ABRAHIM HARVEY’S RESPONSE TO OUPA

Harvey argues that a united front with Cosatu is the best way for the social movements to grow.

Comrade Oupa

I try not to respond to issues that come up in this forum because there are so many and you require time to do so but felt compelled to respond to some of the issues you raise in your substantial and

timely contribution to a critically important debate. This is a very brief response to only some issues you raise.

Unfortunately, you are not strategic about the relationship between Cosatu and the social movements. Cosatu is the Achilles heel of the

ANC alliance. The fact is that the ANC is extremely concerned and fearful of strong links developing between Cosatu and social movements, which is why it is strategically and tactically correct to call for a united front between them, which I have done for years, especially given the present weakness of social movements and unchallenged dominance of the ANC. In fact such a united front – even while Cosatu remains formally in the alliance – will present these movements with the best prospects to date for rapid growth.

With all the contradictions Cosatu is definitely becoming more open to prospects of working with social movements and prominent progressive and leftist activists, academics and writers, even those who have been critical of them. The fact that I was invited by Vavi to their recent 10-year conference

– who for years resented me because of my columns and articles which were critical of Cosatu and its alliance with the ANC and blatantly refused at the time to have me interview him – was yet another indication of a healthy opening up to engaging the left outside the ANC alliance, even if ‘no left social movement were given any space at the Cosatu conference’, as you state. Perhaps at the next one there will be and that will be good in my book.

Terrible as many of the fundamental compromises they have made I would be much more careful in characterising the ANC as the party of monopoly capital, period. You need a

much more sophisticated and refined analysis than such a conclusion. The ANC’s characterisation

– though admittedly moving along a path that is fundamentally neo-liberal – is much more complex and contradictory.

Your position on spontaneity in the mass movement seems also contradictory. On the one hand you berate the “old left” – forgetting that there are and have always been many differences among them – for not paying enough attention to the spontaneous struggles of the masses over the past year but on the other you decry the spontaneity with which Ceruti appears to approach relations between Cosatu and social movements. Here you want various questions to first be addressed – and important ones at that – but you appear uncritically a great supporter of the spontaneous struggles that have emerged over the past year or so. Besides, I don’t think all these struggles can be described as spontaneous. It appears that in some areas protests were more organised and planned, following admittedly earlier more spontaneous struggles elsewhere in the country. For example, not all the ongoing mass protests in the Free State can be described as spontaneous.

Besides, you seem not to place spontaneous struggles in their proper perspective and approach it is if it is inherently virtuous. It is nothing but

the forceful expression of an accumulated ‘gatvol’ feeling in the bosom of the unorganised oppressed and exploited and the raw material with which Marxists have to work, wherever it comes from, whoever is involved and whatever forms it takes. But the most powerful of such struggles have dissipated in many countries without organisation, leadership and programme. This is the ABC of lessons of struggles of the 20th century. Don’t

glorify or fetishise spontaneity. Besides, spontaneity cannot be a substitute for organisation and so can mobilisation not be a substitute for organisation and more organisation. Mobilisation is best and easiest when you are strongly rooted and organised.

But spontaneous mobilisation – which is largely what we seen recently – is a truly powerful lever, unleashing vital energies and potential for winning short term gains and a valuable basis for longer term organisation-building. I don’t think you quite grasp the dialectical links between spontaneity and organisation. You seem too seduced by spontaneity itself, which is often itself a symptom of lack of organisation, as is the case in SA presently. The

ANC’s allies are often not where they should be and the social movements have not been strong enough to always be there: a vacuum spontaneity exploits since, as you know vacuums don’t last long. So I think it is also you who do not “provide systematic theorisation” of this and other issues.

Cosatu is not now giving some space to social movements because of the present retreat and weaknesses of these movements but much more as a consequence of the spontaneous but strong mass struggles against poor services over the past year, which were often not linked to social movements.

