Let+us+just+wait+and+see,+Editorial,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, Editorial, 16 August 2006
=Let’s just wait and see=

IT’S brave of the South African Communist Party (SACP) to test its membership on whether it should contest the 2009 elections under its own banner.

It will be even braver if the membership says yes and the party actually does go ahead and test the direct support it commands from SA’s electorate, independently of the African National Congress (ANC). But it’s the democratic thing to do.

It’s easy to forget, perhaps, that the debate raging in the SACP is not about whether it should continue to exist as an independent political party, within an ANC-led alliance. It re-affirmed its commitment to the alliance at its special national congress last July, although there is constant agonising about just how that relationship should work.

But it continues to position itself as a political party in its own right — an independent party of the working class, with its own programmes, policies and membership. It is clearly not just a faction of the ANC.

That is as it should be. Even those who do not agree with the SACP’s particular brand of socialism (if socialism it can even be called at this stage) can agree that we need a party of the left to help to keep the ruling ANC honest. It may not always play the most constructive of roles, but the SACP does stand for certain principles which should be at the core of a ruling alliance that is committed to transforming SA into a society that is democratic, both politically and economically.

A left party can keep up the pressure on the ruling alliance to keep an eye on reducing inequality and poverty at the same time as it implements policies aimed at increasing SA’s prosperity. The left has a crucial role in making the points that need to be made in the debate about black enrichment versus broader black empowerment.

It’s not the only group to raise questions about the extent to which a small black elite, one often far too close to public office and public officials, is getting its hands deep into the empowerment cookie jar. But it does on occasion go further to raise questions about whether the new black “comprador” (spending) elite is really a business class, in the sense that it runs businesses and creates jobs, rather than being just a bunch of parasitic “rent-seekers”, to use the left jargon.

It is an important question to raise and keep raising. Ideally, the left party would come up with some constructive alternatives too, something it hasn’t unfortunately done enough of. But at least it’s there.

The problem though is that the SACP’s positioning, as a party both independent and dependent, has made it something of an anomaly. Alliances between political parties are common in many countries, at many times. But whether those alliances are in government or in opposition, the parties that constitute them almost always fight elections under their own banners.

In constituency systems, parties within an alliance will generally share out constituencies among themselves, so they don’t fight each other for territory. But in proportional voting systems like ours, they will simply vie for how many votes each can get. That may shape the balance of power within the alliance. But it’s the only democratic way to approach the electorate.

It’s one thing for a faction within a party not to fight elections on its own. But quite another for an independent party to subsume itself into another’s electioneering efforts. In practice, South African voters who want to vote for a communist party can do so only by voting ANC. Conversely, there are many anticommunists in the ANC’s broad church who have no option but to support the SACP along with their own party. That’s a problem for democracy, and for the alliance itself and for SA. We simply don’t know how extensive the SACP’s support is. Is the ruling alliance taking it more or less seriously than its support base really warrants? We are all entitled to find out.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A250756**

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