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Volume 15, No. 06, 16 February 2016 |
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Red Alert Develop clarity of task, unite the working class, our movement, and communities:Advance the second, more radical phase of our struggle!! |
By Cde Solly Mapaila
Dear comrades, first and foremost we are looking forward to your Political and Ideological Commission discussing the State of the Nation Address presented by President Jacob Zuma in Parliament on Thursday, 11 February 2016. In particular, there is one particular issue: that state owned enterprises that are no longer “strategic” to our project of social transformation will be phased out. This must not be taken lightly. It can be a new source of serious problems in our alliance. In particular, we have fought against privatisation in the past, including when it was presented under a similar logic.
Having noted the point, as the SACP we welcome the progressive content of the State of the Nation Address, including steps to implement the creation of a new state owned enterprise focusing on pharmaceuticals.
Develop clarity of task!
It is important all times to continuously develop clarity of task in relation to taking the national democratic revolution, which is the South African Road to Socialism, forward. Since 2012, the whole of the alliance converged on the perspective of the need to place the national democratic revolution on to a second, more radical phase. In order to give content to this perspective, the SACP in 2014 launched a discussion document titled `Going to the root`. Our Special National Congress held last year, 2015, engaged with the content of the paper and enriched it with a set of resolutions on the immediate tasks facing the national democratic revolution.
The work is not over yet. In particular, next year, 2017, the SACP and the ANC will be holding their national congress and conference respectively. This important events will shape the future of our policy going forward and elect the Central Committee and the National Executive Committee, respectively, to implement policy content for the next five years from 2017 to 2022. This will be an important period in the history of our struggle for national liberation and socialism but also internationally as part of the world revolutionary movement for national independence and social emancipation.
Firstly, the year 2017 will mark the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution that occurred in Russia. That event delivered an invaluable contribution in the history of the struggles for national liberation and social emancipation in the entire global south. Unfortunately, we do not have both time and space today to unpack all the details of that history, including its relationship to the national liberation struggle in Southern Africa.
Secondly, 2018 will mark the second centenary of the birth of the founding intellectual and revolutionary, a communist par excellence, of a body of both science and thought that was later to be named after him as Marxism, Karl Marx. Marx worked together with Frederick Engels, who, after they had met, became his closest, truest friend, comrade and lifelong collaborator.
By the time of his death, Marx had not completed some of his major works that would later be published posthumously, edited by Frederick Engels who accurately understood Marx in all respects. This includes works such as Capital: A critique of political economy, volumes II and III. Marx and Engels co-authored `The Communist Manifesto` and many other fundamental documents of the Communist movement.
The central thrust of their theoretical and revolutionary work remains valid on the overall contradictions and general movement of human society and nature. The theoretical contribution of their work in the origins and making of the Great October Socialist Revolution and its emancipatory impact on the liberation struggles of the global south became of an immense magnitude and remains incalculable.
As they said in `The Communist Manifesto`, the spectre of communism, and indeed of their own work as the leading theoretical elaboration of the struggle - if we may add - haunted Europe. This as everywhere else globally.
Those posing as the champions of freedom of expression today, banned both Marx and his entire work, that he became stateless. Here in South Africa, the Communist Party became the first political organisation to be banned with the backing of European and North American powers, in particular the United States of America. Europe and the USA launched a severe attack, including a propaganda of falsehoods, lasting to this day not only on the works of Marx and Engels but also on the struggle for communism and its transitional phase of socialism.
Regardless, the scientific approach and body of thought developed by Marx and Engels remains the lifeblood of the struggle for the liberation of the working class. It remains the lifeblood of the struggle for universal emancipation human society and nature from the shackles of capitalist and imperialist exploitation and other forms of social oppression. So we assert with undying spirit of determination, that: “The struggle continues!!”
Thirdly, the year 2021 will mark the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party in South Africa. Founded as the Communist Party of South Africa, it had to alter its name to the current name of the South African Communist Party when it reconstituted itself underground after it was banned. The contribution of the Communist Party since its founding in our struggle for liberation and social emancipation leading to the defeat of the apartheid regime in 1994 was vital. The history of the overthrow of the apartheid regime and the ushering in of the foundations for the development of democracy and social transformation in South Africa is, and will be incomplete without the Communist Party.
