Notes from the debate of
11 May 2000

Present

Apologies: Langa Zita and Rob Davies.

The ANC/SACP/Cosatu Alliance an input by Jeremy Cronin

As the ANC we were concerned that while theconferences held every five years and their elections are important, they do not allow forthe discussion of theoretical and strategic issues. A strategic conference is due to beheld in July on race and racism and the ANC as a popular movement. A draft input documenton motive forces of the national democratic revolution was prepared for this, but it wasweak, naming the motive forces as the black working class, the middle classes, and thepatriotic bourgeoisie, and lining them up like soccer teams Chiefs and Pirates. I havebeen asked to be part of the drafting team to revise the document.

My first encounter with Harold Wolpe was whilepreparing a draft SACP input in April 1989, naming the same motive forces. Harold had animpact on improving this static notion of forces and classes. These social forces areheavily contested, and they have their own stratification and tendencies. There is a greatpolitical contest for their political allegiance. The Alliance has its own contests,internally and outside. How we understand the Alliance is often filtered through themedia, and through our ideological paradigms.

We dont have a good understand of what thekey strategic option in South Africa is. There is a new kind of opposition in the country,and it is not retrograde conservative forces (although these do exist). A project ofradical change confronts the Alliance. It is not conservative but conserves the powersfrom the past. It is not particularly racist, but is about reconfiguring class terrain ofSouth Africa. It is transforming the level of organisation of the working class. It hasnot won the right to a two-tier labour market, but is effectively doing this throughcasualisation and contracting out. The capitalist class is being reconfigured,deracialised, it is a more global player, and it plays a sub-imperial role.

Big business and the Alliance

SA Breweries commissioned a study from the Centrefor Development Enterprise (successor to the Urban Foundation and under the leadership ofAnn Bernstein), published under the title Policymaking in a new democracy. The publication reviews governments performance, andamounts to a kind of Bonapartist project. It suggests the country requires a new centre ofgravity and tough leadership to respond to the challenge of the future. It proposes apowerful presidential centre, and constituting a new ANC bloc to replace the ANC Alliance.This bloc would comprise large business as governments most important ally, emergingblack business, handpicked provincial leaders, the rural and urban poor, and members ofZionist-type churches. It describes the members of these churches as people who arenot experts in the toyi-toyi or first in the entitlement queue, and as disciplinedhard-working people. According to the report, in order to achieve this new power bloc, thepresent ANC Alliance would have to be smashed. The report praises ramming GEAR through inspite of opposition, and the castigation of sections of the Alliance, for example, KaderAsmal openly criticising recalcitrant teachers. This is a paradox, a kind of Faustianbargain. The report proposes building an authoritarian figure authoritarianism isseen as a virtue but what will happen if this authoritarianism is unleashed? Forexample, Mugabe was previously saluted by IMF as a hero, but the situation has turned.Mbeki said yesterday in Parliament we need legal land reform, and would not tolerate landinvasions. Big business want Mbeki to be this Bonapartist figure. They want him to takeoff the gloves, but make sure the white minority feels it is important. The reportmentions watching for the body language, not just saying it, but meaning it.This grouping wants Mbeki to be a Bonaparte, but one sent to Swiss finishing school. Thisparadigm moulds how the media writes about the alliance.

The media and the Alliance

Howard Barrell wrote an idiotsguide to South African politics in the Mail& Guardian of 4 March 2000. This exemplifies the kind of paradigm which influencesthe media: that there are only three things which affect politics: the economy, race, andpower.

The economy

With regard to the economy Barrell sayssince the late 1980s, since the triumph of the neo-liberal orthodoxy, there is only oneeconomic policy there is no alternative, no debate to be had. Any attempt to doanything else will be punished. Any alternatives may be dismissed as populism andrhetoric. In the Sunday Times, Ray Hartleypraises Trevor Manuel strategy of assembling a team of high-powered technocrats, anddismisses the idea of political compromise as cynical or painfully naïve.

The media does not engage in meaningful policychoice debate. The Mail & Guardian is notable to inform us about what is happening in the ANC, the Cabinet, or the Alliance. Business Day is an important exception ithas a hard business orientation. There is not just one capitalist viewpoint on, forexample, inflation targeting there are real debates in and between sectors. For theother media there is just the Western consensus, all the rest of the debate is just a lotof noise.

