Comrade National Chairperson, members of the Central Committee, leadership of the ANC, (our brand new!) COSATU leadership, which we must warmly congratulate on their recent election, invited guests from the democratic movement, government, NGOs and the religious sector, comrade delegates. It is just over a year since our 10th Congress, and a lot has happened since then. It might therefore be tempting to treat this Strategy Conference as a mini-congress, given the challenges of the conjuncture and challenges facing the SACP and the Alliance in the immediate post-election period. Nevertheless it is important that we confine ourselves to the main issues that this Conference has to deal with.
We are gathered here today as South African communists for the first time since the second democratic elections. It is therefore proper comrades for us to start by thanking all of you for the sterling role that you played as communists and as members of the ANC in the overwhelming victory of June 2. Much more importantly to thank all those communists who directly participated in the SACP’s own election programme in support of the ANC. To us the election experience was an important one in that as the SACP we went all out to reach directly to the workers in a manner perhaps that we had not done for a long time. We had hugely successful Chris Hani commemorations throughout the country, as well as our Red Thursday on 20 May. We need to build on this comrades in order to firmly root our party amongst organised workers in our country.
It is important perhaps that we also remind ourselves why we are gathered here today at this Strategy Conference. We have not come here because we have no strategy, nor to undertake a fundamental review of the programme we adopted at our 10th Congress. Our 10th Congress Party Programme still remains as relevant as ever as the strategic framework within which to advance our political objectives. We are gathered here to deal with some of the issues we could not discuss in detail at our 10th Congress, together with some of the issues subsequently identified by the Central Committee, as part of fine tuning our own strategies in the current period. Most important we should use this Conference to deepen the strategic and ideological cohesion of our party as a basis for the implementation of our programme.
Indeed our Strategy Conference assumes an added significance in that it takes place only three months after the second democratic elections. The ANC won the election on a manifesto and platform of accelerating change. It is therefore important that communists should, as has always been the case, be in the forefront and set a revolutionary example in the implementation of the government programme as contained in this manifesto of the people. This conference should be seen as yet another platform for us to refine our approaches to questions of governance.
The principal strategic contradiction
Our starting point therefore is that ours is a struggle for socialism. It is a struggle against poverty, it is a struggle for human freedom, it is a struggle for economic justice, it is a struggle for the eradication of the apartheid legacy, and most importantly a struggle against capitalist barbarism. Our struggle is also a struggle against the economic and social brutality of capitalist globalisation and imperialism, and a struggle for a just, humane and caring world. Our starting point is also that South Africa remains a capitalist society, and that in fact capitalism constitutes the single most significant threat to the attainment of a better life for all on a sustainable basis. Our starting point is that as long as the bulk of the wealth of our country remains in the hands of the few, our goal of liberation, freedom and social justice will be postponed for a long time.
However it is important for us to recognise the immense progress that we have made as a country over the last five and half years. Despite the hostile global environment and the tyranny of the capitalist market our government, buttressed by mass participation, has managed to connect clean water to millions of our people; millions of telephone connections, houses, electricity connections, and classrooms. These are important advances and foundations upon which to build. We have also succeeded in building a legal, constitutional and institutional framework for our ongoing national democratic revolution.
Indeed we are justly proud of these achievements comrades. However, the reality is that we have inherited a deeply entrenched legacy of deep racial, gender and class inequalities. South Africa still remains one of the most unequal societies in the world, coming marginally after Brazil and Guatemala according to the Gini co-efficient measurement. Almost half of South Africans, 95% of them black live in poverty. This persisting and dramatic structural inequality evokes the question of the principal strategic contradiction in our society as identified in our party programme.
The principal strategic contradiction in our society lies between, on the one hand, those forces aligned around a thoroughgoing national democratic revolution with the working class at its core. On the other hand, there are those forces whose vision of democracy is limited to one-person-one vote and multipartyism in a situation where political power should be limited (a lean state), whose objectives is to modernise and align a capitalist South Africa to a globalised imperialist system. Underpinning the objective of these forces is a partial deracialisation of society, incorporating an elite from the previously oppressed, without touching the class foundations of South African society. It is within this framework that we locate some of the major struggles and challenges facing our revolution at this point in time.