Let us therefore pose the questions:
If everything remains constant, and were you a country as a province, how long would it take, from the stand point of your ideological, political and organisational work and all the contradictions it is facing, for you to realise all the goals of the Freedom Charter, thus completing the national democratic revolution and advancing to socialism?
In this process, what goals would you have achieved by the time of the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in 2017, the second centenary of the birth of Karl Marx in 2018 and the centenary of our Party in 2021?
These questions also go for the work of the entire Party organisation, and we must together address them.
As you can see, the time frames are very tight.
In addition, we have two other important time frames to develop clarity of task about in relation to the national democratic revolution and socialism. We are raising this in the context of a long range planning and industrial execution of our struggle, knowing where we come from, where we are and where we are going.
Where must South Africa be by the time of the centenary of the Freedom Charter in 2055 and of our first democratic breakthrough in 2094?
What principal goals must we, as the Party, the ANC-led national liberation movement and alliance, as well as the South African society as a whole achieve within the context of these two important time frames - the centenaries of the Freedom Charter and the 1994 democratic breakthrough?
We are raising all these questions because the Political and Ideological Commission that does not look forward especially in a Marxist-Leninist Party will not meet the mould of its purpose. We expect you therefore to also reflect on the tasks that you need to, and must undertake in building and strengthening the Party and its capacity in leading the struggles of the working class in your province. The same goes for all of us together in the country.
We expect you, therefore, to commence the work of developing your contribution, from the interim member, full member and the branch level up, in the review of the Party programme, `The South African Road to Socialism`. Our 14th National Congress in July 2017 will finalise the work, including the review of Party organisation and associated constitutional amendments.
The perspectives we have been discussing since 2014 after launching `Going to the root`, on what we mean by the second, more radical phase of the national democratic revolution, its context, basic content and strategic tasks, will have to be enriched, refined further and streamlined in our 2017 review of the Party Programme to be adopted by our 14th National Congress.
The Congress will also receive a report of our State Power Commission established by our Special National Congress in July last year, 2015, on the relationship between the Party and state power.
We mention all of these priorities to highlight the enormity of the tasks on the shoulders of your Political and Ideological Commission.
Combat racism and confront imperialism head-on!
We still have a lot of work to do to towards completely resolving the national question, continue building and properly guiding the development of the new society that we seek to achieve in the place of the old one. The South Africa we have inherited when we dislodged the apartheid regime in 1994 is yet to be completely transformed.
In addition, there are strong features of resistance from those who benefitted from the crime against humanity that apartheid was. It is in this context that the stark reminders of continued existence of racism in our society have recently erupted.
But the beneficiaries of the old South Africa are not only some racist local fellows.
There are imperialist forces in Britain and the USA as well as in all other imperialist countries such as France named in the 1969 Strategy and Tactics document of the ANC that have benefited from national oppression and racist capitalist exploitation in, and imperialist domination of South Africa. Let it not be forgotten that the governments of those imperialist countries backed the oppressor regimes in South Africa with which they closely collaborated.
Some imperialist forces such as the USA even went further to list our national liberation movement and the political and social forces organised under it as terrorist. In Britain, former Prime Minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher opposed sanctions against apartheid. This was not a mere government administrative position. It was in the best interests of the British imperialist capital that participated in the exploitation of South Africa and its resources, that her regime opposed sanctions against the apartheid regime - a system declared by the United Nations as a crime against humanity.
The imperialist partners of the oppressor regimes are more sophisticated than a racist tweet or Facebook post of some fellow defending white privilege. The institutions with which they continue to pursue their old agenda of imperialist exploitation and domination, such as ratings agencies, are more advanced. Their actions and outcomes are co-ordinated to undermine democratic national sovereignty. They are therefore anti-democratic. Wherever they take root, they replace popular democratic electoral mandate in policy making.
Instead of implementing what the people want, targeted governments are forced to implement instructions from ratings agencies which are holding a weapon of mass destruction - in the form of downgrades. The consequences of their decisions are not blamed on them. They are blamed on national governments as part and parcel of a regime change agenda. The politics of opposition are moulded to coalesce around this political tendency.
