SNC+Discussion+Doc+2,+SACP+contesting+elections

__Discussion Document 2, for SACP Special National Congress, April 8th-10th, 2005__
=Should the Party Contest Elections in its own Right?=

1. Since the April 1994 the SAC P has campaigned actively for the ANC, and within the ANC and alliance structures in national, provincial and local elections. The SACP has played an active role in helping to shape all of the ANC election manifestos. SACP cadres have played an active (and often leading) role in all of the ANC elections campaigns – sometimes in their SACP capacities, and at other times more directly in ANC (or COSATU) roles. To date, the SACP has never lobbied for an SACP quota on ANC lists, we have always preferred to allow the process of list nominations to be driven from the ANC-branch level up. Many hundreds of SACP cadres have been endorsed by this ANC-led process, and many hundreds serve (as elected ANC representatives) in national, provincial and local level legislatures and councils.

2. There is, however, nothing sacrosanct about any of these arrangements. It is perfectly natural that the SACP should, from time to time assess, from the perspective of the party’s programmatic objectives, the effectiveness of the above approach to electoral politics. Is it working well? What shortcomings have emerged? How are they best addressed?

3. Over the last few years some forces within our society, faced with the reality of an overwhelming and seemingly impregnable ANC electoral majority, have tried to “encourage” the SACP to launch out on its own electorally. “You would make a very handsome opposition party”, we are told by these hypocritical flatterers (among them the Business Day, which from time to time flies this particular kite).

4. More recently, within some quarters of the Party, and perhaps in the context of the anti-left onslaught (1996-2002) and its continued legacy, some comrades have (as is their legitimate right) raised the prospect of some kind of independent SACP electoral effort.

5. The exact modalities of an SACP electoral campaign have not ever been tabled formally, certainly not within any national structure of the Party. As far as we know, none of those advocating one or another modality from within the Party are advocating a break with the alliance. Informal suggestions include: It is quite possible that there are other suggested variants.
 * the proposal that a block of SACP comrades should stand on the ANC national list (and perhaps other lists) with the agreement of the ANC. They should stand as communists within the list, and they should then speak formally in the legislatures on a Party mandate.
 * another informal suggestion is that the SACP should agree with the ANC on certain designated municipalities where we would put up a formal SACP mayoral candidate and team.
 * still another version is that the SACP should run a fully-fledged electoral campaign with its own lists, but with a “friendly agreement”, a “non-aggression pact” with the ANC.

6. Certainly, for the moment, the CC and a majority in all of our provincial structures are not in favour of an independent SACP electoral platform. But this is not a reason to suppress the debate. The CC has undertaken to engage with this debate, and the purpose of the present discussion document is to provide some reference points to assist a thoughtful and comradely discussion of the issue. Naturally, this paper will inevitably reflect the prevailing majority view. But it is designed to open up the debate, not shut it down.

7. In the course of the debate, we believe that those who are advocating one or another version of an SACP electoral platform should take into account the following issues:


 * 1) In the heat of an electoral campaign, how realistic is the idea of a friendly understanding between alliance partners – bearing in mind that we are not talking abstractly, but about a contest, on the turf of the same mass constituency… and in which victory means a paid position? Considering the heat with which list processes are often contested within the ANC (especially at the local level), how realistic is it to expect the ANC to step aside in some working class wards (precisely the wards that are most safe) in order to let the SACP have a go?
 * 2) What are the electoral results that advocates of an SACP electoral platform anticipate? As far as we are aware, there have been at least three public opinion surveys in the last 18 months that have sought to gauge, amongst other things, voter support for an independent “workers party”. Although the question was framed in different ways in the different surveys, they were all alluding to a hypothetical COSATU-SACP electoral break from the ANC. All three came up with relatively similar results – showing potential voter support of around 15-17%. This suggests that if there were such an electoral party it could become the “official opposition”. But, of course, all of this is hypothetical. There was no such party campaigning electorally when the surveys were undertaken. If there were, then perhaps it might do even better. Then, again, some of those indicating support might have had a different notion of what was meant by a “workers party”- and would not vote for the actual “workers party” should there be one.
 * 3) Bearing in mind all of these qualifications, let us assume that an initial result of around 15-20% is attainable. Then the next question that arises is: how does this impact upon the trajectory of national politics? Does an ANC, still the largest party, but now perhaps dipping below 50%, tack more to the left? Or will the inevitable electoral tensions be used by forces inside and outside of the ANC to move it rightwards, finally purging the influence of the left within, and achieving what was not achieved between 1996 and 2000?
 * 4) If the ANC, on the contrary, as the majority party agrees to form a governing alliance with the SACP/workers party as a minority party, how would the situation of SACP ministers, for instance, in a majority ANC cabinet differ in practice from the reality that already exists?
 * 5) What, in the present, prevents SACP members who are ANC ministers, MECs, MPs, MPLs or councillors from more boldly affirming an SACP identity, albeit within the disciplines of an ANC caucus? Would a negotiated quota of SACP members on ANC lists actually result in more (or less) SACP members being represented?
 * 6) Obviously Zimbabwe and South Africa are quite different realities in many respects. However, we all need to study and debate the merits of the MDC project, bearing in mind that the mass base and the majority of the leading cadre of the MDC came out of the NLM and the trade union movement. Those involved in the project were certainly addressing some very real issues – the serious deterioration of the NLM, deepening social and economic problems for the working class and urban and rural poor, etc. But has an oppositionist electoral programme advanced the interests of the workers and the poor? Have the very successes of the MDC in elections not fostered electoralist illusions and electoralist compromises within that movement on the one hand, while also playing into the hands of the most retrograde forces within the NLM on the other? The MDC has won every single major town and city in Zimbabwe, but its mayors are rendered powerless by legislation and the actions of the security forces – winning elections does not necessarily translate into winning power.
 * 7) Contesting elections is an extremely costly business – as the ANC, and many of the lesser parties in our political spectrum have discovered. Have those advocating an independent SACP electoral platform costed their proposal, and do they believe that the party’s resources are best spent by the party in this way? The SACP would certainly not be the beneficiary of major corporate or foreign donations – in this regard, our situation is quite different from the MDC’s situation, for instance, of 2000 and 2002.

8. Comrades who argue for an independent SACP electoral platform often buttress this with the argument that “any political party that takes itself seriously must, sooner or later, contest for power.” It is true that the SACP should (and does) take the question of power very seriously, it is, in the end, the central question. But the argument above tends to be guilty of two confusions:


 * It reduces the question of political power to an electoral contest (and in this way simply repeats the bourgeois liberal view of politics). The SACP, without a single (formal) communist mayor, has considerably more power and impact upon governance in South Africa, than the MDC in Zimbabwe, despite its full-house of elected mayors in the major cities and towns of that country.
 * More importantly, the programmatic and strategic goal of the SACP is the rolling back and defeat of capitalism and the winning of power by the working class. We are convinced that the SACP has an important, vanguard role in the realisation of this programmatic goal. But we must NOT confuse class and Party. The condition for working class power in South Africa might ultimately be an SACP ruling party. That it one possible scenario, but it is far from being the only possible scenario. What IS certain, however, is that where working class power is simply identified with communist party rule very serious errors have been made. This kind of reductionism was, for instance, at the heart of the stagnation and collapse in the former Soviet bloc.

9. Our medium-term vision attempts to provide a strategic basis for the Party and the working class to be able to impact on, and influence all sites of power without focusing on a narrow electoral form. The issue of elections merely expresses a form and only a part of a fundamental question we need to pose. The fundamental question is building working class power and its impact within society; the form that this takes will be determined by specific conjunctural conditions.

10. Ultimately, the argument of this discussion paper is that those comrades who are suggesting an independent SACP electoral platform might be asking the right question…but they are providing the wrong answer. The right question is, indeed, how do we strengthen the influence and impact of the SACP in order to advance our medium-term vision of working class hegemony throughout our society? We believe that over the last few years we have begun to answer this question much more clearly in practice. By anchoring the Party in a leadership role in a series of mass-based campaigns and by positioning the Party (and the campaigns) not in oppositionist ways (either to the ANC or government) we have made considerable progress in building a party of influence, activism and power. What is more these campaigns – the financial sector campaign, for instance – have also helped to strengthen communists (and non-communists) in ANC elected positions. We believe that the independent electoral platform argument is a diversion from the real tasks of the Communist Party in our current context, and a diversion from the real lessons learnt in the past few years.