The current phase of the National Democratic Revolution

CHAPTER 1 THE CURRENT PHASE OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

THE STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA, AND THE CHALLENGES GOING
FORWARD

The April 1994 democratic breakthrough represented the strategic defeat of white minority rule, and the state form (colonialism of a special type) that had underpinned a particular path of capitalist accumulation over the previous century. Led by the ANC and its revolutionary alliance, the 1994 breakthrough represented a huge advance for a bloc of radical forces with their mass base amongst the historically oppressed black majority and working class.

In the brief period since 1994, the ANC-led government has spearheaded very significant advances. Among the most important are:

Restoration of political peace, the marginalisation and defeat of a counter-revolutionary
ultra-right, and the consolidation of relatively high levels of political
stability;
The inauguration, nurturing and consolidation of a thoroughly progressive,
democratic constitution, and the steady transformation and democratisation
of the judiciary;
The inauguration and relative stabilisation of multi-party, one-person
one-vote, elected legislatures and executives in all three spheres (national,
provincial and local);
The relatively rapid and relatively successful transformation of the security
forces a process that remains, of course, an ongoing but already considerably
stabilised reality.
The rolling out of a strategy that is beginning to get a handle on the
serious crime challenge. After an initial post-1994 escalation of violent
crime, there is a heartening stabilisation and the beginning of a rolling
back of many (but not all) varieties of violent crime although still at
unacceptably high levels
Very significant labour market reforms, ensuring many more rights for workers.
Major transformation programmes in the provision of health, education and
training, electricity, telecommunications, water and sanitation, housing,
and the beginnings of land restitution and land reform. Many of these measures
have increased the social wage of workers and the poor.

These are remarkable achievements, and few societies and governments can boast so many major transformational achievements within such a short time-span. However, notwithstanding these and many other major transformational programmes, the systemic inequalities and under-lying structural crises that we have inherited are proving to be extremely stubborn.

Race, class and gender continue to play a determining role in regard to poverty and inequality. South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world, and despite the ending of formal racial discrimination in 1994, racial inequality remains a dominant reality. However, as inequality between races diminishes marginally and as intra-race (within racial groups) inequality grows, increasingly it is class that is the most significant determining factor underpinning poverty and deepening inequality.

The economy is characterised by sluggish growth, continuing formal sector job
losses; deepening poverty for many in the midst of persisting high inequality;
disappointing levels of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI); significant capital
outflows from domestic and foreign multinantionals; and vulnerability to speculative
movements on currency and capital markets.

Notwithstanding the defeat of the apartheid state and many outstanding achievements by the progressive forces since 1994, fundamentally the prevailing growth and accumulation path will not be able to resolve the systemic, structural crises of under-development that continue to beset our society.

This sobering reality is partly the result of the burden of the past (entrenched racial, capitalist and patriarchal power), and partly the result of new dynamics and challenges that include the massive restructuring of the working class, the exposure of South Africa to global capitalist instability and patterns of development and under-development, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In the following sections and chapters we will deal with some of these in more detail.

THE RE-STRUCTURING OF THE WORKING CLASS

The SACP, and the ANC-led alliance continue to affirm that the working class is the principal social motive force in the national democratic revolution. However, the objective capacity of the working class to play this role is challenged by the massive restructuring it is undergoing. In the decade before the 1994 democratic breakthrough, significant changes were beginning to occur within the working class, and since 1994 the trends have continued.

The most serious and dramatic tendency has been the job-loss blood-bath in the "formal" sector of the economy. Unemployment levels have risen almost without pause over the last decade. By 2001, the official unemployment figure on the expanded definition of the unemployed (i.e. including those who have given up looking for work) was 6,96 million, or 37 per cent of the potentially economically active.

The unemployment challenge is deepened by the fact that the economically active population is growing by half-a-million each year. Unemployment strikes at young people with particular severity. There were 2,5 million unemployed young people in 1999, (1,4 million young women, and slightly fewer than 1,1 million young men).

This dramatic shedding of jobs in the formal sector has been only partially off-set by rising "employment" in the "informal" (mainly survivalist) sector. Those active in this informal sector rose from 1 million to 2,7 million between 1996 and 2001.