 

In fact it is because Cosatu feels threatened by these struggles and how they could strengthen social movements and present fertile ground for their growth. They could also over the coming period outflank Cosatu and become the fulcrum around which militant anti-neo-liberal struggles

– particularly as it affects basic needs and services

– could advance into what appears a political and organisational inevitability: a mass socialist or workers party in opposition to the ANC over the next five years or so. The social contradictions and growing poverty have become too stark for ordinary people in the townships and squatter settlements: they are indeed being forced onto

the road of struggle by the sheer weight of their burdens, whether there are social movements around or not.

You are a bit too reckless in some of your statements and certainly mistaken. How can

you say that “Cosatu was seen as supporting the evictions, the cuts in social spending and so on”? I know many a Cosatu member – forget about the top leaders – who would want to lynch you for making such a statement. On what credible basis and with which information can you substantiate such a statement? Such reckless talk is more damaging when it is directed at an organisation as important and big as Cosatu and can alienate them, when

there may be prospects of working together on some issues.

The most important issue today for the left in South Africa – hence I publicly write about it all the time (in the bourgeois press, nogal!) – is the relationship between Cosatu and the social movements. I will repeat this a thousand times

because it should be evident to any serious political activist and analyst. If you are serious about building a mass alternative to the dominance

of the ANC you cannot but be aware that this is indeed the Key Strategic issue today, not because of Cosatu’s strengths but in spite of its many and glaring weaknesses, and in fact partly because of the absence of an established and formidable left

outside the ANC alliance. It is the same reason why the masses in their millions vote for the ANC. It

is not because they are happy with the ANC but in spite of their unhappiness with them, because who is there to vote for today? The PAC and BC organisations have little to offer them. The DA nothing really and social movements are still small and weak, representing at best the potential rather than the reality of a credible mass alternative to the ANC. Surely, the balance and relationship of forces on the ground – however you characterise their leadership and its policies – must to a considerable degree determine political and strategic perspectives for the future. Hence the orientation

to Cosatu, but not a blind one that is ready to place social movements at the service of Cosatu, to do with it what they feel like.

You grossly underestimate the contradictory political, ideological and programmatic consequences and sharpening of contradictions a united front between Cosatu and social movements, such as the APF, will present to the ruling party. It will no doubt be enormous. That

is precisely why the ANC is deeply worried and have sleepless nights about Cosatu working with social movements which are opposed to the ANC government – not so much the SACP because the fact is that it is relatively a very small party (though

we know its ideological, political and programmatic influence upon both the ANC and Cosatu has been totally out of proportion to its limited numerical strength). However, I am confident that the set of contradictions that sharpens and erupts in such a united front as a direct result of common struggle around a common set of demands that strike at the heart of neo-liberalism at critical municipal level (especially if there is mutually-supportive struggle between the factories and townships) will be far more difficult to ‘manage’ than what we have seen so far. In fact I think Cosatu’s leadership itself retreats before the full implications of such a front. That is why it is not just to protect the ANC that

they distance themselves from this new “UDF-type”

front but it is to protect themselves too.

I agree with you that a huge problem/risk is that Cosatu could hijack community struggles to better manage the contradictions and present itself as the overall leader of struggles it has long neglected,

even when these made news headlines, and not only in this country. But the benefits for a longer term left project, I believe, far outweigh these risks. Don’t forget too, that such a united front of working class organisations – if indeed it will be a united front as opposed to a multi-class ‘popular front’

– will imminently create a revolutionary momentum that will not be easily managed by Cosatu leaders. The revolutionary possibilities are numerous, from this perspective. It is precisely why I don’t think Cosatu will ever really agree to such a front because you don’t have to be a political scientist to see that the serious problems in the ANC alliance will be magnified tenfold if Cosatu is part of a united front. In fact, it will programmatically directly contradict the ANC alliance, if its thrust is to challenge neo- liberalism both at the point of production but probably more importantly for the coming period,

at the point of reproduction and consumption: basic services in townships and informal settlements.

