(Militant International Review, No. 55, January 1994)
Militant Labour’s general secretary Peter Taaffe recently visited South Africa. Here he assesses the perspectives ahead.
27 April, the date for South Africa’s election, will see the long nightmare of apartheid finally ended. That hated system, set up in 1948, merely codified and widened the racial segregation which was a cornerstone of South Africa for 300 years before. Now 350 years of enslavement and repression of the African majority and coloured populations will be buried.
Despite the dire threats of ‚civil war‘ from the Afrikaner right – gathered together with the creatures of apartheid in the mis-named ‚Freedom Alliance‘ – exclusive white political rule already lies in ruins. The African National Congress (ANC), Africa’s oldest liberation movement, after 82 years of heroic struggle, with countless victims and martyrs, will enter the government.
That the ANC will come out of the elections with an overwhelming majority is doubted by no-one. All that is in question is the size of its majority.
This is a turning point not just for South Africa or for the African continent but one which will resound throughout the world. It signifies the completion of the de-colonisation of the African continent. In South Africa’s case it is a process of internal de-colonisation, the substitution of white minority political domination with the representatives of the African people entering the government for the first time.
It is true that, because the ANC leadership have voluntarily decided to share power with the National Party of De Klerk, yesterday’s jailers and executioners, it is not a complete victory. Yet it is a victory nevertheless and will be perceived as such by the South African masses and the toilers throughout the world.
Their ‚liberation‘, and that is how many African workers speak to you when referring to 27 April, has been achieved not through the benevolence of De Klerk, the National Party, or the South African bourgeois. It was through the revolutionary struggles of the mighty South African working class, which battered away at the foundations of the apartheid regime in a series of near-insurrectionary general strikes in the course of the 1980s, which compelled a switch in tactics by the South African ruling class. In time-honoured fashion they resorted to reforms from above in order to prevent revolution from below.
They were enabled to successfully carry through this manoeuvre by the development of two crucial factors. On the one side the collapse of Stalinism opened up a new situation. Throughout the colonial and ex-colonial world this has resulted in a sharp evolution to the right of the representatives of local capitalists. Partly as a consequence of this, the ANC leadership moved to the right, clearly accommodating itself to ‚democracy‘ within the framework of capitalism.
Mandela, even before his release from prison in 1990, had probably come to a broad agreement with De Klerk that universal suffrage, the right to vote for the African, Coloured and Asian populations, would be granted. However, this would not be the same as majority rule. A series of blocking mechanisms with entrenched rights for ‚minorities‘ and a five year ‚multi-racial power sharing‘ government were to be installed.
The other factor was the revolutionary explosions of the South African working class, which compelled the bourgeois to recognise that repression alone would not work. Not the least of the factors that were borne in on the strategists of South African capitalism was the demographic time-bomb that was ticking away to shatter the basis of apartheid. By the end of the century or shortly after it is estimated that there will be 50 million Africans compared to 5 million whites. Despite the Group Areas Act, the forced removal of whole populations of Africans and Coloured people, and all the paraphernalia of repression in the hands of the apartheid state, the inexorable Africanisation of cities like Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town could not be stopped.
The three years which have elapsed since the release of Mandela have been used to condition the population to accept that there is ’no alternative‘ to the path mapped out by Mandela and De Klerk. Negotiations and elections have been pictured by the right wing of the ANC as an ‚easier road to liberation‘. De Klerk and the National Party, in the sunny optimism which radiated from South Africa in the immediate aftermath of Mandela’s release, convinced the whites that the ceding of partial political power to the African majority was the only alternative to a bloody racial civil war and countless victims on both sides.
At the same time state and Inkatha terror has been unleashed throughout this period as a means of dividing the Africans and forcing greater and greater concessions from the ANC leadership. The violence has exceeded that which resulted from the struggle against apartheid. Since 1990 upwards of 15,000 have perished in the bloody reign of terror which has been unleashed by state forces and Buthelezi’s Inkatha impis.
But to little avail. The whip of counter-revolution has merely provoked a massive reaction from below by African workers and a greater determination to prosecute the struggle to the end.
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The phase of negotiations has in fact been punctuated by huge general strikes, showing the immanent power of the African working class, for instance, following the Boipatong massacre and the assassination of Chris Hani. Remorseless mass pressure and a spontaneous arming of a section of the workers and the youth have compelled Inkatha to go onto the retreat. In its home base of Natal it has been evicted from one African township after another. Its strategy of terror has latterly been shifted to Johannesburg and the Transvaal. In the summer of 1993 the rate of killings in the east Rand was five times that of Natal. There is no doubt that Inkatha and the white right, if they do not get the necessary concessions from the ANC in the run up to the elections, will continue with their murderous tactics. But this will merely serve to harden the mood of the masses and provoke even more determined action from below. If a proper lead had been given by the ANC – above all the setting up of armed and democratically controlled defence committees – the state and Inkatha terror would have been nipped in the bud.
