What+SACP+paper+said,+and+did+not+say,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 07 June 2006
=What SACP paper said, and did not say=


 * Blade Nzimande**

THE South African Communist Party (SACP) has published a widely cited discussion document dealing with our alliance with the African National Congress (ANC) and the post-1994 state. We are heartened that our intention of stimulating national debate has gone far beyond initial expectations. However, we are also concerned that the substantive matters raised in our document are in danger of being distorted by critics and even some supporters.

It is important to reaffirm what the discussion document is, and therefore what it is not; and to reaffirm what it actually says.

Firstly, the document is not an intervention into a presidential succession debate. Obviously, any discussion about present political realities will inevitably have implications for any such debate. But we have no intention of allowing the systemic issues we want discussed being turned into a personality contest.

We have consistently argued the ANC presidential succession question is an ANC matter. Indeed, the origins of our discussion document are to be found in our own April 2005 special national congress. There we debated not which ANC presidential candidate we should support, but whether the SACP would field its own separate party list in future elections.

Secondly, the document is emphatically not arguing for a weak presidential centre, or for a weak state. Power is not a zero-sum game. But we are concerned that there is a serious imbalance in the way in which power has been centralised within the presidency while Parliament is relatively weak, and the popular mass movement has been considerably demobilised and fragmented. This power imbalance is liable to result not in a strong presidency, but in a power centre vulnerable to isolation and to undue influence by established and newly enriched capital. The national democratic objectives of our struggle are in danger of being systemically undermined by this reality. That is our central concern.

We support many ANC conference resolutions calling for an active developmental state to lead transformation in SA. This is why we have opposed privatisation of key state assets. Privatising public resources invariably weakens the developmental capacity of a democratic state.

The ANC’s July 2005 national general council (NGC) correctly noted that a developmental state in SA could not simply repeat the Japanese or South Korean experience: “In many international cases, the developmental state has been characterised by a high degree of integration between business and government. The South African developmental state has different advantages and challenges ... in SA the developmental state needs to be buttressed and guided by a mass-based, democratic liberation movement in a context in which the economy is still dominated by a developed, but largely white, capitalist class."

The relative weakness and disunity of the mass-based movement in our country currently (as elaborated upon by the ANC secretary-general’s report to the NGC) means that it has not been able to effectively buttress the state. We frequently find government out on its own.

A current example is the attempt to spend a generous R7,7 billion on taxi recapitalisation. Yet, government is being opposed (and officials physically threatened) by the very forces that stand to benefit from this largesse. Meanwhile, millions of frustrated township commuters are left unorganised and voiceless.

In Kenya, by contrast, a popular wave of anticorruption mobilisation empowered government to move boldly with the scrapping of dangerous minibuses and to enforce compliance with safety regulations.

Government has resources and capacity, but also limitations. For instance, government needs to conduct its Zimbabwean policy within the framework of intergovernmental responsibilities. However, the ANC has often been exceedingly timid as if it, too, were bound by the rules of interstate diplomacy.

A notable exception was the ANC Women’s League’s morally inspiring espousal of Amina Lawal’s cause in Nigeria. However, too often articulating the values of our national democratic revolution has been left to alliance partners, who are then castigated for “rocking the boat”.

The weaknesses of parliament may well be simply because parliament is weak, and not because a presidential hand is deliberately marginalising the institution. But the serious power imbalance between a relatively strong executive and a relatively weak legislature means that key decisions (on redrawing provincial boundaries or Gautrain, for instance) are insufficiently open to extensive public scrutiny.

President Mbeki is the democratically elected president of our country. He will be our state president until 2009. The SACP has twice thrown its weight behind an ANC electoral list with President Mbeki as its presidential candidate.

The workers and poor of our country have nothing to gain from a weak government, from a disunited movement, or a “lame-duck” presidency for the next three years.

But unity and strength will not be built by pretending there are no challenges, or that every comradely criticism is a personal assault, or that there are no lessons to be learnt from our recent past.


 * Nzimande is general secretary of the South African Communist Party.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A212076**

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