This is the new terrain of vitally important struggles the recent mass resurgence has opened up. The things that Cosatu would be required to agree to fight for in a united front will be nothing less

than anathema for the ruling party, which is, even if reluctantly, the bearer of neo-liberal policies,

that have deepened black poverty over the past decade. You will immediately have a combustible situation, pregnant with the potential and the forces to pose the most serious and sustained challenge

to ANC rule since 1994. But I agree with you that this perspective and trajectory will have to be very carefully examined before social movements commit themselves to joint action.

I also certainly agree with you that Desai’s talk of Cosatu’s more “structural and macro- economic understanding of their oppression” is very problematic and sounds nonsense, as is his attributing a reluctance to fight by Cosatu

members to “strategic exhaustion, not ideological confusion”. If Cosatu’s members are not confused Desai sounds so. He is also completely and, might I add, dangerously mistaken about the need for

Cosatu to stay in the Alliance. I have written many articles explaining the necessity for Cosatu to break from this alliance and make no apology for this consistent stance. In fact this alliance poses the single biggest obstacle to working class and even trade union unity. I also think Desai’s analysis of Cosatu workers is badly mistaken. You point to only some of these contradictions and problems. There are many other examples that point to massive confusion and apathy among the rank and file, far from a class-for-itself consciousness and action, very far in fact.

But place Cosatu in a broader united front and it will be much more difficult to contain pressures and contradictions, though they will have a big numerical, political and social advantage over smaller social-movement-type organisations,

such as the APF, but since there has to be a common programme of action this should not be a huge problem. For example, Cosatu and social movements are opposed to the privatisation, commercialisation and commodification of basic

services. Just on this basis alone – the implications of which are massive and far-reaching – a programme of action can be agreed upon.

I think you make a big mistake when you say that Cosatu members are becoming ‘labour aristocrats’. I dealt with this question in the SA Labour Bulletin in 2000 and thought I demolished this mythical nonsense. So if you read the SALB why resurrect this nonsense again? This is the same language the bosses use, which becomes an excuse for poor wage increases, when workers should be happy that they have a job in the first place! Your mechanical and schematic assessments of strikes and wages is also fundamentally flawed, though I don’t have the time to now elaborate.

The main strategic perspective and strength that a united front between Cosatu and social movements holds for me is this: It will, like nothing before, create the climate and conditions that will

in theory and practice make the continuation of the alliance with the ANC untenable and impossible.

It will, I believe, therefore, soon end an alliance that has been artificially sustained, against the real interests of Cosatu members and the broader

working class, for over a decade. But because you overestimate the problems Cosatu’s presence will have for controlling such a front in the interests

of Cosatu and the ANC, and underestimate the radicalising potential that will inevitably emerge in such a front, under conditions of worsening black poverty, you cannot appreciate this perspective.

In fact what gives credence to this perspective is the fear of the ANC for such a front because they understand very well what it would mean for their rule, better than it seems you do. So the emphasis

on Cosatu is not one that is blind to all the problems inherent in such a perspective but it originates in

the fact that they are still the biggest and potentially the most powerful mass organisation in the

country, situated in the most strategic sectors of the economy, in spite of all that you say. For this reason the most powerful community struggles will be seriously disadvantaged if they do not intersect or link up with Cosatu workers. Likewise, on

their own, social movements will not win the big and longer-term struggles, especially if they don’t become a political party. That is why I have for years repeatedly stated that whether we like it or not – and obviously we don’t – Cosatu will remain key and crucial for any left alternative to the ANC. I know it’s not quite palatable to many but for the foreseeable future that will be the reality.

By the way, it was not Desai who spoke of Cosatu’s continued stay in the ANC alliance being a case of a ‘battered wife syndrome” but it was I who said this when I did live political commentary for etv at the 2003 Cosatu congress in JHB.

