SACP+GS+Nzimande,+Options+of++working+class+relationship+to+state+power



=Assessing options of the working class and its relationship to state power in a democratic South Africa: //Address to NUM Congress, 24 May 2006, Gallagher Estate, Midrand//=


 * Blade Nzimande, General Secretary, SACP**

Cde President Zokwana, Cde General Secretary Gwede Mantashe, the national office bearers of NUM, regional leaders, leadership of the Alliance, distinguished guests, especially our international guests, comrade delegates. The SACP wishes to express its appreciation for the invitation to address this august body, your Congress, which is the highest decision making body of your union.

The SACP continues to appreciate the very close relationship between the NUM and our party. It is a relationship that has grown from strength to strength since our unbanning in 1990.

Our message today will focus mainly on sharing with you some of the key themes and questions in the SACP Central Committee Discussion Document on the Party’s relationship to state power and possible electoral options. We decided that it is important to do this so that you can use political discussions in this Congress to reflect on this question, and we would appreciate your feedback in this regard.

We are doing this because the SACP does not want to narrowly pose the question just in terms of the SACP and state power, but also to broaden it to include the relationship of the working class as a whole to state power. The SACP does not narrowly represent its membership but seeks to be the vanguard of South Africa’s working class as a whole.


 * Thank you Qwathi, son of Cala!**

However, I wish to start by expressing the SACP’s most profound appreciation for the very long service given by Cde Gwede Mantashe to the NUM, occupying different roles and now the outgoing General Secretary of the union. Cde Gwede has been a dedicated cadre, a revolutionary unionist and gave his all to his work as General Secretary. In many ways it is very sad to us as the SACP that Cde Mantashe is now vacating this position and exiting from the union. I will particularly miss the many jokes we have exchanged on this NUM platform, from which area is better, Dambuza or Cala, the problems and challenges of studying when you are already a leader, and the ever-persisting disagreements around Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. Of late also reminding him that the SACP is not in alliance with NUM, but with COSATU and he must know his place in the alliance that he is only a General Secretary of an affiliate and not an alliance secretary! But he always fights back to say, especially to myself and Cde Vavi, that when the things are going alright in the Alliance we relegate him to a GS of an affiliate, but when the chips are down we suddenly remember that he is our umkhuluwa and we come rushing to him for consultations and advice! He has a great sense of humour and lightens any meeting or activity he is part of.

As the SACP we can of course proudly claim, without by any means underplaying his talents and insatiable quest for knowledge, that Cde Mantashe is what he is because he is a communist. Over the years he has been a valuable part of our Central Committee and Politburo, positions which we are proud he will continue to occupy.

We should all be saying thank you Qwathi, and thank Cala for giving us such an outstanding revolutionary. To Gwede, we say we are certain that you are not lost to the NUM, as I know that it has been part of most of your adult life. We wish you all the best in your future endeavours!


 * Current working class struggles and the broader ideological contestations**

You are gathered here in the midst of continuing working class struggles in country. Last week we again saw one of the biggest of COSATU led general strikes. And of course the NUM, true to its militant tradition, played a critical part in ensuring that mine workers join the action in their thousands around the country. It is important that the NUM uses this Congress, amongst other things, to safeguard its militancy as one of the most important weapons in broader working class struggles in our country. We salute the NUM for this.

The COSATU-led strike was called to highlight the plight of the working class and poor in our country. While there has been sustained economic growth for over a decade, while prices for many of our primary commodity exports are soaring on global markets, and while the bosses have been reaping unprecedented profits – millions of workers are barely experiencing any benefits, if at all, from this post-apartheid dividend. The wage gap has widened, and the share of GDP accruing to private capital has been increasing while that to workers has diminished.

The COSATU-led strike of this past Thursday is a powerful statement. Workers will not stand passively by while the rich become richer and workers remain stranded, as if they were second class citizens, in another world of poverty and underdevelopment.

Our Central Committee held over the last weekend has also discussed the current SATAWU strike in the security industry. The working class cannot allow this strike to be defeated. COSATU needs to seriously consider solidarity action by its other affiliates to bring sense to the bosses in this industry.

These struggles are also important as a critical component towards the achievement of our objective of making the second decade of freedom, a decade of the workers and the poor. The SACP has identified the building of working class power in four main spheres – the state, the workplace, the community and the ideological – as critical towards the attainment of these objectives.

Building working class power in these spheres is also important in order to ensure that build the working class as the main motive force of our revolution. We are in the midst of deepening working class struggles about the kind of South Africa we are fashioning. Our revolution is faced with the danger of the triumph of money (greed, get-rich-quick mentality) over the will of the people. This danger is manifesting itself in a number of ways.

