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Umsebenzi Online, Volume 5, No. 52, 02 March 2006
In this Issue:


 * **Red Alert: On the election campaign trail: An excursion into the class, racial and gender contradictions and challenges in contemporary South African society**
 * **"__A LETTER FROM AFAR”__**
 * **The Party, Mass Movements and the State: What kind of a state? A response to No. 49 Red Alert**

//Red Alert//

On the election campaign trail: An excursion into the class, racial and gender contradictions and challenges in contemporary South African society

 * By: Blade Nzimande, General Secretary**

We have decided to use this edition’s Red Alert to reflect on some of my experiences in the ANC’s local government election trail for local elections on March 1. I will reflect especially on the last week of the campaign.

The SACP used its 2005 Red October Campaign and the ‘Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign’ (KYNC) to lay the groundwork for intensified election campaigning at the beginning of this year. We held a series of successful Red October campaigns throughout the country last year, focusing on the challenge of fighting hunger in our society. These Red October activities were accompanied by door-to-door visits in many parts of our country as part of the KYNC. This is a very powerful campaign which should become a permanent feature of our work.

Incidentally, it was through the KYNC activities in Merafong that the SACP in the West Rand’s Dr Yusuf Dadoo district managed to understand the extent and intensity of the community’s resistance to being part of North-West.

The 2005 Red October Campaign had taken me to the rural areas of North-West Province and the Northern Cape, focusing our activities on farmworkers and communities living on white-owned farms. Indeed, one cannot help but be struck by the extent to which, despite progressive labour market legislation by the ANC government, the 1994 democratic breakthrough seems to have passed by many communities living in farm areas owned by white farmers. The high number of incidents of violence against black farm workers in the hands of some of the white farmers, slave wages and a lack of basic services for those communities still reflect the pre-1994 situation in most of these areas. Our revolution remains far from complete without the total liberation of the working class and the people in the countryside.

On 4 and 5 February, my Eastern Cape election trail was ‘interrupted’ by the funeral of that exemplary working class and communist cadre, Simphiwe Mnguni, who was provincial chairperson of Sadtu in the Eastern Cape, a son of Lusikisiki. The funeral was attended by about 7 000 people, and in itself turned into an elections rally for the ANC, a befitting send-off for a comrade of Mnguni’s calibre and dedication.
 * Funerals and elections: Voting for the departed**

It strikes me now that my election trail has been punctuated by three funerals within the space of a month, including that of our dedicated Provincial Secretary of the SACP, Cde Juda Tsotetsi. Cde Juda had collapsed some six days prior to his death doing door-to-door work as part of the SACP’s campaigning in support of the ANC. Cde Juda slipped into a coma the day before he passed away, a day on which we were to meet to discuss, together with the SACP Provincial Secretary of Limpopo, how to deal with the problems emanating from the redemarcation of Moutse as part of the Limpopo province, and not Mpumalanga. His funeral became an alliance rally, with colourful flags of the ANC, SACP and COSATU, addressed by family spokespersons and friends, Cde Jacob Zuma, Deputy President of the ANC, Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of COSATU, Fikile Mbalula, President of the ANC Youth League, Buti Manamela, National Secretary of the YCL, and myself.

For the first time, I visited and was campaigning this last week in Manguzi (of Umkhanyakude district) in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), some 12 kilometres from the border between South Africa and Swaziland. The KZN leg of my election trail was the toughest, especially since it focused mainly on the rural areas, a matter I shall return to below. My programme was to start on the morning of Saturday, 25 February, with door-to-door work. I was to be joined by our candidate councillor Sipho Mthethwa in a place called Velabusha (literally meaning “Appear anew” or “Rebirth”).

It was however not to be, as Cde Mthethwa tragically passed away in a car accident the Friday before. Instead of doing door-to-door work that Saturday, I found myself once more addressing the funeral of one of our cadres. So I never met Cde Mthethwa, except seeing the coffin with his remains, but listening to all the speakers at the funeral, we know we have lost another dedicated activist. He was an active SADTU member in the region, heading the arts and culture section of the union, and he was a gifted singer and orator, a candidate councillor for the ANC, and a member of the SACP.

