By Norm Dixon
Peter Mokaba — a former president of the African National Congress Youth League, a member of the ANC national executive and presently deputy tourism minister in the South African government — has issued a thinly veiled call for the exclusion of members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) from the ANC.
Mokaba has cultivated the image of a "radical" since the days of his leadership of the ANCYL. He is best remembered for his chant "Kill the farmer, kill the Boer" in the lead-up to the 1994 elections. Mokaba and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela are the most prominent "populists", as they have become known. More recently they have begun to be described as "Africanists".
Their fearless involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle and their militant rhetoric have made the populists enormously influential amongst poor South Africans, especially the youth.
However, since the 1994 elections, Mokaba has aligned himself with the emergent black capitalist class being fast-tracked into existence by the ANC government and South African big business in the name of "black empowerment".
Mokaba and Madikizela-Mandela are key allies of Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela's heir-apparent, whose supporters dominate the cabinet. Mokaba and the ANCYL were instrumental in Mbeki's rise to the ANC deputy presidency and the defeat of Cyril Ramaphosa.
The populists' radicalism these days is little more than crude anti-white, anti-Indian rhetoric that verges on chauvinism. Their "Africanism" and vague rabble-rousing around issues such as housing and unemployment are a cover for right-wing, pro-capitalist politics. Their radicalism does not extend to criticism of the ANC government's increasingly conservative economic policies and restrictive labour laws.
Mokaba has long tussled with the SACP. He knows it is the only political force that can challenge and expose the populists' "radicalism". He is also bitter because, he claims, SACP supporters engineered his recent defeat in the Northern Province ANC leadership race.
Mokaba's attack on the SACP is contained in a discussion paper circulating within the ANC prior to its December national conference.
The paper states categorically that the ANC is a "national liberation movement and not a socialist organisation" whose goal is not and never has been to "destroy the capitalist class and establish socialism". The ANC has a "duty" to create the conditions for the emergence and development of black entrepreneurs.
Mokaba believes the Asian "tigers", especially Malaysia, are a model for South Africa's development.
Mokaba's paper questions the place of SACP members in the ANC and their right to criticise or oppose ANC policies: "Is it fair to the ANC that certain members of the ANC who sit in ANC meetings and take decisions there are able to convene in another name and criticise the very decisions they took as ANC members? Is such a practice a form of ill discipline or opportunism?"
Speaking to the media on October 6, Mokaba singled out the SACP's criticisms of the government's economic rationalism: "I am questioning the opportunism and behaviour of people like [SACP deputy general secretary] Jeremy [Cronin] ... Jeremy has publicly, and to everybody's embarrassment, claimed that there is a struggle for the soul of the ANC. His handling of public debates about GEAR [the government's economic policy] leaves much to be desired."
On October 24, South Africa's big business mouthpiece, the Financial Mail, pointed out joyfully that Mokaba's paper "marks a decisive shift in tone and intent deep within the African majority in the ANC. Mokaba would probably not have written his tome without an approving nod from Mbeki ... There is a growing acceptance of capitalism in the upper echelons of the ANC. Mokaba is merely declaring openly what others are still too scared to say publicly".
The FM could hardly control its glee: "There is nothing so absorbing in public life as an institution changing its mind, and this is what is happening to the ANC — all Africanist, populist and redistributionist smokescreens aside. In a few short years of power, profit and the capitalist ethic are becoming a Holy Grail. The good news is that the conditions in which capitalism and the free market thrive — social and economic stability — will become more, not less, important to the rulers."
Cronin and SACP acting national chairperson Blade Nzimande — replying to Mokaba in an article titled "ANC Thatcherites want a party of black bosses" published in the Weekly Mail and Guardian — accused Mokaba of "arguing unabashedly for the conversion of the ANC into a party of free market capitalism" and representing a wing of the movement marked by support for the "cause of an aspirant black elite and a discomfort with socialism and the undue left-wing influence of non-Africans".
The SACP leaders state that Mokaba "is quite wrong to believe that giving a few black capitalists the chance also to exploit workers is going to be the dynamo for transformation. For the SACP, if we are going to speak about democratising capitalism then it has to mean rolling back the empire of a purely profit-driven market. Democratising capitalism means, frankly, progressively abolishing it.
"Mokaba is trying to place the ANC on a trajectory that coincides with [National Party leader] van Schalkwyk's dream of a coalition government in 2004. In this dream, a largely white NP gets into bed with an ANC that now represents black capitalists. The two parties ... simply represent different ethnic factions of the same ruling class."
Cronin and Nzimande reaffirmed the SACP's commitment to the maintenance of the ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance and pointed out that Mokaba's views "fly in the face of all official ANC conference discussion papers, and of the draft strategy and tactics document of the recent Tripartite Alliance summit".
The Financial Mail on October 10 cautioned the ANC tops not to get carried away with "resentment ... about the SA Communist Party's vocal opposition to Thabo Mbeki's economic blueprint, GEAR ... The centre within the ANC may feel uncomfortable with their leftist brothers, but they appreciate them. After all, it is the same communists who constantly remind them that they were brought into office by the masses. And they much prefer criticism by their own than by those outside their circle."
Big business knows that what makes the ANC valuable to it is the ability to convince South Africa's workers and poor to accept conservative, pro-capitalist policies as the best way to "transformation". As long as the SACP and COSATU are prepared to remain in the alliance on the ANC right's terms, and are not prepared to organise a militant socialist alternative (in or outside the ANC), big business is in no hurry to see them forced out prematurely.