Hartley says Manuel did the right thing byignoring an Alliance consensus position. But the job of technocrats is to model, to spellout the pros and cons of policy. Their job is to inform the policy makers, and the policymakers must make intelligent choices. Hartley conflates two things he does notseparate the technocratic stuff from policy choices. This is the economic line.

Even in Washington there are debates. We have acolonial kind of mentality here. Barrell says there is no difference between the SACP, theANC, the NNP and the DP. His view is that the ANC in practice is the same as DP and NNP intheory. We in the SACP are seen as a hangover, all Stalinists, but in our saner moments weget it right. This is a cognitive dissonance, Barrell says.

Race

Barrell says the top leadership and a few brightminds are ahead of their constituents, and they operate by using the race card as a kindof rhetorical device to connect enlightened leadership and ignorant mass base. In his viewthis is the area of political discourse; it is not for real.

A lot of newspapers say the ANC says one thing,but means another. The newspapers see deep meaning behind the superficial meaning of whatit says. For example, when it says restructuring, it really means privatisation, but itcannot say the word. This idea that the ANC has problems with vocabulary, with words, isalmost racist.

Power

The media also sees political space as being aboutpower. Week after week, the Mail &Guardian exposesabuses of power, careerism and factionalism in a reductionist way. The Sunday Times and the Mail & Guardian are fascinated by power, as isthe Centre for Development Enterprise in its Bonapartist presidential project. Even thechoice of terms indicates this, for example, a BusinessDay headline refers to Geoff Radebe as the tsar of privatisation. The Sunday Independent speaks about two Geoff Radebes the good one, the cavalier privatiser and Geoff the small town preacher, forexample, when he spoke at the Human Rights Commission hearing into the media.

The Centre for Development Enterprise supports theconstruction of a powerful centre but seems to regret that the ANC plays this role. Howcan Tony Leon stand on a soapbox in Browns Farm to talk to poor people? You needblack politician with street cred. If I had a chance to write the ANCs submission onracism in the media to the Human Rights Commission, I would have located the debate aboutracism as a neo-colonial project to make Mbeki say what Tony Blair says; to act as thepresidents ventriloquist; an indirect rule model in which the media praises him in asupine manipulative way, while reinterpreting what he says for example,restructuring really means privatisation.

The state of the Alliance

There is some truth in all of this media coverage.Under pressure from volatile markets, with the rand losing 20% of its value in the balanceof payments crisis in 1996, some ministers didgo the technocratic route. The attempt to suppress the debate about GEAR has beensuccessfully resisted but it has not changed the policy. Igoli 2002 is an example of atechnocratic, managerial approach to the real financial crises experienced by localauthorities. The race card has been played, but remarkably infrequently. Perhaps there areelements of Bonapartism in Mbeki, but this is far from the whole truth.

We are an alliance in struggle. An alternativeprogramme, a dominant but contested programme within the Alliance has to do with severalthings. The most salient is race as a defining reality within our society. According toUNCTAD figures, 53% of South Africas people are poor and 27% are ultra poor. Of the53%, 98% are black. Trevor Manuel says the latest Gini coefficient figures show that SouthAfrica is once again the most unequal society on earth. We have displaced Brazil from topspot. Inequality has deepened in our society. At the opening of Parliament the presidentwas talking about two nations one impoverished, poor, deprived and black; and asecond nation which is mainly white, although not as entirely white as it was. Of the top10% of the wealthiest households, 9% are white. Not just the unemployed, but even employedworkers live in deep poverty.

In the Alliance the ANC is the national movement in a society which is racialised like ours, its constituency is mainly thedowntrodden, the poor, and mainly black African. It is not a typical third world poor proletarianisation has taken deep root, creating a constituency for the CommunistParty, and Cosatu. The defining reality of South Africa underpins the unity in theAlliance. There are strains, but the underpinning features remain in place.