This is why as the SACP we reject the logic that instead of the plight and democratic aspirations of the people, our government must be alienated from them and become the government of the ratings agencies whose word is imposed as state policy.
We must intensify the struggle against imperialism and all its manifestation. Imperialism is the most dangerous threat that not only our revolution but many across the world especially in the global south are faced with. It has the capacity to infiltrate revolutionary movements and develop turncoats in what would become former revolutionaries. This it does by various means, including wheeling and dealing in business crumbs while it retains the lion`s share of the stake.
By so doing, imperialism has the capacity to cause divisions, disunity, fragmentation and disintegration within organisations and ultimately defeat them as a whole, or create conditions for them to be defeated. Some of these things have been going on in South Africa and especially intensified in the period since the eruption of the ongoing global capitalist system crisis in 2008.
In particular, crisis conditions have proven to be a fertile ground for imperialist machination in dominated countries as the imperialist countries retain their strategic advantages. It is on this basis that imperialism is able to exploit the genuine concerns and frustrations of those in the receiving end of the brunt of economic crisis.
In every struggle there are people who by means of their susceptibility and ambitions can serve the enemy`s agendas in the same way as in every production process there are factory faults. These are imperialism`s hunting grounds for disunity, division and new, deviant organisations.
It is important for us to recognise that we are in an all-round struggle.
We are facing the beneficiaries of the racist system of apartheid who are determined to stop at nothing to preserve and further advance white privilege. We are facing imperialist forces. We are facing the enemy within, the willing agents of the enemy and its internal manifestation. We are also facing loosely structured elements who are suffering from problems of lost consciousness and are not determined to turn back. We are facing turncoats of all sorts. We must be broad both in our thinking and approach. We must be strategic and tactical in fighting in this terrain.
Unite the working class, our movement, and our communities!
The period lying ahead is an election season. We will be going to the sixth democratic local government elections. This is another context we need to take into consideration.
The geography of voting patterns shows that some of the achievements we have made on building broad unity during our liberation struggle pre-1994 leading to our democratic breakthrough have been weakened. The post-1994 voting outcomes increasingly indicate that there is a reproduction process underway, of particular political dynamics that the apartheid regime sought to achieve through its policies of racial segregation.
It cannot be denied, that a trend exists indicating that there is a process whereby national minorities across all classes and strata are politically being turned against the ANC and the whole of the alliance. The forces behind this agenda have been cementing and deepening it for their own profit.
However, it is important also to look at the totality of the conditions that have made it possible for those forces to reproduce such apartheid-type political divisions. This being a Political and Ideological Commission, it is important to emphasise that the problem must be understood first and foremost in its historical context taking into consideration both the objective and subjective factors.
Extensive examination is therefore also necessary, of the consequences of the apartheid social structure and the political implications of the perceptions that have been forged as a result of the fall of certain privileges of the past in the course of social transformation. On the other hand, it is important to examine the way in which the conduct of things within our own movement, and by extension also in governance, has played into the hands of agendas that thrives on the mobilisation and consolidation of the so-called minority fears.
In addition, it is important for your Commission to reflect on the hyper competition that has emerged for resources - including opportunities in the form of jobs and tenders associated with the state - that is manifesting itself and to some extent ravaging our movement from within through a destructive contest for positions. Especially the problem is acute at lower levels of the movement. But it does not mean that it is absent at the top. The political, ideological and organisational implications this has on the national democratic revolution and both the ANC and the alliance are huge.
From all of the afore-mentioned challenges, it is important to underline that where the ANC has lost elections, it is not just the ANC independently of the alliance that has lost or loses going forward. The whole of the alliance and supporting organisation also lose.
It is very important to underline therefore that what happens in the ANC`s electoral processes, including the selection of candidates, is not a matter only for the attention of the ANC.
Our alliance platform of the ANC-led electoral strategy was established in the best interests of the unity of the primary motive forces of our struggle. When something goes wrong in the ANC or its electoral processes, the entire alliance is affected and not just the ANC alone.
