NDR,+Taking+Forward+the+Struggle+for+Socialism+YCL




 * Young Communist League, Discussion Document** **to the National Policy and Strategy Conference**
 * 11-14 August, 2005, Makopane, Limpopo Province**

=**__The Current Phase of the National Democratic Revolution, Taking Forward the Struggle for Socialism__**=

The pre-1994 era was characterised by Colonialism of a Special Type and the legal dominance of the white minority over black people in general and Africans in particular. South African racial and colonial struggles can be traced since the arrival of Jan Van Ribeck in the Cape in 1652, which saw massive resistance by the natives occupying that land. The native were dispossessed land and other means and forces of production, and became subjects of the white multinational, the Dutch East India Company. The coloniser came on shore with the Indian and Malay slaves later on to work on the sugar cane and other forms of domestic labour, and from thereon, the South African nation was bound to change. The coloniser also forced themselves on the native woman, which brought in the coloured race.
 * 1. The significance of the 1994 breakthrough and the phase of the South African Revolution.**

Before then, there were obviously battles and wars for land and cattle amongst the natives, which forces some to move towards the north. With the discovery of gold in the late 19th century, British colonisers, despite kidnapping slaves to their countries for cheap labour, they also fought bitter wars with the now Afrikaner race for the mineral resource. The last bitter battle between the native and the coloniser, was in 1906, led by Bambatha. On 1912, the ANC was formed as an elite organisation constituted by academics, clerics, chiefs and others who were regarded as, by birth or profession, capable to lead.

This was an important development as the ANC united all black people in the struggle against colonialism. The formation of the SACP [then CPSA] in 1921, and various trade unions in the era, were important also because they fought against imperialism and capitalism. The SACP later became the first non-racial, working class organisation and characterised the nature of the South African struggle as national, class and gender in character and form. The Alliance between the ANC and SACP, with various popular organisations representing various sections of the oppressed was significant in collectively defining and fighting the Apartheid system. The Apartheid government banned all political formations and ensured that it uses terror and torture to silence any opposing voice. Various forms of tactics for advancing the war against national oppression were engaged into, with the main ones being mass mobilisation, armed struggle, international sanctions and negotiations.

1994 saw all South Africans, black, white, coloured and Indian participating for the first time in elections for a united country. This was after acrimonious battles waged, compromises reached and many lives lost. The South African transition was through a negotiated settlement between the Apartheid protectionists and the democratic movement. It was not an overall, peaceful or violent, overthrow of the white capital cartels and cohorts, but instead, it guaranteed them presence in the governance and state apparatuses of the country.

Besides this, a lot has been done, and to borrow from the SACP’s Political Programme, as adopted in the 2001 National Congress, which indicates that

“In the brief period since 1994, the ANC-led government has spearheaded very significant advances. Among the most important are: • Restoration of political peace, the marginalisation and defeat of a counter-revolutionary ultra-right, and the consolidation of relatively high levels of political stability; • The inauguration, nurturing and consolidation of a thoroughly progressive, democratic constitution, and the steady transformation and democratisation of the judiciary; • The inauguration and relative stabilisation of multi-party, one-person one-vote, elected legislatures and executives in all three spheres (national, provincial and local); • The relatively rapid and relatively successful transformation of the security forces – a process that remains, of course, an ongoing but already considerably stabilised reality. • The rolling out of a strategy that is beginning to get a handle on the serious crime challenge. After an initial post-1994 escalation of violent crime, there is a heartening stabilisation and the beginning of a rolling back of many (but not all) varieties of violent crime – although still at unacceptably high levels • Very significant labour market reforms, ensuring many more rights for workers. • Major transformation programmes in the provision of health, education and training, electricity, telecommunications, water and sanitation, housing, and the beginnings of land restitution and land reform. Many of these measures have increased the social wage of workers and the poor.