Several things have confronted the alliance in thelast six years. One has been taking on governance without a cadre with experience. Historyexcluded our cadre from this kind of experience. 1994 was the worst possible time totransform social democracy was in tatters, there was chaos in Eastern Europe, achaos echoed in Seattle in 1999. Under huge pressures and realising the constraints weface an inadequate budget, an onerous debt, massive pension fund commitments there has been a tendency to get bureaucratic and technocratic. What has been portrayed inthe media as a strain in the Alliance was Cabinet taking things through the ANC. I wasinvolved in explaining what GEAR was in Mafeking. At the time the press reported it hadbeen approved by ANC, but this was not the case. There is a disjuncture between being ingovernment and being a mass movement these are some of the strains of being inpower. The speed with which decisions must be made and their technical complexity make itdifficult to open a space for debate. However, there is more ferment and debate inside theCabinet and the ANC National Executive Committee about appropriate economic policy. Withinflation targets, no formula will work, it must be appropriate to local conditions. Thepromises of the GEAR policy package have not been realised at this point we werepromised 6% growth and many jobs, but none of this has happened. Some say that it has nottaken place because of externalities (like the currency crisis), others say because ofinternalities.

There are strains between the movement characterof the Alliance, and the intensity of policy making within government. Party members areoften portrayed as left-wing malcontents within the Alliance. The Alliance itself iscontested the debates within the alliance get refracted through the media, whichare often hostile. There are strains, but the Alliance will continue. It is a robustalliance.

Discussion

NalediPandor: Are we talking about some homogenous entity, without different viewpoints? Wedo have different viewpoints. When you said the Alliance you meantANC. When you made reference to the executive, you did not reflect on how theSACP felt you need to be measured because that there are different opinions. Wewere not seeing the distinctions that exist. I want to dispute the Gini coefficientcharacterisation of the emerging bourgeoisie and the poor among blacks. We do not look atthe social formation within which blacks find themselves. If you are poor you are actuallysupporting many people, having a good income does not mean the same for blacks and whites.This is part of the misreading of black people. There is a lack of understanding of socialexperience of black people. New wealth does not repose in an individual, we may misreadthe contribution that an individual is making.

AlexLichtenstein: So the whites say we have a deracialised economy, the left uses fakestatistics?

NeilColeman: These statistics are punted by conservative forces in society, they are notpart of left thinking as such.

NormanLevy: The Centre for Development Enterprise argues on the basis of class forces. Theconclusions they may reach may not be ours, but it is interesting to see that class is thebasis of its argument. I would be interested to see the countervailing power it sees big business, the Zionist Church disciplined hard-working corps? Infact, some of these are supporters of the Alliance rather than a grouping which couldconstitute some alternative opposition.

JeremyCronin: The main point is that this viewpoint is contrary to early drafts of motiveforces of forces for change and others against it. There is a kind of strategic projectand an authentic national democratic project. Both compete for the support ofthe ANC.

NeilColeman: Speaking from the trade union movement, a lot of the agenda driven since 1994by captains of industry has been covert. The business sector published Growth for all in 1996 this was an openintervention. While not much was openly accepted from this source, many of its proposalshave found expression in GEAR. These things work in a sophisticated and covert way. Wheredid the high-powered government technocrats and bureaucrats who deal with big businesscome from? In 1996, Financial Mail pointed outMaria Ramos met with captains of industry where they proposed a devaluation of 25%, asproposed in Growth for all. This is how muchvalue the rand lost in the currency crash of that year. The currency crash was a manageddevaluation done in a covert way.

JeremyCronin: Liberalism has many currents. It is also present in the ANC, as can be seen inour liberal democratic Constitution. One liberal current attached to white business hasalways been out of power before, when the Afrikaner nationalists were in power andnow that the ANC are in power. Now these people are saying build a Bonapartist figure topromote continuity. They say strikes attack our attempts to grow, the only way we can makemoney is to invest offshore. The RDP is more than an election manifesto, but it is notenough of a macroeconomic framework. The RDP wanted growth and development to be catalysedby major infrastructural development in the areas of transport, skills training, housingand many others. Only massive infrastructural investment would overcome the inequities andgeographical illogic of apartheid, but by 1995 it was clear that we did not have theresources in the state to do this. So, the key thing become to attract attract foreigninvestment, not through development, but by making the right macroeconomic noises. One ofthe technocrats involved in GEAR told me what they had planned was to prepare in greatsecrecy, not clouded by democratic debate, take a dramatic tough measure, hit hard, bysurprise, and then open the debate into a job-creating environment. But the 1996 marketcrash stole our thunder, so the devaluation of the rand we had planned had been done bythe market instead. Now the market keeps saying what you are doing is good, butconvince us you are serious. We keep trying to prove we are really serious. A lot of the polemic directed atus should be more directed at the market. We could not devalue the rand by 25%. Massiveinvestment flows have not come for a variety of reasons. We are sending the rightsignals, for example, austerity, devaluation and massive privatisation.

