Brian Ashley argues that the primary task in South Africa is building a united front against neo-liberalism. Central to such a front is a revived, independent Cosatu.
Capitalism failed absolutely the vast majority of this country as it became intertwined and dependent on racism and could only survive in the form of apartheid. Post apartheid capitalism is once again leaving a trail of hunger, poverty, anger and misery. In spite of the best efforts of the African National Congress government (and governing this country with its apartheid legacy, division and inequality is no easy task) every progressive programme, strategy and intention is being abandoned in the face of the brutal logic of managing a capitalist state in this historical period and within the realities of present day South Africa.
In the interests of developing a stable state the ANC has shied away from confronting capital and white society that was left largely intact when the end of apartheid was negotiated. This has resulted in a situation where the ANC leadership has adapted itself to the unreconstructed power institutions.
It could have been different if the productive potential had been harnessed to overcome the deprivation of the past. But this would have required breaking with the logic of profits over people, capital accumulation over human need, breaking with trickle down economics and thinking. And it would have required continued and continual struggle, organisation and mobilisation.
In the face of the unfavourable international balance of forces it would have required a courage and boldness capable of sustaining the confidence of the oppressed in an alternative vision.
A small number of comrades, (that is small relative to the scale of the tasks we face) have come together and are uniting their individual efforts to develop a strategy to challenge the capitalist path of the post-apartheid transition. We are comrades with a long history of building trade unions, civics,women, youth, student and political organisations in the struggle against apartheid-capitalism and in fighting for working class interests in the transition from apartheid. We have been at the forefront of building many of the new movements that have been formed to resist neoliberalism and have struggled to rebuild the broader popular movement. We are activists who see as our first and main task to build these movements and to unite them in resisting retrenchments, cut-offs, evictions. We are for a new, united and democratic mass movement of the oppressed that builds a counter power to the power of capital, the market, the investors, the black bourgeoisie, the state functionaries and other social layers that the capitalist state in South Africa rests upon.
our tasks
Globally a new period of resistance to capitalist globalisation is gaining momentum. From Chiapas to Buenos Aires, from Seattle to Genoa, from indigenous and peasant mobilisations to the reawakening of the traditional labour and social movements, there has been a renewal of struggle and organisation to the harsh attacks of capital.
Ten years into the transition in SA and as the government locks itself into the dominant paradigm of free markets and free trade and increasingly carries out the neoliberal project the renewal of the mass movement on a radical and militant basis becomes the central task facing the left.
At the centre lies the task of rebuilding the mass movement and building a united front against neoliberalism. Such a project is faced with a number of strategic issues and questions. A major obstacle to a systematic fight back is the continued hold and influence over the oppressed masses of the ANC. The novelty of bourgeois democracy and the channelling of political energy into electioneering have ensured the ANC’s continued hegemony in the body politic. The ANC’s deep roots within the working class and its pre-eminence during the liberation struggle secure a patience and loyalty on behalf of the masses that goes well beyond the organisation’s track record of transforming the lives of the majority.
The labour movement and particularly COSATU, as the biggest and most militant section of the trade union movement, has in the last years grown considerably weaker in terms of its membership, capacity for mobilisation and political autonomy. Not only objective factors related to the restructuring of the economy and the swelling of the army of unemployed explain the evolution of COSATU. Its lack of political independence and autonomy from the ruling party, its reliance on the Tripartite Alliance and its conversion to the politics of social consensus stand in the way of reviving its fighting traditions and militancy. The failure of a class struggle current to emerge within the labour movement has delayed its renewal and led to its isolation from the new struggles and emerging social movements.
The process of regaining COSATU’s class independence will be a struggle that has to be waged within COSATU to militantly defend workers interests whether in the form of defending jobs, fighting for a living wage, resisting privatisation etc. The main form of our intervention in the trade movement should be focussed on getting COSATU to take up the day-to-day and daily struggle against the neoliberal offensive of capital and the state. It is within this logic that the continuation of the Alliance will be posed. The resolute defence of workers interests pits the trade union movement not only against capital but also the state It is precisely because of this that COSATU initiates struggles and campaigns, only to turn the proverbial tap off in the face of government anger and opposition.