 

Harvey is a student at University and is active in the social movements in Jhb..

 

Trevor ngwane’s Response

 

Ngwane argues that the task of the left in the social

movements is to build working class unity against the capitalist class and the state.

summary of the paper

Oupa Lehulere is the director of Khanya College and a socialist. His paper is

33 pages long and talks about how we can find a road to socialism in South Africa.

He concentrates on COSATU and its call to form a “UDF”, that is, an organization which brings together different community and labour organizations fighting against capitalist policies. Oupa does not think that COSATU is genuine

in making this call nor does he think anything good (progressive) can come out of communities heeding this call. Rather, Oupa thinks the left must concentrate its efforts on linking up with and building the spontaneous uprisings taking place in the country, especially in the Free State. In the paper Oupa attacks the “old left”, these are socialists such as Brian Ashley of AIDC, Ashwin

Desai, Keep Left and the Socialist Group. He thinks this old left is sentimentally (irrationally) still looking to COSATU for the social force necessary to fight capitalism. For Oupa COSATU is reactionary and class collaborationist. It is not only COSATU leaders who have rotten politics but even rank and file COSATU members have become a labour aristocracy more interested in themselves than taking forward the struggle of the masses.

 

Importance of the paper

This paper is important because it is trying to

tell us what the way forward is for the workers’

movement in South Africa. The paper is aimed at influencing the thinking of comrades in the social movements such in the SECC, APF, Jubilee, LPM etc. It is also aimed at comrades in the trade unions and in NGOs such as Khanya College and FXI and others. Basically it is saying that the left in South Africa must stop looking at COSATU

as important and crucial in building a broader and more powerful workers movement because COSATU is reactionary; rather the left must look at the spontaneous community uprisings in the country. More importantly the paper says the leadership of the “old left” is misleading the

working class and that in the social movements, as much as in the left generally, leadership must now be taken over by the “new left”. This new left is what Oupa represents and his paper elaborates the position of this left. What Comrade Oupa seems to be doing is to draw a line inside the left and in the social movements between the “old” and “new” left. He is more or less declaring war on the old

left ideologically and politically. His paper is the political expression of the new left’s attack on the old. The attack on SG, on the SECC, on the APF organizer and administrator, all these are, in my opinion, aspects of this attack of the old left by the new. The new left claims to be more left than the old left and in fact Oupa’s argument is that the old left is actually reactionary or right-wing.

 

Main problems with oupa’s paper

There is a something wrong in many sentences and pages of Comrade Oupa’s paper. In what follows a few major points of disagreement with Oupa are covered for the purpose of discussion and debate. These views are those of the Socialist Group. There is a plan to write something more systematic in the near future but hopefully this will do for now:

 

• Oupa’s analysis of the class struggle in South Africa is not correct e.g. he does not think that the recent strikes by SAA, SAMWU, NUM and other workers constitutes a “strike wave”. But there is clear evidence that the strikes influenced other workers to go on strike thus making a wave. He also dismisses the importance of these strikes because he claims they were “procedural”,

meaning they were legal and followed the Labour Relations Act. He thinks wildcat strikes are more revolutionary. Of course, in some circumstances, they can be more militant. In others, they may not be. But he misses this reality in order to make his point. The SG is wondering what was procedural about SAMWU members trashing cities and sabotaging services or the disruption caused by striking SAA workers. Or the many workers in essential services who broke the law to join the action. What Oupa fails to understand is that workers on strike can be driven to fight against procedures while the leadership are the ones who will invoke procedure.

 

• A close reading of his paper shows us that actually Oupa’s perspective is not consistently pro- working class e.g. he blames COSATU rank and file members for the class collaborationist policies of

the COSATU leadership. He thus cannot separate the politics of the leadership of working class mass organizations from that of the rank and file. This failure always leads to blaming the workers

instead of organizing with the workers against the class collaborationist politics of their leadership.

