South Africa: Resistance from below -- reclaiming the past, inventing the future?

For more on South Africa, click HERE. More by Dale McKinley. For more on NUMSA.


By Dale McKinley

August 2015 – At Issue e-zine, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – Among the most studied and celebrated aspects of the anti-apartheid struggle during the 1980s in South Africa was the breadth and impact of community resistance. (Ballard et al 2006; Buhlungu 2010)

The origins of that resistance came during the late 1970s and early 1980s when the working class, broadly conceived, was hit with a double blow. Emerging clusters of neoliberal capitalism privileged the opening up of global markets, increasing capital mobility and reorganising states to guarantee and catalyse "free market principles" (Harvey 2005), while pushing for a flexible, insecure and informal labour regime. (Chun 2009)

Simultaneously, a large number of unions had become increasingly opposed to what they saw as the subordination of workers' interests and struggles to the macro-national liberation politics of the African National Congress (ANC) and its alliance partner, the South African Communist Party (SACP). (Pillay 1996) These unions wanted to forge politically independent labour organisations allied to the broader working class of communities, informal workers and students that practiced workers’ control and participatory democracy. (Baskin 1991)

This eventually resulted in the formation of the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU). Linking the strengthening of internal union (especially shop-floor) structures and democracy to the struggles against state repression on a more general societal level FOSATU reached out to communities and their unemployed and casual worker constituencies. (Barchiesi 2006)

On the community front, there was the launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983. This brought together a wide range of community and other anti-apartheid civil society organisations, many of whom were aligned to the ANC. Key to these developments, were the worsening material conditions of the black majority and their increasingly radical resistance to the devastating socio-economic impact of the apartheid-capitalist system (Naidoo 2010). After the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985, the terrain for a genuine people’s alliance that contained an equally genuine alternative to apartheid-capitalist oppression was fertile.

Negotiations and mobilisation

Meanwhile, in the midst of widespread community and labour movement struggles during the late 1980s, behind-the-scenes negotiations between the ANC and the apartheid state were well advanced. Negotiatory politics began to fast displace whatever ground working class struggles were attempting to occupy, in the process creating the conditions for top-down, centralised “power and decision-making”. (Pillay 1996)

 "...in the midst of widespread community and labour movement struggles during the late 1980s, behind-the-scenes negotiations between the ANC and the apartheid state were well-advanced." 

By the early 1990s, the strategic locus of resistance and people’s power shifted even further onto a "negotiations" terrain. COSATU became involved in a parallel negotiating process, devoting much of its energies to institutionalising bargaining agreements between unions, employers and the state. (McKinley 1997) Similarly, a range of community organisations entered into negotiations with local white councils about the provision of public services. With the core leadership and organisations of what had constituted the UDF now absorbed into the ANC itself, the remaining community organisations, after holding talks with the ANC, formed a new umbrella body called the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO), which unofficially became the fourth member of the ANC Alliance. (Zuern 2004)


Combined, these shifts resulted in the effective curtailment of anti-capitalist mass struggle by the broad working class. Ordinary workers and community members often had little say in key political and policy decisions, which became dominated by the perceived necessity of seeking common ground with capital and the apartheid state for some kind of social contract to restructure an ailing South African macro-economy.

The post-apartheid ‘dividend’

With the transition to democracy and the ANC’s capturing of state power after 1994, a range of new political, socio-economic and organisational constellations of power thus came to the fore. This occurred alongside the rapid adoption by the ANC of a neoliberal macro-economic policy framework that profoundly reshaped not only the political economy of South Africa but the more specific struggles of poor and working-class communities. (Marais, 1998)

For the poor and working class, the impacts were devastating. Massive job losses were visited upon those who had been fortunate enough to be employed, this "experience" being accompanied by attendant social and economic damage to already poor and vulnerable families and communities. The ANC-managed state also implemented “basic needs” policies that turned many basic services into market commodities, facilitated by a drastic decrease in national government grants/subsidies to municipalities and support for the development of financial instruments for privatized delivery. (McDonald, 2000)

 "For the poor and working class, the impacts were devastating. Massive job losses were visited upon those who had been fortunate enough to be employed, this ‘experience’ being accompanied by attendant social and economic damage..." 

