisters in African countries, particularly those that are troubled.

This has pitted local South African workers against their fellow-workers from the African continent and led to xenophobia. 

This has benefited South African capitalists, as they need the cheap labour and the “influx controls” provided by xenophobia.

It is because capitalists engineer and benefit from cheap foreign African labour and xenophobia that all the world’s workers must unite to defeat xenophobia and the capitalist system that breeds it. 

As we approached 2008, it was clear to all class-conscious workers that the liberation movement and its Alliance was led a heartless, right-wing faction of the ANC leadership that worshipped neo-liberalism.

Cosatu and the SACP began seriously to question the revolutionary morality of encouraging workers to campaign and vote for members who turned out to be high priests of neo-liberalism.

This prompted debates about reconfiguring the Alliance; an electoral pact; revisiting the deployment policy and mechanisms of the Alliance; and for the SACP to examine real power-sharing or contesting elections separately. 

Cosatu urged its members to “swell the ranks of the ANC”.

The SACP encouraged all its members to be active in ANC branches and save it from the neo-liberals. 

The ANC’s Polokwane conference largely about how classes and class formation in a democratic South Africa played themselves out in the Alliance.

Any analysis of Polokwane that ignores this fact is empty and right wing.

Polokwane
 
Polokwane violently ejected from leadership many leaders who were seen to have too openly championed the neo-liberal and anti-working class policies of the past 16 years. 

Polokwane once more re-established the working class, particularly its youth portion, as a revolutionary force to reckon with in the ANC.

The branches of the ANC suddenly became supreme. 

Polokwane was not a complete defeat for neo-liberal right-wing elements in the Alliance leadership. 

Polokwane did not establish the working class as leaders of the liberation movement and the Alliance. 

Polokwane did not mean the defeat of neo-liberalism in South Africa. It radically reaffirmed the demands of the working class and the poor in South Africa within the Alliance. 

Polokwane severely damaged the neo-liberal project – the “1996 Class Project” – without destroying it.

This is very important to understand as we take stock of the post-Polokwane period and what it means for the South African working class in general and the black and African working class in particular.

Polokwane opened up vast opportunities for direct class struggles, especially over the trajectory of the National Democratic Revolution. 

Polokwane opened up space for serious class engagements within the Alliance on policy and institutional tools in the South African capitalist economy and society for advancing struggles to redress the class, race, national and gender injustices.

The post-Polokwane period

 As a revolutionary trade union and affiliate of Socialist Cosatu, Numsa has a duty to carry out a serious class analysis of the past 16 years and, more importantly, of the period after Polokwane.

This takes on even more importance as the ANC prepares for its National General Council, where it will also review its performance on the Polokwane resolutions. 

In our analysis of the post-Polokwane period we must be guided by the theory and ideology of Marxism which has stood the test of time. 

The Numsa political school must resist the temptation to waste time asking “what the ANC has done for us since Polokwane”.

We cannot outsource our working class responsibilities to another class, regardless of whether we are members of the Alliance. 

The revolutionary duty to defend the working class victories of Polokwane are ours and ours alone. 

We have seen the collapse of the neo-liberal paradigm for organising global capitalism.

We must ask deep questions about how, we, as the working class in South Africa, have used the opportunities provided by both Polokwane and the global crisis of capitalism to advance socialism. 

Capitalism across the world takes different forms, and gives rise to many versions of the pattern of ruling and exploited classes.

In Numsa, we must not waste time fantasising about “pure working class struggles”, but seek to understand how South African capitalism has used, continues to use, and may continue to use race, gender, nation, age, disability and other platforms for accumulation. 

It is sterile and undialectical to ignore racism as an inherent component of South African class struggles.

Any left formation, let alone a formation claiming loyalty to Marxism, that ignores racism in South Africa confines itself to the margins of revolutionary activity. 

It is dangerous and anti-working class to ignore gender oppression in South Africa. Numsa fully understands, as its constitution states, that gender struggles are class struggles. 

Our post-Polokwane analysis must include how other contending classes have performed within and outside the ANC, especially in the light of the collapse of global neo-liberalism.

What is to be done? 

As Lenin taught us, at the end of it all we must answer the question: what is to be done to advance working class struggles towards a socialist South Africa after Polokwane? 

Karl Marx warns us against merely interpreting the world. He says as revolutionaries, our struggle is to change the world.

We must therefore emerge with clear revolutionary demands for the ANC National General Council. 

We must attempt as honestly as possible to reveal the weaknesses of the working class as organised in the liberation movement in general and the Alliance in particular, and suggest ways of dealing with these weaknesses. 

We remain confident that the August 2010 Numsa Central Committee political school will succeed in educating all of us about where we are coming from, what happened in Polokwane, and where we must go.

Irvin Jim is Numsa general secretary

This is his opening speech presented to Numsa central committee political school on August 16-18 2010 in preparation for the ANC National General Council.

Source

Numsa Bulletin No 21, September 2010