These and other developments have resulted in a working class that is stratified
into the following five broad categories:

Employed workers in core, mainly full-time, semi-skilled and skilled
jobs in the major sectors of our economy (mining, manufacturing, the public
service, parastatal and commercial sectors). This is the main base of the
trade union movement. Politically, this stratum is the leading detachment
in the struggles of the working class as a whole, because of its strategic
economic location, revolutionary traditions and organisational muscle. It
is this stratum that has borne the brunt of restructuring (retrenchments,
casualisation, etc.).
The peripheralised working class, principally made up of casual
and contract labour in the major sectors of our economy, though concentrated
in retail and textile sectors, with the mining sector increasingly employing
contract labour. This stratum is on the periphery of the core of the working
class. Through casualised and contract labour it does not have some of the
benefits and security of full-time employment. Its growth is a direct outcome
of casualisation, privatisation, outsourcing and general restructuring that
affects the core of the working class. This stratum is increasingly being
used as a substitute for permanent employment as well as being available
to be used against, and to weaken the organisational capacity of the working
class as a whole. For example, in a study done by Andrew Levy and Associates,
covering the period 1994-1998, 68,3% of the companies surveyed (80,1% of
which were unionised) had outsourced, and the majority (90,6%) of workers
affected by outsourcing were blue-collar workers. Women are most affected
by casualisation.
A rightless section of the working class, located mainly in the
countryside as farm-workers, and as domestic workers (mainly women) in the
urban areas. The South African Agricultural Plantation and Allied Workers
Union estimates there are 1 million farm-workers who are unorganised, and
there is no organisation of domestic workers of any significance. These
workers are rightless and unorganised. They are also amongst the most
exploited and underpaid sections of the working class, working long hours
with little recourse to trade union protection to advance their rights.
Farm-workers are also located in vastly dispersed, remote areas. The conditions
to which this stratum is subjected are substantively unchanged from the
labour regime under apartheid. Change has passed them by. Again this is
an area that requires renewed organisational attention. A systematic focus
on the organisation of women will also go a long way in the mobilisation
and organisation of this section of the working class.
An informalised working class found in the streets of our major
cities, on the sides of the major highways and around tourist centres. This
stratum includes the majority of taxi drivers, as well as thousands who
are involved in some kind of self-employed activity, living from-hand-to-mouth.
This stratum of the working class is, perhaps, one of the most neglected,
sometimes even subjected to harsh action from some of our own local councils
(like hawkers). As an Alliance we have left this section either completely
unorganised or in the hands of reactionary and even counter-revolutionary
elements. Our strategy towards this section requires high articulation between
the residential and economic forms of organising in this sector. The SACP
has a particularly important role in organising this sector, both residentially
as well as around their immediate economic needs. A large section of retrenched
workers also find themselves being thrown into this sector as joblessness
increases. We need, amongst other things, to use the organisational experiences
of retrenched former union members in organising this broader, informalised
stratum of the working class.
Unemployed workers, who cannot find jobs, some coming in and out
of the informal sector and others caught in a deep cycle of structural unemployment.
The unemployed are largely concentrated in the periphery of our urban areas,
in informal settlements, as well as in the former bantustan areas. They
constitute a "reserve" army of labour, but the majority of these
workers are likely to be permanently reserved in the light of growing joblessness
and absence of other economic opportunities. In the former bantustans they
are under the rule of chiefs, therefore highly susceptible to political
manipulation and are vulnerable to patronage. In the informal settlements
there is a growing phenomenon of shacklords who carry out all forms of extortion
against the unemployed and vulnerable workers who are seeking to retain
a place to live closer to potential areas of employment or informal self-employment.
It is this section of the working class that is forced to live a parasitic
type of a relationship to the main urban economies of our country, thus
being highly vulnerable to criminality and all other forms of social ills
of society. It is also from this stratum that reactionary forces are seeking
to build an alternative power base to the Alliance. Tackling the question
of unemployment constitutes the biggest economic challenge of our revolution
at this point in time. Residential organisation is the prime form of organising
this section of the working class, around developmental initiatives aimed
at generating means of livelihood.

The restructuring and stratification of the working class in South Africa is
closely linked to changes in the structure of capital in South Africa.
Various processes associated with "globalisation" are impacting on
South African-based conglomerates in several sectors the focusing on "core-business",
accompanied by outsourcing; integration into global networks, etc. In this context,
a number of former conglomerates are seeking to transnationalise themselves,
including through the relocation of listings and the movement of head-offices
to the North. While many of these moves are presented as being "ultimately
in the best interests of South Africa", they are, in fact, a major contributing
factor to the weak growth, the huge job-loss blood-bath, and the deepening of
overall systemic underdevelopment.

POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN SOUTH AFRICA

The Report of the Taylor Committee (the Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive
System of Social Security for South Africa - March 2002) estimates, among other
things that:

45 per cent of our population (18 million people) live on less than $2
a day;
25 per cent of African children have stunted growth, and 10 per cent of
Africans are malnourished (underweight for their age);
60 per cent of the poor get no social security transfers.

Measured on the Gini-coefficient, inequality in South Africa is fifth highest in the world. Persisting inequality amongst races remains a defining feature of our society in 1996, 61 per cent of Africans lived in poverty, compared with only 1 per cent of whites.

However, inequality between races has been decreasing over the last 10 years, reflecting the mobility of a small but significant upper stratum of blacks. The persisting levels of deep inequality reflect, therefore, the increasing impact of class as a key determinant of inequality and poverty. In the words of the Taylor Committee: "In the period 1991-1996, while inequality between races decreased, intra-racial (that is, class) inequality increased. This suggests that the racial divide of the apartheid era, if left to its own devices, could become entrenched as a deep class divide in the post-1994 period () by the end of apartheid, intra-racial (class) inequality was contributing more to overall inequality than inter-racial inequality. The contribution of `within-group inequality to total inequality rose from 38 per cent in 1975 to 58 per cent in 1991 and 67 per cent in 1996".

The HIV/AIDS pandemic will impact (it already is impacting) in very significant ways on poverty, inequality and the general vulnerability of a large proportion of our people. Life expectancy at birth in South Africa has already declined from about 63 in 1996 to about 56 in 1999. It is likely to decline even further, and these declines will be particularly marked in specific age groups, the 0-4 year olds and the 25-34 year olds. The proportion of women in the total population will decline, as women are more vulnerable to HIV infection because of their lower social and economic status, and because of physiological factors. The projected age structure of our population shows that the proportion of dependent age groups children and elderly people will increase considerably in relation to the potentially economically active proportion of the population.

The working class and the poor one aspect of the neo-liberal project is to divide a wedge between employed (and particularly skilled and semi-skilled, organised) workers and "the poor". Skilled and semi-skilled organised workers are presented as "selfish", a "labour aristocracy", resisting a "flexible" labour market, "protecting their own narrow interests", and generally resisting the imposition of neo-liberal, structural adjustment measures that will (supposedly) "attract investment", which will (supposedly) "promote growth", and which will (again supposedly) then "benefit the poor".

In the SACPs use of the term, the "working class" is an analytic concept referring, in the first place, to role and function in the relations of production. The working class, in the strict and narrowest sense of the word, is the active, waged proletariat, producing surplus value in the capitalist mode of production. However, this working class is reproduced within a variety of social structures, notably the house-hold, and individual members of this proletariat are constantly moving in and out of a large unemployed, or semi-, or self-employed, reserve labour of army. It is important to understand that the members of proletarian households, and the wider category of the reserve labour of army are all, properly speaking, part of the working class. Which is not to deny, as we have already noted, that this working class is stratified in several ways.

"Poverty" is a more descriptive term referring to a range of indicators (which are, nonetheless, real enough), including income, social exclusion, and vulnerability. Poverty is often (and appropriately) measured by household. This means that there is not an absolute coincidence of poverty and of being a member of the working class (either in the narrow or broader sense).

Some skilled and even semi-skilled workers will not be found in the ranks of the absolutely poor. However, many semi-skilled workers are the sole earners in extended house-holds, and are, therefore, indeed living in deep poverty. With high levels of unemployment and mass retrenchments, and with a very inadequate social security system, currently employed skilled and semi-skilled workers are also vulnerable to being plunged into unemployment and resultant poverty at any moment.

Apart from skilled and semi-skilled workers, other categories of the working class are incontestably living in absolute poverty. In fact, about 30 per cent of employed workers are in households in the bottom five deciles. While only 13 per cent of manufacturing workers are in this category, farm labourers, domestic workers, other unskilled categories are overwhelmingly clustered into the categories of poverty and absolute poverty.

The SACP rejects all attempts to drive a wedge between the working class and the poor. As an analysis of our South African reality such a wedge flies in the face of the dominant reality. Politically, wedge-driving is intended to distance the best organised, the most strategically located sections of the working class from the mass of the poor.