NalediPandor: Most parastatals are sitting with huge pension debts taking its pensiondebt into account, SAA was worth only R1. It had borrowed money against the pension fund.The whole of Transnet is underfunded. We passed a bill in Parliament to take over thisdebt so that strategic equity in SAA could be sold.

RichardRosenthal: They were committed to pay a pension for which they had not provided theunderlying capital.

NeilColeman: The biggest problem is speculative capital. This is directly linked to highinterest rates imposed by the Reserve Bank it is a vicious circle, linked to thebalance of payments problem.

JeremyCronin: There has been a net outflow of domestic savings. The dominant ideology outthere has been an Afro neo-liberal one in so far as Washington consensus is concerned. Therequest is for foreign investment but with a black economic empowerment component. Thereis talk of a (black) patriotic bourgeoisie the RDP wanted to mobilise allresources, statal, parastatal (in the sense of selling strategic equity stakes), as wellas domestic capital. The idea is that only the black capitalist class will be patriotic,hence the appeal to domestic capital to invest and create jobs. We have said to whitecapitalists we are not interested in you. Cosatu has been exploring domesticcapital investment in the Millenium Council. The sociology of black households isdifferent (Naledis point), but subject to the caveat that my friends, lots of peopleI know, are disowning relatives, others not. The fact that the one person that has donewell is often because a whole village has sacrificed to send the person to school, and nowit is payback time.

ShirleyWalters: Both in the Centre for Development Enterprises argument about the needfor strong leadership on the one hand and your talking about the ANC, rather than the ANCand SACP leadership, the notion of a more authoritarian system is with us. This suitscapital. The popular press conveys an increasing idea of the president philosopher king,whether it is the African Renaissance, or AIDS and HIV. The media is shutting down debate.The president is leader of the government, head of the ANC, and part of the Alliance. Howdoes this affect the Alliances way of operating?

NormanLevy: One normally thinks of Bonapartists as strong figures, and strong stateintervention. What opportunities for choice are there with the big economic reality ofglobalism? To what extent do we respond to the imperatives of the international market, orto something before GEAR? Are we victim and participant in global reality?

AnnemarieWolpe: We have had several sessions on globalisation for example, Doratspaper on diminution of skills of the labour force. Can we link this with the discussionswe have had?

JeremyCronin: To answer Shirleys question part of what many of us have beenarguing for is that we need a fairly effective, well-managed state, but this has been oneof the problems. There is a high degree of incoherence, we have a Ministry of Transportbut key public resources fall under the Ministry of Public Enterprises, for example, SAAand Transnet. We need a more purposeful, more directed government which can leadreconstruction and development by harnessing all the available resources and drive theprocess of transformation forward. Some of this is happening, but there is a danger ofauthoritarianism. It is not just white South Africans who are worried about what ishappening in Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe there was a peasant guerrilla army the upperechelons of which went into government, the middle into the army, and the rest weredemobilised back into the rural areas. That was a classic third world revolution the rank and file are remote and scattered peasants unable to impact on the higher levels.We never got our guerilla struggle up and running, it was more armed propaganda involvingpeople in the factories, churches, townships and other places. There are elements whowould like to demobilise Cosatu back to the Eastern Highlands, but this willnot happen, the conditions are different. Zanufication can happen here, butthere are powerful countervailing forces. During presidential question time in Parliamentthis week there was a question about Zimbabwe, led by the opposition, saying why areyou so silent? Mbeki said we must have a soft landing in Zimbabwe, we must remain incontact with that government, because that government could pull the whole region down.The President is portraying it as a land crisis I dont think it is, althoughthere is a land issue. It has to do with ZANU losing the referendum and deepening poverty.Now the Zimbabwe Council of Trade Unions, previously a tame appendage of ZANU, which hadbegun to assert its independence, is now in an opposition political role. What Mbeki issaying privately to Mugabe we do not know. Under repeated questioning he effectively saidI am not Mugabe, how could you think so? There is a racist assumption here they want him to be Bonaparte, but they do not want the flipside of that. Buteventually he said we will not allow this to happen.