The struggle to defend and deepen the national democratic revolution, and indeed the struggle for socialism all take place in the midst of struggle and challenges facing ordinary working people and the poor. It is for this reason that as the SACP we are deeply concerned at the current job loss bloodbath. We are a country faced with deep structural unemployment. The danger of continued job losses and retrenchments is that it can damage our economy for a long time to come. Our view as the SACP is that an economy is not about factors or things, but it is essentially about human beings. One more retrenchment or job loss is already too much. That is why we have taken a decision and have actually joined organised workers in their struggles against job losses and for job creation. Our perspective is that we cannot talk about job creation without paying particular attention to job retention.
These job losses are taking place in the midst of one of the most unprecedented attacks on the working class. The bosses’ ideological assault includes a number of dimensions. Firstly, organised workers in particular are being blamed for unemployment on the grounds that they are responsible for the fictitious “rigid” labour market. Secondly, there is growing neo-liberal assault, which treats workers as a nuisance, something to be dealt with an iron fist as a pre-condition for economic development. Cde Chair it is important that we debate this question of job losses and our approach to it during this plenary session and hopefully come up with an appropriate resolution.
Globalisation is Imperialism
These realities are related and reinforced by the global realities within which we have to locate and struggle for the deepening of the NDR. The reality comrades is that the current globalised imperialist period is characterised by widening economic and social inequalities within all societies, in particular those between developed and developing countries. A brief assessment of the levels of poverty in the world today starkly reveals the extent to which capitalist globalisation is worsening rather than reducing economic and social inequalities. In fact, as has always been the case with imperialism, its reproduction as a system has been premised on the exploitation and marginalisation of the poor, particularly in developing countries.
According to a joint survey recently conducted by UNICEF and the UNDP on social spending in Africa reveals that only three countries in Africa are allocating more than 20% of budget funds for use on basic health care, education and nutrition – a target set by the 1995 UN Social Summit in Copenhagen. According to Kofi Annan, the Secretary general of the UN, 44% of all Africans – and 51% of these in Sub-Saharan Africa live in absolute poverty. Amongst other things, this leads to a situation where millions of children are being deprived of their right to education, health care and nutrition, thus reducing them to perpetual poverty.
At the same time Africa’s debt stock has increased from $344 billion to $350 billion dollars in 1998, and is equivalent to more than 300% of exports of goods and services from Africa. The average African household today consumes 20% less than it did 25 years ago. Economic growth rates in the African continent continue to decline, as well as development assistance, which has dropped from $23 billion in 1992 to $18,7 billion in 1997.
On the other hand, according to the UNDP report, Americans spend more than $8 billion a year on cosmetics - $2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide basic education for everyone in the world. In 1996 alone Ethiopia had a total foreign debt of $10 billion, whilst in the same year Europe spent $11 billion on ice cream alone! The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.
On the health side the picture is even bleaker. For instance, at the end of 1997 nearly 31 million people were living with HIV, up from 22,3 million the year before. With 16 000 new infections a day – 90% percent in developing countries – it is now estimated that 40 million people will be living with HIV in 2000.
In our own 10th Congress Party programme we also highlighted the fact that the impact on women of the current globalisation phase of imperialism has been particularly harsh. Amongst other things, women have been forced to become shock absorbers of the rolling back of the gains won in the post-1945 period. In our programme we also point out that structural adjustment, the rolling back of the welfare states and the “shock therapy” in Eastern Europe have thrown millions of women back into the invisible realm of “private”, unpaid, reproductive labour – to care for the young, the unemployed, the aged and the sick. One of the most important issues we will be dealing with at this Congress is precisely this one of unpaid labour of women and what strategies we should be adopting to place this question high on the agenda of transformation in our country.
