The Social Movements Indaba

Tasks and prospects

The origins of the SMI

The formation of the SMI was a product of the mobilisation that took place in South Africa in the course of 2002 in opposition to the “Rio plus 10” World Summit for Social Development (WSSD). The SMI emerged in the struggle against the SANGOCO leadership’s attempt to impose a neoliberal programme as a platform of South African civil society. This struggle was led by the new anti-neo-liberal (sometimes even anti- capitalist) social movements that had been growing in the country from about 1998/99. These movements include the Concerned Citizen’s Forum (CCF) in Durban, the Anti-Evictions Campaign (AEC) in Cape Town, the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) in Johannesburg, the Environmental Justice Network Forum (EJNF), and many others. By the time of the WSSD end of August, all these bodies had gathered a support base which included progressive NGOs, various sectoral organisations dealing with issues

of water, the environment, debt, marine resources and economic justice. A process of mobilisation had taken place and a new centre for organising that was a direct counter to NASREC (where the NGO Forum of the WSSD was held) had been established in the township of Alexandra. At this critical juncture the SMI joined forces with the l the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), and together formed the Social Movements United.

This movement finally expressed itself in the great march from Alexandra to Sandton on August 31 under the banner of the Social Movements United. Anti-globalisation cadres from militant social movements coming from all over the world also joined the Social Movements United march. This was a resounding international rebuttal of the imperialist- sponsored WSSD.

The important question facing us is whether the SMI was a purely episodic affair or a gathering with a long-lasting significance. At this point I want to note that at various points there were calls for the formation of a South African Social Forum . The establishment of a formation calling itself by that name was overtaken by the facts of history when the SMI was formed. For me the SASF and SMI refer to one and the same body of social forces. The facts of history in their own way simply replaced one name with the other. There is no need now for a name change.

On the eve of the second conference of the SMI in March 2004 MP Giyose* takes a look at the formation and its weaknesses, and argues that the next phase of the SMI is to deepen its ideological and programmatic unity.

What is the social basis of the SMI?

Our social movements were a product of the international capitalist system, a system driven by the rapacious greed of the multi-national corporations backed by huge financial institutions. In its present phase capitalism has generated poverty and deprivation on a world scale, which has now reached unparalleled proportions. In 1994 the new Mandela government took over an economic system that was already under transformation into neoliberalism, with strong features of a continuation from the apartheid past. Neoliberalism intensified the critical areas of deprivation, especially in the sphere of the social infrastructure (housing, water, health facilities, sanitation, education, power, transport). In addition to these problems a universal joblessness now holds working people in both town and country in an ever-more wicked grip. As with the economy itself, the struggles, which have emerged in this area at the present time, are a continuation of struggles which in South Africa had come to the fore already in the early 1980s.

Thus it is that rural workers, urban workers, peasants, environmental activists all are facing a life and death war along a cutting edge which unites them all through a network of social movements today.

The composition and character of the SMI

Although the mobilisation against the WSSD united the social movements, different organisations still tend to see themselves as different, peculiar and autonomous. So much so that the general spirit in the thinking of almost all the organisations in the SMI meeting in February 2003 was dominated by a wish structurally to put the SMI together as no more than a mere collaboration of different social organisations. And this thinking was not posed as being purely tactical, temporary and transitory. It was seen, as the way things should be in our national situation. This kind of thinking can accurately be described as SMI internal parochialism. It is a conception of the bodies in SMI that does not take account of the dynamics of the social system. It is an understanding of these bodies as if they were made by God, immanent and running along parallel lines for a long historical period, but sometimes forced together either as a matter of convenience or as an act of historical exigency.

This kind of thinking was demonstrated when, in an astonishing development, the leadership of the LPM decided to withdraw itself from the deliberations and decisions of SMI. The reason espoused for this decision was that the LPM was unprepared to continue a struggle within a body that allowed also the participation of NGOs. Rather it wanted to call a meeting of pure social movements, which would then become the SMI.

This thinking prevalent in the SMI is more erroneous because it is a misreading of the events in South Africa between April and August 2002.

It is also a mistaken understanding of the political economy of capitalism in its neo-liberal phase. The outcomes of the neo-liberal phase of capitalism in their social character are themselves systemic and fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of all the poor and their organisations. As such, the people’s organisations are tied together by a bond of political solidarity that cries out everyday, every hour, every minute for its translation into programmatic and organisational unity

All these problems notwithstanding, the unity forged in the practice of the historical march of 31 August 2002 remains powerful. The only missing factor was the organised working class in the person, first and foremost, of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), together with the other subsidiary union federations in the country.

