Ex+Social+Movements,+Cosatu+and+new+UDF,+O.+Lehulere,+Aug+05

=From Social Movements, Cosatu and the 'new UDF' by Oupa Lehulere - August 2005. (pages 28-30)=

The most striking thing about the 'solution' Desai advances is how similar it is to the politics of the left in the 1980s, and how it is a repeat of the politics that led the left to 'miss the boat' when the uprising in the 1980s grew and intensified. On the hand there was the FOSATU workerist bloc, who imagined that they would build 'strong shopfloor structures', and when these were 'strong enough', they would be able to take on the state, launch a struggle for socialism and so on.

Somehow they imagined that they could control the tempo of the class struggle, and could run the struggle like they ran their trade union meetings: all co-ordinated, all organised, on time, with clear mandates and so on. They were horrified by the chaotic nature of the struggles in the townships, and in particular they felt all these struggles - the running battles with the police, the barricades in the townships - were all reckless and were bound to end in failure.

On the other hand there were the revolutionary socialists, the Leninists and Bolsheviks of all kinds of persuasions, who had a particular reading of Lenin's "What is to be done." According to this reading of Lenin, spontaneity was counter-posed to a planned execution of the class struggle.

For these lefts too, the struggles in many townships were messy and chaotic, they were parochial and mostly insular, and most problematic, they were not informed by a 'socialist perspective'. Like the struggles today, those who were participating in those struggles, so the lefts argued, lacked a "more structural and macro-economic understanding of their oppression", and so on.

For the FOSATU workerists, the co-ordination was going to be provided by the unions, any maybe the 'Workers Party'. For the 'Leninists', only the "vanguard party" was going to do the job, and by vanguard they meant the party chiefs.

Today, as then, instead of turning to the spontaneous struggles that are erupting in some parts of the country; instead of finding ways of connecting up with new militants that are being thrown up in these struggles; instead of spending time and energy preserving and building the organisations that were thrown up by the last mini-wave of struggle, the 'old lefts' are looking for organisations that could fulfil the kind of role they dreamed of in the 1980s. Its is for this reason that we see, among some lefts a fixation with the 'party' completely out of proportion or synch with the present historical period.

The problem, of course, is that the Party seems as remote today as it was in the 1980s, and so, (again a form of dispair) COSATU now substitutes for the Party. You see, if it is 'captured,' COSATU provides the 'resources', the 'national links', the 'macro-economic understanding' that makes it possible to run the revolution according to a "plan", or according to a schedule. As things stand, Desai's plan cannot work without COSATU.

This attitude to the question of spontaneity vs planned struggle led the lefts to 'miss the boat' in the 1980s. Both the workerists (FOSATU), and the 'Leninist' left, failed to position themselves in the eye of the storm that was about to break. Ironically, what Desai is proposing is an action replay of the 1980s, and once again, his approach will lead to a position where the movements become an appendage to COSATU, and are positioned away from the spontaneous struggles in the townships, and are therefore unable to respond to a new upswing in the class struggles. Unfortunately for the 'old lefts', revolutions are not run according to a schedule, and they have to get used to a rather messy process of social change. There will be no "co-ordinated huge annual income strike" that is synchronised with "the rhythm of the annual budget", and that will be planned "months before the annual budget."

This wish is a dream, and a bad dream at that. An attitude like this will land us on the right, with those who are opposed to working class militancy and independence, when the tempo of the class struggle picks up. This, indeed, was the destiny of Ashley & Company during the WSSD mobilisation.

From the WSSD to the new UDF the underlying logic of the orientation to COSATU and recently to the new UDF is an attempt to cheat history and steal the masses from the Congress movement. Instead of building organisations patiently the 'old lefts' are hoping to find a ready-made organisations that would deliver a revolution, all pre-packaged and pre-paid. Instead of helping the new movements to develop their own programme appropriate to their own times the 'old lefts' are getting themselves to sound like the Freedom Charter in the hope that the masses would think they are the real Charterists.


 * From: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/lehulere.pdf