By Luzuko Buku
As Thobile Maso would say, its “Confusion in the capitalist world - The Saints are the Sinners, The Devil is divined.” This poetic phrase becomes very relevant in accessing the class contradictions within the alliance, which manifest themselves in various forms. Yet again the revolutionary alliance has become the subject of robust and frank but sometimes mischievous and slanderous debate in various quarters and, like pre-Polokwane, behind this there is the question of leadership preference and or ambition. Some believe that the tensions are between the ANC Youth League and the South African Communist Party (SACP), emanating from the discussion on nationalisation and stretching towards the unfortunate humiliation of ANC YL president Julius Malema and ANC National Executive Committee Member, Billy Masetla by some delegates at the SACP Special National Congress in December last year. Also the public comments made by Billy Masetla regarding the role of communist in the ANC can be seen as the primary contributor to these tensions, but what can give us answers is exactly what is not that much hidden for the eye to see.
Honest observers know that behind all of these real or perceived differences lies the contest for leadership positions in the run-up towards the 2012 ANC National Conference. The singling out of ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe and the warfare declared against himself and what he represents is a case in point. Here we seek to probe as to what brought us here. The united front that delivered the watershed Polokwane conference is not there anymore. The question is, has the ANC NEC failed or has some within it failed in implementing the mandate bestowed upon them in Polokwane? If yes how, if not, then why the tensions and the eminent vying for positions, particularly the one of Secretary General?
Are these tensions caused by deep rooted ideological differences or by blind leadership ambitions? What informs this real or perceived clash between communist and nationalist? Is it just a tactical move with the sole aim of creating otherness, in that it seeks to expose and isolate the ideological other or is it ideologically honest? Can we distinguish this creation of otherness from that created during opportunistic tribal tensions? If we can’t, have we not failed the essential task of the ANC, which is to unite the people of South Africa?
In all the public war talk by our alliance leaders; these questions have not only gone unanswered but still remain unasked. Here we seek to probe them and see how best we can apply our minds to navigate these trying times.
Has reconfiguration failed?
Key amongst the resolutions taken in Polokwane was the reaffirmation of the central importance of the alliance. This was a decisive break from the past where there were tensions amongst the alliance components. Just months before this, in its Congress in Port Elizabeth, the South African Communist Party (SACP), after long and intense discussions, had finally decided that it will “contests state power in elections in the context of a reconfigured alliance.”In slightly similar phrases COSATU shared this perspective. What the alliance failed to do was to properly define what is meant by alliance reconfiguration and how best to achieve it. It is therefore important to give some pointers on what was or what could have been the idea.
Reconfiguration meant proper integration of short and long term objectives of each alliance component so as to bring about a common programme. This meant the respect of each alliance component’s right to hold views on economic and political matters and the creation of a conducive environment for debate and policy direction canvassing amongst the individual components of the alliance as led by the ANC. The alliance summits and political councils that culminated into the drafting of the ANC Elections Manifesto are just but one example of true reconfiguration. The list process and its outcomes clearly showed reconfiguration at work, but the ideal was to go beyond this. The presence of communist in parliament is just an example.
“The SACP has 9% representation in the national assembly and the ANC has 57%. In all provincial legislatures, except in the Western Cape, there is also a small, but important presence of SACP members. The Eastern Cape has the highest number of SACP members, followed by Limpopo and Gauteng, with the Northern Cape having the least. The national cabinet has a 9% SACP membership…” (David Masondo, 2009). Somewhere somehow, reconfiguration at a national level was occurring and resistance was not that much prevalent.
What we need to note is that reconfiguration does not start and end at Polokwane, a series of events were meant to have brought it. So it will be correct to say the elections were contested in a reconfiguring alliance rather than a reconfigured one, as this process was still unfolding. What then do the eminent tensions say about reconfiguration, does this mean it has failed?
Reconfiguration did indeed take place on national level but in almost all fronts it failed to occur in most provinces, regions, sub-regions and some branches and here we use the Eastern Cape as a case study. The Provincial Executive Committee of the ANC in this province supported the right wing inspired view of a third term for the then President of the ANC, comrade Thabo Mbeki. As a matter of fact this province is where most proponents of the 1996 class project come from. After Polokwane there province had to undergo a process of healing. The ANC Youth League, COSATU and the SACP called for the Provincial Executive Committee to be disbanded and the reasons for this was that the leadership of the ANC was not exercising its role as a leader of the alliance; it was not allowing the process of reconfiguration to unfold. Alliance meetings were difficult, if not possible, to organize and this manifested themselves in regions and Amathole Region was one of the hardest hit by this. During this time the words alliance summit and alliance political council at the level of the province or region were never known or utilized. As it has been, emphasis was always on the ‘leading’ role of the ANC as if someone from either COSATU or the SACP had disputed that. The revolution was faced with people who viewed COSATU and the SACP as their class adversaries, hence the rejection of any form of reconfiguration. At least the 2009 River Park Provincial Conference, managed to change the direction in the province and in most of the regions, but regions such as Amathole and OR Tambo are still faced with this problem.
