Joe Slovo, general secretary of the South Africa Communist Party and a member of the African National Congress executive committee, has been on of the men most feared by white South Africans because of his political affiliation and his pivotal role in the armed struggle.
In this interview with our correspondent in Johannesburg, Slovo spells out the controversial relationship between the SACP and ANC, and speaks frankly about the shortcomings of communist governments around the world, explaining the role of the party in the unfolding South African political drama.
Africa Report - It is said that the South African Communist Party (SACP) policy has been politically opportunistic in the sense that now where in the world has a communist party been elected to power, and in fact that the SACP is allied to the ANC is a way of getting in through the back door. Is that what the SACP's alliance with the ANC is?
Slovo - Absolutely not. The SACP has played a big role in helping to build the ANC. Our alliance is a very strong one and it's strong for reasons which are the very opposite of those that are alleged by people who try to detract from our policy, precisely, because we haven't embarked upon a deliberate policy, of manipulating and controlling the ANC.
We have been accepted by great non-communist figures such as Luthuli, Tambo, and Mandela, who accept us not just as a theoretical question but as a result of the experience they've had working with communist from day to day.
For instance, a man like Mandela started off as an ant-communist. He in the 1940's was among those who actually moved at the congress of the ANC that communist ought to be excluded from the leadership of the ANC. And if you speak to him now, he'll tell you he's learned a great deal since.
Africa Report - So what is the difference between the ANC and SACP?
Slovo - There are very few differences in relation to immediate policy perspectives in the post-apartheid society - destruction of racism, creation of a democracy, and so on.
But there are what I call non-antagonistic differences, non-hostile differences in the sense that the ANC doesn't and shouldn't have a policy of choosing a different social system such as socialism. It's a multi-class organisation. It has within its ranks communists, non-communists, workers, capitalists, middle classes. That is the strength of the ANC and it would be a disaster if it were to move away from that position.
It's a forum of the people, the whole people, whereas the party goes beyond just the struggle against racism and believes that in the end the only rational form with which humanity should order its life is through a system in which one person cant live off the labor of another, a system of socialism. And we don’t postpone the advocacy of that until after the ANC flag flies over Pretoria. We regard it as our independent task as a party to begin to explain, to get acceptance for the doctrine of socialism and its ultimate implementation in South Africa.
Africa Report - What is the position of the SACP members who are members of the ANC National executive committee NEC, the ANC leadership? When they hold dual membership, do you see a conflict arising?
Slovo - The ANC permits dual membership. The ANC would accept people belonging to the Democratic Party, Liberal Party. It has in fact had such members.
For example, before 1950 there were no secret communists at all. We became secret because we were all illegalised and we had to work in the shadows for 40 years. A lot of the major figures of the party leadership like Kotane, Mofutsanyana, Tloome, JB Mrks, were all elected leaders of the ANC.
The point is it's not the party that puts them into these organisations although we expect all our members to work wherever the people are - they get elected to the ANC executive. I wasn’t elected by the party to be on the ANC executive in 1985, I was elected by the conference as the first white to be the executive.
Africa Report - And if there's a question of loyalty between membership in the SACP and the ANC?
Slovo - its been our policy and our practice that if we are working as members of the ANC, we are obliged to respect unconditionally the inner democratic decision making process of that organisation.
So, I as a communist - I am general secretary of the SACP - working on the NEC of the ANC, regard myself as being bound by the democratic collective decision of the organisation, whether the party agrees with it or not.
If the party does not agree with it - and it has happened occasionally- we call a meeting between representatives of the two organisations where we try to explain, exchange views, and convince one another about the correct approach should be. Sometimes we reach some kind of accommodation, moving in a certain direction. Sometimes we may not, in which case I cannot be a member of the NEC refusing to abide by its collective democratic decision.
Those who have experienced all this will know. If I could give one example: Before the ANC opened its ranks to non-Africans, there was a long debate. At the Kabwe Conference itself, the person who moved that the ranks of the ANC be opened to non-Africans and the persons who led the opposition to it, were both well known communists, which is an indication of the way we work.
And on the NEC, we have quite a number of members of our central committee. If you were to be present at one of those meetings, you'd see how we sometimes engage one another as members of the SACP central committee, but now serving on the NEC, in the most vicious disagreements.
It's quite open. We don't come there in other words as a caucus, as having taken a decision that we by some form of man or cabal formation, are going to direct which way thing are going to go, or who's to be elected to what positions.
Africa Report - Your initial announcement perhaps gave the impression that you are not going on a membership drive, you're trying limit the numbers….
Slovo - No. we have announced we are going to use the space which we’ve won , and which people have won for us, as a legal party to build what we call a mass party.