In turn, this laid the foundations for an enabling environment of patronage, corruption and factional politics as well as a huge escalation in the costs of basic services and a concomitant increase in the use of cost-recovery mechanisms such as water and electricity cut-offs. By the 21st century, millions more poor South Africans had also experienced cut-offs and evictions as the result of the neoliberal orgy. (McDonald and Smith, 2002) Further, the state’s capitalist-friendly land policies, which ensured that apartheid land ownership patterns remained virtually intact, has meant that South Africa’s long-suffering rural population continue to taste the bitter fruits of labour exploitation and landlessness.

It was within this transitional context that a range of new community organisations and social movements surfaced. (Ballard et al, 2006; Naidoo and Veriava, 2003) In almost all cases, they emerged in the very spaces opened up as a result of the failure of the tactical approaches and strategic visions of the main traditional forces of the left (for example, COSATU and the SACP) and "civic" structures like SANCO to offer any meaningful response to the changing conditions. (McKinley and Naidoo, 2004)

This "perfect storm" of neoliberalism thus brought together all those inhabiting an extended and flexible "community" of work and life the organisational form of which replaced the formal workplace as the epicentre of social solidarity. In response, there were some serious efforts from sections within the labour movement in the late 1990s and early 2000s, mostly from municipal workers, to forge collective solidarities and struggles. Despite this, the dominant politics and practices of the labour movement in the context of the changing composition of the broad working class and the enforced boundaries of corporatism under neoliberalism, has largely undermined the possibilities of any practical unity. 

The "new" social movements and community organisations have also been subject to a consistent state campaign of rhetorical vitriol and physical assaults. (McKinley and Veriava, 2010) Crucially, the various leaderships of the SACP, COSATU and other ANC “civil society” allies have most often given tacit support to the state’s repressive actions and have consistently failed to seriously engage with, politically support, or provide material solidarity to their struggles.

Catalysing division and conflict

While these community organisations and social movements do not represent some kind of homogeneous entity, and while there have been (and continue to be) substantive organisational differences and political and ideological debates within their ranks, they have become inextricably bound together by the levelling content and common forms of the neoliberal onslaught, both nationally and, to a lesser extent, internationally.

And yet, besides the highly fractured social and productive relations within poor communities, there is the additional challenge of engaging and overcoming a rising social conservatism among the ranks of the broad working class, driven by the growth of (right-wing) Christian evangelical churches and culturally reinforced patriarchy, as well as intensified ethnic and national chauvinism.

Much of this social conservatism (McKinley, 2010) has come to the political and social surface since the rise of the current South African president, Jacob Zuma, whose thinly disguised misogyny, homophobia and open embrace of patriarchal "traditional values" and religion have provided a trickle-down, socially backward "role model" to the ANC’s and the left’s core constituency – the broad working class. Further reinforcement has come from the ANC-led state’s consistent championing of a narrow nationalism that has framed and encouraged xenophobia as evidenced in the eruption of xenophobic violence in 2008 and again in early 2015.

All of this has evinced a double "movement" over the last several years in respect of poor communities and their struggles. On one hand, an escalating hyper-commoditised daily existence has produced a situation in which the vast majority of those residing in poor communities are engaged in a desperate struggle for social relevancy and location. The result has been an intensification of social division, stratification and dysfunction, now more than ever driven by increased competition for limited social benefits, services and productive opportunities.

 "Much of this social conservatism has come to rise with the current South African president, Jacob Zuma, whose thinly disguised misogyny, homophobia, and open embrace of patriarchal ‘traditional values’ and religion have provided a trickle-down, socially backward ‘role model’ to the broad working class." 