The funeral of Cde Mthethwa also turned into a rallying point for the people of the area to wrest the ward he was candidate for from the IFP. It was a sad moment as a number of speakers pleaded with the community to still put their cross next to Cde Mthethwa’s name on the ballot paper, and hopefully if ‘he’ gains majority votes, the IEC would have to call for a by-election. I am heartened that the latest result from the Independent Electoral Commission show the ANC has won this ward!

All these funerals brought back memories from the difficult period of the 1980s, when funerals of cadres, usually murdered by the security forces and assassins of the apartheid regime and its tentacles in the Bantustans, became rallying moments to intensify the struggle against the racist apartheid regime. My memory flashed back to the funeral of the Cradock Four in the Eastern Cape where a large flag of the then illegal SACP was unfurled, to a thunderous response from the mourners. Long live the memory of our departed cadres!

Back to the 4 February: as I drove into Umthatha at dusk from Lusikisiki, a distance of about 2 hours by car, I was struck at how Umthatha looked like a huge urban city of the order of East London, for example. I was really actually fooled by the lights at night, as most of those lights were not from the actually city centre and its immediate environs, but from the large electrification of the rural areas surrounding this town. This is palpable proof of one of the most impressive achievements of our government, electrification of millions of households since 1994, including the rural areas. And Umthatha and many other rural areas of our country will never be the same since the ANC took power in 1994.
 * Achievements and challenges of rural development**

The national leaderships of both the ANC and SACP decided that I should campaign in KwaZulu-Natal in the last week before the elections. This was the toughest leg of my assignment, as I was principally campaigning in IFP ‘strongholds’, and in the deepest of the KZN rural hinterland. The campaign trail took me to rural areas outside Empangeni, Hlabisa next to Vryheid, Manguzi near the Swaziland border, and Hluhluwe, then back to Durban. In the process, my car clocked close to 2000 kilometres.

I had never been to some of these areas, especially that next to the border with Swaziland. It is a flat area, fondly referred to by locals as “KwaMhlabuyalingana” (“where the earth is flat”), and is famous as a happy hunting ground for herbalists!

Door-to-door work in the countryside is completely different from the urban areas. In the rural areas, door-to-door literally means travelling between households that are, on average, one kilometre apart. This really tests one’s fitness to the limit.

The far north of the KZN province has some of the most fertile land, producing cashew nuts, sugar cane, amadumbe, avocado pears, banana, sweet potato, and so on. Its beauty and its greenery are astounding, yet beneath that beauty lies the ugliness of poverty. As I moved from one area to the next, I couldn’t help but better understand the centrality of accelerating an integrated land and agrarian transformation programme in fighting poverty in the rural areas.

Many villages and communities there are entirely dependent on the diminishing transfers from workers in the urban areas, and increasingly on government social grants. In fact, without these grants, many of these communities would have been wiped out by poverty. A renewed effort is required to support these communities with seeds, implements and tractors to plough even the minimal land in their hands. This was one of the major issues in the people’s forums we held and in our door-to-door work.

The communities of areas like KwaNgwanase and Manguzi were in the 1970s forcibly removed from their areas next to the sea by the apartheid government, in collaboration with some of the IFP aligned traditional leaders, to pave the way for white-owned game reserves and timber forests. These communities in the past relied on fish as their staple food. But their forced removal and distance from the sea has now negatively affected the community in terms of its food needs. The area had some of the most beautiful wetlands in our country, but most of them have now been wiped out because of the huge quantities of water stolen from them by the forestry industry – a classic case of capitalist destruction of our environment!

As we had pointed out before, the one key feature of the former KwaZulu Bantustan was the alliance between IFP-aligned traditional leaders and white farmers, constituting a privileged layer of a rural petty bourgeoisie. One expression of this alliance in the 1980s was the use of some of the white-owned game reserves to train some of the IFP-linked hit squads that terrorised many of those communities, especially activists associated with the democratic movement at the time. A recent attempt to consolidate this class and political alliance was the failed political marriage between the Democratic Alliance and the IFP in the run up to the 2004 national and provincial elections.