The working class (as our ANC-led alliance has once more recently re-affirmed)
remains the leading motive force of the national democratic revolution. Any
weakening of the working class, any undermining of its mobilisational capacity,
any dampening of its revolutionary aspirations, will have dire consequences
for the prospects of consolidating the NDR.

However, the unity, the revolutionary consciousness, the organisation and mobilisation
of the working class and the poor in general are not things that can simply
be taken for granted. It is for these reasons, that the SACP is advancing, as
the key line of march for our time, the slogan WITH AND FORTHE WORKERS AND
THE POOR!

PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION

National oppression, class exploitation and patriarchal domination are deeply
entwined within the fabric of our society. Over many decades our Party has rooted
its strategic approach to the struggle on an understanding of the deep linkages
between national oppression and capitalist exploitation in South
Africa. This legacy continues to characterise our society, and it lies at the
heart of the SACPs strategic socialist commitment to advancing, deepening
and defending our national democratic revolution.

But it was not just colonial/racial oppression and class exploitation that intersected and reinforced each other. Through our own programmes of action and mobilisation, and through the influence of Marxist feminists, the Party has, in recent years, become more aware of the manner in which the South African capitalist path of accumulation relied heavily on patriarchal domination over black women (and, to some extent, black youth and the rural and migrant poor). Traditional structures of domination chieftaincy, village headmen, and house-hold patriarchy were appropriated, perverted, and their coercive features exaggerated for the purposes of colonial control and accelerated capitalist accumulation.

Pre-existing patterns of patriarchy amongst the black majority were transformed into subordinate adjuncts of the colonial (and later apartheid) state. In reserves/bantustans, in townships, in mine compounds, in the work-place, in squatter camps and in households, the oppressive white minority state cultivated and perverted traditional patriarchy. Numerous patriarchal structures were fostered as subordinate instruments of domination - "chiefs", "head-men", "indunas", "boss-boys", "war-lords", "shack-lords", vigilantes, and male house-hold heads. Black women, African women in particular, and black youth and the rural and migrant urban poor, continue to bear the brunt of this subordinate coercive apparatus, which, in many respects, remains in place.

It was not just perverted traditional African forms of patriarchy that oppressed black women. Patriarchal power relations from within the white minority ruling bloc further oppressed women, in particular black women. In white households and on white farms, it was often black women who were (and who still are) forced into the lowest paying and most menial work. In the "formal" sector of the economy, including the public sector, black women workers are often confined to the worst paying jobs, and they are those who are most likely to be employed as "casuals", and among the first to be retrenched when "rationalisation" and other measures are pursued.

The South African capitalist accumulation path has rested on the unspeakably harsh, triple oppression of the majority of women, perhaps in a more exaggerated and barbaric form than in almost any other society. Black women generally, and African women in particular, have played the central role in the reproduction of the working class a working class that was "cheap" (for the capitalists), not just because it suffered direct coercion (colonial dispossession, pass laws, compounds, starvation wages), but also because the burden of its reproduction was carried by the unpaid labour of women. The triple oppression of black women (as workers, as blacks, and as women) forced them to bear the burden of care for the young, the unemployed, the old, the sick and disabled, and the vast reserve army of labour with the most pitiful resources.

Through survivalist activities, through micro-trading, through extended family
networks (including the use of very young women and girls, "makotis",
as household chattels), through resistance and collective endeavours (stokvels,
burial societies, church groups) black women have played a coerced but absolutely
central role in the accumulation process that developed (and simultaneously
underdeveloped) South Africa. Women in great numbers have organised against
their triple oppression, often playing the leading role in agitational, mobilisational
and organisational work in our national liberation struggle. The SACP believes
that the advancing, deepening and defence of the NDR, and a progressive transition
to socialism are critical for these struggles to finally lead to outcomes that
surpass the oppressive accumulation logic of capitalism. However, the de-racialisation
of our society, and a dominant socialist ownership and control of the economy
do not guarantee, on their own, that patriarchal oppression will be overcome.