It is therefore important to place emphasis on the fact that the ANC is not just a leader only of its members. As it correctly states in its own Strategy and Tactics document, the ANC is the organisational leader of our national liberation movement. It is important at this point to emphasise that in its Strategy and Tactics document, the ANC defines our national liberation movement not just as itself alone but as an array of forces organised to achieve political freedom. This, as the document correctly states, has taken the form of the alliance, the mass democratic movement and other sectoral forces, led by the ANC. It is this national liberation movement, encompassing all the primary motive forces of the national democratic revolution, and not just the ANC alone, that overthrew the apartheid regime and laid the foundations for the development of democracy and the advancing of social transformation in our country.
Any departure from this dialectic of unity of purpose will cause serious problems in the current phase of our struggle when we are facing an increasing line-up of reactionary and counterrevolutionary forces.
Immediately ANC electoral processes are not handled in a proper manner, but are either seen or allowed to be handled as if they were an exclusive preserve of the ANC in isolation from the alliance, such problems will entrench to the peril of our revolution. It is very important for ANC electoral processes to be understood in their proper context as not just ANC but alliance processes - led by the ANC. The alliance must therefore both be reflected and visible in the conception and execution of these processes and their outcomes.
Let us unite the primary motive forces of our revolution and build broad unity of principle!
This is not the time for division. It is the time for unity. For without unity the ANC and the whole of our alliance and national liberation movement will not succeed.
This is the time for all progressive forces to set aside their differences and build principled unity under the banner of our alliance and fight to reclaim all lost ground in all sectors, communities and key sites of struggle.
Without this it will be difficult to achieve radical economic transformation - the central task of the second radical phase of our democratic transition towards realising complete social transformation. Our national project of social transformation will not be possible without radical economic transformation in the line of development of the Freedom Charter, and leading towards the complete achievements of all its goals.
We must fight to overcome all forms of divisive strategies and tactics that are being used to weaken the alliance and its components. We need to all go out and organise and properly politicise all potential motive forces of our struggle to bring about unity within the alliance and national liberation movement as a whole, while decisively increasing new recruits to strengthen our struggle.
Step up the struggle to combat harmful tendencies!
Lastly, but not least, harmful tendencies such as corporate capture and rent-seeking targeting decision-makers in the public service and public representatives appear to have become emboldened. This is associated with maladministration and corruption and the problems of wasteful and fruitless expenditure based, mainly, but not limited to tenders and other state transactions. In the process, new private monopolies based on parasitic relationships preying on the state, including manipulation of our national wealth and basic resources, are created if not advantaged, in addition to the old ones that we are yet to dislodge. Some fellows have come out in defence of the shenanigans associated with these harmful tendencies and the relationships that are developed in the web of the schema.
There is no reason in principle to be threatened by such voices. Not an inch!! We must instead press on until victory is secured and successfully defended!! This, is our revolution!! It is the people`s revolution, with the working class as the majority!!
* Cde Solly Mapaila is SACP Second Deputy General Secretary. This is edited version of his input at the SACP Gauteng Political and Ideological Commission, Benoni, 13 February 2016.
Unite against the primary opponents of our struggle and their collaborators, the enemy within: Advance the national democratic revolution
By Cde Sidumo Dlamini, 13 February 2016, Benoni
I have been asked to speak on the role of the trade union movement in the fight against corporate capture and corruption. I am tempted to conclude that actually this topic is asking a question: “What does Cosatu make of the current challenges facing our movement as manifested in such provinces as in KZN and in Mpumalanga?”
Let me state from the onset that our approach as Cosatu on this matter is based on our understanding of the class enemy of the national democratic revolution.
We proceed from an understanding that the principal enemy of our revolution is private monopoly-capital, in particular white monopoly capital. This constitutes the real South African ruling class. The power of this ruling class is rooted in its ownership and control of the basic means of production. The mines, the banks and major industries such as forestry, petroleum, steel and large segments of the wholesale and retail sector, are dominated by monopolies.
