Comment by Jorge Jorquera
The initial motivation for this comment came from reading articles on South Africa in Socialist Worker, the paper of the International Socialist Organisation. These articles don't vary much, at least not in theme, which is that the African National Congress is leading black workers astray. "The ANC has made it clear that it is not prepared to challenge the power of big business", declared Socialist Worker two months before the election — the ISO didn't need to wait to see what the ANC would to in government.
According to the ISO, the ANC must sell out. The outcome is preordained by logic: "The ANC has always been a nationalist movement, not a socialist one. It has argued that the movement against apartheid should weld blacks of all classes together. Its aim has been to see black-led capitalism established in South Africa."
To construct its schema, the ISO has to distort history, treating the ANC as an unchanging monolith when in reality it has gone through many phases in the development of its program and leadership. Moreover, the schema presumes an ultraleft oversimplification of Marxist strategy.
The ANC's Freedom Charter is hardly a program for "black capitalism". Along with the general program and direction of the ANC in the postwar period, it reflects the genuine aspirations of the South African black majority — all of whom have been institutionally oppressed.
In the struggle against apartheid, the black working class has made alliances with "middle class" forces, on the basis of democratic demands. This is no "concession", but a strategic necessity of building a mass democratic movement.
The RDP
The election victory of the ANC has forced economic issues to the fore. All social classes in South Africa look to the ANC's economic program — the privileged classes in fear and the working people in expectation.
In 1990 the total estimated employed, including agriculture and domestic service, amounted to a mere 7.95 million people. Large numbers are self-employed in the informal sector, around 4.5 million people, of whom 1 million work in informal agriculture. These millions exist at below-subsistence levels. Another 2 million are estimated to have no income at all.
For the capitalists, the economic crisis is felt in falling profit rates, due in particular to the low price of gold, generally poor commodity prices over the last decade and the political instability and financial costs of apartheid. A shift of capital from production to the financial sector has resulted in diminishing capital stock and economic stagnation.
In this context the ANC's Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) has become a battleground between big capital and the working class.
Bobby Godsell, executive director of Anglo American, South Africa's largest company, in an article on the RDP had the following to say: "We will not achieve economic growth without political stability. Political stability is not possible without growth ... This will indeed require a partnership between government and civil society — precisely as the RDP seeks." Big business is looking for a social contract to restrain the militancy of labour.
On the other hand, the revolutionary forces in South Africa see the RDP as an organising tool for the further development of the mass democratic movement. A May 1993 South African Communist Party (SACP) Central Committee paper put it this way: "The pact is a basis for a broad national democratic alliance".
Jabu Moleketi of the SACP explains: "Through the accord we must also endeavour to rally and consolidate all social forces that are interested in real democratic change. Slogans such as 'free and compulsory primary education for all', 'fight poverty, disease and squalor, decent housing and jobs for all', 'towards a national health system', have the capacity to build a mass movement outside parliament. It is the growth of this mass democratic movement which will further tilt the strategic balance of forces in our favour."
Within the left and revolutionary forces in South Africa there are of course different opinions on the role and nature of the RDP. Alec Erwin (COSATU/SACP), an important economist in the ANC, argues, "The private sector and market forces are vital components of the RDP, which is proposing to alter the environment in order to make them more effective". At the same time, Erwin argues for the principles of economic redistribution central to the RDP.
The content of the RDP, if implemented with political will and mass support, would undoubtedly intensify the South African class struggle. The RDP is not a ready-made social contract.
Bobby Godsell recognises this when he says, "Some of the targets set [by the RDP] do not suggest that there has been a serious examination of the achievable". Regarding the provision of effective public transport, for example, Godsell writes, "It is surely premature and pre-emptive to decide that this goal can only be met by a publicly-owned passenger transport system".
State power
What is crucial is the political strategy behind the RDP. A more radical economic program with a more rapid pace of nationalisation — like that of the Allende government in Chile — would not in itself guarantee a revolutionary victory.
The discussion underlying the debate on the RDP is over the question of state power. This is the central question which the South African revolutionary movement is having to deal with. Government is not state power. And without state power, the position of any radical or revolutionary government is permanently tenuous and hamstrung.
It is a mistake to deny, as ultraleft ideologues do, that parliamentary government can be party of the arsenal of revolutionary tactics. But the overthrow of the old capitalist state is still the dividing line between reform and revolution. Without such an overthrow, not even the major "democratic tasks" of the revolutionary process in South Africa can be carried through. There will be formal equality for the black majority, but the bulk will remain in poverty and oppressed.
Ideological struggle
The ANC and the national democratic movement as a whole reflect the pressures of both the South African class struggle and the international situation. The movement in South Africa has to deal not only with the pressure toward opportunism from international capital and the domestic ruling class, but also with the legacy of Stalinism and the disappearance of the old "socialist bloc".
These are real questions that the ultraleft ideologues simply ignore. How do you organise a revolutionary democratic state in such global conditions? The Nicaraguans know how hard it is to keep state power.
The debate on the "market" is real. Rapid nationalisation would isolate the South African economy. This would have immediate repercussions. The volume and composition of consumer goods available to the middle classes (and sections of the white working class) would be drastically curtailed, increasing the social base for counter-revolution.
The road ahead may be hard, but it's also full of promise. The strength of the mass democratic movement makes it impossible for the ruling class not to give further concessions. Such concessions will eat into their pockets and thus their ability to carry through the project of creating a labour aristocracy that could sustain a social contract and help stabilise the political situation.
Internationally, the class struggle is intensifying. New fronts will open up, as in Brazil, where the Workers Party heads a powerful challenge of the ruling elites.
What the outcome will be, in South Africa and internationally, is still to be determined by struggle. The ultralefts want to appear wise by predicting failure. Fortunately, they do not have much of a following, for in politics that kind of prediction can become self-fulfilling.
The revolutionary forces in South Africa face a big challenge — to steer a course that will maintain and extend the support of the working class and oppressed, to forge many alliances, and to extend the international hand that will help the struggle advance on a global scale. Our aim should be to support them in that effort, not to prescribe ultraleft rules for them.