Another important matter that requires the attention of government immediately after the local government elections is that of resourcing councillors so that they can do their work efficiently especially in the rural areas. Councillors in the rural areas have to cover large wards which are impossible to service without transport and other resources.

Perhaps in debating increased funding for political parties as per the resolution of the ANC National General Council in July 2005, particular attention will have to be given to local government.

A high number of women have been participating in the ANC’s campaign trail. This underlines the fact that African women, especially in the rural areas, are one of the most crucial constituencies for the ANC.
 * Women and the African National Congress**

However, the struggle for gender equality still has a long way to go, especially in the rural areas. Whilst in the urban areas there is a certain degree of awareness on gender equality, in the rural areas, gender inequality is an entrenched reality, manifesting itself in the division of labour within the household, and the clearly inferior place of women in all facets of rural life.

The delivery of basic services and social welfare grants is a challenge that faces women in the most acute of ways. For example, one of the serious problems we have had to attend to as we were campaign, was that of the provision of birth certificates. Many children are unable to access social grants because of the inability of Home Affairs to rapidly provide birth certificates, especially in the rural areas. This is an issue that was raised by many women during the campaign, and priority attention needs to given to drastically improve the capacity of the Home Affairs Department in this regard.

All this further underlines the arguments we were making in the last edition of this publication, about the importance of building a progressive women’s movement from below, targeting working class and poor women around the many activities they are involved in, such as child-rearing, stokvels, burial societies, school governing bodies, small-scale and subsistence farming, etc. In the people’s forums I participated in during the election trail, it is women who seem to have a much deeper understanding and appreciation of matters relating to building sustainable livelihoods in their households and communities. This is not surprising given the role they play in the domestic division of labour. It is these matters that should inform and drive the 50/50 gender representation that the ANC strives for in local government, to harness women’s experiences whilst involving everyone in the struggle for gender equality.

If there is one reason for the disbanding of the Abaqulusi municipality in Vryheid by the MEC for Local Government in KZN, Cde Mike Mabuyakhulu, it is the state of the old hostel of the Hlobane Colliery mine. The living conditions of our people there are shocking, with disconnected electricity and no water. Many of the people living there are of course unemployed as the mine was scaled down after 1994, with thousands of workers retrenched. I had never seen so many sick people gathered together outside a hospital. There are high rates of TB, waterborne diseases, etc. People are living literally with pigs, blocked drains and all that is unfit for human habitation. A pandemic is just waiting to happen. The IFP ward councillor has been flatly refusing to attend to this matter, not even visiting that hostel.
 * The centrality of the working class in the African National Congress**

The situation of the hostel of the Hlobane Colliery is the sharpest expression of the extent to which capitalism creates poverty, and then continues to thrive on it. The minimal mining that is done there is now done by casualised and rightless workers, earning a maximum of R400-00 per month with no benefits whatsoever. The workers have been impoverished precisely in order to be more vulnerable to further exploitation by the capitalist class.

In the midst of this depressing situation, I was inspired by our candidate councillor, Cde Masikane, a former employee of the Colliery and former shop steward of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). He was one of those retrenched after 1994, and had lived through IFP-sponsored and police-backed violence unleashed in 1986. Those attacks were initiated immediately after the launch in 1986 of the IFP-created union, UWUSA, funded from slush funds of the apartheid police forced, and used to try and smash COSATU unions.

Cde Masikane’s energy and enthusiasm seems endless. He drives around in his old VW Passat, with ANC election posters pasted all over the vehicle, and two mounted loudhailers on top, urging people to vote for the ANC. He deploys all his shop steward skills as we go door-to-door, with an incredible insight into the reasons for the decline of that hostel and a passion to address the problems. To me, he represents the best of the ANC cadres drawn from the ranks of the working class. It is this cadre, whether councillor or not, that our movement needs to nurture, as the likes of him are the salt of this movement. Again I am elated that according to latest IEC results, Cde Masikane is the new ANC ward councillor for the area!