To further justify his argument in support of sidestepping the job of confronting the union leadership Oupa claims that COSATU members are part of the problem because they have become

a “labour aristocracy”. It is very difficult to imagine a worker at Pikitup, paid R1 200 – R2 000 a month with few benefits, being an aristocrat, politically, socially or economically.

• His Marxism is questionable e.g. he is opposed to what he calls an emphasis by Marxists on the “point of production” (workplace) because he thinks this makes the left look too much to organized labour. By so saying he is ignoring the basic

strength of workers, namely, that they produce the wealth and that’s why they can go on strike and stop production. Of course, many workers are not even organized. That is a problem, not a solution. Under capitalism this is a very important source

of strength. Oupa disagrees with this fact which

has been the foundation of the workers’struggle for

socialism for more than a century.

 

• Oupa has written a 33-page letter on COSATU but he chooses not to mention GIWUSA. This is the union which workers joined after a split from CEPPWAWU, a COSATU affiliate, involving some lefts close to Oupa. The question is: do Oupa and his comrades actually believe that COSATU is the enemy? If so then does it mean we must work to weaken and defeat COSATU? Is that what Oupa is saying? Workers need unity at the workplace – that is what a union is and any division amongst unions is undermining that unity. Of course there will be political differences inside any union because there is a contest for political ideas amongst the working class and not all workers have the same politics.

But is Oupa saying workers do not need that unity? Is he saying unity must be found without COSATU?

 

• For Oupa the politics of class collaboration of the COSATU leadership appears to be a discovery. In reality class collaboration is not new in COSATU.

It was there during the politics of ungovernability when the COSATU and union leaders could not even connect the NUM and NUMSA strikes of

1987; it was there when the COSATU leadership took the initial RDP and removed demands including a moratorium on retrenchment; when COSATU collaborated in the COSATU/NACTU/ SACCOLA Accord, when COSATU leadership supported the new Labour Relations Act, accepted variation downwards in the new Basic Condition of Employment Act, etc etc. Nor is class collaboration politics limited to COSATU – it dominates the SACP which is powerful in COSATU leadership positions.

 

• The action of a riot is an expression of working

class anger but it is not always revolutionary. Just as the strike raises many political issues and challenges so does a spontaneous community uprising. In opposing the spontaneous community uprising – the “riot” – against the strike Oupa fails

to see the strength in the apparent weaknesses of the recent strikes and fails altogether to see

the weaknesses in the drama of the community uprising. The leadership associated with some of the uprisings has been shown to be opportunistic

and individualistic and their politics can be narrow and not always pro-working class. Some ANC leaders have opportunistically exploited some

riots. If your politics tells you, like ours, to orientate to ordinary working class people, then you see and celebrate the strength, but also critically examine

the politics in militant action.

 

• Oupa speaks for a faction or group inside the South African left and some of the social movements. His arguments are designed to justify and promote the political views of this faction whatever its

internal contradictions. Unfortunately unlike Keep Left, the SG and other political groups, Oupa’s group denies that it actually is a group. The SG believes

that the correct thing is for each group and faction to declare itself and to openly espouse its views. That way each group can give as much as it receives, it can criticize and be criticized. It is not good politics to use organizational processes to express and take forward political differences and contestations as appears to be happening in the APF today. Let the politics of each group and faction be put on the table and we have a contest of politics versus politics,

not organizational accusations camouflaging actual political differences between groups.

