Current Developments in Latin America:
Some Lessons for Southern Africa: Address at the Newsmakers’ Forum of the Press Freedom Committee of The Post of Zambia
29 March 2006 - Lusaka
I wish to thank the Press Freedom Institute of Zambia for extending this invitation to ourselves to address this important forum on a topic that is of importance to all progressive forces in the world, not least in our continent and region.
This invitation could not have come at a better when our Party, the South African Communist Party (SACP) is increasingly discussing ways and means of reaching out much more vigorously to left and other progressive forces in the region. This is informed by a combination of factors. The reality of the decline of left, socialist forces and voice post-independence, and the deepening poverty in our continent and region, and the growing aggression of US-led imperialist offensive.
US-led imperialist era
As a backdrop to locate the topic under discussion, it is important to quote from the recently released “National Security Strategy of the United States of America”. In his Foreword to this document, George W Bush says
“America is at war. This is a wartime national security strategy required by the grave challenge we face – the rise of terrorism fuelled by an aggressive ideology of hatred and murder, fully revealed to the American people on September 11, 2001”
“We choose leadership over isolationism and the pursuit of free and fair trade and open markets over protectionism… We fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to arrive in our country. We seek to shape the world, not merely shaped by it… We must maintain a military without peer… History has shown that only when we do our part will others do theirs. America must continue to lead”
The National Security Strategy document continues to elaborate on some of these themes, including the following:
“The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. This is the best way to provide enduring security for the American people”
“Ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade”
“The United States has long championed freedom because doing so reflects our values and advances our interests. It reflects our values because we believe the desire for freedom lives in every human heart and the imperative of human dignity transcends all nations and cultures… Championing freedom advances our interests because the survival of liberty at home increasingly depends on the success of liberty abroad”
Of particular interest and concern is the ‘developmental strategy’ underpinning this and attitude towards developing countries:
“Yet political progress can be jeopardized if economic progress does not keep pace. We will harness the tools of economic assistance, development aid, trade and good governance to help ensure that new democracies are not burdened with economic stagnation or endemic corruption”
To underline this approach to developing countries, is the place of poverty (eradication) in this strategy:
“An end to tyranny will not mark an end to all global ills. Disputes, disease, disorder, poverty, and injustice will outlast tyranny, confronting democracies long after the last tyrant has fallen
A number of observations can be made from this Strategy:
* Terrorism is indeed becoming one of the big threats globally today, but, according to the US NSS, the causes of this are all reduced to an ‘ideology of hatred’ unconnected to the actions of the US in supporting repressive regimes, the question of growing global inequalities, both within and between countries, and unresolved political conflicts in the world. For the US NSS the primary answer to this is increased militarism
* What is striking in the US NSS is that it is a brazen unilateral strategy, with hardly any role for multi-lateral institutions, especially the United Nations. The UN is largely referred to in so far as it can be used to back some of the elements of this strategy.
* Whilst imperialism has always been political and military means through which to create conditions for capital accumulation, what is distinct about the NSS is the brazen integration of imperialist economic goals into a security strategy. The implication of this is that it is possible for the US to take military action in instances where free trade and markets are threatened as this constitutes a threat to American security interests. In essence the NSS imposes decrees the US as the custodian of human civilisation from now onwards
The NSS is also particularly instructive in terms of the US attitudes towards the developing countries. It defines the immediate allies of the US as the major centres of global power (the other imperialist countries). In so far as developing countries are concerned they are not centres of global power, not even centres for development, but must only be assisted through the same old methods that have not worked (aid, trade, etc). This derives from the absence of an effective poverty eradication strategy, and that poverty eradication is not a key dimension of democratisation as conceived in the NSS.