Many of the ANC’s candidate councillors are workers, drawn from COSATU affiliates. In the rural areas they are coming especially from SADTU, NEHAWU and SAMWU. I was campaigning with many of them during the election trail, both as candidates and volunteers. Their commitment to the movement and the Alliance, despite some of the problems that have surfaced during this election campaign, is inspiring. To me, it underlined the dangers posed by those in our movement who unnecessarily provoke Alliance tensions and fail to take the working class – as the central pillar of our movement - along. Alienating the working class in general, and the organised workers in particular, is a sure way of destroying the ANC.

My election trail wounded up with victory rallies in three of the wards in the sprawling Kwa-Mashu township in eThekwini Metro, and handing out pamphlets on Monday afternoon to workers at the bustling Johannesburg Park station. In KwaMashu, the election messages were interspersed with the blaring sounds of the Jacob Zuma song sung by the maskanda group, Izingane Zoma, and some spirited indlamu dance, that beautiful traditional Zulu dance.


 * A tough assignment but well worth it and very rewarding!**

Of course, I was not the only communist who was on the election trail for the ANC in this local government election campaign; thousands of Party cadres have done really sterling work in the campaign, and in many ways my own experiences are theirs, too.


 * Let me take this opportunity to thank all those Party cadres who participated in this election campaign.**
 * Victory to the ANC… With and For the Workers and the Poor!**

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ONGOING MASS MOBILISATION AND STATE POWER

 * By: Joel Netshitenzhe**


 * ANC NEC Member**

The article by General-Secretary (GS) Blade Nzimande (Umsebenzi, Vol 5, No. 49) on the January 2006 meeting with President-elect Evo Morales provided profound insights into the recent victories of the Left in Latin America.

These advances affirm the progress that working people can make by using the weapons of mass mobilisation and the electoral terrain in combination.

In his analysis, the GS argues that “…revolutionary movements cannot win at the negotiating table what has not been won on the ground, thus emphasising the importance of progressive mass mobilisation as an essential element of the constitution-making process itself”. This is of course true. And one assumes that this “essential element” has to be combined with developing and utilising expertise in constitution-making and mastering the art of negotiation. For, is it improbable that a revolutionary movement can, without such capabilities, easily lose at the negotiating table what it has won in the streets?

In other words, different phases of struggle require different capacities and different combinations among forms of struggle. At times, new capacities have to be injected, and delicate balances struck among old and new forms of struggle.

In processes of change such as being experienced in Bolivia, the weapon of mass mobilisation has been and will continue to be essential. But, in combination with what new forms, and with what balance among them?

For instance, when going into electoral contestation, new challenges arise. The GS correctly asserts the need for “ongoing popular participation and mass mobilisation, not only during election campaigns…” But is it correct in the context of electoral contestation to argue that such mobilisation must be based on the ‘lived experiences’ of the poor, “not some ‘feel-good’ opinion surveys, predominantly measuring the confidence or otherwise of the bourgeoisie and the middle classes”?

As we know from our own experiences, to win elections requires that the leading organisation should also be adept at mastering electoral tactics. This includes ensuring that the emphasis, tone and manner of delivery of the revolutionary message achieve the desired electoral result. As with other forms of struggle, electoral contestation has to be treated both as a science and as an art. Combining an appreciation of the ‘lived experiences’ and scientifically-conducted opinion research is accepted, among Left forces across the world, as critical in the social psychology of electoral politics.

The GS correctly argues that “[e]lectoral victories of the mass of the people are always susceptible to reversal by those who control wealth and the major ideological institutions in society”. But then what solution is posed? Buttress these electoral victories by “ongoing mass mobilisation”!

As such, while one found the article truly enlightening, its accent on one form of struggle (ongoing mass mobilisation) created a sense of one-sidedness.

What about the critical task of transforming the state machinery to serve the people? What about creating new institutions to deepen the popular nature of democracy? What about changing the rules that govern distribution of national resources? What about systematically engaging in the ideological struggle? Failure to do these things would definitely undermine a progressive electoral victory.