 

• Oupa bungles together the “old left” into one camp despite some important differences and distinctions in the politics and practice of the

people and organisations he attributes to this camp. For Oupa AIDC, Keep Left, Ashwin Desai and SG politics are all the same as far as their position on COSATU is concerned. This is not true. We of the

SG want to explain our orientation to COSATU: as Marxists we orient to the working class, some members of the working class are employed, and some of these employed workers are members

of trade unions, and COSATU happens to be the biggest trade union federation in South Africa. We insist that ordinary working class people who are employed must be organized at that point – this is what a union is. And we insist that maximum unity must be promoted amongst ordinary working class people. We separate between the leaders and the rank and file and as SG we always look to the rank and file, to ordinary workers. We don’t just connect to militants but also to the rank and file. When we connect with the militants, we connect also about the politics and method which will take them to mobilize and organize amongst the rank and file. That is how we end up orienting to COSATU – we orient to its rank and file not to its leadership.

• The political method preferred by Comrade Oupa and the comrades around him seems to be that of watching out for incidents of and places where there is mass action and then to move in and recruit the most active elements to a workshop at Khanya College. The idea is that mobilization plus a Khanya political education course makes one

to be a 100% revolutionary activist. We of SG say there is nothing wrong with that but we would emphasise the need to turn those militants back to the masses so that they can do political work also in those areas where there is no immediate action and where the working class seems to be quiet. Some Khanya College graduates (trained militants) can easily turn against their fellow workers,

their own organizations and even split their organizations after receiving political education at Khanya. We must not forget that the best political education for workers will more likely come from a worker participating in a strike rather than from a Khanya College workshop.

 

sG views on some of the issues raised in oupa’s paper

On the strikes

There was a strike wave, some workers went on strike influenced by previous recent strikes. The strike by its nature is important because it raises the question of power and of who produces and who controls the production process. These strikes were important and should be seen as linked to the 2004 one-day public sector strike which was reputed to be the biggest in South African history. The following brief points can be made about the strikes:

 

• they happened after years of little strike activity

 

• they broke through the one-day strike barrier

 

• they were disruptive

 

• the workers were fighting to win and not just to get the bosses to negotiate

 

• the politics of the union leadership neither confronted the LRA and the chains of pro- ceduralism and legalism, nor clearly identi- fied some of the strikes as strikes against the ANC government

 

• the union leadership failed to connect them to each other

 

 

The last bullet point is interesting because Oupa condemns COSATU for building and supporting “procedural” strikes. We accuse COSATU leaders of NOT building, supporting and connecting these procedural strikes. It should be noted that many young workers were involved in strike action for the first time in their lives and that many people watching saw for the first time the power of organized labour to disrupt the plans of the bosses. On workers and COSATU Oupa condemns workers for being loyal to COSATU

but we think that the loyalty to COSATU is not as great as Oupa claims e.g. when COSATU calls for

a May Day rally workers are not attending in their thousands. Workers are no longer just doing what COSATU tells them to do. When workers look to COSATU and seem willing to obey its calls for action it is because they are looking for a power and strength that can take their struggle forward rather than because of blind loyalty. They are looking

to COSATU for cover for themselves. What is dismissed as their loyalty often comes if and when they see COSATU doing something which makes sense in struggle.

So for example, thousands of ordinary working class people have been to COSATU meetings in their struggle against pre-paid meters, not because they obey COSATU leaders. Of course the best thing is when workers realize that they are their

own cover. We don’t celebrate the fact that workers’

loyalty to COSATU has been destroyed because of years of betrayal and class collaborationist politics. Because it means that working class strength through organization and mobilization at the workplace has also been weakened. We also insist that class collaboration is an old, not a new problem. But we can see an advantage in that this loss of loyalty means workers are no longer just doing what COSATU leaders tell them to.

 

on unions versus social movements

It is wrong to oppose or counterpose the strike to the community uprising. It is also wrong

to counterpose the community struggle to the strike as Oupa does. Workers are employees at the workplace and community members at their

workplace. The APF, for example, was specifically formed to build unity between employed and unemployed workers, between struggles in the community and at the workplace. In “correcting” a political mistake he perceives Oupa bends

the stick too much the other way. He is arguing for abandoning organized labour to its class collaborationist leadership while all our energies should focus on community struggles. This is undialectical and fails to understand the nature of a workers’ movement. A workers’ movement consists of all or most sections of the working class. In

strikes it has been easier to turn employed workers towards community struggles, for example, against prepaid meters and evictions. The duty of the left

in social movements is to encourage different parts of the workers movement to stand with each other against the common enemy – the bosses and the bosses government.