In a Manichean twist, scarce waged labour has become the hoped-for light at the end of the tunnel, the main “prize” for social inclusion and stability as against the dark and desolate recesses of utter social marginalisation. Access to state-serviced and controlled social grants, which are even then most often subject to considerations of political patronage and party electoral support now represent a barely inclusivist second "prize".

Simultaneously, there have been growing levels of tension and conflict that have been manifested in various forms of local, community protests and violence, most often involving the state’s police forces as well as local politicians and elites. (Alexander, 2010; von Holdt, 2013) According to one, multi-year, academic study the number of community protests increased by almost 150% from the period 2005-2008 to the period from 2009-2012 when they averaged 309 per year. (Runciman, 2013)

The combined waves of protest and violence have also involved trade union members, mostly those occupying the lowest paying jobs in the mining sector striking over wages and working conditions. This was the case at the Marikana mine in August 2012 when 10 miners were killed in intra-union violence, followed by the massacre of 35 striking miners by police, with another 70 injured. (Alexander et al., 2012) There have also been scores of community protesters shot dead by police forces over the last several years. (The Sowetan, January 24, 2014)

Cumulatively, this cocktail of constructed dysfunction, division and conflict has made the possibilities of forging common, national level political and socio-economic struggles of communities for radical change hugely difficult. Likewise, it has also vitiated much of the earlier transitional potential of meaningful anti-capitalist labour-community alliances.

New spaces, new possibilities

The good news, however, is that there are new spaces opening up. The most crucial of these spaces have been engendered by the on-going fracturing of the ANC-led [ANC-SACP-COSATU] Alliance over the last few years, which has seen a slow-but-sure loosening of the ANC’s political and ideological hegemony. This process has been catalysed by the horrific events at Marikana. During the subsequent post-massacre strike by platinum miners, the longest in South African history, practical and solidaristic links between workers, community organisations and independent left activists were forged. This heralded possibilities both for more sustained and campaigning alliances between labour and community and an effective and principled "United Front" of community, labour and independent left forces and struggles.

For, whether it be in South Africa or elsewhere, the very basis, historically, for the maintenance of a sustainable political alliance between unions and (ostensibly progressive) political parties that have hold of state power is the parallel maintenance of both a politically malleable union leadership and expanding benefits for a meaningful threshold of unionised workers. On both counts, the alliance of the ANC, COSATU and the SACP is looking increasingly precarious.

 "The good news, however, is that there are new spaces opening up. The most crucial of these spaces have been engendered by the on-going fracturing of the ANC-Alliance over the last few years" 

Now not only is the ANC itself riven with factional battles and drowning in a sea of corruption but the last two years have also seen the formation of a new political rival (ostensibly to the ANC’s left) in the form of the breakaway Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as well as the expulsion from COSATU of the largest union in the country, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). Further, COSATU and many of its affiliates have become virtually paralysed by leadership and factional battles, these catalysed by ever growing exposés of massive financial mismanagement and fraud. (McKinley, 2014)

What is also happening is that the wage and working condition gains of all but the most highly paid unionised workers are being seriously eroded by the combined effects of the state’s neoliberal policies and the displacement of the current crisis of capitalism onto workers. In respect of the ‘other’ part of the broad working class (i.e. poor communities), the impacts are being felt even more acutely.

This is where the incipient moves by NUMSA, supported by many community organisations and other civil society formations across the country, to forge an independent and anti-capitalist United Front of the broad working class comes into the picture. For many community organisations, workers, social movements and other left activists who have been waging various struggles over the past decade and who are not part of the long-standing ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance, the significance of NUMSA’s break is that it comes with a commitment to lead in the establishment of a new United Front (UF) that will coordinate struggles in the workplace and in communities, in a way similar to the UDF of the 1980s. The task of this front will be to fight for the implementation of the Freedom Charter and be an organisational weapon against neoliberal policies such as the National Development Plan. (NUMSA, 2013)

Such initiatives could indicate that “the nearly 10-year revolt of the poor may be complemented by an industrial partner” (Gentle 2014) and see a rejuvenation of labour-community alliances centred on basic public services. (Ashman and Pons-Vignon 2014).