The struggle to rebuild COSATU and to regain its political independence and militant tradition will not be the result of rank and file struggle alone. A number of shocks from “without” will have to pave the way. The emergence of militant and radical social movements with a mass base that take up the struggles against the failure of the new government to transform the lives of the majority and resist the impact of its conservative macro-economic policies will have a major impact in “keeping COSATU honest”. Here lies the importance and potential of a whole range of new popular organisations such as the Treatment Action Campaign, the Landless People’s Movement, new women and youth formations that while taking up single issues are forced to link their local struggles to the broader struggle against neoliberalism. These formations will provide the mass base for the anti-globalisation campaigns and networks that have emerged recently and challenge directly government policy.
And as these formations develop a cadre of activists that see the necessity of engaging with the trade union movement to provide the necessary social weight to challenge capital and the state more fundamentally, objectively and increasingly organically the formation of a united front against neoliberalism will be posed. Class struggle militants and currents within the trade union movement linking up with the new social movements in a united front against neoliberalism will signal not only the end of the Alliance but will constitute the mass workers party if not in name but in fact, which will challenge the ANC at all political levels including electorally.
Along this road a number of strategic, tactical and theoretical questions will confront the movement. How do we engage a government, which currently enjoys electorally nearly a two thirds majority in parliament yet carries out policies that condemn two thirds of the population to lives of misery and exclusion? How do we build the unity of the working class and overcome sexual, racial, language and other divisions that undermine its cohesion and identity as a class for itself? How do activists gain the theoretical and ideological clarity necessary not only to challenge the theories of National Democratic Revolution through which the ANC maintains the Alliance and its base within the working class but puts in place a coherent alternative? These and a whole range of tactical and practical questions that will confront activists in building their movements and in waging their struggles pose the questions of leadership and organisation. Such a leadership will not emerge spontaneously, it has to be carefully built and nurtured.
It is in the light of these and other questions that we have started the process of regrouping revolutionaries active in rebuilding the mass movement in an effort to build a new leadership of activists capable of building an anti-capitalist mass movement.
Who We Are
We make no great claims in terms of representing the vanguard of the working class. Yet we strongly believe that the working class needs its own political expression if it is to realise its specific class interests and resist capitalist globalisation. The question of the political organisation of the working class is a complex one and given the great differences, sectorally, regionally, in language etc. it is likely that there will be a range of political formations competing for the allegiance of the working class. Some of these will be divided by ideology, programme and strategy. Nevertheless if revolutionaries are to be a major catalyst for rebuilding and regrouping the mass movement it must overcome its own divisions. We see this occurring only through clarifying the major questions of strategy by active intervention in the class struggle itself and in jointly undertaking the tasks of rebuilding the movement.
Programmatic clarity and the unity of revolutionary forces must not be based simply on the dogmas of the past but must be based on a genuine refoundation of socialist vision, programme and strategy. This will have to include a critical assessment of the history of the liberation movement, the nature and role of socialist currents within the liberation struggle and must further come to terms with its sectarian and abstentionist past as well as develop a full understanding of the structural, social and cultural upheavals within capitalism globally and the changes within the
South African social formation brought about by the end of apartheid.
There will be a number of parallel initiatives that have similar aims and even political positions but yet remain distinct for a period of time. This has to do as much with history, differences in style and tactical approach. It is inevitable that in the next period there will be an organic regroupment of forces as direct involvement in the class struggle and the rebuilding of the mass movement clarify the tasks, strategies and tactics needed. We believe in actively working for this regroupment so as to enlarge and unify the efforts of revolutionary socialists.
