SULEIMAN ISAACS is an activist with the Cape Town-based Community Peace Foundation and a member of the African National Congress. He is a former union organiser, an early member of the United Democratic Front, and was a member of the Communist Party until it was unbanned in 1990. On a visit to Sydney, Isaacs spoke to Green Left Weekly's NORM DIXON about politics in the Western Cape.
In 1994, the National Party won control of Western Cape provincial government by exploiting fears among "coloured" (the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking mixed race) voters, almost 60% of the electorate, that an ANC government would discriminate against them. The NP painted itself as the party protecting the rights of "minorities", and 68% of coloured voters opted for the party that had oppressed them since 1948. At the May 29 local elections, while the ANC narrowed the gap, the NP again won a big majority from Cape Town's predominantly working-class coloured voters.
The result was a surprise to many, considering the prominent role struggles in the Western Cape played in the '70s and '80s. Coloured communities were among the first to build the civic movement, and the United Democratic Front was launched in Mitchells Plains in 1984. Coloured workers became stalwarts of the militant, anti-apartheid new unions affiliated to COSATU, particularly the SA Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
Like many other coloured activists, Isaacs was shocked and disappointed at the NP victory. It was especially galling because ANC and SACP activists, at enormous personal risk and cost, led campaigns against the NP's apartheid policies and for community empowerment.
"The NP does not have infrastructure in communities. We assisted people with legal and rent problems, we run advice centres. We have had all these structures going for years. We felt: 'These bloody coloureds, we'll just close everything. They can go to hell.'"
But once the shock passed, movement activists discussed the situation and realised that there were reasons for the defection. The liberation movement had failed to win the coloured community politically to non-racialism.
"The Western Cape was a Coloured Labour Preference Area under apartheid. At the expense of other blacks, we coloureds were granted privileges in jobs, education and housing. The racial divisions were socially engineered ... Coloureds are not a homogeneous group. I'm a Muslim; my parents are what are called Cape Malays. Other are descended from the [indigenous] Khoi or San people, and others have mixed blood from the British ...
"The NP said to coloureds: 'Hey, you watch it. Those blacks are going to take what you have.' It was a psychological thing. The very poor coloureds — who are just as poor as Africans — were convinced they had to protect what they had, even if they have nothing much to protect."
The NP spread crude racist rumours like, "Africans will marry your daughters. You will be turned out of your houses. Basically, the NP based their campaign on fear."
Isaacs said this fear must be addressed by the left because the NP and big business continue to drive a wedge between the coloured and African sections of the black population. "Now coloureds have to compete for jobs with their African counterparts on an equal basis. They are not competing with the white middle class. Through the '80s recession, more and more coloured people became unemployed.
"Affirmative action as applied by big business is tokenism. My mother worked as a garment worker for 13 or 14 years, yet an [African] worker is appointed manager after working at the factory for six months. The bosses want an African face to show those in power that things are going well there." This fuels resentment, Isaacs pointed out.
Debate
The NP victory in the Western Cape has prompted a debate within the liberation movement. Noor Nieftagodian, an ANC activist and an academic at the University of Witwatersrand, has written that an important reason for the size of the ANC's loss was its unwillingness to campaign on an unreservedly pro-working-class policy.
In June 1994, Nieftagodian wrote: "The ANC did not hammer the alliance between the bosses and the NP, which has been responsible for the miserable conditions experienced by the Coloured working class. Coloured workers, especially those organised in trade unions, are acutely aware of their exploitation by the bosses. In the Western Cape, thousands of clothing and textile workers have been retrenched over the three or four years [prior to 1994], and farm workers on the outskirts of Cape Town continue to live under terrible conditions. The rule of the bosses has been defended, very often with guns, by the NP.
"A political attack on this alliance would have strengthened the ANC's campaign against the NP. However, the leadership's accommodating stance towards the bosses made this virtually impossible. It has become apparent that important sections of the ANC leadership are unwilling to antagonise the capitalists, and have quickly learnt the art of defending their economic interests."
Isaacs disagrees with this analysis, he told Green Left Weekly. "I have worked in the unions, especially in the early years of COSATU, and it is not true that coloureds were better organised or class conscious. Coloureds had unions for years — sweetheart unions — and it was activists like us who had to go into these reactionary unions and transform them to become part of the bigger movement ... After they ended up in COSATU, they did slowly start to understand how exploitation worked. They started to get more money. Their militancy was based on that."
Isaacs does agree that the UDF was wound up prematurely. "The UDF included religious groups. The coloureds are very much organised around religion, be they Muslims or Christians. The UDF also was organised around other structures such as trade unions and civics. So within the UDF, the impression was that the UDF was largely a coloured organisation.
"When the ANC was unbanned, tactically we made a mistake. If we had based our analysis on the coloureds' consciousness due to racist social engineering, we would have kept the UDF purely for the sake of organisation and to politically address the issue of racism. I was one of the people arguing that we cannot have a separate congress because that is reactionary. But now, after a few years looking at it, I would say we made a fundamental mistake. Religious organisations didn't have problems per se with the ANC as an organisation, they had problems with being part of an umbrella body under the ANC. Because the UDF was a front, they still had their autonomy. The ANC is based on individual members, not constituencies."
Class issues
How can coloured people be won back? "People look at the '80s and say coloureds were organised. I've been around since 1976. We had a core of activists and that was it. We used that core to mobilise, and the impression was that the community was very organised. But they were never that organised. In fact, they are much better organised now, as ironic as that sounds after losing the election to the NP."
Isaacs told Green Left Weekly that perhaps "for another five years race and public issues" will dominate political debate in the Western Cape, but he believes class issues will increasingly become key. "Coloured people are very loyal towards COSATU. On a provincial level, coloured workers are a majority. In terms of getting people to vote for a progressive party, COSATU has to split and go into elections on its own."
The challenge for the left and the ANC remains, by fighting for the interests of the working class, to convince the coloured community they must unite with African workers in both the Western Cape and the rest of South Africa.