Additionally, NUMSA has said that it will embark on a process to organise workers across value chains, including in the highly divided and volatile mining sector (NUMSA 2014), a move that could also herald the beginnings of organisational support for informal and casualised workers who, it is estimated, now constitute the majority of those employed in South Africa. (ILO, 2015)

Since the beginning of 2014, NUMSA has held a range of meetings and conferences with an array of community organisations, NGOs and independent left forces. This has led to the launch of several provincial and local structures of the United Front and campaigns against, for example, the ANC government’s introduction of a youth wage subsidy and its neoliberal budget. Several joint protests have taken place across the country and have often been extended to other struggles initiated by community organisations and social movements.

NUMSA’s moves to build such a United Front remain embryonic at this stage, of course, and it must still translate stated intent into practical action when it comes to active involvement in community struggles and organisations as well as in making common cause with informal/casualised workers. Nonetheless, what NUMSA has done is to open wide the door of new possibilities not just for labour-community alliances for public services but for a broad working-class-led movement to mount a serious organizational and political challenge to the ANC (alongside its so-called "left" alliance partners) as well as to the state in its present form.

The key challenge now for both community organisations and the labour movement in South Africa is to occupy the new spaces that have opened and to do so independently from any political party. In order for that to begin to happen though, there must first be recognition by unions and community organisations that they are part of the same struggle: in other words, the laying of a foundation for a unity in resistance of the broad working class in opposition to neoliberal capitalism and all its associated practical impacts.

In doing so, a base can be constructed on which a parallel joint program of basic grassroots organising and activism can then be pursued. Such a program needs to be grounded in a basic set of demands that speaks directly to the real living conditions and daily struggles of both poor communities and organised workers. And it must also linked to a coming together to change the face of the public sector as a means not only to deliver public services but to do so in a way that deepens and expands their democratic character and content. (Ronnie, 2013; Wainwright, 2013) In this way, the idea of a meaningful United Front that also encompasses social forces beyond its broad working class core can begin to be translated into practice.

 "a base can be constructed on which a parallel joint programme of basic grassroots organizing and activism can then be pursued. Such a program needs to be grounded in a basic set of demands that speaks directly to the real living conditions and daily struggles of both poor communities and organized workers." 

Above all, for community and worker resistance to invent the future of anti-capitalist struggle in South Africa is going to require patient political and organisational work and activism informed by a democratic spirit of humility and openness. There is no space here for vanguardist, paramount leadership, no room for the presumption of collective “working-class” consciousness and no place for the defensive and divisive promotion of narrow organisational identities and terrain.

While a longer-term goal of broad working-class struggle might well be to replace capitalism with an alternative system, it is only by engaging in the kind of practical, here-and-now struggle for real changes in the lives of the public, both human and institutional, that the possibilities for more radical change can be brought into being.

[Dale T. McKinley is an independent writer, researcher and lecturer based in Johannesburg. He is a long-time political activist and has been involved in social movement, community and liberation struggles for over three decades. He is the author of four books and has written widely on various aspects of South African and international political, social and economic issues and struggles.]

References

Alexander, P. 2010. ‘Rebellion of the poor: South Africa’s service delivery protests – a preliminary analysis.’ Review of African Political Economy, 37(123): 25-40.

Alexander, P., Sinwell, L., Lekgoa, T., Mmope. B. and Xezwi, B. 2012. Marikana: A view from the mountain and a case to answer. Johannesburg: Jacana Media.