An indication of the potential is shown by the comments of a worker from the Mandela area of Alexandra when commenting about the defence units in his area: „Inkatha is nothing if we are organised and disciplined. We have had several fights with the Inkatha warlords and I have learned over these years of violence that Inkatha does not have much discipline, is scattered everywhere. They do not have clear political aims, but are manipulated by others to perpetrate violence against the masses.
„You have to fight your enemy in a very disciplined manner, at the same time bringing forward to the people an understanding of why this fight is taking place. You’re not there to kill but you’re there to bring unity to the people. We just want to fight against the criminals and their methods, which is a product of the apartheid regime.
„I’ll give one indication of what a disciplined defence force can achieve. It took place on what we in Alexandra call Black Tuesday. We fought Inkatha for 12 hours at night on this date. The police did absolutely nothing but all along were identifying themselves with the Inkatha warlords. In the previous period we had been burying comrades time and again because the police backed up and defended Inkatha. We were slaughtered time and again but on Black Tuesday we said we had had enough of this.
„When the Inkatha warlords came on that day we were ready for them in a much more disciplined way than any other formation I have ever seen. We had not been out in exile to train. We were prepared to fight because we had lost so many comrades. Anyway, on this day Inkatha warlords came with the police and a crowd of 200-300 which surrounded our area. We had no chance to escape or to flee anywhere. We had about 500 living in that section, including many women and children, which was surrounded by the Inkatha forces. They attacked at 7.30pm in the evening. We made sure that, number one, people should not run away for that is the best way to expose themselves and be shot easily. We demanded that everybody should lie down, don’t stand up because there is a hail of bullets and anybody could be shot.
„We fought the enemy almost the whole night and the police retreated, leaving the warlords to fight alone. Because we were organised and disciplined we defeated them and Inkatha retreated. We maintained the defence force which acts against criminals in our area“.
Such incidents could be repeated in practically every township, particularly in the Transvaal/Johannesburg area as well as in Natal. The consequence of this is that the strategy of terror of the state, egged on by De Klerk, has completely failed. This has had very important consequences in the negotiations on the constitution. The constitution does guarantee representation to whites and other minority groups in local government. The ANC local government head Thuzamile Botha, in the capitalist Business Day, „said that whites would have representation even where they formed a substantial minority“. (17 November 1993). It is clear that the constitution has been so framed as to leave a substantial number of councils in the hands of whites. But on the national plane the National Party were forced to abandon the blocking mechanisms for a future cabinet. In the previous months De Klerk had been boasting that it would need two-thirds or even 75% agreement within a new cabinet for decisions to go through. Twelve months ago such an arrangement would probably have been acceded to by the ANC leadership. But under mass pressure they have been compelled to harden their demands. An agreement has now been reached which in theory concedes ‚majority rule‘ within the cabinet. Decisions will be adopted on the basis of a clear majority.
The only reason that there will not be untrammelled majority rule now is that the ANC leadership, in advance of the elections, and irrespective of any majority that they might receive, have agreed to enter a five-year power-sharing government. They have accepted that every party which receives 5% of the vote can have a cabinet minister. This has been done to allegedly keep the civil service and army tops ‚onside‘. They have even hinted at an ‚amnesty‘ for the army tops and secret intelligence units which organised the murder and assassinations of liberation leaders.
The demand for the release of all political prisoners receives powerful political support from the African workers. But the heroic fighters, such as Philemon Mauku and those who still languish in Leeuwkop prison, can not be put on the same plane as the murderers of Chris Hard, Darby-Lewis and co, or the hired assassins of the apartheid regime. Who is and who is not a political prisoner should be determined by a commission organised through the trade union movement COSATU, with It representatives of all layers of the population.
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By agreeing to enter a coalition, and remaining within the framework of capitalism, the ANC leadership is increasingly seen as the bourgeois wing of the movement. They have systematically jettisoned all the most radical features of the ANC’s aims and programme, above all the Freedom Charter, which summed up the aspirations of the South African masses for a new society. The bourgeois press of South Africa can hardly restrain its delight at the rapid evolution to the right of the ANC leadership: „You can’t help noticing that when the ANC has an intense encounter with the international marketplace, it seems to register a significant jump in its policy graph. It happened at the world economic forum in Davos, Switzerland last year, for instance, when – in the presence of hundreds of the world’s top businessmen and statesmen… Nelson Mandela changed his speech at the last moment to offer major assurances about the safety of foreign investments“. (Peter Fabricius, The Star, 14 October 1993).