Cde National Chairperson, we are raising these realities precisely in order for these delegates to appreciate the extent of the crisis in the world today and the damage wrought by a system based on private greed and profit. In fact, capitalism, and especially capitalism in its rampant speculative form of the present, is increasingly a grave threat to the survival of human civilisation on this planet. Underlying the apparent strength and durability of capitalism, it is possible to discern looming train smashes. Capitalism has managed to perpetuate itself, and to surpass its own inherent declining profitability, by extending its operations to unorganised working classes in distant parts of the world, and by intensifying the destruction of natural resources. On both counts, it is beginning to bump structural limitations –last year’s global crisis, was a glimpse of the tremors that lie ahead.
In these circumstances, advancing alternatives to the global capitalist system is not a political game, not some kind of point-scoring past time – it is a necessity for the survival of human civilisation. It is important to underline this because the power of neo-liberal ideology is such that whilst the majority of world’s population is sliding into abject poverty, this ideology continues to “beautify”, in our minds, the virtues of the so-called “free market” system. In fact what neo-liberalism claim and the real world of ordinary people are two poles apart.
Perhaps the point we want to underline as well is that the prescriptions of structural adjustment – privatisation, deregulation, liberalisation and cutting back on social services pursued by the IMF and World Bank – has made the situation worse than improving the conditions of humanity in the developing world. These prescriptions are in essence not about the positive development of the peoples of the world, but about creating conditions for capital accumulation by the transnational corporations of the developed world. Instead of a serious review of these measures and seeking a more socially beneficial path for development, the IMF and World Bank are prescribing even more of the medicine that is destroying developing countries, despite the fact that many IMF and World Bank studies clearly show the failure of these policies.
Cde National Chairperson, perhaps at this point we need to ask those who daily barrage us with the need for us to follow this path of privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation to tell us where have these measures succeeded in laying a basis for overcoming the legacy of imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism on the African continent? In addition they will have to tell us how is this developmental path is going to succeed in our country? These are the realities and questions that will have to be discussed and inform our deliberations and proceedings at this Conference.
The SACP in the 1990’s: Socialism is the future, build it now
What we have just outlined clearly points to the fact that, contrary to what our detractors and cynics say, socialism is as relevant as ever in the world today. We pointed out earlier that we have not come here for a fundamental review of our programme. Our programme, guided by the strategic slogan of socialism is the future build it now, is based on the fact that for us socialism is not just a vision, “an ideal located in some distant future of which we can only dream. As the SACP we seek actively to build capacity for socialism, momentum towards socialism and elements of socialism here and now”
It is important comrades that we firmly relate our strategic objectives to the kind of Party that we have been building. This is important also because this Strategy Conference should be seen as an integral component of building our Party for the challenges ahead.
Re-emerging into legality in a contradictory situation
The SACP re-emerged in 1990 from 40 years of illegality into a thoroughly contradictory situation. On the one hand, within our country, the Party’s popularity and legitimacy had probably never been higher in what was, by then, nearly 7 decades of communist organisation and struggle in the southern part of the African continent.
On the other hand, the communist tradition of which we were part was in the midst of its most serious crisis - with the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the impending break-up of the Soviet Union. Was our communist tradition on its last legs? Was this the end of a tradition that traced its specific origins to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and the 1919 formation of the 3rd Communist International?
We did not, as the SACP have the luxury of being able to devote all of our attention to this contradictory reality. For, at the very same time, the SACP and many of its key leading cadres, were actively involved in the complex negotiations process. Our leading cadres were also active in helping communities confront and deal, as best as possible, with the vicious low intensity conflict that was launched against them in the midst of the negotiations. As pressing as the organisational demands on the newly re-emerged SACP were, we also understood that the key organisational priority was the building of a mass-based ANC. Many leading communists devoted their energies more or less full time to this latter task.