‘Statecraft’: The art of (aggressively) wielding state power in the interests of domestic elites and imperialism
I must admit, as a necessary diversion, I am quite fascinated by this ‘new’ concept in the ideological armoury of imperialism – ‘statecraft’ – a concept that seems to have also found resonance within sections of our own liberation movement. It is a concept and a practice that consciously aims to demobilise the people as a motive force for change and treats them as both ‘objects’ (of state policies and occasionally recipients of benevolent delivery from above) and ‘subjects’ (passive citizens who obey the class biased ‘rule of law’ and religiously follow directives from a ‘vanguard leadership’).
The imperialist content of ‘statecraft’ is clearly defined in the March 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States in the following terms:
“The goal of our (‘US-led imperialist’) statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly (‘according to imperialist rules’) in the (‘imperialist dominated’) international system. This is the best way to provide enduring security (‘not for the ordinary people of the world, but’) for the American people… Achieving this goal (‘of statecraft’) is the work of generations. The US is in the early years of a long struggle, similar to what our country faced in the early years of the Cold War. The 20th Century witnessed the triumph of freedom over threats of fascism and communism [Emphases and text in brackets added]
In other words ‘statecraft’ is a ‘craft’ precisely because it is both an art and a set of particular outcomes in which control over state power is cleverly used away from and above the heads of the people (especially the workers and the poor) to attain the class objectives of domestic (usually compradorial and parasitic) elites under the tutelage, protection, and for the ultimate benefit, of US-led imperialism.
All the above pose serious challenges for left-forces worldwide, especially in the developing world. It is against this background that we should also locate current developments in Latin America, and lessons that can be drawn for left forces in our region.
The current developments in Latin America can be regarded at one level as the single sharpest expression of the crisis of neo-liberalism, since the triumphalist claim by imperialism about the ‘end of history’. Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980’s and early 1990s, it has taken left forces globally and individually in many parts of the world a long time reflecting on the meaning of this collapse and attempts at serious regrouping.
Latin American Left Advances: An end to the era of US dominated, capitalist ‘democratic transitions’?
There is definitely an important and very welcome and continuing shift of Latin American politics towards the left. As we have argued before, this leftward shift also marks a powerful popular rejection of and challenge to capitalist neo-liberal policies. It is for this reason that the progressive developments in Latin America are not only significant for the Latin American people, but for the peoples of the developing world, whose rights and economic opportunities have been rolled back by neo-liberalism. These developments are therefore also of immense significance to Southern Africa, especially to all the progressive forces in our region.
While the political parties, movements and programmes of these different leaders, and other left-leaning governments as in Uruguay, each have their own national specifics (and some are more left-leaning than others) – all have been swept into power by powerful popular waves of anti-neoliberal mobilisation. Clearly the tide is turning in this part of the world, in favour of the workers and the poor.
Obviously there are important differences between South (and Southern) Africa’s recent history and that of much of Latin America, but there are also some important parallels. Heightened popular mobilisation after World War 2 in, for instance, both South Africa and many Latin America countries was crushed by authoritarian and (in Latin America) usually military regimes. There was widespread torture, disappearances, assassinations, and the targeting of Communist Parties, trade unions and guerrilla movements.
In the midst of the Cold War, US imperialism actively supported these reactionary forces, just as it supported white minority regimes in Southern Africa. In Chile, democratically-elected president Allende was overthrown and murdered in a military coup in 1973. Not unlike the strategic defeat of the ANC-led liberation movement in the mid-1960s, most of the traditional left in Latin America found itself badly destabilised in the decades of the 1960s and 70s.
Again, with many similarities with South Africa, in conditions of severe repression, the popular movement began to stir again in the 1970s and 80s – often in the shape of social movement (“UDF”-type) activism - trade unions, civil rights groups, civic and student movements, progressive journalism, progressive faith-based formations influenced by liberation theology, etc. The trade union movement in Brazil, which went on to be the core formation for President Lula’s Workers’ Party, emerged roughly at the same time as the re-emerging progressive trade union movement in South Africa.
In other Latin American countries, particularly among the least developed (like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru and Colombia) rural-based guerrilla struggles against US-backed authoritarian regimes proved to be more durable.