NATIONAL OPPRESSION, CLASS EXPLOITATION, PATRIARCHAL DOMINATION AND THE CRISIS
OF SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIETY

In approaching the transformation of our country we have to deal with a terrible
and interrelated triple legacy that, to some extent, gives South Africa a unique
character:

Colonial dispossession - has left the overwhelming majority of
our people deprived of sustainable means of independent survival, probably
to a much greater extent, and for a much more extended period than virtually
any other African or colonised society. It is true that many colonial invasions
resulted in the genocidal extermination (or near extermination) of the indigenous
peoples. In our case (although some of our indigenous peoples have suffered
complete, or near complete, genocide), the greater proportion of indigenous
peoples survived as an overwhelming (but thoroughly dispossessed) majority.
Partly linked to this is the prolonged colonial fostering, perversion
and aggravation of traditional coercive patriarchy. This, as we have
just argued, has placed an impossible burden on women, and young people,
in carrying responsibility for social reproduction (care of the young, the
aged, the unemployed). This is a responsibility more characteristically
borne, in other societies, by relatively more durable household self-sufficiencey
and/or the state and its public sector; and
The relatively advanced levels (for an African society) of capitalist
development - and, therefore, of relatively advanced levels of urbanisation,
proletarianisation and the commoditisation of basic needs.
These have left the great majority of our people more or less entirely dependent
on the capitalist market for work, and for means of survival (food, housing,
loans, access to land, transport)

These three pillars of capitalist accumulation have left us, in many respects, with the worst of all worlds. The two greatest crises currently facing our society (the HIV/AIDS pandemic and unemployment of 37 per cent in 2001) further worsen, and, of course, highlight these three intersecting problems. Once more poor women (sometimes the very young, and very often the aged) are being forced to carry, through unpaid labour, the burden of care and general survival.

This triple legacy, which is not the product of a lack of development, but the product OF a particular kind of development (and its consequences systemic under-development) now leaves us with a huge challenge.

A Marxist-feminist approach to the challenges facing our revolution helps us to understand, perhaps better than any other perspective, three crucial and closely related points:

One: Any sustainable growth and development strategy has to address, as a central (and not peripheral) task, the progressive eradication of patriarchal domination in production and in the social reproduction of the conditions for production

The struggle for a non-sexist society, the struggle to overcome gendered oppression is NOT simply about "integrating" women into the "modern" economy - as if their daily grind over more than a century had not been a critical element of the "modern" (i.e. capitalist) economy. Nor is it simply and primarily about promoting a quota of women into senior positions within the existing structures of power although such promotion might help foster transformation.

Two: The progressive transformation of gendered power must be understood, theoretically and practically, as absolutely central to a growth and development strategy.

This means, amongst other things:

Engendering our entire approach to the economy
Integrating the analysis of the reproductive and informal economies within
our analysis of the capitalist economy, and understanding their future potential
role in constructing a socialist economy
Recognising that the subordination of women is fundamentally linked to
capitalist exploitation
Promoting the role of the state and public sector in providing secure quality
employment for women and men
The role of the state in setting an example as a model employer for women
(through good working conditions, pay equity, maternity benefits, job security
and affirmative action)
Deepening and extending the provision of social services by the state
Establishment of an integrated system of social protection and the promotion
of a social wage
The social wage should include the development of infrastructure, facilities
and services that reduce the disproportionate reproductive and care-giving
responsibilities of women (thus moving towards the socialisation of reproductive
labour)
Driving a bold state-led rural development strategy, including service
and infrastructure provision and job creation projects (e.g. public works
programme)
Promoting and supporting sustainable livelihoods, income security and food
security
Promoting womens access to land
Campaigning against privatisation measures that deepen the reliance of
millions of unemployed and poor on the capitalist market for basic necessities,
and which, therefore, increase the burden of social reproduction placed on
poor women

Three (and by extension from the above two points) In
both theory and in practice we must:

Avoid separating "development" from any sustainable "growth"
strategy;
Avoid separating "social" transformation from "economic"
transformation, as if they belonged to two separate worlds; and (a
related tendency)
Avoid separating the "informal" sector from the "formal",
as if what happens in the one is more or less unrelated to what happens in
the other.

These are themes will be taken up in the following chapter. Critical, however,
to any success is the organisation, the ideological development, the unity and
the general subjective and objective strengthening of the key motive force of
our struggle the working class.

ADVANCE, DEEPEN AND DEFEND THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION WITH AND FORTHE
WORKERS AND THE POOR

Contents

SACP

South African Communist Party

CHAPTER 1