Most of the people that resisted reconfiguration after Polokwane decided to break away from the organization to form what they called the Congress of the People (COPE). This was primarily because they did not see themselves as equal to the task of stopping the unfolding process of reconfiguration within the alliance. Some of them remained within the movement but they totally disengaged in its political activities on the run up to the General Elections. They instead clandestinely supported COPE. The emergence of this splinter, particular because of the period in which it emerged, brought problems in terms of reconfiguration in that it was difficult for the organization to decisively deal with such members with the fear that it would be chasing them away to COPE and further exacerbating the problems brought by the formation of this splinter.
This is what basically brought the process of reconfiguration to a halt in many provinces and with provinces that are not reconfigured you cannot expect proper national reconfiguration. The current tensions are primarily fuelled by people who have always been resisting reconfiguration and credit must be given to this group for its ability to co-opt some of the people sympathetic to the Polokwane programme, based on these people’s ambitions for leadership. The cooption of some comrades who agreed with Polokwane by the dissenters of reconfiguration in the Eastern Cape is just but an example. The project is still the same neoliberal-petty-bourgeoisie 1996 class project albeit with new names and faces. The dissenters use one of our own to contest against us. The failure of reconfiguration therefore, combined with blind leadership ambitions is behind these tensions.
Blind leadership ambitions: the add-on effect
Leadership contest in the ANC 2012 National Congress, preceding and subsequent provincial conferences will be the order of the day. The contest will be between those that had agreed on a common programme on the run up to Polokwane and the question that occupies everybody’s mind is what had brought us into this situation.
As we have tried to demonstrate, what actually brought us here is the failure of alliance reconfiguration to trickle down to provinces and regions. This was not only due to the weaknesses of the process but due to fierce resistances from right wing sections of the alliance. One primary thing that brought us here is blind-business-backed-leadership ambitions from certain leaders of our organisation. We say blind leadership ambitions because they are not based on any political programme. They are blind because they are more concerned with the Self and his or her development rather than organisation. This self-centrism is so pervasive that an individual is even willing to sacrifice the entire organisation to business for its fulfilment.
Reconfiguration rebels are very good at seeing such ambitious individuals and the cooption of such individuals into their programme is their speciality and expertise. They do this for as long as the ambitious person will carry their liberal mandate. They are even willing to channel funds to that individual’s campaign without any hesitation. Whilst honest ANC members recruit members, they buy memberships. They employ people to recruit people, even if those who are recruited don’t pay; the rebels have enough money to pay for them due to the wealth accumulated during the tenure of the 1996 class project. We have seen the development of what has been called ‘register campaign’ where people are made members without them knowing such. A classical example is that a person would sign a membership form on behalf of people based on the information available on the General Elections voters roll.
The “Project 2012” as it is called is a very good example of this. Majority of people who are linked to this narrow nationalist programme are beneficiaries of Black Economic Empowerment. It is therefore a project of business politicians who want to use ambitious people in order to advance their accumulation interests. The clear example of the Eastern Cape provincial contest in River Park comes to the fore again.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is the task of every revolutionary to jealously guard the revolution whenever it is faced with counterrevolutionary setbacks that project themselves otherwise. Examples from Africa tell us very clearly that those seeking demolition of a National Liberation Movement, rarely call it by its true name. The ability to detect and expose such tendencies is the strong point of Marxist-Leninist. In an attempt to navigate the grounds, we must put emphasis on political education.
This is a time where we are supposed to be a implementing our mandate as a movement and no amount of factionalist regrouping should deter us from that. We must strengthen our programme of creating a reconfigured alliance as a force for radical transformation of society and we must expose and isolate those within our ranks, who are willing to compromise this programme in order to advance their narrow ambitions. To do this we need intensive political education coupled with programmes and this should properly trickle down to the masses so that they are not lured by the “politics of Satan”.
We should forge a clear campaign that will advance, deepen and defend the National Democratic Revolution, strategically for the realisation of the Freedom Charter objectives and tactically, for the realisation of the Polokwane resolutions. We should not be shy in our defence of the policy resolutions taken at Polokwane and also the entire leadership elected, including Gwede Mantashe. As one writer remarks, “In warfare, when an army surrenders a stronghold and retreats, its other positions are harder to defend. In politics, similarly, a retreat on one battleground often leads to retreats elsewhere.”
For Free Education and Socialism
Luzuko Buku is Regional Chairperson of SASCO in Western Region-EC, he is also a BEC member of the ANC and Young Communist League. He writes this in his personal capacity.
Sources
David Masondo(2009): Independence of the SACP on the post 2009 state-YCL Discussion Forum
Thobile Maso- THE HISTORICAL MISSION (2009)-Poems of Thobile Maso
Gugile Nkwinti- The Politics of Satan
Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny (2004) Socialism Betrayed-Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union
SACP Congress Resolutions-(2007): Sacp and State Power
ANC Polokwane Resolutions (2007)
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