Our approach to building working class leadership and organisation of the political struggle against the system of capitalist oppression is based on the famous dictum of Marx and Engels that “communists have no interests separate and apart from the working class…” For us this means the necessity of building socialist organisation within the daily struggle of workers against oppression and exploitation. Our main task is to be where the masses are and not to place conditions on our involvement in the mass formations of the working class nor must we expect to find perfect and ideologically pure organisations.
The defence of working class interests requires the greatest unity in action. The tactic of the united front remains critical for overcoming the political and strategic differences that exist within the workers movement. While we may march separately we endeavour to strike together. The united front tactic is extremely relevant in our situation today where the working class remains under the neo-liberal political hegemony of the
ANC. Socialists will have to work patiently within the mass movement even where these subscribe to the politics of the NDR, constantly trying through engagement to provide political leadership and win workers to revolutionary socialist politics.
The difference between reformists and revolutionaries does not lie in the rejection of the struggle for reforms, instead, as revolutionaries, we must be the most resolute fighters for all reforms which correspond to the basic needs, interests and rights of the masses and in a context of a programme of revolutionary socialist transformation. Our approach is not to simply reject legislative and parliamentary options but to prioritise the struggle for reforms through direct forms of mass activity transcending narrow reformist bounds of the system of capitalism and to challenge the power relations that militate against the interests of the working class. Our task is to build the confidence, combativity and self-activity of the masses. This is only possible through ongoing, daily struggles on the shop floor, in the townships and in the rural villages.
Integral to our socialist approach is our belief that in addition to capitalism profoundly shaping social relations in South Africa, racism and patriarchy have intersected to render black working class women the super exploited of our society. Women share oppression with each other. However, what they share as sexual oppression is differentiated along racial and class lines. Patriarchy has qualitatively very different meanings in different class situations or whether you are white or black. The dynamics of race and of gender will continue to shape social relations in this country for the foreseeable future.
In this phase of excessive accumulation by transnational corporations, heightened competition, accelerated privatization, deregulation of trade as well as of labor markets, black working class women have been rendered very vulnerable economically. They constitute the majority of the unemployed and of those who find themselves in insecure casual or temporary employment as transnational companies seek to maximise their profits.
The majority of those having to survive in the informal and shadow economies are black working class women who are at risk of sexual harassment and gender based violence in precarious employment and safety situations.
The transition to liberal democracy in this country has been characterized by the adoption of neo-liberal macro economic as well as radical and liberal feminist approach. These policies and laws, whilst seeking equality for women, do not question the economic policies, which militate against women achieving such equality. In opposing neo-liberalism, racism and patriarchy we integrate a gender analysis in all our campaigns, programs and the structure of organizations that we are building.
Transformation of those social relations that result in inequality of power in the economy, family, and social institutions requires us to build organizations which take up campaigns that bring together all these aspects separated by capitalist production. Our practice should address the totality of women’s experience and effect both personal and political change.
A major part of our platform is our feminism. Women’s oppression based on patriarchy is an integral part of capitalist oppression. Neoliberalism makes use of the sexual division of the working class to drive down the costs of labour and restore profitability. Increasingly the unpaid labour of women at home and in the community is exploited to transfer costs from the state and capital in providing basic social services. Domestic and sexual violence are directly and indirectly related to the increased vulnerability of the working classes under neo-liberal capitalism as joblessness, falling income and pauperisation are internalised within the nuclear family.
Feminisation of our politics, our organisations and approach to struggle is about ensuring that we build a new consciousness in the mass movement, raising the specific oppression of women and foster conditions that ensure the direct participation and leadership of women in all organisations and all levels of society. Furthermore, the feminisation of organisation is also about engendering all our analysis, demands and methods of struggle. This we see as not an added extra but a central component of a revolutionary struggle for socialism. There can be no socialism without the liberation of women.
Ashley is the Director of the Alternative Information & Documentation Centre (AIDC) in Cape Town.
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