Ashman, Samantha, and Nicolas Pons-Vignon. 2014. ‘NUMSA Rupture Could Mark New Start for Socialist Politics.’ Business Day, 11 February

Ballard, R., Habib, A. and Valodia, I. (Eds). 2006. Voices of protest: Social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

Barchiesi, Franco. 2006. ‘Commodification, Economic Restructuring, and the Changing.

Urban Geography of Labour in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of Gauteng Province, 1991–2001.’ Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Palmer House Hilton Hotel, Chicago, 7-11 March.

Baskin, Jeremy. 1991. Striking Back: A History of COSATU. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

Buhlungu, S. 2010. A paradox of victory: COSATU and the democratic transformation of South Africa. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press

Chun, J.J. 2009. Organizing at the margins: The symbolic politics of labor in South Korea and the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Gentle, Leonard. 2014. ‘Forging a New Movement: NUMSA and the Shift in South African Politics.’ The South African Civil Society Information Service, January 28

Harvey, D. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

International Labour Organisation. 2015. World Employment Social Outlook: The Changing Nature of Jobs. Geneva: International Labour Office Research Department.

Marais, Hein. 1998. South Africa limits to change: the political economy of transformation. London: Zed Books.

McDonald, D. 2000. ‘The bell tolls for thee: Cost recovery, cut offs, and the affordability of municipal services in South Africa.’ MSP Special Report. Cape Town: Municipal Services Project.

McDonald, D. and Smith, L. 2002. ‘Privatizing Cape Town. MSP Occasional Paper No. 7.’ Cape Town: Municipal Services Project.

McKinley, D.T. 1997. The ANC and the liberation struggle: A critical political biography. London: Pluto Press.

McKinley, D.T. 2010. ‘South Africa’s social conservatism: A real and present danger’, South African Civil Society Information Service, March.

McKinley, D.T. 2014. ‘Authoritarianism for Beginners’: The crisis of leadership in SAMWU and the union movement’, Daily Maverick, 12 September.

McKinley, D.T. and Naidoo, P. 2004. ‘New social movements in South Africa: A story in creation.’ In McKinley and Naidoo, eds. Mobilising for change: New social movements in South Africa. Development Update Special Edition 5(2): 9-22.

McKinley, D.T. and Veriava, A. 2010. Arresting Dissent: State Repression and Post-Apartheid Social Movements. Saarbrucken: Lambert Academic Publishing.

Naidoo, P. 2010. The making of ‘the poor’ in post-apartheid South Africa: A case study of the City of Johannesburg and Orange Farm. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

Naidoo, P. and Veriava, A. 2003. ‘Re-membering movements: Trade unions and new social movements in neoliberal South Africa.’ Research Report No. 28, Centre for Civil Society. Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal.

NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers). 2013. ‘NUMSA Special National Congress, December 17 to 20, 2013 Declaration.’

NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers). 2014. ‘Resolutions adopted at NUMSA Special National Congress, 16–20 December, 2013.’30 January.

Pillay, D. 1996. ‘Social movements, development and democracy in post-apartheid South Africa.’ In J.K. Coetzee and J. Graff, eds. Reconstruction, development and people. Johannesburg: International Thompson Publishing Company: 325-351.

Ronnie, R. 2013. Personal interview, 29 November (Ronnie is a long-time unionist and political activist and former General Secretary of SAMWU).

Runciman, C. 2013. ‘An overview of community struggles in 2012: Key trends and their significance.’ Paper presented at the International Labour and Information Group April Conference, 26 April.

von Holdt, K. 2013. ‘South Africa: The transition to violent democracy.’ Review of African Political Economy 40(138): 509-604.

Wainwright, H. 2013. The tragedy of the private, the potential of the public. Ferney-Voltaire and Amsterdam: Public Services International and the Transnational Institute.

