CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES FOR LEFT PROGRESSIVE FORCES IN AFRICA AND EUROPE

Jeremy Cronin, SACP

Rencontres France-Europe-Afrique 2003

Vitry-sur-Seine, 8-9 September 2003

I am speaking near the beginning of our two-day Rencontres, but I notice that the final agenda item is entitled: "Towards a new momentum in the co-operation between European and African progressive forces". The idea of a "new momentum" (or new "élan") implies, correctly I think, that over the last dozen years we have lost momentum. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, one important pillar of our collective momentum was an impressive international anti-apartheid mobilisation. Contrary to a recuperative legend that has gained ground in the last decade, it was left progressive forces that constituted the core of this international solidarity struggle from the very beginning, and it was left progressive forces that continued to sustain this solidarity as it gained broader acceptance.

I have begun with a reference to the anti-apartheid solidarity struggle not because I believe in some South African exceptionalism…on the contrary.

Last week, South African president, comrade Thabo Mbeki, speaking on the eve of the WTO Cancun meeting, urged governments in the South to join hands with social movements and trade unions in the North protesting against the current direction of globalisation. It might be possible to detect in this call an evocation of the old spirit of the anti-apartheid struggle. There is, perhaps, a continuity of tradition, but we would have to admit, as South Africans, that it has been a disrupted continuity. And the disruption has come considerably from our side.

At the Seattle WTO meeting, for instance, the South African government delegation, led by ANC ministers (some of them SACP members), expressed considerable scepticism about, and even frustration with, the social movement mobilisation that delayed and then cut short the proceedings of the meeting. For the SACP and all progressive South Africans it is important to ask why there has been a significant disruption in the fostering of solidarity between progressive forces in the North and our own struggle. I hope that, in seeking to answer this question, I will touch on issues that resonate with challenges that comrades from Europe and other parts of Africa have also encountered. I hope that in probing the question of why there has been disruption and a loss of momentum, I will also be laying the basis for a discussion on what needs to be done.

Post-1990 confusions

From the side of the South African progressive movement, the challenges, responsibilities and inevitable confusions of exercising state power following our landslide electoral victory in 1994 have undoubtedly played a major role in a certain loss of left momentum. However, this is only part of the story. Other important factors include:

The inter-acting combination of all of the above realities and ideological narratives has led to a loss of orientation and momentum, certainly in Southern Africa, if not elsewhere. It is possible (but not necessary - as I will briefly argue later), to read all of the above confusions into the African Union-endorsed economic policy perspective - NEPAD (the New Partnership for African Development).

Those of us here at this Rencontres, from Europe and Africa, will, I think, have been critical of most, if not all of the above confusions. But, notwithstanding our critical stance:

I can't answer for any other comrades, or organisations - but I know what the candid answer should be from the side of the SACP (and ANC). And yet, in 2003, as we consider the realities before us, surely it is clear that it is both possible and necessary to inject a new momentum, a new élan, greater urgency into the cooperation between European and African progressive left forces.

The crisis of the "benign globalisation" illusion

An important part of what makes the posing of a consistent, left, progressive perspective both possible and necessary is the current crisis of the "benign globalisation" illusion. There are several notable factors in this regard.

The most dramatic blow to this illusion has been the aggressive unilateralism of the Bush administration, and notably the invasion of Iraq. Of course, on its own, this unilateralism could encourage other illusions - "bad Bush/good Clinton", or "bad US/good (`old') Europe".

However, on the eve of Cancun, and seen from an African perspective, "Europe" does not look so "good" either. The "Europe" we encounter is the coalition of the willing between a corporate Europe and a social liberal Europe - it is a Europe that is in the forefront of stubborn resistance to any effective negotiations on agricultural subsidies. It is a Europe that is in the forefront of seeking to push onto to the WTO agenda the "Singapore issues" (that endeavour to open up new service sectors of our economies to predatory transnational profit-taking). It is a Europe that, in the context of the ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) countries, is moving from the relatively more developmental approach of successive Lome conventions - that, at least, acknowledged a general asymmetry in the relationship between developed and "developing" countries. We now have a Europe that is seeking to push symmetrical free-trade agreements on regions, completely avoiding the huge asymmetry in power and capacity.