But when we talk about "mass party" we're not using the word "mass" in the same sense as the ANC uses it - millions. But I believe we are going to have tens of thousands of members.
So we musn't be frightened of members. What we are going to insist on is that every member of the SACP should be an activist, either in the party or wherever that person is linked with people, whether in the trade unions, in the civic associations, in the ANC.
I've come across quite a few young people recently who are ultra-militarist and who've said to me that they're not interested in joining the ANC, they're waiting for the party to emerge as a legal organisation. I've told them that they will not be accepted as members of the party with that kind of view because we believe again that, even in this new period, one of the primary tasks of the party is to help build the ANC as the kind of organisation that I described. We don't want to transform it into a party. We don't want to slit our throats. We have a party. The ANC has a completely different purpose.
And if we behave in the ANC like people sometimes suspect we do, we'll be destroying not only the ANC but ourselves because we regard the ANC as the primary leader of the whole liberation struggle at this stage. It stands at the head of the liberation struggle.
African Report - Does that mean that if there are to be open elections, the ANC and SACP won't have opposing candidates?
Slovo - It's a question I've been asked over and over again. The answer I've given - and this is the only answer I can give - is that it's premature to really work out a formula. It's a bit speculative.
We are working in a fraternal, close relationship on most current questions. We believe we will continue to be working with the ANC even in a post-apartheid society because the process of raising the flag is not the end of the liberation endeavour.
It has to be consolidated, things then have to be built, and there'll be a long period where I should imagine that both the party and the ANC will have a common purpose and will collaborate. Therefore, if there are elections I'm sure there will be a way between us of finding a non-hostile way of both parties participating without being at each other's throats. It could be an electoral pact, perhaps, or some other variation.
African Report - If the SACP regards the ANC as the foremost body and wants to help build it, does it mean the SACP is more a pressure group than one with ambitions to get into government?
Slovo - No, you must look at the purposes of each organisation. The ANC, we believe, stands at the head of the whole liberation front, the whole Mass Democratic Movement. For example, the party has not even suggested that it has any kind of independent part in this negotiating process (between the government and the ANC). We believe we should be under the umbrella of the ANC in the process.
It's clear that this is the situation in relation to the task facing the country at the moment, which is to achieve a non-racial, united democratic South Africa in that process.
To us, there is no doubt the ANC is the primary organisation. But we believe the party has a very important role to ensure that in this alliance of forces moving toward that goal, the working class constituency is not swamped, is not out maneuvered, sees to it, for example, that the fruits of sacrifice of the majority of people, who are working people, are not taken away by exploiters with black faces. So there is a role for the party both as part of the alliance and as an independent entity.
African Report - You haven't announced your full membership and that has reinforced suspicions of the SACP being a sinister organisation. The PAC's Barney Desai had tagged the SACP the "Broerderbond".
Slovo - It's a second-hand phrase because I've already indicated that we have never been and we do not intend to be a broerdebond inside any organisation.
You must remember the Soviet Union was the only worker state in our eyes for many years, surrounded, vilified, isolated. The whole of the international media was engaged in a campaign of trying to destroy socialism.
Like the ANC, we are not yet convinced that the process is irreversible, that there are no dangers of a backlash either from the existing regime - which I doubt, I think they are moving, they want to move - but one can't be 100 percent certain considering where they've come from.
Or from the whole white constituency, the right-wing, the army, the police, we can't be certain. It would be foolish for both the ANC and the party to abandon their underground structures completely.
There is nothing illegal about having an underground. It's a question of insurance against the kind of development I'm talking about. It would be a tragedy if, out of euphoria for this process that's taking place, we abandon everything and the backlash comes and we have to start from square one.
We had that experience in the 1960's when we were destroyed. We experienced how painful and long the process is recreating an organisation which has disbanded and been destroyed. We are keeping part of our underground intact. But we are aiming for a situation - and I am talking about decades, not even about years - where there will not be a single secret communist. That is our objective.
We are hoping by July next year, when we will be three-score-and-ten, to have our congress, where a new program, new constitution, and a new leadership will be elected, open, above-board, by delegates, democratically elected by the grassroots structures.
When people talk about keeping membership secret, it's really the same kind of cautionary measure which the ANC is also taking. We're not announcing the names of everybody.
African Report - You don't see any danger in that sort of secret underground lapsing into the same type of activity - if you can't get your way - as some of the right-winged groups are doing now?
Slovo - It depends on the type of political control. We believe political control will be maintained by the party as a whole. There are complexities - because we are already experiencing them in the ANC, the relationship between Lusaka and the internal leadership core - which have to be ironed out as we go through this transition period.
But I don't see that to be a danger because what we are doing in maintaining an underground is completely legal. We are a legal party. we've got the right to have secret members - at last.
