BY DALE T. MCKINLEY
JOHANNESBURG Be afraid. Be very afraid. Lurking beneath the surface of an evidently otherwise contented and patriotic South African society, there lies a "new" enemy of the state and the people.
According to those in the know, this "new" enemy is highly organised at both domestic and international levels, carries out its nefarious activities with total contempt for the truth and morality, encourages political anarchy and social indiscipline and seeks to wage a counter-revolutionary war against the African National Congress (ANC) and the government it controls.
If you thought this "new" enemy was those heavily armed right-wing nutters who want to take us back to the good old days of baaskap apartheid, think again they're nothing but a minor nuisance.
You would also be completely off-track if you fingered the mandarins of South African and international corporate capital who make an ideological and socio-economic virtue out of raping the country's natural and human resources they're merely doing their job and a very good one at that.
Above all, you would be simply silly to think that things like the massive levels of generalised poverty, increasing hunger, disparities in the ownership and concentration of wealth, lack of access to the most basic human needs or the devastation of the HIV-AIDs pandemic could qualify as the real enemies of the South African people and/or their government after all, these are straightforward policy issues that will eventually come right under the expert guidance of our political and economic leaders.
No, the real enemy that has emerged to threaten the entire fabric of South African society is none other than the "ultra-left". Evidently, this "ultra-left" has, in one form or another, been around since the early part of the 20th century but it is only in the last several years, with the ascension of the ANC to political power, that it has transformed itself into a real enemy of the South African state and people.
No doubt, most South Africans and a large number of people across the globe realised that there was something horribly wrong when thousands of these "ultra-leftists" took over the streets of Alexandra and Sandton during the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The presence of a number of non-South African citizens among the "ultras" must have been a sure sign that South Africa was now facing an unprecedented assault on its national integrity and identity.
So afraid was the ANC government that these ultras would wreak destruction and mayhem, not to mention be bad news for the ANC's public relations with the foreign and domestic capitalists they are always so eager to please, that it felt it necessary to instruct the security forces to attack peaceful marches and demonstrations organised by the "ultra-leftists" and to treat those involved as serious threats to "national security".
Deployment of troops
When this approach (added to the fear of losing subsequent legal battles) failed to convince ordinary people in South Africa and internationally that the ANC and the government were facing nothing other than a spirited and well-organised, anti-capitalist opposition, the government eventually backed off.
For insurance though, it deployed 10,000 soldiers and police equipped with enough heavy weaponry to take on an invading army to supposedly ensure that the march on Sandton did not turn into the bloody insurrection government ministers had conjured up in their growing anti-"ultra-left" campaign.
However, the seed of a "new" enemy had been planted into South Africa's political discourse and it needed to be nurtured.
The ANC leadership has wasted little time in tending to its nurturing duties. In the face of a second national strike, initiated by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) on October 1-2 against the privatisation policies of the ANC government, the ANC's political education unit (PEU) saw fit to take the anti-"ultra-left" campaign a step further.
In addition to ascribing to this burgeoning movement all sorts of brutish, anti-social and unpatriotic characteristics, a leaked PEU paper accused the "anti-neo-liberals" of "waging a counter-revolutionary struggle against the ANC and our democratic government", and of siding with the "bourgeoisie and its supporters ... to confront the ANC and our democratic government".
What better and more convenient way to confirm the presence and evident threat of an enemy of the state and people, while affirming the ANC and government as the guardians of real democracy and socio-economic progress, than to let loose the vultures of insinuation, crude labelling and demagoguery.
President Thabo Mbeki obviously felt threatened enough by the "ultra-left" peril to back-up the poorly constructed rhetoric of his minions by claiming on September 27 that, "this ultra-left works to implant itself within our ranks ... it hopes to capture control of our movement and transform it into an instrument for the realisation of its objectives".
Echoing its master's voice, the ANC Youth League, an organisation whose sole reason for existence seems to revolve around raising the levels of political hysteria to new heights, claimed that this "ultra-left" had "infiltrated the ranks of COSATU" and thus were to blame for a strike that was intended "to weaken the ANC government".
Not to be outdone in the gathering anti-"ultra-left" frenzy, ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe somewhat confusingly accused it of telling, "lies, untruths and half-truths'.
Not surprisingly, all of the real political and economic issues raised during the strike simply disappeared from the ANC and government's radar screen. The script has been all too familiar manufacture an "enemy", construct its self-fulfilling destructive character and purpose and then launch a sustained assault against it under the guise of rationality, "law and order", the preservation of the nation's political heritage and identity and, of course, the "people" themselves.
Familiar script
Unfortunately for the ANC leaders their job of manufacturing, and selling the existence, and explicit threat, of this "ultra-left" enemy, has been made extremely difficult by two interrelated failures: they have failed to actually identify and locate the culprits and they have failed to offer a meaningful explanation for the existence and purpose of this "ultra-left". Exactly who, and where, are these evidently well equipped and determined "ultra-leftists" and what have they actually done to earn the mantle of public enemy No. 1?
The best "identification" so far has come from the profound analysis of the ANC Youth League which confidently stated that while it is not easy to identify the "ultra-leftists", their presence can be felt through "their actions, words, strategies and tactics".
Maybe we should take the word of that noted exponent of bended-knee apologetics and political masochism, South African Communist Party leader Jeremy Cronin, that this "ultra-left" is little more than a peripheral minority to be found in the ranks of the new social movements and in some COSATU affiliates? Or, are we to put our trust in the brilliant intellect of President Mbeki who, like an ex-US Supreme Court judge commenting on the existence and character of pornography, relies on the "I know it when I see it" school of identification and explanation.
It would seem that Mbeki's supporters will simply have to be content with imagining this "ultra-left" enemy, the mere thought and/or whiff of it being the confirmation of its existence and reach.
As to the practical purpose of this "ultra-left" enemy, the only thing that has been on offer is the charge of attempting to undermine and discredit the ANC and government. It is the kind of accusation vague and all-inclusive that allows its practitioners to avoid the difficulties of trying to explain the activities of those whom they simply cannot, and do not, identify with and understand themselves.
The bottom line is that the ANC leadership does not want to face up to the political and socio-economic realities of present-day South Africa. Rather than own-up to the fact that there are sizeable numbers of South Africans who are opposed (some more actively than others) to the very purpose and attendant consequences of the version of capitalism that the ANC has so unapologetically pursued, the ANC leaders choose to ignore reality and wallow in the self-comforting realm of manufactured enemies.
From Green Left Weekly, October 23, 2002.
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