It will be necessary to add, however, that masses of unemployed workers found their way into that march. It is true as well that there are many smaller community organisations and occupational bodies of the labouring masses which have not yet found their way into the SMI. In other words, in a political fashion, it has not yet become possible for the SMI to define itself and be defined by the masses of the people in this country too, as the growing power of the future. It is nonetheless incontestable that an understanding of the basic features of our political economy as reflected above, leads to only one conclusion. That is to recognise the SMI as the body that will become the vortex of social organisation in this country on a national scale. What is missing (and critically so) is for the SMI to recognise itself in this way too.

This process of the development of the SMI is continuing apace. Indeed, the SMI has now began to intersect with the three major wars of Globalisation, that is to say, the two on the Gulf in 1991 and 2003 and the other on the Balkans in 1999. This intersection was in the first instance fostered by that standing symbol of rot and barbarism in capitalism today: the war against the Palestinian people. What had started off as the Palestinian Solidarity Committee became rapidly transformed into the much larger Anti-War Coalition by 2003? And this, a national body, is now taking its place in the ranks of the SMI.

Ideological and strategic weaknesses

The “internal parochialism” I observed above prefigures another and deeper methodological problem within the SMI formation. For a large organisation such as the APF or the LPM to show disdain for getting into a united front with a mere NGO or even a tiny even more or less backward organisation in the hinterland of Natal, is a most dangerous position to take. Methodologically, it stands on the same plane as that taken by cadres who are driven into such pessimism by the positions currently being adopted by COSATU as to excommunicate that organisation outside of the body politic of the social movement for all time. We must have confidence in the progressive march of history. We must be aware all the time that those organised workers who are being side tracked daily by a leadership which has tied itself to the apron-strings of neo-liberalism are caught up in a dynamism in history much bigger than anything capitalism can produce.

As the crisis of the capitalist system deepens, lessons will be driven home to these workers by the system itself that they belong, not to the capitalist class, but rather to the social movement of the poor. For instance, right now the same workers who are made to look so smug because of their perilous hold on jobs, are being thrown out of work everyday thanks to the onslaught of the privatisation drive.

In the townships, these workers are demoted by means of an evil leveling up process to a situation with other members of the township community, where they are deprived of their socio-economic rights. Such a contradictory position in their social- cultural existence will gradually change their political consciousness. On the other hand, the progressive NGOs have always fulfilled an important role in their overall mission to uphold survivalist resource mobilisation in favour of the toiling masses. Nothing therefore would be more dangerous than seeing any of these forces as part of the enemy.

Our movement and our tasks

At a structural level therefore, we need to understand the alignment of forces as is presented to us today. The growing social movement consists of rural and urban social movements of labour; others committed to an unflinching struggle on the questions of water, power, sanitation, housing, education, health, transport, debt, dams removals, environmental / ecological degradation, and progressive NGOs, research institutes, alternative information bodies, and so on. All these belong to one side in the current struggle. Unevenness at the levels of both organisation and/or consciousness pervades their situation; but this is purely episodic and temporary. An unavoidable imperative facing all these forces is that they should work their way, not only towards collaboration, but also towards a programmatic and organisational self-recognition. Their future is cast within a single national united front of people’s organisations built on the basis of a common political program. The task of leadership today is first of all to recognise this central fact, and secondly to adopt whatever practical steps are necessary in order for the entire movement to work it’s way progressively, rapidly towards such unity.

As our struggle on all these fronts deepens, it is obligatory too that we sum up a worldview that we will appropriate as the driving force behind our actions. We need to arrive at a clear summation of the character of the capitalist system worldwide and in South Africa. We must make an unambiguous characterisation of the role played by different social classes and political parties in the current situation, so that we can develop a programmatic position and an organisational characterisation of the SMI. This is a task that will have to engage our attention in the next twelve to fifteen months in the life of the SMI.

It is an undeniable fact that many of the partisans of the SMI also belong to different ideological currents in the country. This is not to be regretted because those cadres have already found it possible to work together inside the SMI. And it will not pose a danger to the SMI even in the future, provided they politically forswear any temptation to use their positions in the united front for the purpose of deriving special advantage for their own ideological current.

We need to celebrate the growing ideological and organisational strength of the SMI. The name Social Movements Indaba is itself a principal ideological weapon. It means the Council of the Social Movements. In other words, a united front of the ordinary people locked in mortal combat with an enemy that gives them no quarter when they falter and fall, and therefore they must needs stand up and fight for the very survival and salvation of the poor people.

*MP Giyose is the National Chairperson of Jubilee

South Africa and is active in the SMI.