African Report - In terms of the liberal democratic traditions of civil liberties and so forth, throughout the years from the Stalinist era virtually up to Gorbachev, the SACP was not critical, and in fact was supportive and defensive of what the Soviet Union was doing.
Slovo - That was part of the negative consequence belonging to the Comintern which was situated in Moscow and which had as a condition of its membership that each constituent abide by the decision of that Comintern, which is obviously completely dominated by the Soviet Party.
For a large slice of our life, that kind of tradition took root. But it wasn't just that. You must remember the Soviet Union was the only worker-state in our eyes for many years, surrounded, vilified, isolated. The whole of the international media was engaged in a campaign of what we consider to be slander, vilification, trying to destroy socialism, both physically and in the West, ideologically.
Therefore, there was a defensiveness which led to automatic reflexes not to believe any of the negative things that were said and to defend the only sort of oasis of what we consider to be socialism.
So we were guilty of that and perhaps this is one of the last bastions of old-style thinking to fall. I'm not sure yet whether it has completely fallen in the case of all our members, because people are moulded in a certain style, it's difficult to wean them away from it. The party as a whole is moving away from it. What must be emphasised is that the main thrust of what we were doing was inside the country, trying to elaborate our own indigenous theory of the South African revolution which was completely native to ourselves. Even on the question of the kind of party, the concept of vanguard, the question of whether we have a monopoly and so on, we moved away from those positions long before Gorbachev.
In fact we are going to publish one of these days the proceedings of our 1970 extended central committee where we examined precisely these questions and you will see a lot of them have been taken up by Gorbachev, not necessarily as a direct following of our positions, but objectively. The things being said now about the nature of the party, democracy, pluralism, and so on were contained in that.
But we were blind adherents of Soviet foreign policy, we should be ashamed of it, and we should see to it that it doesn't ever happen again.
African Report - What type of influence does the Soviet Communist Party have on the SACP now?
Slovo - On internal policy, I've been on many delegation to the Soviet Party both as SACP and as ANC, I really do not recall a single occasion where the Soviet party either directly or indirectly hinted or instructed that we should choose either this or that policy.
Had it happened during the last 30 or 40 years, it would have been completely unacceptable because the Comintern days were over some time ago. I know it'd be difficult for people to believe, but on internal questions it never happened. The only possible qualification is that for a long time, both as ANC and as party, the Soviet Union was really the most important pillar of support for our liberation struggle.
African Report - More than the Swedes?
Slovo - Long before. The Swedes came in with money which the Russians never gave us. They (Soviets) gave us weapons, which were very important from 1960 onwards, and logistics, supplies, food and material goods.
For a long time, they were the only ones who were giving us weapons, and obviously there's a tendency, when you are dependent upon a friend, even if you have reservations about some of his or her policies, for you to keep quiet.
African Report - The impression one gets then is that there isn't now much difference in political thinking between the National Party and the Communist Party on matters such as commitment to a bill of rights, and that real differences are on economic policies. Is that a reasonable summing up?
Slovo - I would say the regime has been forced to settle for majority rule. So the question of who is going to inherit the political kingdom is, I don't think, in the end going to be a fundamental stumbling block.
But as you say, the fundamental stumbling block is the question of the future of the economy. And it's not just the sort of economic laboratory question, of what kind of system would best generate growth, which is the way it's presented.
It's a question of what's going to happen to the statistic of 98 percent of all productive properties and 85 percent of all personal income in the hands of the whites. That's the issue.
Of course we believe growth has to be generated but as a statistic it's irrelevant to people unless there's more equitable distribution of the fruits of that growth. I think that's going to be the fundamental issue. When they talk about vetoes and group rights, I think that's what they're talking about. That's going to be the most difficult obstacle to overcome.
African Report - I gather the National Party is holding out on incorporating anti-nationalisation in a constitution. I don't know it that is the sense you get.
Slovo - We've been accused of perhaps trying to move toward a kind of situation where we can impose communism, and (Constitutional Affairs Minister Dr. Gerrit Viljoen has said we must have built-in mechanisms to event the impositions of communism.
I agree with that. I think that there should be built-in mechanisms to prevent the imposition of communism - as an imposition - but there should equally be in-built mechanisms to prevent the imposition of capitalism.
This future system must be chosen by the people. And in that sense, my view is consistent with Western democracy and Viljoen's is consistent with the old form of communism!
Africa Report - If there are genuinely free and fair elections and the National Party happens to win, or even the SACP, what then?
Slovo - I see no problem. But I don't believe that either of those parties will win. I would regard it as a tragedy but I wouldn't regard it as something one's got to prevent by undemocratic means. One would have to examine what the hell we've done to make such a thing possible - and then start all over again.