Zuern, E. 2004. ‘Continuity in contradiction? The prospects for a national civic movement in a democratic state: SANCO and the ANC in post-apartheid South Africa.’ Centre for Civil Society Research Report No. 26. Durban: Centre for Civil Society.
South Africa SACP COSATU Africa ANC NUMSA Marikana massacre Dale McKinley

I would suggest that there are some glaring holes in Dale McKinley´s historical and thus political analysis:

He presents what I would call a version of the "Common Wisdom" of Liberationist Historiography. It has become a Common Sense and thus "accepted" version of "what really happened" in the seminal period 1985 to 1994, in an uncritical and linear fashion. The audience is the liberal and Left-leaning middle-class one that engages with this type of analysis and then reproduces it without critical comment. Air-brushed away are the unpleasant "facts"!
This is done through the use of books and articles by known authors that form the core of that accepted mainstream wisdom.

It is possible that Cmde McKinley´s aim was indeed more modest, aimed at an "outside audience" and basically the theme is :"Hey Hey Man, What´s Going on in Johannesburg!" type of totalising analysis.

But as we enter a new phase of our struggle, and here I take issue with Cmde. McKinley, we must present to "facts", warts, barnacles, septic pimples and all - not sweep under the carpet all those unpleasant features which spoil of otherwise so neat and clean presentation!

In two earlier Facebook Notes, I have tried to lay bear the elements that are thus "missing" from this now accepted version, but which is seminal to our understanding as to the process as to just HOW and WHY the major Liberation Movement, the ANC, came to accept and implement a neo-liberal socio-economic programme (without consultation even making it "non-negotiable") as with GEAR from 1996 (and still with Nelson Mandela as President), the GATT/WTO liberalization of trade and get caught up in a spiralling Dept Trap - these Notes can be viewed @

1) THE TRANSITION FROM APARTHEID to the ANCs NEO-APARTHEID: Notes and Reading Tips @ https://www.facebook.com/notes/selim-gool/the-transition-from-apartheid…

2) CUBA, ANGOLA & SOUTH AFRICA 1976 - 1994 - the True Story Emerges .... @ https://www.facebook.com/notes/selim-gool/cuba-angola-south-africa-1976…

See also: DEBATES, SPLITS AND SCHISMS IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNION MOVEMENT @ https://www.facebook.com/selimgool/posts/10207521490861795

Summary: My "reservations" about this more "journalistic account" of the last 20 years of South African history can be summed up as follows:

a) It is impressionistic in its account of the major "behind the scenes" battles, fights and confrontations between the the "Congressites" (supporters of the ANC/SACP faction) and the "Independents" in the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) and especially in the FOSATU leadership pre-1985 (from Joe Foster´s Speech calling for a "Workers´Party in 1970) - here lies a wealth of unrecorded material yet to be tapped - the ANC did not just leap from their leather couches and feathery beds in London and Lusaka to be the Kings of the Jungle without contestation and major confrontations. The behind-the scenes struggles and debates are yet to see the light of day!

These latter struggles have notoriously been "Hidden from History" by superficial and journalistic accounts of countless liberal and neo-Marxist flunkies and hangers-on.

There is also a long history of Comrades being side-lined, vilified, expelled and pushed out into the Cold - and so the true nature of Stalinism as it functions in the Party, the State, the grass-root organisations is never teased out.

2) There is an excessive reliance on secondary sources and materials already published.

Maybe I am being unduly severe but there is no interviews with respondents not adhering to the Official Line (Lie!).

Dr Selim Y Gool, Rauland

Submitted by Terry Townsend on Sun, 07/26/2015 - 23:35

Permalink

Unity and cohesion remain the slogans for the ANC-led alliance as the three partners echo the claim of last week’s Cosatu special national congress that such togetherness has been assured. It hasn’t. But, with the infighting having gone overwhelmingly in favour of the executive, there are hurried attempts to create a facade of unity as the lobbying continues.