GeraldShaw: He could only influence with quiet diplomacy.

RichardRosenthal: Mbeki wanted to express empathy with the dispossessed. The other statementhe needed to make to focus the attention of white South Africa and say what isunacceptable there is unacceptable here. But he had to say, dont worry, itwill be done in an orderly way, dont panic.

JeremyCronin: In Parliament we said we have a land redistribution programme. This made nodifference. Mbeki has a distaste for ventriloquy, he did not want to saywe wont allow this to happen, but was pressured into doing it. The ANChas had challenges and has faced up to them unevenly, as have the SACP and Cosatu. Thismight be a huge lack of realism and pragmatism in the face of massive, rampantglobalisation.

NormanLevy: It is not that we are mainly following Washington consensus. The economicreality is that capitalism has reconstituted itself, it goes wherever the returns aregreatest. We talk as if we have choice. Is there any coherence, are we not just respondingto imperatives? Is there really a policy at all?

JeremyCronin: If you are incoherent you have very little choice. There is a great deal ofincoherence in this situation. There is an important priority around centralism in theAlliance, but there is also a shared strategic perspective and there is evidence ofgreater coherence in certain areas. In the EU free trade negotiation process, it becameclear that capital is free, except when we try to export to them, or to export steel tothe US. The free market is not so free, even on silly issues like ouzo and grappa where wecould never be a threat. On the trade front, a greater coherence and toughness has emergedin struggle. Also, Trevor Manuel has critiqued many things about globalisation hesupports the positive things, and has focused on a major re-engineering of the IMF andWorld Bank. There is an emerging perception of a struggle for example, SouthAfricas role in the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of African Unity showelements of an emerging alternative radical third world project.

RichardRosenthal: When you referred to the events of 1996, you referred to an historicopportunity that was missed the opportunity to devalue the rand and lift foreignexchange controls. Funds locked up here for a long time are likely to flow out as soon asexchange control goes. The opportunity was lost in the incremental market devaluation. Howcan we recapture this opportunity, become architects of our economic fate? If we arelooking for serious long-term investment, we need to take the risk, the punishment, liftexchange controls and risk serious capital outflows. Foreign investors can come and go asthey please.

JeremyCronin: The argument out there is that people inside want to get their money out.Third world countries are generally not getting foreign investment, although Brazil andMexico are doing a little better than others because they are closer to the US. China isthe major recipient of foreign investment in the world in spite of the fact that it sendsall the wrong signals, and has a socialist public sector as an important engine of growth.India has all kinds of blockages to investment. Both survived the Asian economic meltdown.China gave its public servants a 15% wage increase, running up an increased deficit, butdid this to boost its own market. Capitalism and socialism depend on each other. A strongstate is the key factor. I dont think we are about to be a major beneficiary offoreign investment, but we do have some resources. However, I dont think we areusing the opportunity our roads are falling apart, and railways are being closeddown. We need an effective Transnet even if it is publicly owned, Kevin Wakeford of SACOBand I agree on that point.

AlexLichtenstein: Rhoda Kadalie openly took on Philip Dexter here a communist maystand on a public platform and be heard. The Alliance depends on what people get out of it what are the partners getting out of it?

AnnemarieWolpe: The ANC is not a consensus.

JeremyCronin: We have just dismantled the provincial executive committees of Gauteng and theFree State. I was part of the decision, and we went to explain our action to the branches.When there is a complex mass issue, communists become useful to explain things. Fivehundred ANC branch activists gave Blade Nzimande of the SACP a standing ovation. The ANCremains at base level a radical revolutionary, transformation-committed third worldmovement. The SACP is seen to be part of that tradition that people want to see continue this is its symbolic value. We are prepared to stand up and be say our thing. TheANCs election effort depended massively on Cosatu, with its 1.8 million members. TheANC is falling apart, it is riven with rivalry and factions, but it offers politicalpower. Now there is the possibility of making some money in politics, the prospects arenot just jail or death. Cosatu has a different kind of machinery, it runs in a way thatthe ANC is not able to do.