In the course of the 1980s and early 1990s, there was an important (if partial) shift in imperialist policy towards authoritarian regimes in such diverse places as South Africa, other parts of Southern Africa, the Philippines, and key Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina and Brazil. These regimes were increasingly seen as a liability, and negotiated elite-pact transitions to “democracy” were now encouraged by influential think-tanks in Washington. This shift was partly a pre-emptive response to popular challenges to authoritarian regimes. It was also partly because the diminished power and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union rendered unpopular, pro-imperialist regional gendarmes in Southern Africa or in Latin America less useful to imperialist purposes than previously.
As a result of a combination of factors military rule ended and there were elite pact transitions to multi-party “democracy” in a number of key countries. However, where the guerrilla struggle proved to be victorious (Nicaragua) Washington’s policies continued to focus on active economic and military destabilisation – the people were to be given “democracy”, but if they voted “wrongly”, they had to be given lessons.
In many key Latin America countries (including Chile, Brazil and Argentina) there were indeed transitions to civilian rule and some degree of liberal democracy in this period. Obviously, these democratisation processes were generally welcomed. However, with few exceptions, the new civilian governments used their electoral “mandate” to push through harsh neo-liberal social and economic policies – macro-economic stabilisation at the expense of popular classes, whole-sale privatisation, etc. The brutality of the torture room was replaced by the faceless brutality of the market.
In Washington in the 1980s and 1990s the “democratic transitions” in Latin America, Eastern Europe and South Africa were heralded as the “third wave of democracy”, the fruits of a new post-Cold War globalisation. What we are now witnessing, at least in many parts of Latin America, is the popular rejection of this “third wave”. Just as in South Africa, so throughout South America people are asserting that democracy is not just periodic elections and formal constitutional rights (as important as they are), democracy must also involve social and economic justice if it is to have any real meaning for the majority.
The working class taking direct charge of, and responsibility for, advancing the national democratic revolution. Perhaps what marks the possibilities of a new era in Latin America is that the workers and the poor, principally through mass movements, have made it possible to more directly take charge of democratic revolutions without class mediation from the petty bourgeoisie, or the “patriotic” bourgeoisie. Also, more than in the previous two decades, popular revolutionary formations are beginning to master the electoral terrain as an important platform, in the current conjuncture, to advance revolutionary goals.
Of significance in some of the left advances in Latin America is a direct challenge to the otherwise dominant neo-liberal discourse of an ‘end of history’ and that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA) to imperialist global policies. These advances are also challenging the familiar reformist arguments that “we need to understand the bigger picture”, that popular mobilisation is “populist”, “ultra leftist” and “adventurist”. These reformist positions are TINA with a bad conscience.
Another important lesson from the Latin American left advances, not least in Venezuela, is that of the necessity of ongoing popular participation and mass mobilisation, not only during election campaigns, but as a permanent feature of consolidating progressive revolutions. It must be mass mobilisation based on popular participation in the daily struggles around issues facing ordinary people. It must be mobilisation based on the ‘lived experiences’ of ordinary workers and the poor, not on some ‘feel-good’ opinion surveys, predominantly measuring the confidence or otherwise of the bourgeoisie and the middle classes. This was an appropriate lesson that Chavez taught the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and middle classes in last year’s referendum.
Potential fault-line: political parties, mass movements and the state
The Left as a whole should note, welcome and seek to build on the very important advances made by the Latin American people in fighting against neo-liberalism and seeking to build a new order, with and for the workers and the poor of those countries. In much of the recent advances it is also noticeable that mass movements (referred to as ‘social movements’ in Latin America) have played a crucial, and sometimes even determining, role in some of the recent electoral advances and victories.
We have noted above the important parallels between our own recent struggle history and that of many Latin American countries, particularly the re-emergence of popular struggle through the mass movement current often in a situation in which older political parties had been defeated. The South African organisation experience is, however, somewhat different from many key Latin America countries, in that through the 1970s and 80s, despite the fact that much of the leadership of the ANC and SACP were in prison or in a relatively distant exile, our historic formations (the “old left”) succeeded in providing leadership and coherence to (while also learning from) the “new” broad mass movement.
