The Bullet – Socialist Project
What is the ANC and
Where is the Left in South Africa?
Chris Webb

Hex River Valley strike
About a month ago I stood with some 200 striking farm workers in South Africa’s Hex River Valley, a rich agricultural region that produces table grapes for export. The workers were on strike against severe pay cuts and outsourcing, which came about when a major fruit export company took over the farm from its previous owner. The workers were a mixed group. Some were Zimbabwean migrants, but the majority were Xhosa speakers from the more impoverished Eastern Cape, where 72 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Most of them currently lived in the valley’s informal settlements, expanses of matchbox houses and zinc shacks on the dusty ground between the grape farms. As we marched toward the farm, the workers began to sing struggle songs praising the African National Congress (ANC) and the role of struggle leaders like Oliver Tambo and Chris Hani.
Hex River Valley Strike – 27 August 2012. [Picture: christopherswebb.]
The songs and circumstances seemed to capture the complexities and paradoxical politics that define the post-apartheid condition. While the promises of the political transition in 1994, the ANC’s “A Better Life For All” campaign, have been largely unfulfilled, the idea of the ANC as the agent of political emancipation remains very much alive. How then can we make sense of a political organization that has largely accepted the dictates of global neoliberalism, failed to restructure the country’s apartheid-era labour markets, allowed a handful of white commercial farmers to retain most of the country’s land, is embroiled in near endless corruption scandals, yet retains the support of millions of poor and working-class South Africans at least once every four years?
Of Struggle and SUVs
The ANC is a difficult beast to understand. In its contemporary form it is perhaps most adequately described by writer and activist Patrick Bond’s useful “Talk Left, Walk Right” phrase, which describes its strategy of justifying neoliberal or anti-democratic policies using Marxist phraseology and obligatory allusions to struggle heroes. This has been a crucial tactic for the party in maintaining the hegemony across the class divide and asserting its dominance as the sole inheritor of the liberation struggle. Numerous scholars have emphasized the diversity of political, religious and labour movements that comprised the anti-apartheid movement, rather than viewing the ANC and its armed wing as the primary actors.
There remains significant debate over the political character of the ANC before the transition to majority rule in 1994. Was it forced to abandon radical redistributive reforms by the World Bank and the ruling white elite, or were its economic ambitions always more moderate? Did the collapse of the Soviet Union bury its aims of socialist transformation? Moving forward one could question whether the transition from the mildly redistributive Reconstruction and Development Program policy in 1994 to the pro-market Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy in 1996 was a sign of shifting class alliances within, or simply a party pragmatically adapting to the dictates of globalization.
A closer examination of the party’s history can help us answer some of these questions. If we return to some of the debates that shaped the party in the mid 20th century it becomes clear that its primary concern was the pursuit of state power with the goal of universal suffrage. The party’s ambitions were only socialist to the extent that they fraternized with the South African Communist Party (SACP). This is not to suggest that the party’s politics have always been homogeneous: the influence of Marxists like Harry Gwala, Govan Mbeki and Chris Hani was significant. Indeed, these internal ideological rifts and debates between Liberal, Marxist and African nationalists tendencies have defined much of the party’s history, including a strong anti-communist current that emerged in the 1950s. The political heterogeneity and the vigorous internal debate that were once key strengths of the party as it faced the material and ideological barrage of the apartheid state have eroded in recent years as a creeping culture of discipline and deference to leadership has taken over.
Ultimately the school of thought that emerged triumphant did not see the 1955 Freedom Charter as a pathway toward socialist transformation but rather as a means toward establishing a capitalist democracy. This would be the prelude to a socialist state, but in the interim, the ANC would fight against racism rather than capitalism. Known as the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), this two-stage theory of revolution (a Stalinist hangover to be sure) remains on the books as the party’s guidebook of societal transformation. While its first phase, the deracialization of the economy, has progressed significantly, the second phase of a socialist transition is an ever-receding goal on the horizon. This ossified political doctrine has allowed the party to retain its radical credentials while using it to enrich a small coterie of black business people who are its primary beneficiaries.
Polokwane Conference in 2007
Another good starting point for understanding the current state of the ANC is to return to the ouster of former president Thabo Mbeki at the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007. Mbeki was widely criticized as an out-of-touch president more interested in quelling conflicts in the rest of Africa than dealing with spiraling unemployment and poor service delivery at home. His bizarre position on the HIV-Aids epidemic, along with his near-thorough embrace of orthodox neoliberalism, distanced him from the ANC’s historic allies in the tripartite alliance, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the SACP. The fall of Mbeki and the rise of Jacob Zuma can be explained by the widening gap between the ANC and its alliance partners as well as between the presidency and party’s base. Zuma’s popularity amongst ANC members, particularly in his home province of Kwa-Zulu Natal, along with his long history in the organization earned him the support of many rank-and-file members. Perhaps most importantly, he successfully framed himself as a voice of the poor and working-class, earning him the support of COSATU and the SACP. Rape and corruption charges aside, supporting Zuma during this time was seen as a way of regenerating the ANC and the alliance structures.
COSATU’s General Secretary Zwelenzima Vavi recently told a trade union congress that the euphoria felt after Polokwane had not returned the ANC back to members, nor had it held government to account. “If we don’t act decisively, we are heading rapidly in the direction of a full-blown predator state, in which a powerful elite increasingly controls the state as a vehicle for accumulation,” he told delegates. Accumulation of personal wealth via state channels has embroiled the ANC in scandals too numerous to list. Perhaps the most notable among them is the 1999 arms deal, which involved massive payouts from European Arms companies to senior ANC politicians. The case reached a fever pitch in 2005, when Zuma was temporarily suspended as deputy president after his close advisor was jailed for his role in the arms deal scandal. Current vice-president Kgalema Motlanthe has called this moral decay of the organization a “rot across the board.” Almost every project is conceived because it offers opportunities for certain people to make money. And yet this moral decay of the party is an inevitable outcome of its adherence to the myopic NDR and piecemeal deracialization of corporate boardrooms.
The ANC has not undergone any significant ideological transformation under Zuma. Economic and labour market policy has stayed the course of the Mbeki years, and there have been few attempts at addressing spiraling unemployment, particularly among young people. A system of “regulated labour flexibility” remains central to the party’s market-friendly policies, which has resulted in the massive growth of contingent and contract employment across the economy. Unions have estimated that between one and two million workers are employed through third-party contract agencies. This growing insecurity of employment has condemned those lucky enough to find work to poverty and increasing indebtedness, while preventing effective organization of a growing class of precarious workers.
Following the Polokwane conference the ANC under Zuma has repeatedly made commitments to rural development and agrarian reform. The government has released a series of policy documents outlining its vision for broad agrarian transformation aimed at challenging the political economy of rural underdevelopment. Closer examination of these documents reveals that they remain conceptually tied to a commercial farming model that has done little to generate sustainable employment in the past. The much discussed Green Paper on Land Reform is not a significant break from the pro-market, investor friendly policies of years past, which have left 87 per cent of the land in the hands of white commercial farmers. It is a serious indictment of ANC policymaking that for the past 18 years there has been no systematic attempt to address rural poverty and landlessness. It is indeed unfortunate that there is no rural social movement capable of taking up the mantle of agrarian transformation toward sustainable livelihoods at present. Read more…
