The South African Communist Party is marking 102 years in existence. That is no mean feat for any party, not to mention one that was banned.
Even more impressive is the fact that without having contested an election under its own name (except to a very limited extent at municipal level), it has not only commanded an impressive network of public representatives, but has exerted a formidable degree of ideological and political influence over its alliance partner, the African National Congress.
Nowhere is this more so than in the master narrative of the party, the so-called National Democratic Revolution, which our colleague Anthea Jeffery has deftly outlined in her recent book Countdown to Socialism.
As Jeffery’s book illustrates, the NDR is an intensely ideological project. Conceived by the SACP, it seeks an expansive role for the state, which will reorder society and the economy in its image. This will take place, of course, under the ‘hegemony’ of the ANC and its alliance partners. In practice, the ANC is an unwieldy organization, many of whose members cleave to what the late Lawrence Schlemmer termed an ‘untidy populism’ rather than to any particular programme. This is probably all the more so after nearly three decades in power and enjoyment of the fruits that incumbency and sinecures can provide. The SACP has the virtue (of sorts) of ideological coherence, and has tried to position itself as a workshop for ideas for its ally. What it says matters, both in terms of revealing the thinking and attitudes that animate policy and politics, and in providing insights into what lies ahead.
A recent statement from the party helps put this into perspective.
‘Our hard-won gains,’ the statement claims, ‘have come under constant threat. The negatives have clouded the positives, and in some areas, progress has even reversed.’
It’s a theme that not only arises repeatedly in the statement but has been central to the approach to politics evident in both the SACP and the ANC for decades, conveying the cloying sense that ‘threats’ lurk in dark corners. There is an unhealthy dose of paranoia in this: the sense that things are being undone because of the nefarious machinations of those in opposition (acting legally or illegally, the difference is not particularly significant).
Not an end goal
Hence, the need to seize the state not to end the revolution, but to push it forward. Note that the statement terms the transition a ‘democratic breakthrough’, not a settlement. It was a victory, but not an end goal by any means. The establishment of a non-racial democracy merely opened up other axes for further objectives to be reached. The SACP has always been candid that this would involve bringing into existence a socialist, and ultimately a communist society.
Yes, there is some concession that mistakes were made, but the SACP holds to a view of history and geopolitics in which the trajectory of things is motivated by known and well-nigh immutable dynamics, and in which ‘struggle’ is inescapable.
‘We hold those responsible for state capture, governance decay, corruption at Eskom and neoliberal policy choices and their failures accountable,’ says the SACP. Absent is any sense of just what brought the country to this point, or more to the point, how the SACP, its intellectual framework and its political positioning contributed to doing this.
So, yes, the state was seized for the revolution – but the consequent building of the nomenklatura destabilised and deskilled it. It turned out that political affiliation and ideological clarity were no substitute for technical skills and managerial ability.
Remember too that the SACP was in the vanguard (no pun intended) of putting former president Jacob Zuma into office, and in abolishing the Scorpions as part of securing him against inconvenient meddling by law enforcement agencies. The SACP took the latter to a level beyond the faux constitutional arguments about the need for a single police service, or the grubby realities of shielding a presidential hopeful. For them, the issue was also that the Scorpions were counter-revolutionaries (to recap: nefarious guys lurking in dark corners…).
About the darkness
And speaking about the darkness, the SACP is worried about the energy crisis. It says: ‘Policy priority in electric power generation went to microeconomic liberalisation, privatisation, outsourcing and unbundling of Eskom, in favour of insinuating competition to the public utility by private power producers, called “Independent Power Producers”. This disregarded the energy security needs of our nation.’
That’s debateable. The government – in which SACP cadres have served for 29 years – sat on its hands for years after Eskom warned that South Africa’s power capacity was running out. If it expected the private sector to add power to the system, it oddly dallied on creating the conditions for it to do so. It was only in 2021 that licences for generation were raised above the 1MW threshold.
Previously, hopes were pinned on the new Medupi and Kusile stations (or a Russian nuclear fleet). These are now hopelessly over-deadline and over-budget.
Still, the SACP wants industrialisation. It ‘vehemently asserts the urgent need for a high-impact industrial policy that prioritises national production development and employment creation at scale.’ Well, easier said than done. Much easier said than done when the failures of governmental responsibility – the ideologically correct cadres notwithstanding – are factored in. South Africa literally can’t keep the lights on. It also can’t move goods effectively on the rail network, keep most of its urban centres functioning, enforce the law or maintain security and keep the water supply clean. Not exactly the developmental state that’s been promised for decades.
Why on earth the state should be any more successful in pushing ‘reindustrialisation’ is unclear, to put it mildly. One of the big ideas at the moment is tariffs on imported steel – which if anything is having the opposite effect to what was (nominally) intended. South Africa just can’t at present make quality steel at a globally competitive price. Whatever benefits local steel producers are getting out of it, manufacturers needing steel inputs pay the price for it. Value add, anyone?
Profit-obsessed considerations
This probably doesn’t resonate with the SACP, these being the profit-obsessed considerations of an unpatriotic bourgeoisie. But it’s difficult to see how any sort of industrial economy is going to survive without taking those concerns seriously. Or without relying on the private sector, since it functions. The state does not.
Meanwhile, the SACP wants Expropriation without Compensation. ‘The radical land redistribution framework must decisively include expropriation, by which we are not referring to an exchange relation involving compensation or a watered-down version of expropriation. Here, we are referring to expropriation according to its true meaning. At this moment, South Africa needs expropriation with no compensation and categorically, clear legislative measures to put it decisively into practice.’
In other words, the SACP wants the real deal: the confiscation of property, with no compromises.
This will be done by the same State whose interventions elsewhere tend to vary between ineffectual and deleterious. The SACP might bear this in mind as it simultaneously calls for an end to hunger and securing the food supply to the country’s people. It might, but it probably won’t.
Ideology is a useful commodity in politics: it orders thinking and establishes a coherence in political discourse. When elevated to an infallible, all-embracing worldview (as is the case with Communism) or when pursued by a political class that has known little beyond politics (as is the case for many of South Africa’s incumbents) it risks becoming more real than reality itself. Considering the realities of present-day South Africa, the SACP is a good illustration of this. Considering the realities of the ANC, what the SACP advocates may well be an indication of where policy is likely to go.
[Image: Chickenonline from Pixabay and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:South_African_Communist_Party#/media/File:Emblem_of_the_South_African_Communist_Party.svg]
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