The SACP is concerned about the growing close relationship and overlapping interests between some of our cadres in the echelons of the state and business. But this phenomenon is also a threat to our own organisations, where the power of money is threatening to corrupt our values.

There is also a seemingly disproportionate influence of business in many spheres of the state and policy making. We need to look at business strategy in influencing the state and those occupying public office.

The SACP is strongly of the view that public service and private accumulation must be strictly separated. It is time that the working class campaigns for someone who occupies public office not to be involved in private business. It is very important that we defend the values of service to the public without mixing it with private business interests.

The above brings me to the main question I want to touch upon today that of:


 * The relationship of the working class to state power in a democratic South Africa**

Having completed just over a decade of our democracy it is proper that the working class and its formations thoroughly reflect on their relationship to state power. This is important for a number of reasons, but I wish to highlight only two here. Whilst power is not only located in the state, but it is the highest concentration of political power. The state as the highest concentration of political power is naturally contested by various class forces in society, and its character is shaped by the balance of class power in any society.

The other reason, and perhaps the most fundamental, for reflecting on the question of the relationship of the working class to state power, is simply that the struggle of the working class is ultimately to capture state power and create an egalitarian society through socialism. It is for this reason that the working class should build its power and muscle to lead the national democratic revolution.

The SACP, at its Special National Congress last year, raised and debated the question of whether it is not time now for it to consider contesting elections in its own right. Whilst working class power is more than just the SACP contesting elections, however the SACP as the political party of the working class is the main instrument in the hands of the working class by which to contest state power.

The Special National Congress decided that the Central Committee must establish a commission to investigate this question. This commission has now been established, headed by the General Secretary, with members of the Politburo as commissioners. The Central Committee has now produced a discussion document to facilitate debates and its work. It is the main themes that this document covers that I would like to share with you today. In addition we would request that in your political discussions at this Congress you also reflect on these issues, and also take them back for discussion in your regions. We would also encourage comrades to give us feedback, as the Central Committee will compile a report that will be tabled at the 12 th Congress next year for final decision.

The **Discussion Document** is divided into two parts.

//Part I: Class and national struggles in South Africa and the historical relationship between the SACP and the ANC//
This section principally deals with the historical evolution of the relationship between the SACP and ANC within the context of analysing the relationship between class and national questions in South Africa.

The point of departure of the document is that the South African revolution has always been seeking to address three interrelated contradictions, the class, national and gender contradictions. However for a long period the SACP had primarily dealt with the question of the relationship between the national and class struggles and that it is not a question of which one is primary, but that the challenge is that of properly understanding the relationship between the two.

However the SACP has always argued that the fundamental contradiction is the class contradiction, as it is the key one that helps to explain the underlying dynamics of South African society. The national contradiction – national oppression and its legacy – remains the dominant contradiction, dominating virtually all facets of our society. Of course the gender contradiction remains the most pervasive in South African society.

The main argument in this part of the document is that from the 1960s through to the 1980s, both the ANC and the SACP, and of course the progressive trade union movement had a shared strategic vision of the kind of society we wanted to build in South Africa. This shared vision and assumption is captured most vividly in an ANC NEC document produced in 1979 called the ‘Green Book’. (The Green book was a report of a Commission appointed by a joint meeting of the NEC and Revolutionary Council in Luanda between 27 December 1978 and 1 January 1979. The commission, headed by President Tambo. Included Cdes Thabo Mbeki, Joe Slovo, Moses Mabhida, Joe Gqabi and Joe Modise, with some of its sessions joined by Cde Mac Maharaj).

Amongst other things this document says:

//“We debated the more long-term aims of our national democratic revolution, and the extent to which the ANC, as a national movement, should tie itself to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and publicly commit itself to the socialist option. The issue was posed as follows://

//“In the light of the need to attract the broadest range of social forces amongst the oppressed to the national democratic liberation, a direct or indirect commitment at this stage to a continuing revolution which would lead to a socialist order may unduly narrow this line-up of social forces. It was also argued that the ANC is not a party, and its direct or open commitment to socialist ideology may undermine its basic character as a broad national movement.//

//“It should be emphasised that no member of the Commission had any doubts about the ultimate need to continue our revolution towards a socialist order; the issue was posed only in relation to the tactical considerations of the present stage of our struggle.”//

This shared vision was of course also informed by the period during which these documents were written, which was characterised by our movement as a period in which there was a world-wide transition from capitalism to socialism.