The end of the Cold War was marked by the disappearance of a second, alternative power bloc (whatever its own inherent weaknesses and grave distortions), but it was not (obviously) marked by the disappearance of the first power bloc. Over the past decade, the relationship of the developed capitalist North to Africa has continued to be an imperialist relationship, a relationship of continuously reproduced, systemic underdeveloped. With some country-specific exceptions, the dozen years post-Cold War have produced, not a peace dividend for Africa, but deepening poverty, deepening inequality (between the North and Africa, and within our countries), low growth, low levels of foreign direct investment, and catastrophic new challenges, like the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The possibility and the necessity of a new momentum of co-operation between progressive forces in Africa and Europe

In the context of this present reality, and from the side of the SACP, we would like to propose eight issues in which we might take forward our discussions, explore perspectives, and seek to develop common interventions. These eight issues are, obviously, not exhaustive, but they emerge very organically from our own struggle - we do not know the extent to which they resonate with the challenges confronting comrades and fraternal parties and movements in other situations.

We will table these eight issues as questions:

  1. How do we develop and consolidate (should we develop and consolidate?) a renewal of progressive anti-imperialist politics? Clearly, we are speaking here of a consistent and not demagogic anti-imperialism. There are several reasons why we think the progressive left in Europe and Africa needs to become more dynamic and assertive in its anti-imperialism. In the first place, wide-spread and deepening popular anti-imperialist sentiment (not least in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, and the persisting crisis in Palestine) require a consistent, strategic and principled leadership - otherwise these sentiments are available for mobilisation by all manner of reactionary, xenophobic, fundamentalist and demagogic projects. There are also new challenges, including deepening our analysis of US economic parasitism, itself (we think) the underlying structural reason for the lurch towards unilateralism, and for the deepening but still managed tensions between corporate Europe and the US;
  2. How, as left progressive parties in Europe and Africa, do we co-ordinate our approaches around the WTO, the ACP, and a range of other international multi-lateral realities? Two examples of challenges in this regard: (1) At a government level in South Africa (and as the SACP we have strongly supported this), we have been pursuing strategic relationships with key "developing" countries - Brazil, India, China - with a view to impacting as a counter-balancing bloc upon the WTO, for instance. How do we (should we?) reinforce this kind of strategic approach from other African countries and from progressive left European movements? (2) In campaigning against the impact of agricultural subsidies in Europe and the US on the South, we have sometimes slipped, ourselves, into a "free trade" logic. This has had a certain polemical appeal, after all the developed countries that have been most forceful in insisting on the liberalisation of our own economies are themselves often the worst offenders. However, we are not, presumably, ourselves free trade advocates…how do we coordinate a consistent progressive left perspective on agriculture uniting African and European progressive parties?
  3. What is the emphasis that we should place on achieving some strategic convergence among ourselves in regard to international multilateral issues like the above (WTO, ACP, etc.) relative to other points of focus (eg. local, national, regional, bilateral, decentralised solidarity, etc)? Clearly, we are not dealing with a mechanical either/or set of choices. We need to coordinate perspectives and work, as much as possible, across a wide range of issues. However, we do need to prioritise our efforts, and there is always the danger of exaggerating certain major forums (eg. the WTO) where our leverage might be limited, and neglecting other important spheres where we might be able to make considerable head-way. This question is related to other questions below, particularly the issue of how (whether?) we should seek to achieve transformational and not just ameliorative change through partial "de-linking" from capitalist dominated accumulation trajectories.
  4. How do we relate to NEPAD? As I have already noted, NEPAD can certainly be read in a neo-liberal manner - a "partnership" in which the "trade-off" is that Africa commits itself to good economic and political behaviour ("good governance"), including peer-group ("neo-colonial"?) review and policing in exchange for investment from the North. The NEPAD document is available for this kind of interpretation, and this is certainly how it is read in many circles. The SACP believes, however, that we should engage with NEPAD and seek to extract a different reading, and develop a much broader content. Our reasons for this are several:
    1. From a South African perspective, and whatever its inherent shortcomings, the NEPAD process at least nudges South Africans in the direction of thinking about the continental challenge, and the place of the South African democratic revolution in this context. In short, from our own national perspective, it might help to correct the dangers and illusions of South African "exceptionalism";
    2. At a descriptive level, NEPAD, in our view, correctly invokes a crisis of underdevelopment in our continent, and more or less accurately describes some of the key features of this crisis. We emphasise "describes" because the document, while evoking the concept of "underdevelopment", fails to provide an effective analysis of the structural underpinnings of this crisis. In fact, despite the evocation of "underdevelopment", the document tends to conceptualise the crisis as a lack of development, a lack of modernity, a lack of resources, a legacy of a past colonial reality, rather than as an active and present, systemically reproduced reality. Our continent's problem is not that it is simply marginalized, but that it is integrated into the current global accumulation path, and the manner of our integration is the continuous reproduction of marginalisation. In short, more integration is not necessarily the response…However, despite this major shortcoming, we believe that the NEPAD process opens up possibilities for carrying forward the kind of progressive perspectives schematically sketched above;
    3. While it evokes "development" and calls for "people-centred" development, and for active popular mobilisation for development, the NEPAD process has, to date, been extremely top-down, protocol dominated. However, the fact that it evokes a different kind of approach, creates important potential space;
    4. Our own government has played a leading role in the elaboration of NEPAD, in securing its adoption at the AU, and in lobbying for it in key international forums - however, where NEPAD-related projects are beginning to actually materialise (major inter-country infrastructural projects in electricity, transport, telecommunications in several regions of Africa) it has typically been African parastatals (and not non-African multi-nationals) that have been the key catalysers.
    5. Related to this, while the NEPAD document clearly sees "privatisation" as a key route to accessing the major flows of FDI that it believes are the answer to our crisis of underdevelopment - within South Africa, in the space of 18 months, since the elaboration of the NEPAD document, the official policy perspectives have moved along quite considerably, and are now ahead of NEPAD (notably in regard to building a strong, developmental public sector, and in regard to mobilising domestic capital resources). All of this also leads us to believe that it is possible to engage with NEPAD and shift it much further in analysis and in practical implementation perspectives.