But we could not avoid taking responsibility for the contradictory reality in which, specifically as South African communists, we found ourselves. Directly related to this contradictory reality, two issues occupied considerable SACP attention in the early 1990s:
However, it was also recognised, in the midst of this organisational debate, that, if the Party was to take its commitment to an NDR and its alliance with the ANC seriously, and if it were to add value to these, then a simple duplication of the ANC’s broad mass organisational character was not required. The Party had to “add value” as a communist formation, and not simply duplicate.
At our 1991 Congress we “resolved” this particular debate by declaring that the SACP should be a “mass-vanguard” party. As we noted at our 10th Congress last year, this was not necessarily a very elegant resolution of the debate at the time, but it was a creative and still open-ended approach to the actual realities of our concrete situation.
Since the early 1990s, we have come a considerable way, not just in debating the issue, but in actual experience of organising significant party political machinery, with an effective presence throughout SA. Indeed we are proud of not only having preserved this precious political organ of South Africa’s working class, but we are also strengthening it.
But while we were busy with this inner-party debate about our organisational character, we were also confronted with the deepening crisis in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In 1989, the general secretary of the Party, cde Joe Slovo had written an important intervention, “Has Socialism Failed?”, in response to the growing crisis. The main thesis developed by Slovo was that it was not socialism that was failing in the Soviet bloc, but a distorted version of it. Essentially, he argued, the socialist systems in those countries had failed to nurture and deepen democracy, and this parting of ways between democracy and socialism was killing socialism itself.
Slovo’s intervention was to have an important influence on debate in South Africa - indeed, many communist and left forces around the world used the Slovo pamphlet.
Especially in the first four years or so, from 1990, there was considerable debate within our Party around Slovo’s perspectives, there were important differences with, and corrections and amendments made to Slovo’s theses. What the pamphlet empowered was, however, an open and dynamic debate, sanctioned, as it were, by the general secretary of the time himself. It meant that our Party was not left speechless in front of the spectacle of a Soviet Union in full dissolution.
Part of an international socialist renewal
Since 1994, there has been something of a renewal of progressive and even socialist movements, partly against the background of the gathering international capitalist crisis. As a significant actor within the South African transition, many forces have called upon, the SACP internationally, to play an active role in helping to renew the socialist project. While much of this work has not been recorded locally, we should understand this role, and continue to accept our internationalist responsibilities, with a due sense of modesty.
The SACP in the post-1994 reality
The democratic breakthrough of 1994 presented the SACP with new possibilities and challenges. SACP members found themselves in cabinet, and in significant numbers in provincial governments, and national and provincial legislatures. Hundreds of others were incorporated into government administration, and the new army and police services.
Although these cadres were located where they were primarily as ANC members, or for their professional skills (when in government and the security forces), nonetheless, there was a sense in which the SACP was, partly at least, “in power”. We could no longer conduct ourselves as if we were a purely extra-parliamentary, still less an oppositional, force.
This reality, along with other things, not least our critical review of our socialist legacy, compelled us to think creatively about what we meant by our struggle for socialism. Yes, we all agreed, the present phase of struggle was to advance, deepen and defend the democratic breakthrough, a key bridgehead to consolidating the NDR. But what was the relevance of being communists in the midst of this, why preserve an independent SACP? Were we taking a free ride on the NDR, but with “second stage” intentions? And what would become of our non-communist allies when we got to the second stage?
It was in this context that, at our 9th Congress in 1995, we advanced the slogan, “Socialism is the Future, Build it Now!” From its inception the Communist Party in South Africa has always believed that socialism is the future - but we were now adding some to that view.
