Let’s move the national democratic revolution on to a second radical phase
Let’s advance, deepen and defend the revolution, the most direct route to socialism
Chris Hani commemoration
The 10th of April 2019 marked the 26th year since Chris Hani was assassinated. The SACP maintains that an assassination of such a magnitude cannot be an act only of two individuals. The gun that was used to murder Chris Hani was taken from the military armoury, for instance. It was taken neither by the Polish immigrant, Janusz Waluś who pulled the trigger, nor by Clive Derby-Lewis who supplied Waluś with the murder weapon.
In summary, there has been no full disclosure of the truth and all the circumstances surrounding the murder of Chris Hani. This includes all the associations that were created in planning and executing the assassination and therefore not only the relay of the murder weapon from the military armoury. In addition there was a hit-list with detailed addresses of targets that included Mandela and Joe Slovo.
The SACP continues to stand against the release of Waluś on parole. We want full disclosure of the truth. We want justice to be done in respect of holding to account every person who was involved or who had prior knowledge of the plan to assassinate Chris Hani and did nothing to stop it.
Let us go to the root
Let us radically confront the crisis into which the productive sector of the state was plunged.
Our public utilities, Eskom, Denel, Transnet, Prasa, SAA, Nuclear Energy Corporation, Central Energy Fund, among others, were plunged into multiple crises. The SACP identified three major phases behind the crises.
Some of the public utilities were created after 1994 from the various segments of their former state conglomerates. Nevertheless their base structures were not radically transformed from those of their apartheid or colonial era roots. In the same manner, by and large the base structure of the productive sector of the state remains the one that was transmitted from the pre-1994 past. The case of Eskom almost perfectly typifies this situation.
The oppressed majority was largely excluded from household electrification up to 1994. Eskom’s power generation, transmission and distribution capacity was chiefly targeted at serving South Africa’s growing capitalist system and the white population. This contributed to the relatively advanced but colonially underdeveloped capitalist system against the background of the systemic underdevelopment of the majority black population. The origins of the Eskom crisis, that is its first or constitutive phase, can therefore be traced to the colonial and apartheid marginalisation of the formerly oppressed.
The second phase of the crisis emerged post-1994 under the neoliberal economic policy regime of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) imposed in 1996. This involved a contradiction between, on the one hand the progressive massive expansion of both transmission and distribution to cover the formerly excluded, and on the other hand the deliberate failure by the 1996 class project to invest in Eskom, expand and modernise its power generation capacity. The latter was underpinned by the neoliberal privatisation agenda.
By the time the Eskom Medupi and Kusile power generation investment decisions were taken it was already late, as the country was facing electricity shortages and load shedding. In addition Eskom had lost its new power generation project management capacity due to the fact that, amongst others, it was deprived of investment into new power generation. Design, engineering, construction and substandard quality problems found their way into the scenario. The results include the failure to complete the two projects on time and a significant sub-optimal performance.
The third phase of the crisis is that of the widespread corruption, governance decay and mismanagement. This is associated with the post-1994 corporate state capture agenda which took off on steroids after the 2014 general election.
The phases of the origin and development of the crisis into which Eskom was plunged also refer to other public entities in varying degrees. Other public entities were plunged into similar crisis, including financial crisis.
Unlike the 1996 class project, the corporate state capture agenda did not push privatisation as such. It largely maintained public entities in the hands of the state, however, not for the purpose of developing and expanding their productive capacity so that they can play a developmental role, but for the purpose of exploiting them and looting in pursuit of private wealth accumulation interests. This sort of state ownership as well as its related “nationalisation” agenda is spurious. It does not lead to state owned entities playing their crucial role in driving a more radical national democratic revolution. Instead state capturers sloganised about “radical economic transformation” as a cover for massive looting of some of our public entities. Another important lesson here is that radically sounding slogans do not advance transformation in themselves, unless they are accompanied by a concrete programme of transformation. In other words, depending on its class character and the nature of the class forces behind it, nationalisation can be used as an instrument for theft rather than transformation.
What then is the way forward?
We need to remain vigilant in all respects. Accordingly, we must continue to guard against privatisation and, in the same revolutionary spirit, also spurious state ownership altogether with its “nationalisation” agenda.
What South Africa needs, in order to develop in the interests of its majority, is national democratic revolutionary state ownership, which is characterised by a rapid increase of the total productive capacity and developmental role of state entities. This requires a strategic focus on increasing efficiency and resolutely expanding and diversifying the entire productive sector of the state. In this context strategic nationalisation, as opposed to spurious nationalisation, can play a crucial role. It must definitely be given the due consideration that it deserves. Strategically developing, expanding and diversifying the capacity of the productive sector of the state, including rapidly increasing its efficiency to serve the needs of the people, is essential to the imperative of preserving the jobs of the hard working rank-and-file workers and creating decent work. National democratic state ownership must also be aimed at developing and expanding the solidarity sector, social control of the economy and in particular advancing towards a people’s economy.