 

on collectivism and individualism among the left

We believe that as socialists we have to work collectively to support each other and help each other conduct disciplined and effective work building the workers’ struggle and the workers’ movement. This means we don’t think working individually is the strongest way of building. We also believe that as a political organization we need to co-operate with other left forces in the struggle. This means working in a comradely fashion with other groups in working class mass movements

and support organizations. The SG does not hide its existence from anyone and has affiliated to the APF with the aim of building and influencing the politics. We believe that people can and should form groups, factions, caucuses and platforms in working class mass organizations but we think this is best done openly and honestly.

Political conditions allow this in South Africa. We are worried about the tendency to hide organized groups and factions while the same hidden groups speak as individuals and attack other groups such as ours who are open about their existence and accuse them of hidden political agendas. The SG has no hidden agenda, it is fighting for the overthrow of the capitalist system and deploys its comrades to work in the social movements and trade unions to build the struggle of the workers to achieve this.

 

on autonomism

The autonomist tendency is not a class approach, thus cannot be a consistent working class approach. The SG believes that only a working class

politics has any hope of shaking and ultimately overthrowing the power of the bosses.

Militancy on its own cannot answer questions of class struggle. Class politics tells us that the capitalist state is a force organized by the bosses to suppress the working class and maintain the law and order of profits. The bosses’ class uses

the state to deal with any serious opposition to its rule. The view that state power is not important for the working class amounts to tying the hands of workers behind their backs by disempowering workers with unrealistic ideas. The autonomists

wrongly argue that we can have mass organisations without structures and leaders. This robs rank and file workers of the tools by which they can control their own struggle by controlling their organizations and their leaders. All human organizations develop a leadership and such a leadership should be openly and regularly elected. An ordinary member needs to be able to participate in a local structure and such a structure should be connected with other structures in the organization so that a voice in one place can

be heard in other places. on building a movement towards a mass workers party

At exactly the moment when communities and workplaces are rising up in struggle it is sad

to see some social movements turning inward and spending most of their time dealing with internal matters and leadership power struggles. The moment for turning out to the millions and millions is now. The SG believes the way forward is to connect to the existing struggles, build them, promote socialist politics and raise the call for building a movement towards a mass workers party. Such a party will be a party of millions and

millions of workers based on existing struggles and fighting to take state power from the bosses. The aim is to get rid of capitalism and to replace it with socialism – a system where production is not for profit but to satisfy human needs.

Ngwane is active in the Johannesburg APF

 

 

stephen Greenberg’s Response to oupa

 

Greenberg argues it is necessary to appreciate how tensions develop inside the Alliance and how they impact on class struggle, and that the task is to engage grassroot Cosatu members in a common programme of action.

 

Here are a number of points that I think are

being confused (perhaps deliberately so) in the debate about the social movements and

their relationship to Cosatu and other mass based organisations of the working class.

First, there seems to be a crude notion of the way political tensions inside the Alliance are likely to manifest themselves. This is based on the idea that the only possible way that the Alliance will ever break is through a formal split between its partners i.e. Cosatu splitting from the Alliance with the ANC,

maybe together with the SACP. But the desire for this kind of ‘vertically integrated’ split fails to understand the fractures inside the hegemonic block as class based rather than organisation-based fractures. The ANC’s recent policy conference was an excellent lesson in the dangers of thinking of the ANC as

a monolithic bloc with the interests of monopoly capital as its central motivating force. The conference appears (from the outside) as a clear grassroots revolt against the leadership – perhaps

coalescing around the Zuma affair but with significant consequences for policy proposals around labour market flexibility and others. A view of the ANC as a monolithic organisation that aims to push through these policies against its alliance partners would fail to explain this revolt inside the ANC.