This was not generally the case in countries like Brazil or Uruguay or Bolivia. There are many reasons for this, both subjective and objective factors – but the most important is, no doubt, the viciousness with which the United States backed the weakening and, where possible, annihilation of Communist parties and movements. No resources were spared in this crusade in what the US regards as its own back-yard, its own “special sphere of interest”. Hence the obsessive viciousness of the campaign and blockade against Cuba, a country ruled by a Communist Party for close to five decades now.
However, the weaknesses of Communist Parties in many Latin American countries (and the same applies even more forcefully to much of Africa) can also be attributed to a tendency to become ‘vanguardist’, sometimes dogmatic (which is often the direct result of operating in conditions of harsh repression), seeking to be parties of the working class in a purist manner, in a context where the broad working class, let alone its organised sections, is a tiny proportion of many Latin American populations.
The current left electoral advances in Latin America are primarily driven by progressive mass movements. This raises a very fundamental question for the left. How sustainable are such electoral victories, based as they are on the support of a mass movement without any cohesive revolutionary political party? This question is important, given the often fractious nature of mass movements. Oppositional struggles can often unite diverse social movements, but sustained electoral politics and especially the effective exercising of state power pose additional challenges. Chavez in Venezuela seems to have acknowledged the challenge and is engaging in a project to build a cohesive political movement of the workers and the poor.
To argue the need for left and especially communist parties in revolutionary struggles is not to be blind to the inherent danger of bureaucratisation of left political parties and liberation movements once in power. This was particularly the case in the Soviet socialist bloc in Eastern Europe and in the case of many of the former liberation movements in our Southern African region, where, once in power, the party or movement distances itself, and even develop a hostile attitude towards independent mass and trade union movements.
These are indeed very fundamental questions for any revolutionary movement. At the heart of revolutionary struggles is always the often fraught relationship between political parties, mass movements and the state. The route to consolidating left victories in Latin America, and indeed in our own situation, is a correct grasp of this relationship.
The strengths and weaknesses of the electoral terrain of struggle
A perennial question for revolutionary movements is that of the place of elections and representative democracy in advancing the revolutionary objectives of the workers and the poor. Electoral sites of struggle are very important in the contemporary period, but they are always subject to the unequal power relations in society. Electoral victories of the mass of the people are always susceptible to reversal by those who control wealth and the major ideological institutions in society.
During the negotiations period in South Africa this question occupied a lot of internal debates within our Alliance. From our experiences we came to the conclusion that revolutionary movements cannot win at the negotiating table what has not been won on the ground, thus emphasising the importance of progressive mass mobilisation as an essential component of the constitution-making process itself. Similarly, particularly when progressive forces are in government, it is possible to lose on the table what has been won on the ground, underlining the dangers of divorcing governance (or more specifically government) from ongoing mass mobilisation. A progressive constitution on paper without active popular participation in all aspects of life is a dead document. The first step towards decadent revolutions is the periodic mobilisation of the masses solely for elections, whilst effectively neglecting them between election periods.
In class societies there is also always the reality that the propertied classes have the capacity to subvert electoral gains, even in many instances through the co-option of the new elite. It is for this reason that electoral and representative democracy must always be buttressed by ongoing mass mobilisation. This is going to be an important test for the advances currently being made by the left in Latin America, and indeed in our own situation.
Some lessons and implications for Southern Africa
Our starting point in beginning to engage with the current imperialist conjuncture and current developments in Latin America, it is crucial that we also broaden this debate and begin to look at some of the wider questions that arise. This debate needs to be broadened to include a general reflection on the political economy of post-independence/liberation Southern Africa, and, for that matter, of the continent as a whole.