A socialist South Africa, to those who keep asking us what we mean by “socialism”, (as if we had forgotten what has been said for 150 years now) will be a South Africa in which, overwhelmingly, the ownership of the means of production - factories, land, banks, shops, mines - is socialised, and not in the hands of those whose prime motive is profit-taking. It will be a South Africa in which the dominant ethos is the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
It is important to answer this question in a forthright, clear and bold manner once and for all. This question has not only been asked by enemies of the SACP, but also by some of our comrades in the movement. However in answering this question we must guard against two dangers. On the one hand, we should not answer this question simply because it is asked of us, but as part of our ongoing refinement of our socialist vision and struggles in the light of changing political conditions. On the other hand, whilst not shying away from theoretical debate, we should not waste our precious time through endless theoretical and intellectual debates about socialism with anti-Communist forces and other cynics and detractors. This is not our priority. Our strategic priority is the working class and the mass of our people in whose interests a socialist South Africa is.
What are the key features of such a society? It is characterised by four interrelated features: democracy, equality, freedom and the socialisation of the predominant means of production. Substantive democracy is not possible in a capitalist society in that it is mainly restricted to the formal political sphere without democratisation of the economic sphere. Similarly full equality is one based on the abolition of the huge differentials in income, wealth, power and opportunity that characterise all capitalist societies. The content of socialist freedom is about increasing the individual and collective choices available to the majority of the people. As we say in our programme “Socialism is about freedom from poverty and hunger, freedom from indignity and illiteracy, from the fear of joblessness and the depredations of class, gender, race and ethnic oppression”.
Indeed socialist freedom, democracy and equality are premised on the socialisation of the means of production. This is an essential condition of achieving true freedom. Some of the key features that we are struggling for are that the predominant sector of the economy and major institutions of production should be in the public hands. This means a predominant public sector with enterprises owned and managed by the central state, by provincial and municipal authorities. These enterprises would need to be subject to various forms of democratic control, including trade unions and workplace worker forums and committees. In addition to this the socialism we envisage is where there is a deliberate political strategy is followed to develop a co-operative sector both in the urban and rural areas. This is our vision of socialism! This is a vision we shall consistently propagate and struggle for and the basis upon which we shall mobilise, educate and persuade the working class and the majority of our people. This we seek to attain through open, free and democratic means.
Our path to socialism: deepening the national democratic revolution
Our perspective of a path to socialism is rooted on the struggle to mobilise the working class to hegemonise the struggle to advance, deepen and defend the national democratic revolution. Our perspective is that the national democratic revolution is not a detour but the most direct route to socialism. The main strategic objective of the NDR, the overcoming of the legacy of centuries of colonial and decades of special colonial oppression, has to be addressed in the context of overcoming the national, class and gender contradictions in their relationship to each other. Any attempt to approach the NDR outside the interconnectedness of these contradictions would be a fundamental departure from our revolution.
However, defending and deepening the national democratic revolution is not just a trick or merely a platform to build socialism. We firmly believe that the attainment of the key objectives of the national democratic revolution – non-racialism, non-sexism and a better life for our people – is critical in itself. Progress towards the attainment of these goals will be significant achievements in themselves for the working class, the poor and the landless rural masses in our country. It is the strategic importance of deepening the NDR in itself that our Alliance is premised.
However it is our firm belief that the strategic goals of the NDR will not ultimately be consummated unless there is a transition to socialism. What then do we mean, in concrete terms when we say socialism must be built now? This captures the deep interconnection between the NDR and socialism. This means, as our programme says, the following:
The above constitutes the core programme of the SACP. However we do not see this programme in a narrow and sectarian manner. We will seek to take these perspectives and approaches to the alliance as a whole and the mass of our people, through struggle and collective, comradely debate. We see these perspectives as adding value to the Alliance effort in taking forward our revolution.
Comrade National Chairperson, we see therefore part of the tasks of this Strategy Conference to guide us on how as the SACP we need to build our policy capacity in order to effectively advance these struggles and perspectives, and meaningfully engage our Alliance partners and government.
Handling differences within the people’s camp
We are stating our perspectives clearly understanding at the same time that we operate within an Alliance. It is for this reason that we need to address this issue as part of the overall framework within which to discuss our strategy. In the last few weeks, the important question of how we should handle differences within and between the three formations of the Tripartite Alliance has once more been posed. The topic emerged, for instance, at last month’s Cosatu Special Congress. We warmly welcome the fact that this matter has been raised publicly.
