SACP General Secretary at the recent Augmented CC. Mapaila conceded, in one of his T V interviews, that the EFF shutdown was actually a success. He was not negative in his review of the shutdown and its demands; in fact, he was sympathetic. The question is, why did he not display such a spirit and attitude before the shutdown.
THE SOUTH AFRICAN Communist Party has announced that the 2024 elections should be contested on the basis of a reconfigured alliance with the ANC, which rejects neoliberal economic policy. Failing that, they are prepared to go it alone and contest the next elections outside the Alliance, through a Left popular front.
This is a resolution of the recent Augmented Central Committee of the SACP. This Augmented CC was convened to finalise modalities for implementing the state power resolutions of the SACP 15th Congress held last year in July.
Both these two options of the latest SACP resolution sound bold and courageous. But in reality they are not. It is obvious that this resolution, and the two options it presents, is a nonstarter because the ANC will clearly not drop the neoliberal economic policy it is so committed to. And we are only left with a year before the next elections. When the reconfigured Alliance fails to materialise, the SACP will not have time, let alone the energy and the inclination, to mobilise its Left popular front for an effective contest in the 2024 elections. So it is clear that these noises of the SACP about a reconfigured Alliance and the Left popular front do not amount to any viable socialist strategy. They are just a bargaining chip within the quagmire of the Alliance.
This is of significance because, to some extent, the crisis of the SACP is part of the political crisis that the broad moribund South African Left must overcome in order to renew and rebuild, so as to pose a social revolutionary advance. As Lenin said in the April Theses; “it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error”. I may not be able to live up to Lenin’s standards, but an attempt is important all the same.
No progress in old debate
The debate about a reconfigured Alliance is almost 20 years old. It started with the state power debate itself around 2005. By the time of the 2007 July Congress in Port Elizabeth, it had fully developed to such an extent that congress passed an explicit resolution that said: “The SACP (should) contest state power in elections in the context of a reconfigured alliance.” I also remember Jeremy Cronin expressing a view at the plenary of that congress, that if the ANC government adopts neoliberal policies, SACP ministers should object. If their objection is not heeded, they should resign from the cabinet and publicly state their reasons for resigning.
Typical of SACP’s approach to policy. There is no assessment of why the reconfigured alliance has not been realised, yet it continues to be their goal. Such an assessment would enable them to devise an approach that might make a difference this time around. At the 30th anniversary commemoration of the assassination of Chris Hani on 10th April, the acute contradictions within the unstable Alliance were laid bare. Cosatu was complaining about betrayal of public sector workers on their wages and the integrity of collective bargaining, and bemoaning the deepening budget austerity. The SACP said that if neoliberal economic policy is not dropped, they will leave the Alliance and go alone alongside a Left popular front. The ANC did not bother to even meet its Alliance partners halfway. Instead, they openly attacked Nehawu for conducting a strike in public health institutions, thereby endangering lives of patients. They also attacked both the SACP and Cosatu for publicly attacking the ANC and government at a time when they are facing a most difficult election in 2024. Most polls predict that the ANC is going to fall below 50 percent at next year’s general elections. So the ANC is panicking.
Instead of moving closer to a reconfigured Alliance that constitutes itself as the political centre, the crisis of the Alliance is fracturing partners. And there is no strategic or coherent conduct; there is no shift towards the Left in policy making.
Prospects for genuine Left popular front
At its national congress in September last year, Cosatu passed a resolution to “engage the SACP to contest state power in the 2024 general elections and ensure full support by all means possible.” I found it a bit odd that this resolution is not openly acknowledged by the SACP, yet they say their approach to electoral participation shall be through a popular front. This should be a good starting point in building their popular front for elections and beyond.
The EEF called for a shutdown on the 20th March 2023. Their main demands were the resignation of Ramaphosa in the wake of the Phala Phala scandal and an end to the Eskom electricity crisis. The SACP rejected EFF’s shutdown and even labeled EFF “fascist”. I thought EFF’s shutdown was legitimate, though the two demands tended to narrow the scope of our social crisis. Worsening poverty makes the demand for a basic income grant essential. And that’s without mentioning high unemployment, fiscal and monetary austerity, collapse of public services, GBV etc.
Saftu endorsed the shutdown and mentioned these broad demands that reflect the social crisis, but their presence was limited on the day of the shutdown. Saftu leaders did not come up on stage when called to speak. The EFF is strategically limited and they sometimes push a narrow nationalist, racialised mobilisation. But to say they are fascist is wrong and it is unhelpful. The EFF machinations are part of a limited political realignment which, like the SACP’s manoeuvre, is a typical game of pseudo-Left sects in our political system. These sects are not about an emancipatory, mass-based Left renewal. They are part of an ANC-oriented orbit, which holds back popular classes.
The shutdown was one opportune moment to forge unity in diversity by the broad array of Left forces in actual struggle, against the deepening social crisis and the neoliberal elite forces who drive it. The SACP and most of the Left failed dismally to rise to the occasion. However, the SACP showed it has the potential to participate in such moments that could crystalise a broad Left front. Unlike most ANC politicians, SACP GS Solly Mapaila conceded, in one of his TV interviews, that the EFF shutdown was actually a success. He was not negative in his review of the shutdown and its demands; in fact he was sympathetic. The question is, why did he not display such a spirit and attitude before the shutdown? The SACP failed to seize the shutdown moment because their conception of the Left popular front is to subordinate mass movements to Alliance dynamics. The alternative is to work with popular movements to pave a genuinely socialist, independent path.
Beyond the Communist Party: build mass movements
We need to wage serious popular struggles in rejecting neoliberalism. And we need to pose radical alternatives, as part of the long struggle towards socialism in the 21st century.
The deepening social crisis means that we must urgently build mass movements as a nucleus for renewing and rebuilding the Left, for halting and reversing the crisis and for posing alternatives for a meaningful social transformation in South Africa. These mass movements have to be linked to social and political forces capable of posing a radical social transformation agenda. We, therefore, need to seriously explore ways of rebuilding the Left, given the current political situation.
A serious attempt to understand the post-apartheid social formation has to be made. This will allow the Left to formulate relevant strategies and tactics for waging effective popular struggles and building formidable mass movements.
Like comrades in Latin America and France recently, we need to wage serious popular struggles in rejecting neoliberalism. And we need to pose radical alternatives, as part of the long struggle towards socialism in the 21st century. Popular movements, not political parties, have to be in the forefront of the struggles against neoliberalism. They must be built in concrete popular struggles, made up of various social classes who are victims of neoliberal polices (privatisation of public services, budget cuts in wages and in basic public services such as education, health and housing, neoliberal agriculture and land polices etc). If popular struggles register decisive victories against these forms of neoliberalism, they will lay a sound foundation for an electoral victory of Left forces. Victory for the Left will come in struggles before elections, not after.
Otherwise, the political crisis marked by a declining ANC, without new electoral alternatives emerging, will persist. And unstable coalitions, steeped in elite deals, will be the order of the day, while the social crisis deepens and takes us down into barbarism.
So the Communist Party must join the efforts to build popular movements in South Africa to effectively challenge the dominant neoliberal capitalism and pose radical alternatives, if they are still to be relevant in some way.
It is clear the SACP offers no meaningful avenue for electoral strategy for the Left for 2024. The strategic question is therefore how should the broad Left and popular movements participate in the 2024 general elections?
Gunnett Kaaf is a Marxist activist and writer based in Bloemfontein. He is a former SACP member.
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