There are very pertinent questions raised by the Latin American developments and our post-independence experiences that need to be surfaced about the character of a post-independence or, as some would argue, post-colonial state in Africa, especially in our region. These matters should be frankly debated by all the progressive forces in our country, the region and the continent.
Much as our analysis here aims to make some general observations, we are aware that each country has its own unique features and the manner in which some of these general features express themselves varies from country to country. We are, however, convinced that there are many common patterns that need to be properly analysed and understood.
What are the tasks of former liberation movements now in power, and what is and what should be their relationship to their national liberation allies, especially the trade union movement and mass organizations? One of the key problems in Zimbabwe for instance is that ZANU-PF has lost much of the support and certainly its hegemony over most of the main motive forces of any national liberation struggle, especially the workers and progressive intellectuals and middle strata. It has also lost whatever rural base it had in Matabeleland.
However, the question of the dissolution or decline of national liberation alliances, and tensions between former liberation movements in power and their erstwhile allies in the trade union and mass movements is not in many of our region and continent. It seems as if one of the first ‘casualties’ in post-independence Southern Africa, with the (partial but significant) exception of South Africa, is the mass movement. If truth were told there is not much of a mass movement to speak of in our wider region.
What seems to have been a pattern is that the mass movement, and the degree to which a mass movement existed prior to independence also varied considerably, is either incorporated into the state, or shrinks into NGOs, often funded by Western donors and increasingly positioning itself as oppositionist. Indeed, many of these NGOs become vulnerable to imperialist agendas. However, it would be wrong to paint all NGOs in this way, and it would be wrong to deny that many play a vitally important role in human rights struggles and in poverty eradication programmes. But precisely because they operate in a context where there is no vibrant mass movement (energetically taking up bread and butter issues affecting communities), they are vulnerable not just to external agendas, but also to repression from some of the governments.
Our own experience in South Africa in the 1980s is that the effectiveness of NGOs was based on their links to a vibrant mass movement. The relative isolation of NGOs in the contemporary reality has made it easy for repressive actions by governments to be “justified” on the grounds that these NGOs are ‘agents of imperialism’.
There seems to be a general pattern that there is a rapid decline of progressive and vibrant mass movements (where these existed) after independence. Such movements sometimes re-emerge in response to repression post-independence and decline again once there is a change of government, after electoral defeat of unpopular post-liberation governments (eg Zambia, or Kenya). Perhaps the lesson out of this is the tendency to channel all the mass energies of such movements narrowly into an electoral effort, with a singular focus on an electoral victory or, for that matter, an ‘electoral regime change’, at the expense of sustained mass activism on the ground even after such elections.
Perhaps the only significant mass organisations post-independence are trade unions. It is for this reason that any independent mass activity or resistance to unpopular governments tends to arise from, or be led by, the trade union movement. This has sometimes led to the argument, found in sections of a number of former liberation movements in our region, that the trade union movement is being used by imperialism to roll back the gains of liberation.
The Chiluba experience in Zambia is often held up as the “paradigm” case. Here, the trade union movement was used as a mass base to defeat President Kaunda, but subsequently, the Chiluba government pursued a heavy neo-liberal agenda and ran a corrupt administration. Of course, the Chiluba experience represents one (the worst) potential trajectory of a trade union movement being used as a mass base for political engagement post-independence. It certainly shows that a trade union movement can be hijacked towards an anti-working class agenda, used for narrow electoralist objectives and to satisfy the personal ambitions of some of its (former) leaders, rolling back the gains made after independence. It is the responsibility of the left and the working class movement in the region to guard against this kind of danger. But it is certainly not the only potential trajectory. Progressive forces need constantly to engage constructively with the trade union movement. Painstaking revolutionary work amongst the workers is essential.
The tensions between post-independence governments and trade unions also have its roots in economic policy decisions. During the 1980s and the 1990s, virtually all Southern African governments were pursuing some form or another of economic structural adjustment programme (ESAPs). These ESAPs were characterised by large scale privatisation of state assets, economic liberalisation and the rolling back of social programmes aimed at the poor. This led to large-scale destruction of jobs and sustainable livelihoods. These programmes were a wholesale failure, and it was the workers and the poor that suffered the most, thus leading to resistance from, amongst others, trade unions.