ANC spokespersons have even come into collision with the largely conservative ‚black caucus‘ in the US congress for precipitately dropping the demand for ‚codes of conduct‘ for foreign investment in South Africa. The above journalist comments: „Was this an early warning of that long predicted cleft between the ‚embourgeoisified‘ ANC and its lowliest supporters?“
In an astonishing historical turnabout the South African bourgeois have recognised the indispensable role of Mandela as a bulwark against the huge aroused expectations of the South African masses. David Beresford, writing in The Guardian, comments „a survey of business leaders in South Africa published yesterday showed that 68% wanted Nelson Mandela to be the country’s next president. 32% backed the present FW De Klerk and none supported chief Buthelezi. The chief was described by 36% as ‚power hungry and irrational‘.“ (4 December 1993).
Commenting on this survey, and summing up the attitude of the bourgeois on this issue, Business Day states: „This does not mean business has been converted to the ANC/SACP alliance – far from it. They favour him (Mandela) because his election would be in their own best interests … There were times when it was expedient to kowtow to John Vorster and PW Botha, because they seemed to offer the best chance of a stable business environment“.
Explaining why they have switched horses, Business Day goes on: „While business and a workers‘ party like the ANC may seem natural adversaries, they have wisely sought an understanding with each other … The ANC no longer preaches nationalisation and retribution, and accepts the basic tenets of free market economics … business accepts that black majority rule is inevitable and that a new government will have the best chance of producing a stable country if the most popular black leader Nelson Mandela is in charge. Businessmen may not like his policies and they may not vote for him, but they realise he is the leader capable of establishing an environment in which they can get on with what they do best; producing the wealth on which the country depends“.
And yet, despite the colossal authority of Mandela and all the best efforts of the bourgeois wing of the ANC, they may not be able to apply the brake on the mass movement for very long. Apartheid has bequeathed a disaster to a new government, visible even to the most superficial commentator.
The Marxist law of combined and uneven development – the latest word in technique and culture co-existing alongside the most primitive economic and social forms – is evident in all colonial and ex-colonial countries. Yet surely South Africa gives an example of the greatest contradiction of any society on the planet.
It is possible, sometimes in the space of a few minutes, to move from a modern first world city such as Cape Town, from the centre of Johannesburg, or central Durban, into a third world of African townships like Inanda in Natal, or the unspeakable social conditions in Alexandra in Johannesburg. The author spoke in Alexandra township to Anna, a domestic worker who works for 12 hours a day looking after elderly whites in the white suburb of Houghton ten minutes away. However, this area might as well be on a different planet, with mile upon mile of the most splendid housing; mansions literally within walking distance of the horrors of Alexandra.
There are up to two million domestic workers in South Africa. There is 50% unemployment and seven million workers living in shacks. Education for African and Coloured children has virtually broken down. These conditions have fuelled the revolutionary fervour of the South African workers. They have displayed many of the features shown by the Chinese working class in the revolution of 1925-1927. In the 1980s, alongside of the series of general strikes, the near-insurrectionary mood of the townships, and the self-arming of at least a section of the workers and youth, we also saw the creation of the mighty Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The South African Marxists have correctly described COSATU as the most important conquest of the South African working class.
This revolution has not been ‚aborted‘, diverted into ’safe channels‘, but is presently going through a democratic phase. Such periods, when there is a lull or the movement appears to have receded, is an unavoidable phase in any revolution. Such was the period which followed the February revolution in Russia or during the Spanish revolution of 1931-1937.
The beginning of a revolution is marked by the masses stepping onto the scene of history. Their attempt to take their fate into their own hands has remained as a feature of the South African revolution even during the phase of ’negotiations‘. The general strikes mentioned above, and the near-civil war between the ANC and Inkatha, are the backdrop to negotiations.
There is another crucial factor in the process of internal ‚de-colonisation‘ which marks out South Africa from the rest of Africa. In the latter case the process developed in the main against a background of a world economic upswing. This allowed a certain leeway to newly ‚independent‘ countries of Africa and the rest of the ex-colonial world. The situation in South Africa, however, is developing in the teeth of the worst recession for 60 years.