“These are remarkable achievements, and few societies and governments can boast so many major transformational achievements within such a short time-span. However, notwithstanding these and many other major transformational programmes, the systemic inequalities and under-lying structural crises that we have inherited are proving to be extremely stubborn.” [SACP Political Programme as Adopted in the National Congress, July 2002]

The YCL shares this view with the SACP, and uses it as a basis of assessment of the 10 years of democracy.

The Strategic Perspective of the National Democratic Revolution is the liberation of blacks in general and Africans in particular from economic and political bondage and the creation of a non-racial, non sexist and democratic country. The YCL remains committed to this historic mission of the liberation movement. We also believe that there is a link between the struggle by the working class for socialism and that of the NDR, we also subscribes to the formulation of the SACP’s “Socialism is the Future, Build it Now”, precisely because it creates and cement this link.

Our further assessment of the 10 years of democracy indicates that, apart from all this achievement, there are still bitter struggles that are waged by the working class and the poor. This includes, inter alia:


 * Continued structural poverty and unemployment, a resultant of the oppressive capitalist system;
 * Inherited and widening gap between the rich and the poor, the working class and the capitalists;
 * Inherited and continuous exclusion of women on the basis that they are of a weaker gender;
 * Exploitation and abuse by the working class from multinational companies through rapid increase of prices in basic services and needs;
 * Increase in chronic disease such as HIV/AIDS
 * Subjection to crime due to increased social exclusion and need to leave a flashy lifestyle, conditioned by the capitalist system and neo-liberal agenda; and
 * A culture of consumerism amongst South African youth irregardless of the low household income.

The main motive force of the National Democratic Revolution is the working class. This is due to their location in the economy, their size, the fact that they have nothing to loose and will take the struggle for the abolition of racial, gender and class oppression to its logical conclusion. In the past, and even currently, the working class has forged links with various social forces inside and outside the country for the advancement and conclusion of its struggle. These social forces; being youth, women, students, black middle class, sections of the white community, black bourgeoisie; had everything to benefit from the overthrow of Apartheid and the creation of a democratic revolution. Rallying behind the ANC, SACP and COSATU, the working class successfully attacked and defeated the Apartheid government.
 * 2. The Motive forces of the National Democratic Revolution.**

This alliances with various social forces in society by the working class are not permanent, but are temporary in that their ultimate class interests are contradictory in nature. The allies of the working class in the current phase of the National Democratic Revolution remains those who stands to benefit from a dictatorship of the proletariat.

As the youth wing of the SACP, ours is to mobilise young people behind the National Democratic Revolution, as the ultimate path towards Socialism. For us, the National Democratic Revolution links the national, class and gender questions, the main struggles and basic element for socialism. The success of the NDR does not wholly constitute socialism, but builds on a foundation for socialism, and therefore, there can be a complete phase of the NDR within a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, where private capital and working class exploitation still persists. The YCL, and so the SACP, cannot do ultimate justice for the struggle towards Socialism without analysing the phases of the NDR and ensuring that those are within the ambit of Socialism.
 * 3. The NDR and Socialism, our Strategic Objective.**

For the YCL, Socialism means the hegemony of the working class in all institutions of state power, and the suppression and ultimate overthrow of the capitalist class and its ideas. It is a society based on justice, democracy, freedom and equality with and for the working class and the poor.

The YCL cannot speak of the National Democratic Revolution, and the path that it assumes in each phase and period, without speaking on how that should prepare for Socialism. We need to conceptualise the NDR and locate the role of the YCL in that regard. The theoretical (and practical) connection between the NDR and Socialism is found in Lenin (as quoted in the Strategy and Tactics of the SACP in the NDR: June 2002).