In other words, the continuum between formal institutions of representative democracy and mass mobilisation should be seen as a complex space of interconnected factors. Part of that space requires adeptness at using the various sites of political power to further the interests of the working people. This is proceeding from the premise that an electoral victory provides the masses with an additional and very critical instrument, the state, to pursue social change.

The institutions of representative democracy such as parliament need to be used creatively as tribunes of the people, and as instruments to define a progressive legislative framework. Further, ways should be found to broaden the sites of popular engagement and influence, beyond ongoing mass mobilisation. In our situation, institutions such as NEDLAC, SETAs, task teams on economic sector strategies and Pension Fund Boards provide an important platform for the working people to participate in the process of change, not merely as protesters, but as creators of a new social order.

This is besides the challenge of training and deploying cadres in government, as managers and professionals, to implement the programmes of social transformation.

To recapitulate: Having attained an electoral victory and thus with the advantage of wielding the power of political incumbency, revolutionaries should creatively use the instrument of state power, in combination with other forms of struggle, to achieve their objectives.

If by “ongoing mass mobilisation” we are not suggesting that the masses are held constantly alert only to protest, as they did in the past, against opposing classes; if we mean that they can do this and more – including creation of and participation in new institutions of popular democracy, transformation of the state and creative use of the formal structures of representative democracy – then we are at one.

Otherwise, a fixation with “ongoing mass mobilisation”, without taking into account the strategic nature of the new terrain arising from an electoral victory, can have the effect of persuading an otherwise victorious working people to conduct itself as victim rather than leader.

A response to Red Alert Vol 5 No 49

 * By: David Masondo**


 * National Chairperson**


 * Young Communist League of SA**

Cde Blade Nzimande in Vol. 5. No. 49 Red Alert points out that the revolutionary processes in Latin America have led to the left’s ascendancy to state power by electoral means in a number of countries, and this has raised anew the issue of the relationship between the Party, mass movements and the state. He points out that ideologically heterogeneous social movements tend to fragment and lose the revolutionary steam in the heat of political struggles. On the other hand, Communist parties tend to be ‘vanguardist’ and bureaucratic.

In the case of the Communist Parties and liberation movements, I would argue that the tendency to read Lenin’s text scripturally, ahistorically and undialectically in relation to the working class consciousness, has led to the emergence of the two phenomena.

In the fight against economism, Lenin argued that class political consciousness should be brought to the workers from without by the vanguard Party. This kind of vanguardism that The Red Alert refers to, has led to a particular conception of working class consciousness. It has always been assumed that the vanguard Party has the ultimate ‘scientific truth’ to be ‘given’ to the working class. This is not to deny the existence of reactionary workers. That is, workers who believe in xenophobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, including the capitalist system. This requires the Party to educate and learn from the workers in order to win their hearts and minds from the bourgeoisie. However we need to point out that a number of vanguard Parties had a crude conception of working class consciousness which detached them from the working class. They had a tendency to mechanically impose the ‘absolute truth’ into the working class.
 * True and False Consciousness**

This type of vanguardism also had an impact on many of the national liberation movements. In the national liberation movement, the truth of the nation is in the hands of the national liberation movement usually led by the local bourgeoisie (usually turned into a nationalist party in the post-colonial period) and ultimately the absolute truth is only in the President and anyone who disagree with the Party and president does not have the national interest – he/she is a traitor.

This mode of understanding working class consciousness, has led some to assume that the ANC in particular has the absolute truth on everything. In other words, the ANC is always right; it is only those masses in Merafong fighting around effective democratic consultations and processes on boundary re-determination, workers and poor communities marching against the effects of neo-liberalism, have ‘false consciousness’.

Justification of anti-working class positions are done through very partial, ahistorical and narrow interpretation of one textual evidence from Lenin’s What is to be Done? which argued for the consciousness to be brought from without. This mode of thinking about the working class and the role of the Party denies the historical contexts which led to Lenin arriving at contradictory positions on the development of the working class consciousness. As opposed to 1902, Lenin argued that ‘the workers’ struggles against the factory owners for their daily needs automatically and inevitably spurs the workers on to think of state, political questions and questions the Russian state is governed, how laws and regulations are issued, and those interests they serve….’