    But perhaps this is all wishful thinking from the side of the SACP? What do other progressive left parties from Africa and Europe think about NEPAD?

  5. Should we not engage with and seek to hegemonise the idea of "good governance", rather than leave it to others to define? - This question is partly related to the NEPAD questions evoked above (NEPAD continuously evokes "good governance"), but it is also a much broader challenge. Rather than dodge the issues of good political and economic governance as the progressive left, should we not actively engage with the issue of governance, providing it with a thorough-going, substantive democratic content - as opposed to the low intensity democracy that is so patently at the heart of the neo-liberal model of elite-pacting? We also need to turn the tables on the assumption that good governance is to be found in the North (Enron, every "bad" debt in Africa is a "bad" loan made by the North, etc.). We need, also, to pay much more attention as left progressive forces to the challenges of technical competence in political and economic governance. Our strengths are often of a broad ideological kind, we leave public management, policy development, project direction, etc. to others - but this domain of practical knowledge and technique is itself not ideologically neutral, unless we occupy the terrain, others will continue to dominate.
  6. How do progressive forces engage much more actively and confidently with areas of political crisis and blockage? This question is directly related to the 5th question above. In the southern African region, Zimbabwe presents an obvious case - liberal forces in the North (and in South Africa) present the Zimbabwean crisis as a crisis of "bad political and economic governance", the abuse of "liberal" human rights. We cannot allow this kind of discourse to be dominant, while we occupy what seem to be largely defensive and even apologetic positions. In the Zimbabwean case, we believe that left progressive forces need to engage much more actively, shifting the dominant paradigm away from a liberal bad governance model whose resolution requires an elite pact between the government and opposition - towards a perspective of social mobilisation, and a popularly-driven negotiations process that foregrounds not just constitutional matters, but a transformational developmental agenda. Are we right? And can similar perspectives be fostered in other African societies characterised by serious political crises?
  7. What lessons and perspectives can we share as left progressive parties/groups in regard to broad fronts, alliances, electoral pacts, liberation movements, etc? In both Africa and Europe a great deal of our daily political preoccupations inevitably relates to the existence of "centre-left" formations of one kind or another that shape the terrain on which we are active. In Anglo- and Lusophone Southern Africa, the political terrain is often dominated by major national liberation movements. Many of these movements (Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe) once described themselves as "Marxist-Leninist". In many cases, in the last decade, there has been a major shift away from this self-characterisation, but, in the absence of an independent but allied left/workers' party, progressive left formations in these countries have been isolated and often lack any kind of organisational centre. In most cases, there have been serious problems of bureaucratisation in these liberation movements. In much of Francophone Africa, progressive left formations have a complex relationship with a variety of "socialist" political parties. There is, of course, also a rich and complex European experience in regard to progressive left and social democratic formations. There are also new European initiatives - eg. "left-green" alliances in some countries, etc. etc. For many of us, especially those of us in Africa, some kind of cooperation with national centre-left formations is essential to ensure peace, to consolidate democratic gains, to defend securalism, and also to provide some access to state power - but there are continuous dangers of the progressive left being swallowed, or being forever tactical and being incapable of robustly posing a transformational agenda. Do these concerns, which are very central to the SACP, have any resonance with other progressive left formations in Africa and Europe? Is the post-independence stagnation of the national liberation movement an "inevitable" outcome? How, as left progressive forces, do we help to build a social movement base that is not "our own", but which underpins a broad front, in this way transforming our own relationship with centre-left parties away from a purely party-to-party (and, therefore, often narrowly electoral, or tactical) relationship?
