By Dale T. McKinley
JOHANNESBURG — Why does the predictable (if uneven) evolution of the African National Congress's (ANC) socioeconomic strategy and policy continue to be treated by the South Africa's media commentators as if it were a revolution in the making? The simplest answer is that most commentators are blissfully unaware of, or consciously ignore, the historic class politics of the ANC leadership.
While it might make good media propaganda (and score brownie points from the big capitalists) for ANC leaders to talk about it being time to "bite the bullet" and speed its implementation of neo-liberal, pro-capitalist policies over the objections of the trade unions and the ranks of the liberation movements, the reality is that the ANC has been continuously chewing on this bullet for the better part of its history.
Finance minister Trevor Manuel's recent opportunistic comments on the direction and character of South Africa's economic policy do not, as Weekly Mail and Guardian commentators Howard Barrell and Donna Block (January 14-20) would have us believe, represent the ANC's version of the "end of history" — its conversion from Marxist to "free" market ideology. Rather, Manuel's comments represent the latest, and possibly most disingenuous, public confirmation of the ANC leadership's petty bourgeois class agenda.
Back in 1945, ANC president Dr A.B. Xuma explained this agenda with an honesty that contemporary ANC leaders would find politically unpalatable: "It is of less importance to us whether capitalism is smashed or not. It is of greater importance to us that while capitalism exists, we must fight and struggle to get our full share and benefit from the system."
The conception of class power that the majority petty bourgeois leadership of the ANC has always held has been defined by the class they have aspired to join, the bourgeoisie. This has meant that — instead of seeing the radical possibilities of the struggles waged by their mass constituency against apartheid, racism and capitalism — the leadership's goal has been limited access to the existing political and economic institutions. This goal has been pursued regardless of the tactics (including left-wing rhetoric, armed struggle and militant mass action) used to achieve it.
In much the same way that current ANC President Thabo Mbeki's prefers "closed-door" dealings with leaders of the ANC-led Alliance (that includes the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions), throughout its history the ANC's dominance of the liberation movement has limited the voice of the majority oppressed black working class and poor in whose name it directed the struggle.
There are numerous examples. During the 1920s and 1930s, the class interests of the ANC leadership (land ownership, access to capital, a "free market") led to a practical politics that viewed close identification with the interests of the workers and unemployed as a danger. In the 1960s, a small group of ANC leaders unilaterally decided to launch the armed struggle in the early 1960s. The ANC's mass constituency was virtually locked out of the decisions during the pre-1994 negotiations.
While the tactics followed by the ANC leadership have varied over time, its belief in the necessity of seeking common ground with capital and the state for some kind of social contract to restructure an ailing South African capitalism has meant the ANC leaders have contained mass struggle within the parameters of an elite-managed process.
The history of the ANC leadership's political practice reveals a tendency to block the self-activity and self-emancipation of South African masses. It should come as no surprise today that the ANC leadership views the day-to-day struggles of the majority of South Africans as merely ad hoc requirements for the more important goal of gaining access to South Africa's political and economic power for an emerging capitalist class.