The leading role of the ANC and its alliance in the political reality of our country means that that the stakes are high and the legitimate expectations of our mass constituency are great. Also, the Alliance represents three independent formations, and that is precisely why we are an Alliance. The particular constituencies and perspectives represented by each partner should be regarded as a strength and adds value to the Alliance as a whole.
Whilst the principle of raising disagreements within the Alliance is generally a correct one, but it will not always be possible nor even desirable to keep particular debates within. We collectively represent millions of people, which on key strategic questions we might deliberately want to involve through a public debate. In other instances the very nature of the issues arise in the first instance in the public arena, like the current public sector wage dispute. The public debate about Sunset Clauses in 1992 -3, for instance, or the ongoing debate on the correct macro-economic policy framework for our country are entirely legitimate (and necessary) debates. They are debates about complex policy choices, where, from the perspective of the NDR, different choices have their advantages and disadvantages. There are no miracle cures, and few policy choices that are risk free. All policy choices will be enriched by a robust contribution to their formulation and to their ongoing evaluation, if and when such choices are implemented. The Sunset Clause option, or macro-economic policy debates do not belong to the inner-circles of the alliance leadership - they are matters that affect all South Africans, and we have the responsibility to empower our mass constituency, and, indeed, all South Africans to be active participants in the political debates of our situation.
The problem is not always in the public airing of differences - but in how we, as the collective leadership of the liberation movement, sometimes conduct ourselves in the course of these debates. Do we show respect for, and an understanding of, the concerns and viewpoints of comrades with whom we are debating? Or do we label them all too easily as “sell-outs”, “lackeys of Washington”, “infantile Leftists”, “betrayers” (on the left or right) of the revolution? This is what confuses our constituency.
I suspect that most of us have, at one time or another, been both victims and, perhaps, perpetrators of these excesses. It is imperative that we all take stock and resolve, as the leadership of this alliance, to set an example of conducting our debates robustly (if necessary), but always in a comradely and constructive way. As the SACP leadership we pledge here today to examine self-critically our own inputs, articles and utterances, to do everything we can to contribute to improving the style in which we intervene - to consolidate the unity of our alliance leadership and movement.
Let us begin to set an example where, in engaging with a view with which we disagree, we also seek to explain to our constituency the legitimate reasons why the collective with which we are disagreeing is advancing its particular line. If we are public sector trade union leaders, let us explain to our constituency and broader public why we understand government’s budgetary concerns, even while we disagree with the wage offer on the table. If we are in government, let us also explain to the broad public why public sector workers have legitimate concerns. That does not mean that we suppress difference or debate, but that we empower each other to understand the complexities of our reality. It might be tempting to score easy labelling points against each other, but, in the end, if we take this course, we will all be the losers.
Finally, on this particular topic, let us note that we have very compelling reasons, as Communists, to insist on the two issues I have tried to underline - the importance of allowing robust debate, the airing of differences on the one hand; and the equally important responsibility to conduct ourselves in a constructive and comradely way when handling differences within the people’s camp. The history of the international communist movement in the 20th century, with all of its achievements and heroism, is also littered with salutary lessons. Where fraternal parties have suppressed debate - stagnation, bureaucratism and failure have been the inevitable results.
We only have to remember the brilliant insight of our own Moses Kotane, who back in the 1930s, in his famous Cradock letter, warned comrades about a particular style of politics, an excessively polemical, overly intellectual, and labelling style, that indulged in debate while, on the ground, working people were starving.
Key issues for the Strategy Conference
It is only against the framework of our 10th Party programme, within the context of building and strengthening the Alliance, and by locating ourselves in contemporary struggles that we should approach the work of this Conference. The following therefore comrades are some of the key issues that we are going to be addressing.
The theory and character of the developmental state
In deepening the national democratic revolution one of the key weapons we have is the democratic state. Indeed we have inherited an apartheid state that we seek to transform as we simultaneously use it to advance our objectives. Every revolution will have to grapple with the issue of the state and state power in general, as the state constitutes a key concentration of political power that should be contested for purposes of transforming society.