The infighting, measured by the vote on the somewhat esoteric issue of credentials, largely went the way it did for three reasons:

  • possibly substantial minorities in a number of unions could not, on a show of hands, go against their majorities;
  • the fact that expelled metalworkers’ union, Numsa, by encouraging the establishment of a United Front and a Socialist Movement, had moved into the political arena, directly opposing the ANC and SA Communist Party (SACP);
  • the executive argument that the reinstatement of both Numsa and expelled Cosatu general secretary Zelinzima Vavi could be raised at the federation’s scheduled November congress.

To the forefront in congratulating the Cosatu majority on “building unity and cohesion” obviously without Numsa and Vavi, was the SACP. In contrast, the ANC clearly would like to see both readmitted, making for an interesting difference in approach.

The SACP had also, only days before the Coatu congress, completed its own special conference, called in the face of growing demands from rank and file members for the party of “go it alone” in elections. As with the schisms in the Cosatu unions, this is a manifestation of increasing levels of disillusionment with the ANC in government.

This disillusionment has also seen the SACP grow quite rapidly to a claimed 225 000 members. And it is many of these newer and younger members, seeking an alternative to the present regime, who want the SACP to challenge for power on an alternative, “socialist” platform.

This attitude is understandable, since of the six-member executive of the SACP, three are government ministers, one a deputy minister and one chairs the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications. The 11-strong politburo (PB) contains the ANC secretary-general, the general secretary of Cosatu and the general secretary of the federation’s now largest affiliate, the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union, along with two former government ministers and two members of parliament.

Among the 22 current members of the party’s central committee (CC), excluding the PB members, are two national government ministers, three deputy ministers, the deputy speaker of parliament and three MPs.

Given this degree of representation in the central body politic alone, it is little wonder that many SACP members feel that their party could stage a serious electoral challenge. But that is only because they think — as, officially, does Cosatu — that the SACP is a radical alternative to the ANC.

But, as SACP deputy general secretary who is also deputy public works minister Jeremy Cronin has said, the “communist struggle” is not about gaining state power and positions in government. It is, he maintains “about serving the people”.

Yet leading figures in the SACP are all members of not only the ANC, but of government. As such they are equally responsible for policies that their own party is supposed to oppose because they are against the interests of “the people”.

And although the ANC remains a member of the polyglot Sociality International, its policies, like those of most SI members, are decidedly mainstream: “neo liberal” in current parlance. So perhaps the SACP should adopt a version of the socialist anthem, the Red Flag, that begins: “The people’s flag is deepest red…..”

However, the more appropriate SACP version might be: “The people’s flag is palest pink/its not as red as some folk think.”

Lets call a "spade" a "spade" Terry and not a shovel! The gravediggers of our revolution have been busy burying the deal corpses and now they want to bury us, those still breathing, alive under a mountain of lies, slanders, and disinformation.

Yes, its correct, the anomalous or seemingly contradictory situation is that there is an (apparent) growth in membership in the SACP (" ... the SACP grow quite rapidly to a claimed 225 000 members"), but at the same time many SACP top executives serve in the neoliberal government of the ANC and thus "legitimise" its anti-people social and economic policies (" .. leading figures in the SACP are all members of not only the ANC, but of government.

As such they are equally responsible for policies that their own party is supposed to oppose because they are against the interests of “the people”!" (sic!)

My interpretation of this is that "Enough is Enough!" (see the United Front!). There is a surge of radicalism of the youth and young workers, the unemployed and of students, all looking for a political home they can be comfortable in.

Now, both you and I know when and where this policy of the Popular Front was first established as "the official Communist line" (France and then Spain in 1935-36) and internationally (in South Africa) prior to the Comintern being disbanded in 1941 (as a sop to the imperialists as they were going to be wartime "Allies" against Hitler - Stalin´s appeasement to Churchill and Roosevelt).

Although a total disaster in Europe, where Stalinism de facto aided the counter-revolution and objectively aided imperialism, and elsewhere in the developing world, this policy of "A block of many classes" had remained the "official communist line" in the post-war period: in practise it is an attempt to weld the Liberal-Democratic class forces (the so-called "liberal bourgeoisie", the progressive middle classes) and the classes of the oppressed, the working class proper in the private and public sectors, and the remaining "peasantry" in the countryside into a functional alliance or bloc.