As Cosatu we have always said that the stranglehold or capture of imperialism on our economy has deepened during the past 21 years. Foreign-ownership has increased. Almost all the minerals that are mined in South Africa, the banks, the monopoly-industries such as SASOL, Arcelor-Mittal, and wholesale and retail sector companies, have significant foreign share-holding. These developments came in the backdrop of new alliances being forged, essentially marked by the entry of sections of the aspirant black capitalist class, many of whom were drawn from the ranks of the national liberation movement.
The dominant ideological expression of the enemy class is neoliberalism. This ideology has also found staunch supporters inside our movement. The function of the supporters of neoliberalism is to protect the interests of white monopoly capitalism and imperialism. For example they are the ones who will call for the de-regulation of labour markets, whose resultant effect is to increase the rate of exploitation of the working class. They are the ones who advocate for policies of de-regulating financial markets, whose effect is to ensure that monopoly capitalists can take profits in and out of the country at will. They are the ones who call for liberalising trade, whose effect is to facilitate the integration of the South African economy into the global chains of production, limiting the capacity of the country to industrialise.
These neo liberal ideologues inside our movement have their own economic interest. This has developed a compradorial relationship between them and monopoly capital.
They are made up of two segments. Firstly, that segment which is allied to monopoly capital and imperialism. Secondly, that segment which accumulates on the basis of “corruption”. For the first segment, its mode of accumulation is based on dealings that ensure that the interests of monopoly capital are protected and extended. This is done through policies that include using access to the state to drive a policy trajectory in contradiction to the policies of the movement.
It has become a common feature to see inter-imperialist rivalries over the spoils of the country finding expression in the bickering, discord and cat-fights within the comprador sections of the movement. This takes different forms, including fights for positions. Given the high stakes, these fights become deadly in some instances. It is in this context that, as Cosatu we have always said that if the movement is to maintain its unity and clarity of purpose, including in its policy thinking, this element must be carefully isolated from the ranks of the movement.
The effect of the comprador element is also to mask the true nature of the enemy. Since it has dealings with monopoly capital and imperialism, its approach is to blunt our movement’s understanding of the enemy, and to divert attention to issues that are either peripheral or mystify the underlying class relations. The comprador element seeks to replace the domestic white capitalist class, or to squeeze itself in the alliance of white-monopoly capital and imperialism, and thereby become part of the exploiters. In this way, it will consistently attempt to discourage the advocacy of the need to pursue the national democratic revolution in the direction of social emancipation and ensure the continuous postponement of measures that tackle property relations in a revolutionary way.
The second segment of the comprador element is made up by those who accumulate on the basis of what is ordinarily called corruption, which is nothing but capital accumulation outside the parameters of bourgeois legality. This segment is not necessarily linked to white-monopoly capital and imperialism. Its elements consistently seek accommodation in the alliances of monopoly capital. They consistently fail to find a place on the dinner-table of monopoly capital. At one point, they adopt the positions of the non-compradorial element. But at other moments, they position themselves against imperialism. In this segment, too, internal bickering, discord, and rivalries over the dregs of spoils that are left by monopoly-capitalism, particularly the spoils arising from tax revenue and state-debt, manifest and have currently become a dominant feature in our movement.
The basic features of the comprador element are as follows. Firstly, it has dealings with imperialism and white-monopoly capital. Secondly, it plays the leading role in advocating neo-liberalism. Thirdly, in some instances, its accumulation strategy involves what is ordinarily called “corruption”.
There are contradictions between these two segments of the comprador element. There are contradictions within these segments as there are between them. The main cause of the contradictions between the “corrupt” comprador and the “non-corrupt” comprador lies in the struggle for space on the dinner-table of the ruling class and imperialism. This inter-comprador contradiction inevitably spills over into the movement and presents itself as factional fights and bickering over positions of leadership. Unless the working class and the rest of the motive forces stamp their authority, our movement will continuously suffer from incoherence and discord, and will lose sight of who the strategic enemy of the revolution is.
A similar phenomenon has found its way and connections in the labour movement. This manifests itself in factional fights for leadership positions used to build relations with captains of industry and to pursue a BEE-type business unionism on the basis of workers’ collective power. Part of this is linked to control over worker funds, totalling multi-millions of rands in subscriptions and agency shop fees, pension and provident funds, medical aid schemes, sick pay funds, union investment companies, and so on, as well as service providers such as financial services administrators and providers, banks, property developers and administrators, all other services that have to do with money in unions, and the corrupt use of procurement of other goods and services as it happens between certain corrupt elements in the public and private sector.