These and other objectives of the absolutely necessary second radical phase of the national democratic revolution depend on our capacity to defend our hard-won democratic power. Intensifying our election campaign in order to achieve a decisive victory in the 8th May 2019 general election is therefore a key immediate task. We should not allow anything whatsoever to undermine the revolutionary task of winning this battle.
The victory we are here talking about is not a victory only of one Alliance component, the ANC. But neither should it be a victory only of the ANC-headed Alliance and supporting mass democratic organisations. It must be a victory for our people as a whole under the organisational leadership of the ANC within the context of a reconfigured Alliance. The Alliance must certainly be reconfigured to function effectively as the strategic political centre of our national democratic revolution. We should therefore remain mobilised even after the general election to ensure that the victory we are presently campaigning for becomes the victory of the masses of our people in material terms. It is the primary responsibility of the working class to be at the head of such mobilisation in order to drive the implementation of the entire progressive thrust of the ANC manifesto as endorsed by the Alliance. As a matter of fact by and large the manifesto contains very progressive commitments whose implementation will benefit the workers and poor.
No blank cheque
Our support for the ANC is therefore not a blank cheque.
Our support for the ANC should not be mistaken as support for factions, or for individuals who violated the values of the revolutionary moral superiority of our struggle. Our alliance is with the ANC and not with factions. The ANC must therefore rid itself of factions and renew itself organisationally. In addition, it must deal anti-intellectual tendencies a blow, fight populism and arrest other forms of intellectual, moral, political and ideological degeneration.
The fellows for example who have a problem with the book that has just been released about the ANC Secretary-General, Ace Magashule, have a right to disagree with its contents in every respect. However, they do not have a single right to disrupt the launch of the book and threaten to burn its copies in our name. As the SACP we strongly condemn the misconduct, and are glad that the ANC has condemned it. The ANC should deal decisively with the misconduct.
In fact such behaviour is a reflection of some degeneration of both organisational strength and revolutionary moral high ground values. Pursuing a correct objective, for example the right to be treated fairly, free education, higher wages, community services, and so on, must not be a license to destroy public property or engage in a regressive behaviour. There is also another emerging tendency – gravitation towards populism as a substitute for strong organisation and intellectual capacity. This manifests itself by simply supporting or criticising issues simply on the basis of what we think our constituencies would like, regardless of whether that is feasible under the circumstances or even correct at all. This is abandoning revolutionary leadership in favour of short cuts and what appears to be popular while in fact it is nothing but populist.
The ANC must unify itself and the Alliance, and the people as a whole. It must contribute to the unity and reconfiguration of the Alliance to play its role effectively as the strategic political centre of our revolution and fulfil its historical mission. In fact we cannot be able to unify our people unless the Alliance is reconfigured and is itself united.
We want an ANC-led government that places the interests of the people first and serves the people selflessly. Our campaign for the victory of the ANC on the ballot in the 8th May 2019 general election is thus a campaign – essentially – for the victory of the people.
When we say vote for the ANC, what we want is an ANC-led government of the people that will, to name but a few national imperatives in addition to those already mentioned:
- Decisively implement the much needed investment in Eskom, in cleaner and renewable energy, and turn around both Eskom and all other public entities.
- Firmly deal with corporate state capture and other forms of corruption in the entire public sector, as well as in the economy as a whole.
- Resolutely implement the National Health Insurance to eliminate inequality in, and thereby provide universal access to quality healthcare.
- Industriously develop a public transport system that is safe, reliable, affordable and accessible, including in particular to people with disabilities. We must support this national development imperative by forming transport forums in our communities.
While it is an absolutely essential condition to address the interests of the workers and the poor, an electoral victory alone, without working class mobilisation to achieve its objectives, may remain hollow. To prevent this situation we need to focus on strengthening the working class at all levels. This also requires that the progressive trade union movement is not co-opted through state capture and other forms of corruption, onto a fight back agenda aimed at dislodging progressive forces in the movement who want to end the capture and corruption.
We also call upon public sector unions in particular to defend the progressive and revolutionary role that the state, including the criminal justice system, must play. We are in a situation for instance where sections of the intelligence services were co-opted in the state capture agenda. This means that the progressive trade union movement has to define very clearly what its progressive and revolutionary tasks are in the current period of our revolution.
The importance also of forming progressive fronts cannot be overemphasised. These include a widest possible patriotic front to defend our hard-won democratic transition, and a popular left front to advance, deepen and defend the second radical phase of the national democratic revolution.
Last but not least, we should strengthen our efforts to achieve African unity, advance, deepen and defend the African Revolution and our internationalism. In this regard the SACP unequivocally condemns xenophobic thinking, condemns xenophobic ideas and condemns xenophobic conduct. The SACP strongly condemns everything xenophobic.
The SACP says:
Workers of world unite against the system of capitalist exploitation as a whole, and against its xenophobic, against its patriarchal, against its racial and against its entire divide and rule strategies.
Workers of the world unite against the regime of imperialism.
Workers of the world unite for socialism, for the sustainable solution to capitalist barbarity and all forms of its manifestation.
VOTE ANC!