We have, as the SACP and the Alliance defined such a state as a developmental state with national democratic features. In our programme we define the national democratic, developmental state as a state that needs to be “fundamentally the state of a popular bloc of forces, aligned to the historically oppressed majority”. The question of defining, both theoretically and in concrete terms, the political features of such a state should be one key subject of discussion at this conference.
A developmental state should be characterised by its special political relationship to the working class and the poor. It should be a state that deliberately seeks to principally define itself in terms of a privileged relationship to the working class and the poor. Such a political relationship should principally include, but not be reduced to a one-way relationship of service delivery to the mass of the people. This is because it should be a state whose political orientation and services should be guided by full participation of the working class and the poor in the prioritisation and manner of delivery of such services. The critical question therefore is what specific kinds of concrete features should such a state have? What kind of restructuring do we need in order to effect the political character of such a developmental state? An additional question is what kind of civil service should it have and what kind of relationship should it develop with trade unions?
Related to and flowing from the above features, such a state should be democratic not only in a formal sense but also in a substantive sense of effective participation of the mass of the people in governance. This critically relates to the question of building organs of popular power as the foundation on which such a state is built. The question facing us here is what specific organisational campaigns should we be undertaking as the Alliance and the SACP to ensure the building of such popular organs?
A critical question that also needs to be frankly and openly debated at this Conference is what kind of relationship should this developmental state have with private capital? One of the key challenges facing the democratic state how should it harness these resources towards developmental objectives beneficial to the majority of the people given the reality of the global dominance of private capital and that the bulk of the wealth of this country is in private hands? In answering this question we should be absolutely clear about our starting points. The starting point is not the relationship of the democratic state to private capital. But the starting point should be that it is a state that either has, or seeks to have, a particular political and privileged relationship to the working class and the poor, and seeks, in the first instance and at all times, to address the basic social needs of this immense majority. It is only from within this political framework that the question of the relationship with private capital should be subjected.
What this means specifically is that privatisation can therefore not be the primary instrument through which a developmental state seeks to achieve its goals. Rather it the priority should be meeting basic needs and the development of an appropriate partnership with private capital to realise this objective in a manner that does not subject the meeting of basic needs to the dictates of the market. Such public-private partnerships, where necessary, should aim to build the capacity of the state in the short to medium term rather than the other way round. However, the fundamental question that arises here is how does such a state reconcile the profit motives of private capital and the developmental objectives of a state oriented towards the working class and the poor? Whilst this is a question that also has to be answered in specific situations, but we need a political framework for doing this. Further, in answering this question we should begin to move concretely towards the identification of key areas of social delivery where the state should play a dominant role, including identification of parastatals and functions that needs to be kept in the hands of the state. This should also include the question of areas where even new parastatals might have to be created in order to accelerate the meeting of basic social needs.
An additional challenge for the SACP in particular is the intensification of an ideological offensive against the notion that it is only private capital that is best able to meet the needs of the people. Whilst private capital might be efficient, but it is more efficient in making profits and far from efficient in terms of redistribution of resources and meeting basic needs of the working people and the poor.
A related task is that of a concrete assessment and refinement of the extent to which global realities have foreclosed certain developmental options for a country like South Africa. In other words are we in agreement with the claim that there is no alternative to the current global regime of capital accumulation. Surely we are not. If so the question then is what spaces are there to forge a national developmental agenda and how do we exploit these in order to advance a sustainable, alternative social and economic path of development? As the Alliance we have not adequately debated these questions.
Another important dimension of developmental state as identified in our Party programme is that of defending and extending the public sector in order to enhance the capacity of the state to be interventionist in setting and driving our social and economic agenda. This means that the notion of a lean and mean state cannot be an objective in itself. The nature, shape and size of the state should in the first instance determined by its social, economic and political objectives. The question that needs to be answered here is what are some of the key objectives in the restructuring of the state?
