Its+not+going+to+happen,+Cronin,+M+and+G




 * Mail & Guardian Online, Johannesburg, 9th September 2005.**

=It's not going to happen=


 * Jeremy Cronin**

The controversy within the ANC-led alliance around the Jacob Zuma affair has breathed fresh hope into the if-only brigade. There are basically two headlines under which most political commentary deigns to acknowledge the existence of the South African Communist Party.

The one headline reads “growing marginalisation” of communists or unionists within the African National Congress. The other, headline “alliance about to split”, is a back-handed admission that the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions are not as irrelevant as hoped.

So, I welcome the opportunity to discuss the hypothetical question: “what if the alliance breaks?” As always, I take it as a back-handed acknowledgement.

After all, over the past three years, the government has shifted away from its privatisation drive. President Thabo Mbeki has articulated an increasingly robust critique of free market fundamentalism. Worker strikes for higher wages have seen growing non-racial worker solidarity and broad public anger directed, not at the workers but at management for their inflated salaries and perks. The ANC’s national general council has rejected labour market flexibility. Following the land summit, and the SACP’s Red October campaigns, the government is supporting an urgent review of the “willing-seller, willing-buyer” land reform approach.

These and many other positive developments are what really lie behind the question “what if?” (which is, in fact, a wishful “if only”).

But what about the Zuma matter? It underlines my point. The alliance is not divided along organisational boundaries, nor neatly into a centre and a left. Anxiety over the Zuma matter cuts through all our organisations, not least the ANC itself. We are united strategically, but also, as we are being reminded, by the shared challenges of combining internal democracy and collective leadership with a progressive rule of law with corruption-free but strong governance, and with the capacity to mobilise and engage poor communities across our country.

An alliance break-up, we are told, will be “good for democracy”. Citizens will finally “know what they are choosing”. The assumption is that democracy is a market-place in which we are periodic voters exercising individual “choice” between competing brands — the more the better. I don’t have a problem with multi-party democracy and I know it is fashionable to brand everything, including sports grounds — such as Vodacom (formerly Securicor) Loftus. But is the “choice” between a Heinz Soup Kerry, for instance, and a Halliburton Bush really the pinnacle of democracy?

Here in South Africa, a democratic breakthrough has been won and a new society is being consolidated on hostile terrain. In townships and rural villages, communities are trying to give substance to this democracy through community policing forums, school governing bodies, water committees, co-ops, health forums, ward committees and integrated development plans. Things are not easy. There are partial advances and failures. Local government helps, but not always. There are problems of official corruption and of community gate-keeping. Most government policies are well-intentioned, but not all are appropriate. This is where the battle to consolidate a vibrant democracy will be won ... or lost.

As we struggle to build this democracy we are up against a powerful antagonistic force. Economic power remains obdurately in the same hands. Our country is still in the grip of an accumulation path that is reproducing concentrated personal wealth and a persisting crisis of underdevelopment.

In the face of these realities, the best hope of workers and the poor is preserving a solid 70% democratic majority with which to consolidate a developmental state buttressed by and strengthening its mobilised popular base.

If the alliance breaks (but it won’t) that potential will be considerably dissipated. And if the alliance breaks, it won’t be neatly into a left and a centre. We will see, rather, a proliferation of personalities and competing factions, mobilised around grievance and frustration, behind which will be the real power-brokers. An Nkobi Holdings left? An Elephant Consortium congress? A Standard Bank dark-horse? A Brett Kebble youth?

But this isn’t going to happen. Sorry to deprive you of the choice.


 * **Jeremy Cronin is SACP deputy general secretary and an ANC MP**


 * From: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=250418&area=/insight/insight__national/**