Moreover it is now clear that world capitalism is in the grip of a depression, as we have explained in previous issues of the MIR. (See MIR No. 53, September-October 1993). This rules out large-scale concessions to the proletariat on a world scale. On the contrary the capitalists are attempting to snatch back the reforms, in the form of the ‚welfare state‘ in the advanced industrial countries, granted in the post-1945 period. Despite the flirtation with Keynesian or neo-Keynesian ideas, in the present world economic situation, the adoption of large-scale Keynesian measures is ruled out.
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This does not mean that in certain specific instances, for vital strategic and political reasons, the ruling class internationally will not attempt to give concessions, some of them considerable, in order to try and solve formerly intractable problems. Thus in the Middle East one of the vital ingredients in the attempt to make the deal between the PLO and Israel ’stick‘ is the promise of substantial investment, particularly from the Gulf states, in Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
Similarly in South Africa, given the colossally aroused expectations of the masses, some reforms will have to be introduced in an attempt to mollify the masses. Action will have to be taken in the field of housing, in education, and above all as far as jobs are concerned. Even journals such as Business Day have advocated a ‚retraining‘ programme for unemployed township youth. A recent report by the Macro-Economic Research Group (MERG) proposed „massive cash injections into education and training, job creation, housing and health“. It also advocated the short term re-distribution of land, mainly for the benefit of female members of landless households in rural areas, the acquisition of white farmland saddled by unsustainable levels of debt, and even the nationalisation of some commercial banks and the buying of key stakes in companies on the Johannesburg stock exchange „in order to transfer the ownership of wealth to the majority“.
Some concessions can, with the help of international capital, be implemented. The report estimates that a basic health care and nutrition programme could be introduced at the cost of one billion rand a year (£160 million) which would lead to the construction of 2,000 clinics. A housing programme could also be introduced aiming at the completion of 350,000 homes a year by the end of the decade and a jobs programme for „2.5 million jobs in 12 years“. Some concessions, it must be underlined, will be given. But the problems besetting South Africa, of massive unemployment, catastrophic housing and dilapidated education, will remain intractable on a capitalist basis. Even substantial reforms by an ANC government, given the nature of the problems, is like an egg cup being used to empty an ocean.
However, it is possible that in the first period the illusion that the problems of the masses are being solved can delay for a short time a movement of the proletariat. After waiting 350 years a certain fund of credit will be granted by the African workers to what they will perceive as ‚their‘ government. But once it dawns on them that only the slightest dent will be made in the massive social problems of the African townships, an inevitable outburst of anger and indignation will take place. Even before an ANC-dominated government has come to power there are rumblings of discontent amongst the youth and a critical attitude towards the ANC leadership among significant layers of the working class. They are already suspicious of the bourgeois wing of the ANC, which more and more distances itself from the working class basis of the organisation.
This critical mood has reflected itself in the debate within COSATU on the need for a „workers‘ party. Its significance is that this idea of a workers‘ party has developed before the coming to power of an ANC-dominated government. It is a promissory note for the future as far as the South African working class is concerned. At this moment the South African masses, correctly so, are driving towards the greatest possible majority for the ANC in the elections, which the Marxists around Congress Militant entirely identify with.
The slogan of the ‚workers‘ party‘, which is played with by some sects on the outskirts of the movement, is premature at this stage. The working class have first to test out the ANC in action. It is vital therefore that the greatest possible majority, giving the ANC leadership no real excuses for delaying action on the demands of the masses, is achieved during the election.
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A class differentiation within the ANC, already in its incipient stages, is inevitable in the future. Cracks along class lines have already begun to appear. Chris Hani, before his assassination, warned against the move to the right of the ANC leadership and spoke of the formation of some possible future socialist force after the ANC came to power. The suspicions of many rank-and-file ANC members were further indicated in December, with the election of Winnie Mandela to the presidency of the ANC Women’s League, who despite her evident political weaknesses, is seen as opposing the ANC’s move to the right.
Developments in Namibia, with riot police deployed by the SWAPO government, have been noted by South African workers. The Sunday Nation comments: „Namibia’s South West African Peoples‘ Organisation has a proud tradition of struggle. Much like the ANC, it fought colonialism at every level, waged a valiant armed struggle and was unstinting in its revolutionary ideals“.
Moreover like COSATU the Mineworkers of Namibia (NUM) supported SWAPO. Yet it was repaid in November with an attack by SWAPO police on its picket line at the strike-hit Consolidated Diamond Mines. And it is not the first time that repression has been used against the Namibian unions. The police attacked striking brewery workers three years ago, injuring scores.