All these are used as a resource base to dispense patronage and advance personal interests, particularly private appropriation and opulent lifestyles while exploiting the language of the masses to fight the movement.
These find practical expression in the following:
- It is the intersection between union work and money. It includes the use of resources from investment companies and service providers to impose preferred leaders in unions and imposing certain policies to protect specific financial interests for individuals inside and outside the unions - corruption
- The second element, linked to this, is how those union leaders who have been put into positions of trust regarding the investment companies and union monies have become corrupted by their access to the power of deciding about workers monies. This weakness of leaders being attracted more than their trade union work to money has been exploited by service providers who promise kickbacks to individual leaders on the basis of securing contracts in the unions.
- The use of money to influence outcomes has not only been employed by outside business in unions. A new tendency has emerged, characterised by an abuse of self-sufficiency. This is where those unions with money bankroll and dispense patronage in the form of money to other unions with a purpose of remote controlling them to support their views and support their programmes even if such programmes do not serve the interests of those unions and their members.
This is how business unionism or corporate capture expresses itself in the trade unions, and give rise to trade union clientelism.
There are even cases where trade union leaders become silent business partners in different business ventures. In many of the cases they are represented by their partners and or relatives. This is called preparing for soft landing in the case where a leader loses a position of leadership and cannot go back to employment as an ordinary worker.
These phenomena also include undermining good governance and procurement policies by people positioning themselves to access workers’ resources for their selfish interests.
In the process core trade union work of providing service to members is relegated to a second priority in favour of activities that create accumulation possibilities such as leaders and organisers making deals with employers for future promotion at work with better perks at the expense of advancing workers’ demands.
Members sometimes support one union leader on the basis of patronage which comes with such benefits as access to trade union cars , lap tops , favours for international trips, access to exclusive and discriminatory training opportunities in which one section of shop stewards is in favour of international trips and training over others .
In all these cases the core trade union work is compromised because a leader cannot mobilise for a strike against employers who are also his or her business partners or a shop steward compromises the case of a worker because he or she has been promised a promotional post.
Actually, this is what has been at the centre of the challenges facing the trade unionism. It is this enemy the Special National Congress said we should fight with everything we have and remove it from its roots, stem and branch from our ranks.
If you ask how Cosatu is fighting corporate capture, the answer is that we expose and expel its leading exponents.
But the most effective and sustainable way of fighting it is taking the organisation back to its real owners - the workers. It is by consistently elevating the supremacy of the organisation over individuals. It is by asserting the financial independence of the organisation through insisting on paid up membership.
We must and we will not make a mistake of running away from these challenges inside Cosatu or even in our movement. We will not abandon the movement and say we are going it alone as the forces of the left. If we do that we will commit a pre-mature move. What we must do must be informed first by what the Special National Congress of the SACP said is part of organisational renewal and redesign, a standing Central Commission on State Power and Electoral options established to evaluate and further refine our long-term strategy for socialism based on the following:
- An independent programme of the SACP for socialism as articulated in SARS.
- Favourable objective and subjective concrete conditions.
- Dynamic, robust and democratic engagements with revolutionary, fraternal and Alliance formations and communities to ensure working class hegemony and leadership.
- Proper and scientific assessment of the class balance of forces at all levels.
- That a report of this Commission be tabled in the forthcoming 14th National Congress.
The most immediate task is to confront our adversaries head-on, on the ground and contest their views politically through clear joint programmes which are aimed at asserting the ANC as a mass based formation, a disciplined force of the left whose programmes and policies are biased towards the working class.
We are already preparing for an Alliance Political Council. Let us go there and be forthright about our concerns.
The biggest task we have as the left is to build our organisations on the ground and to inspire confidence to the masses that our fight is not about our stomachs but the interests of the working people.
Amandla!
* Cde Sidumo Dlamini is Cosatu President. This is an edited version of his input at the SACP Gauteng Political and Ideological Commission, Benoni, 13 February 2016.
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