  8. Are our "township" zones of concentrated marginalisation and underdevelopment potential bases for a transformational politics? Many of us come from parties and movements strongly influenced by Marxism. The SACP certainly acknowledges this influence, and we make no apologies for it. However, for this and other reasons, our strategic perspectives and programmes have often been considerably "productivist" in orientation. We have tended to be less alert to major areas of social reproduction (gender, rural, ecological sustainability, etc.). In the SACP we have increasingly noted that there is a certain disjuncture between our general Marxist theory and decades of practical experience and knowledge - in particular, this applies to the sprawling zones of marginalized social reproduction in our society, the "townships" (which have their counterparts in all third world societies, "favellas", squatter camps, etc.). Our own colonial and quasi-colonial history but also three decades of intensified global social restructuring have led to the transformation of agriculture and to large-scale urbanisation. But, as we are beginning to realise with greater clarity, urbanisation is not necessarily proletariansation, and proletarianisation is not what it used to be (with far-reaching casualisation and informalisation). Our townships (and we think that, in differing ways, this applies to many other societies) are coercively linked to the capitalist market (both local and international), but also relatively de-linked (through marginalisation, casualisation, informalisation, mass unemployment, black-listing, red-lining, etc. etc). Over many decades, the urban and rural poor have devised survival strategies that are partially below the radar-screen of the capitalist market, organising themselves into extended family, community and faith-based networks of solidarity - burial societies, church volunteer groups, neighbourhood vigilant societies, co-ops, petty commerce networks, etc. Some of these networks become criminal, others operate on the margins of the law, most are "informal". The proletarianised working class in our societies often maintains active links with these informal networks, including with rural family households - they constitute a kind of unemployment insurance fund. In periods of heightened political activism (South Africa between 1976 and 1994 for instance) these networks are the key infrastructure of social movement mobilisation and of emergent organs of popular power. Certainly in our struggle, these zones were our "Sierra Maestras" and "Yenans". We believe that we need to analyse these realities much more intensively so that we sharpen both our strategic approach and our practical programmatic efforts. The failure, where this occurs, of the progressive left to engage actively with these social realities is a serious weakness. These zones are, for instance, home to millions of third world, unemployed youths who constitute the social base for the crippling civil wars that afflict many of our societies. These zones are also the localities within which fundamentalist and xenophobic forces are able to recruit a mass following.
    1. How do we link the working class movement, at the point of production, with this broader reality?
    2. How, where this is a practical possibility, do we link governance - national and especially local - to the challenges of these zones?
    3. How do we use state power to foster and strengthen, rather than weaken, the social networks of solidarity? And how do we use these social networks to transform the local state - community policing forums, school governing bodies, participatory local budgeting, etc.?
    4. Is the neo-liberal language of SMMEs (small, micro and medium enterprises), with its implicit strategy of bringing the township survival strategies more effectively "into the market" (i.e. coercing them into becoming labour exploiting and profit maximising entities) the most effective conceptualisation of these networks of solidarity and entrepreneurship?
    5. What can we learn, in Africa, from the substantial, progressive left experience in Europe of municipal government, and of sustaining cooperatives?
    6. How do we more dynamically, as Africans, engage with important experience, particularly in participatory local government, in countries like Brazil and India?
    7. And, above all, how do we (can we?) develop a politics in these zones that is anti-systemic (and not just welfarist), that is transformational (and not just ameliorative and defensive)?

A way forward?

Inevitably, the eight questions sketched out above reflect South African pre-occupations. However, I hope that comrades from other parts of Africa and from Europe will find that at least some of these questions resonate with their own concerns. I am sure that some of the questions that I have posed as if they were novelties are all too familiar and have long been resolved and left behind by many here. In other words, the questions reflect not just South African pre-occupations but also our own under-development. Whatever the case, I hope that these questions will be accepted for what they are: proposals (that are open to agreement, rejection, or amendment) for an agenda of ongoing exchange, debate and analysis. The SACP is convinced that there is the possibility and the necessity of a much more dynamic cooperation among us to consolidate a mobilising politics that has transformational perspectives and capacity.