It is indeed only through addressing the issues outlined here that we should then be assessing the revolutionary character of the state we are seeking to build. The reformist or revolutionary thrust of the state should be determined by the extent to which it is achieving the goals it sets out to achieve. Because the relationship between reform and revolution is not an abstract issue, it is by dealing with these questions that a proper understanding of this relationship will be achieved.
It needs to be pointed out at this stage that when we talk about a developmental state, we are not talking about the central state only, but about the state at all levels or in all spheres. It is for this reason that local government transformation should be subjected to the same analytical framework as proposed above, whilst simultaneously dealing with some of the unique features and challenges facing this sphere of government. It is for this reason that we are now proposing that local government be dealt with in the same commission that deals with the developmental state.
Socialisation of the economy
In our programme as summarised earlier, the question of the socialisation of the predominant part of the economy is the key objective of a transition to socialism. We have not as the SACP debated this question further than what we did at Congress. In particular, the most important issue is how do we begin to struggle for this goal in the here and now, as well as how do we measure progress towards this end. Indeed the question of socialisation has relevance in the present period, and we did identify some of the critical issues that we need to attend to as part of the deepening of the NDR.
Two key issues are identified in our programme in the struggle for socialisation of the economy. The first one is that of socialising the ownership function, and within this the question of the fostering of an extensive co-operative sector. Of strategic significance in this regard is that both the Alliance and government are committed to the objective of building a strong co-operative sector.
The second key issue in the struggle for socialisation is that of ensuring that the monopoly of management is not one-sidedly dominated by profit-seeking objectives. In this case the question of work-place forums and building the political consciousness of the working class is of crucial importance. A related question that we have to deal with is that of rooting the SACP amongst organised workers, as part of empowering the workers to impact on the transformation of the workplace. The organisational question of building SACP industrial units needs to be discussed at this Conference, even more urgently now that we are embarking on a Red October to recruit more workers into the SACP.
However in discussing these questions we should be guided by the framework paper on prospects for the transformation of the South African economy to benefit the overwhelming majority of our people. If our strategic objective is to roll back the capitalist market in key areas of social delivery, what kinds of structural changes should we be aiming for in order to create conditions for an economy responsive to the needs of the majority of our people? Can the tide of job losses be reversed or is this embedded in the phase in which South African capitalism is going through? We have adopted an approach that calls for a comprehensive industrial strategy. Which areas of the economy should such an industrial strategy prioritise and how possible is that given the current structure of the South African economy within the framework of socialisation of the economy?
Gender and reproductive labour
The question of gender and reproductive labour is already briefly raised above. At our 10th Congress we highlighted the limitations of a productivist approach to Marxism Which leads to the neglect of the fact that capitalist profit maximisation is not based just on exploitative production relation but critically on oppressive reproductive power relations. We felt that this question is of such fundamental importance in the transformation of gender relations and the emancipation of women that it must be given adequate attention at this Strategy Conference. In discussing it we should clearly relate it to the question of gender struggles within the working class itself, the gender transformation of the workplace and the building of the women’s movement.
Rural transformation
As the SACP we had not really grappled in any extensive manner with the question of rural transformation. At the same time the party’s presence in rural areas is growing, and in fact some of our fastest growing districts are in the rural areas. One of the key questions is how do we accelerate change and transformation in the rural areas. Our rural areas are still characterised by some of the worst forms of poverty, violence, patriarchal oppression and slave-like working conditions. There is also an increasing brutality of white farmers against farmworkers. The key strategic question is the acceleration of making land available to the landless rural masses and building effective organisation presence to challenge exploitation, repression and the alleviation of poverty. Without a better life for the people in the rural areas there can be no better life for all in South Africa.
In all our deliberations comrades we should be guided by the objectives of building the Party and identifying ways and means to improve our capacity to develop policy in these key strategic areas.
Blade Nzimande
General Secretary
6th Sep '99