Experience of the last 50 years has shown this policy to be based on a false premises, that the "Liberal-Democratic" segment will assume leadership and remain in power, especially during the National Demographic Revolution in the envisaged 2.stage process, even resorting to fascist forces to hold back the social forces demanding democracy!

So that is why a multimillionaire Cyril Ramaphosa can recently address a Conference of the Young Communists!

Quote: "The SACP and COSATU have no answer to this crisis except to redouble the exploitation of workers, preferably by driving them further into the arms of the ANC.

Their prostration before the ANC found its most grotesque reflection in the invite extended to ANC Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to address the SACP delegates assembled at the University of Johannesburg.

Ramaphosa, a key ally of Zuma and a major Lonmin shareholder earning around US$18 million a year, had called for police to take “action” against the “plainly dastardly criminal acts” of strikers.

Four months later he was voted in as Deputy Leader of the ANC, at a congress that ended the ANC’s formal commitment to nationalisation with the blessing of COSATU.

“The alliance is safe,” Vavi proclaimed.

This year, Ramaphosa expressed his appreciation to the SACP, declaring, “The ANC draws great strength from an incisive, activist, independent and supportive Communist Party… dialogue with our social partners to introduce a national minimum wage... provides us with a valuable opportunity to significantly advance the interests of workers.”

These words came from a man who could soon be up on murder charges for his role in the Marikana massacre. Yet there was not a word of protest from the audience.

Together with Nzimande and other ministers, the deputy president wound up an official trip to China on July 17. Ramaphosa was there to “explore how state-owned enterprises could be utilised to promote economic growth while addressing challenges of poverty and unemployment,” according to spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa.

The butcher of Marikana would have felt at home among his Stalinist Chinese Communist Party hosts, the organisers of the Tiananmen Square massacre 26 years ago.

As with the Marikana killings, the slaughter of some 6,000 workers and youth at Tiananmen was intended as a signal to the global capitalist elite that the Chinese rulers would brook no challenge to the super-exploitation of workers which was enriching multinationals with a manufacturing base in the country...."

(from: South African Communist Party and COSATU hold emergency national congresses, 27 July) @ http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/27/safr-j27.html; see also: South Africa: Commission whitewashes ANC role in Marikana massacre @ http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/29/safr-j29.html

Another ray of hope springs from another source:

THE FIGHT BACK! "SAVE OUR SAMWU -SOS - CAMPAIGN!"´ Forward to a Worker Controlled SAMWU!" @ https://saveoursamwu.wordpress.com/

SOS is not a rival union or political organisation.

- It is a campaign within the union and is made up of those who have built the Union, and who want to see the union returned to a worker controlled, militant and progressive union that fights for its members and the improvement of the entire working class.

- The aims of the SOS Campaign are to have all those victimised for asking questions about the finances completely reinstated. It calls for a forensic audit of the unions finances at national and provincial level and while this is underway, for the suspension of National Office Bearers.

- It demands that the authorities responsible for investigating corruption and maladministration of the unions finances undertake an inquiry, and prosecute those who it finds have misappropriated membership resources.

- Finally, in order to prevent any future recurrence, it calls for an overhaul of the functioning of the union to place it once again firmly under workers control, where union affairs are conducted in a transparent and accountable manner. SOS receives no external finance, and relies upon its own resources, and solidarity from workers..."

Our Thanks Go Out to All of Those Comrades Who Have Supported Us!

Forward to a Forensic Audit! Forward to an Accountable Leadership!

No More Dismissals, Expulsions and Suspensions!

Protect the SAMWU Constitution and the Rights of Members!

Forward to a Worker Controlled SAMWU!

Further inquiries can be made via saveoursamwucampaign@gmail.com

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