Former rail worker Andimbu Tolvo ya Tolvo, now Namibia’s mines and energy minister, explained such measures by saying that Namibia could not afford a strike, so key was the mining industry. This is the logic of SWAPO’s decision to remain within the framework of capitalism. The situation will be no different for an ANC government which accepts capitalism and rests on a capitalist state, although one which will be overwhelmingly Africanised How long will it be before an ANC government sends in police and army units against striking workers or rebellious inhabitants of the African townships?
A coalition government, with the ANC as a majority, will be subject to remorseless contrary and counter-class pressures. Mandela and the right of the ANC have already bent the knee to capital, both within the country and on an international scale. It is unlikely that they will, as the MERG group advocates, take over some commercial banks or introduce bigger taxes on capital in the form of a serious wealth tax.
On the contrary, as with the colonial bourgeois as a whole, it seems that the ANC have opted for an ‚open‘ economy without even limited controls on the inflow and outflow of capital. This could have disastrous consequences for the weakened South African economy, particularly for indigenous industry.
Imperialism will be able to exercise an even greater stranglehold than at present on the economy. This in turn will prevent the ANC from introducing a programme that can mollify the masses. Even on the land question a new government will find itself between two millstones. Some five million Africans have been forcibly removed from ancestral land, and five million whites in a population of 38 million now own about 83% of the land.
The cry of ‚kill the farmer, kill the Boer‘, although ultra-left as a slogan on the lips of people like Peter Mokaba, leader of the ANC Youth League, nevertheless has deep historical roots. It does resonate, particularly with impatient layers of the youth, when set against the background of the systematic robbery of the African people of their land over generations.
On the other hand the threat of a ‚White backlash‘ is fuelled by a perceived threat to take over white farms. The demand for a separate Boer homeland, which finds its greatest support in the Transvaal, is connected more with the fear of white farms being expropriated rather than any expectations that such a Utopian dream could be realised. There is no area, covered by a magistrate, in which the whites have overwhelming demographic superiority. The only way which such a ‚Volkstaat‘, a Boer homeland, could be realised is on the basis of the establishment of a new apartheid regime, with the driving out of blacks to create exclusive white areas.
Mandela, while he has attempted through negotiations to divide the white right, has made it clear that „the ANC would never concede an independent white homeland“. (The Independent, 21 December 1993). Nevertheless the land issue will prove to be a source of contention for a new government that comes to power.
The pressures that will be exerted on the new government, particularly on the ANC by the African population, means that the agreed constitution will not be the last word. The ANC leaders will undoubtedly attempt to use the presence of others in the cabinet, the National Party etc., as an excuse for not carrying out the demands of the African people. Pressure will therefore grow for an homogeneous ANC government and undoubtedly that will develop at a certain stage.
The present constitution could be ripped up. The plan for a five-year timescale before the possibility of ‚majority rule‘ could be considerably shortened under mass pressure. It is not excluded that there could be a series of governments, either with the ANC in coalition or holding power by itself.
The other side of the process will be a continued radicalisation within the labour movement. In essence the South African bourgeois is already being forced to rule through right-wing ANC leaders. The National Party could receive no more than 12-13% of the vote in the forthcoming elections. Under the hammer blow of events it could shatter with big sections of the National Party finding a home under the protective embrace of the more and more bourgeoisified wing of the ANC. The ANC could in the course of time become the main instrument for the political rule of the South African bourgeois.
On the other hand an increasingly radicalised working class will seek to cash in its promissory note of a workers‘ party. The ANC itself could split with the left coming together with COSATU to form such an organisation. Thus the end of apartheid and 350 years of political slavery is not the end for South Africa.
On the contrary it is the beginning of a new chapter which will see the emergence of the powerful and inspirational South African working class under its own colours and challenging for power. Mandela, in seeking the support of COSATU for the ANC’s election campaign, asked the delegates at the COSATU congress to do to an ANC government what they did to the National Party if it fails the masses. The South African working class will undoubtedly take him at his word. They will test and re-test the ANC government. They will see in action that it will not satisfy their demands.
They will become more and more radicalised and will look for those ideas which can show a way out of the impasse. They will inevitably return to the ideas of the Freedom Charter, to the concepts of nationalisation, of a new society, of democratic socialism. These ideas still burn fiercely in the hearts of the most class conscious South African workers. They will, through experience, see that it is the ideas of Marxism, of Congress Militant, which offers the programme to realise their aims.
A combination of the powerful organisations of the South African working class – of COSATU 1.2 million strong – and the ideas of Marxism, can forge a real socialist alliance which can guarantee the transformation of the lives of the South African working class and with it open up a new socialist chapter for the whole of Africa.
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