The central argument of the document is that by the early 1990s, especially with the collapse of Eastern European socialist systems, the situation had radically changed. As the ANC moved towards assuming state power the leading cadreship of the ANC were faced with a basic choice:


 * a**. either reformist-revisionism - affirm that the NDR “stage” was (and had “always been understood as”) a “capitalist” stage, a stage in which capitalism had to be “completed” – i.e. “deracialised” and in which there was no “uninterrupted” transition. In this scenario socialism is a relatively distant and quite separate “second stage”. The role of the Party in the present becomes relatively insignificant. This position, which was chosen by a significant portion of the former leading cadre within the Party itself, has gone on to be the dominant (but increasingly insecure) perspective of the ANC.

OR


 * b**. re-affirm the thoroughly dialectical inter-connection in an advanced capitalist formation like SA between the NDR and a socialist transition (essentially the strategic viewpoint of both the SACP’s //Road to South African Freedom// AND the ANC’s Morogoro //Strategy and Tactics//.) However, to re-affirm this perspective in the 1990s also required a struggle for the //renewal// and //revitalisation// of socialism – a project taken up by the leading cadre that remained in the Party after 1990, and the new cadre that joined.

There has clearly been a significant rupture that dates back to at least 1990 (and probably before) in these common strategic and tactical perspectives. The former position, affirming that the NDR was a capitalist stage has since 1996 come to be the dominant hegemonic position, both in the ANC and the state.

Given these developments, in the light of this “rupture” in the former unity between leading elements of the ANC and SACP (as represented in, for instance, //The Green Book)// is the mode of functioning of the Alliance, inherited from the earlier period, still relevant for the current period? Is the organisational form of the Alliance, amongst other things, not based on the array of forces within our movement prior to 1990, but now seeing a qualitatively new dimension in the actual relationship of national and class struggles (and consequently the relationship between the ANC and SACP) in the era after the democratic breakthrough?

//Part II: Class struggles and the post-1994 state in South Africa//
This part of the document essentially argues that a combination of having had a negotiated transition, class struggles and the dominance of what we call the dominant hegemonic perspective in the ANC (what we call ‘The 1996 Class Project’), has evolved to create some key systemic features of the post 1994 state.

The document argues that there has been three different phases within this dominant state project since around 1996:


 * macro-economic policy as the assumed central public sector driver of growth (1996-9),
 * privatisation as the key catalyser of growth (1999 –2002),
 * public sector infrastructural investment to “lower the cost of doing business” – state capitalism - as the key catalyser (2002 to the present).

Some of the key pillars of this dominant project include the following:

1. Its first assumption is that since the end of the Cold War there is now a new global era and a growing international consensus on human rights and good governance and that South Africa enjoys a unique opportunity to benefit from these realities. However what is distinct about these assumptions is the absence of adequately grasping the persistence of imperialism, and the analytical concept of ‘imperialism’ is absent

2. The second pillar is a powerful presidential centre within the state, and a state in which the leading cadre is made up of a new political elite and (often overlapping with them) a new generation of black private sector BEE managers/capitalists. Its strategy for development is largely premised on restoration of capitalist profitability to try and address the crisis of underdevelopment

3. An attempt at ‘modernisation’ of the ANC, aiming to transform it from a mobilising mass movement into a modern ‘centre-left’ electoral party, as witnessed in the organisational redesign proposals that we submitted at, but subsequently rejected by, the ANC NGC in July 2005

4. A key component of the post-1996 state project has been a stratum of emerging black capitalists. This is based on the argument that since we are in a capitalist society we must actively foster the creation of a black section of the capitalist class as part of ‘deracialisation’ of South African capitalism. But this black capital is excessively compradorial (total reliance on the patronage of established white capital) and parasitic (reliance upon a symbiotic relation with the upper echelons of the state apparatus).

The document however points out that this dominant state project is in a crisis, and key amongst these are:

1. the inability of capitalist stabilisation and growth to resolve the deep-seated social and economic crises of unemployment, poverty and radical inequalities in our society 2. the ravages to the ANC’s organisational capacity, unable to lead mass mobilisation and campaigns outside of election campaigns 3. the crises of corruption, factionalism and personal careerism inherent in trying to build a leading cadre based on capitalist values and the symbiotic relationship between the leading echelons of the state and emerging black capital

In fact the ANC’s NGC gave vent to these crises in a relatively dynamic way with a wide range of different grievances coming together around the support for Cde Jacob Zuma.

The challenge facing the working class is to break with this developmental path and seek to transform the many key problematic features of the state we have built thus far. At the heart of building a developmental state must be an offensive against the problematic axis between ANC elected representatives and the state managers on the one hand and emerging (and behind it established) capital on the other.

It is within the above context that the working class needs to debate and clearly define its tasks in relation to the building of a developmental state. And it is within this framework and tasks that the question of whether the SACP contests elections in the future must be thoroughly debated.

We invite the NUM to be fully part of these debates and discussions. With these words and challenges we wish you a successful Congress!

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