“…We cannot regard the mass revolutionary struggle for socialism and the consistent revolutionary programme on the nationalities question as two different things. We must combine the first with the second. One must not think of socialist revolution as a single battle on the single front: imperialism against socialism. This revolution will be a whole era of sharp class struggles and social upheavals of every kind, a whole series of battles on very different fronts because of the most varied economic and political transformations… Prominent among these democratic transformations, which form part of the concept of social revolution, are bound to be also the transformations of national relations. The revolutionary proletariat will not fulfil its task unless it now upholds a consistent programme on this question too… The proletarian revolution will be an era of a whole series of battles… on all economic and political questions, including national questions. It is the resolution of the sum of conflicts stemming from all these unresolved issues that will produce a social revolution… Not to counterpose this (proletarian) struggle to particular democratic demands, but to provide, in the sphere of each democratic issue, an equally revolutionary formulation of our tasks, one linked with the general revolutionary struggle for socialism—this is the only truly social democratic way to pose the question" (Lenin, 1915 – emphases in original)…”

To us, the ultimate and linked objective of the National Democratic Revolution is Socialism. The Strategy and Tactics of the Party acknowledges the three interrelated nature of the national democratic struggle; gender, national and class struggle. The continuous engagement of these struggles, under the slogan “Socialism is the Future, Build it Now”, will lead to the realisation of Socialism. The approach adopted by the SACP took stock of various national and global factors; which includes the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dominant global capitalist and imperialist forces and the nature and character of capitalist South Africa.

We perhaps need to ask ourselves the questions; does the current organisational form and character of the SACP give way to a socialist state? Does the location of the SACP towards state-power enables it to programmatically fight capitalism? Do we posses, or are we gearing ourselves to posses the necessary influence and power towards the working class and the poor? What key institutions of power should the SACP locate itself and its cadres so as to accelerate the path towards Socialism? The leading task on this issue is, what is the relationship bwteen the SACP and state power?

To try and respond to the questions raised above, we need to turn our attention to Joe Slovo’s The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution, where he quotes the 1948 constitution of the SACP,

“The South African Communist Party, in its 1984 constitution, declares that its aim is to lead the working class towards the strategic goal of establishing a socialist republic ‘and the more immediate aim of winning the objectives of the national democratic revolution which is inseparably linked to it’.

The constitution, Slovo continues,

‘describes the main content of the national democratic revolution as ‘...the national liberation of the African people in particular, and the black people in general, the destruction of the economic and political power of the racist ruling class, and the establishment of one united state of people’s power in which the working class will be the dominant force and which will move uninterruptedly towards social emancipation and the total abolition of exploitation of man by man’.

This summarily details the role that the SACP undertook then, when the material conditions of struggle were different from now. But of particular to our interest is the fact that the SACP seeks to lead the working class towards a socialist republic. Currently, the Political Programme of the SACP, adopted at the 11th Congress, seeks to locate the Party within the realm of struggle, and to advance towards Socialism. The continued struggle for ‘winning the objectives of the national democratic revolution’ ensures that the Party remains on track on its socialist path.

This includes:


 * The continued commitment of the Party towards the working class and its struggles, not only through theoretical and ideological stance, but also through programmatic initiatives which signifies minimum socialist goals within the dictate and structure of capitalism.
 * The deliberate organisational building through massification of the Party, with targeted recruitment and involvement of the working class and the poor. This has also been visible through the success of the campaigns of the Party at local and national level.
 * Although at a limited scale, the conscious location of the cadres of the party and the working class in various positions of power, which ultimately spread the ideological and theoretical perspective of the Party widely. The reason why we say ‘limited’, is because in certain position of power, certain cadres of the Party are not obliged to pursue the path as defined in the Party programme. This includes legislative structures, local government, governments departments, parastatals, boards and other institutions of power. This also leads us to the earlier question around the relationship between the SACP, the vanguard of the working class, towards State power. Should the SACP directly contest for state power, or should the current status quo remain, where the SACP extends its mandate through the ANC led alliance. Timely inaction can be as counter revolutionary as untimely action.

We need to, as the YCL, help in defining the ultimate path the working class should pursue towards Socialism, with due regard to the historical and current experiences, but also as a means to rejuvenate and rekindle the Party. Perhaps, we need to establish the YCL Political Commission, which its purpose will be to look into the Strategy and Tactics of the SACP and emerge from thereon with a guiding Programme for the YCL.


 * From: [|**http://www.sacp.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=257&Itemid=107**]**