This means (surprise!) that the ANC actually has its own internal political tensions, there is a strong class basis to these tensions, and they are currently manifesting in open conflict between grassroots membership and dominant sections of the leadership. One can say the same for the SACP and Cosatu, where some leaders are in favour of pushing the envelope (to the left) and some are trying to defend the status quo.

Oupa is suggesting that these tensions, in by far the biggest organizations with active working class membership, are irrelevant to the trajectory

of the class struggle in South Africa and require no tactical or stragetic reorientations from activists and grassroots organisations outside the Alliance. Size isn’t everything, but it is important. There is no

possibility of the social movements, as they are currently constituted, to successfully realise their vision and longer term goals on their own (setting aside the question of how these visions and goals are formulated, and by whom). They have to coalesce

or ally with a far wider base of active participants in practical action to be successful. The lack of practical relationships with organised workers is

a key weakness of the social movements and the professional intellectuals that shape these movements.

This doesn’t mean making a pact with the ANC or SACP or Cosatu leadership, but rather to identify points of common interest and work out how to engage grassroots members and

activists in a common programme of action. This often necessitates engagement with leadership. There can’t be a principled opposition to that. The path is fraught with dangers. Retaining

organisational independence is key. The ability of organisations/movements to continue with their own priogramme, to speak for themselves, and to ensure an independent voice on common platforms are crucial. But it seems that the extra-Alliance left

is afraid to take up these challenges. Is this because of a desire to entrench their own leadership? Or is it a fear of being unable to win the political arguments with the possibility of losing members to ‘rival’ organisations? As long as we see the working class divided into separate political organisations with a brick wall between them, the possibilities of radical change seem slim. The organisational boundaries have to be porous, especially at the grassroots.

To my mind, there are two strategic battles that must be waged simultaneously. The one is to widen the hairline fractures within the hegemonic bloc

that Claire talks about, to intensify the class-based contradictions that have created them because in order for a new class hegemony to arise, the old hegemony needs to be in crisis. The second task is to construct an alternative, counter-hegemonic pole of attraction around which the working class can mobilise. The ‘guided’ independent community

struggles of 1999-2002 raised the possibility of mass- based, extra-Alliance politics. Contrary to Oupa, however, we can hardly suggest that these guided (1999-2002) and sponteaneous (2004-5) grassroots struggles permit the abandonment of the pre-existing array of working class organisations, whatever their weaknesses. To indicate the possibility of a counter- hegemonic pole of attraction is not the same as to sustain and build it. Oupa may want to hold onto

the Social Movements Indaba (SMI) as the only possibility for creating a counter-hegemonic pole. But the SMI itself is resting on a base of dissolving, fragmenting or ideologically divergent formations and struggles. It is part of the answer, but not the whole. Currently disorganised workers must be brought in, but so must organised workers in other formations. And this means the character of the counter-hegemonic pole will be shaped by all these forces and not just one.

In this context, it seems that the key is how to bridge the gap between those working ‘inside’ to widen contradictions in the hegemonic bloc and those working ‘outside’ to build an independent counter-hegemonic pole of attraction. Let me stress that the elements ‘inside’ cannot be identified as organisational monoliths. Individuals and groups need to ally across these boundaries, rather than organisational blocks. Obviously the ‘internal’ and

‘external’ struggles are not mutually exclusive, since contradictions in the hegemonic bloc create spaces for counter-hegemonic mobilisation, just as the possibility (and reality) of an independent working class politics creates fractures in the hegemony.

But the two projects are not operating in unity at present. The Western Cape cross-organisational alliance is a good idea. But joint practical activity will dictate whether it is a success or not, not merely a proclamation. This is the hard work ahead.

Greenberg is an activist in the Landless Peoples’ Movement