A related problem has been that the domestic elites have zealously driven and benefited enormously from the ESAPs at the direct expense of the workers and the poor. This has seen the consolidation of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie, controlling the levers of state and the meagre economic resources in these countries. The mutual suspicions can therefore also be traced directly to the impact of structural adjustment programmes, and resentment at the accumulation by domestic bureaucratic elites through parasitic capitalism. This has been one of the main reasons for the rupture between a former liberation movement and the main motive forces of the revolution.
Whilst not underestimating the extent to which imperialism can (and actually does) engineer or exploit the fallout between former liberation movements and the main motive forces of the revolution, the challenge is for former liberation movements to frankly examine themselves as well. It is wrong to simply blame trade unions as useful tools in the hands of imperialism, without thoroughly examining the mistakes of the former liberation movements now in government. The key challenge and lesson from all of this is the role that liberation movements should be playing in mobilising the main motive forces for reconstruction and development post-independence.
In the case of Zimbabwe for instance, the ZANU-PF government, during the first decade after independence, pursued very progressive social policies. However these policies later became unsustainable, not because they were populist (they were absolutely necessary), but because the Zimbabwean government left the mainstream capitalist economy untouched, including the land and agrarian question. These early gains became vulnerable to complete destruction by the structural adjustment programme. Progressive social policies in the context of a persistent capitalist economy, retaining all of its colonial features, become unsustainable. The market economy itself undermines and rolls back these progressive social programmes.
Another important lesson out of this is that state power not buttressed by mass power is vulnerable. Many Southern African governments could not resist the structural adjustment programmes partly because there was no mobilised mass force on the ground to defend whatever gains had been made immediately after independence. These should be a warning of the dangers of bureaucratisation of former liberation movements, and their growing distance from their mass base and main motive forces for transformation. It is precisely this phenomenon that strengthens the hand of imperialism, and not the trade union movement as is sometimes claimed. It is a weakened movement, with a bureaucratised state that isolates and weakens the capacity of many governments to resist imperialist impositions. Perhaps this is the most important lesson we can learn from the current left electoral advances in Latin America.
It is for all the above reasons that working class and progressive forces in the region need to deepen worker and working class solidarity to defend and advance thorough-going democratisation, worker rights, human rights and pro-poor policies thereby safeguarding and advancing the achievements of the national liberation movements.
The former liberation movements need to go back to the basics that saw them lead heroic struggles against colonialism and imperialism for the sake of defending and advancing the Southern African revolution. It is also the responsibility of progressive forces to work towards the rebuilding of the mass movement, strengthening the trade union movement and build cross-border solidarity.
Perhaps a critical question in our context is the need to take forward the mission and vision of the national liberation movement, especially that there can be no meaningful political liberation without economic emancipation of our peoples. The question is how do left forces take all this forward. Such a task will require forging of alliances with a whole range of forces, and a platform for steady advance towards a socialist future.
As the SACP we will seek to make our own contribution, and we will continue to engage all progressive forces in our region on these perspectives.
Some challenges and questions
1.The SACP proposes the creation of a loose left network in the region which needs to reflect on the above and many other questions. The key question that we need to engage around, and also in practice, is who is left in Southern Africa? Are the former liberation movements still parts of, and act as, the left?
2.One of the immediate tasks of such a left platform would be to undertake a frank and critical examination of the experiences of the former liberation movements in power, and the challenges arising out of that
3.What are the prospects of building a progressive, anti-neo-liberal mass movement in the region?
4.What kind of left political Party formations do we need in the region, and what kind of alliances are needed to advance a left agenda?
5.Which forces are possible allies of a left-wing agenda in our region?
6.What relationships should we seek to forge with other left networks in other parts of the world, eg The Sao Paulo forum in Latin America?