We must combat a tendency to Lenin’s writings as gospel as opposed to a guide to action. The working class-Party relations should be organic in a sense that it must be a fighting organ with and for the unity of working class and its emancipation. However, the Party must not see itself as the working class, but it must see itself as an organ that is continuously fighting to win the working class to its side. This cannot be achieved by decree from above or by conspiratorial adventurism organized around a group of a few individuals detached from the working class’ daily struggles. A revolutionary party should engage itself in the day-to-day community struggles but at the same time transcend reformism. The party must raise the day to day economic struggles of the workers, but transcend trade union reformism or economism. The party must defend democratic rights and transcend bourgeois democracy. The party must also fight for national liberation but transcend national democracy. Furthermore, the party must participate in the day-to-day democratic struggles around provincial boundaries, but must move beyond provincialism and ‘municipalism’.

The relationship between the state, the Party and working class mass movements depends on the class character, nature and character of the state, and its role in the reproduction and transformation of a social system. The South African state is capitalist judging by its effects and functions in the reproduction of the capitalist system. It does not work against the logic of the system; it furthers the growth of capitalism. The fact that the ANC has assumed government power does not make the state in SA socialist or national democratic, because a capitalist state can be run by classes which are not inherently bourgeois or even in character, but still maintain the general interest of capital as it is the case in our country.
 * Post-1994 state in South Africa**

The ANC’s capture of governmental power through electoral means supported by the popular forces does not validate the left or right libertarian proposition that a state, regardless of its class content, is inherently evil. It only shows that it is not sufficient for progressive bloc to ‘capture’ state power because the bourgeoisie exercise its control through different means such as media, lobbying executive in golf-clubs, breakfast and dinner meetings. Hence it is necessary for a progressive government to be backed by extra-parliamentary organization and mobilization to challengee the power of the capitalist class within and outside the state apparatuses.

There is a growing tendency within the liberation movement to treat any form of working class-led extra-parliamentary actions with suspicion and petty-bourgeois disdain, and insists in channeling all mass protests to bureaucratized ‘democratic committees’, and at worst, call repressive state apparatus (police) to intervene. This anti-mass mobilization found expression in 1999 in the ANC’s ‘Briefing Notes’ which suggested that the aim of COSATU’s anti-privatization strike was aimed at toppling government. It was not seen as strengthening popular forces in the fight against neo-liberalism, because a leading fraction of capital within the liberation movement saw this as a threat to its class interests.

However, we must avoid two growing tendencies on mass mobilization and organization. The first one sees mass mobilisation and organization as an appendage to parliamentarianism and the state. In other words, all forms of mass mobilisation should only be aimed at supporting the state and take campaigns directed only at capital and delinking the state even when it is guilty in its collaboration with capital.

The second tendency sees mass struggles as always opposed to the state. We need to use mass mobilization as way of opposing capital-state reactionary reforms, support and fight for progressive reforms, as well as building alternative organs for working class power towards communism. In other words, these anti-systemic reforms should be linked to the broader struggles for working class power. This must also include forming an anti-capitalist united front with some of the contemporary social movements.

Working class-driven accountability, recall, and mandate mechanisms are important to avoid bureaucraistiation of revolutionary movements. Mitchells argues that leadership positions can become sites for social advancement of talented members, who abandon revolutionary goals. What is the implication of the Alliance leaders’ involvement in business, as it is the case mainly in the ANC and SANCO? What is the impact of this phenomenon on the nature and character of the ANC? It is for instance estimated that only about 2% of ANC NEC members who are not in business. The bourgeosification of the ANC and SANCO is shifting the revolutionary goals by the leadership that has already achieved its social revolution through BEE. We need to make a class analysis of our organizations, and assess the class projects they are serving. Otherwise they will serve as stepping stones to achieve personal social revolutions of its leading cadres. This may also shed some light on why SANCO has not been taking up community struggles around privatization of services, electricity cuts and evictions.
 * Leadership, bureaucracy and class formation**