Yesterday in Polokwane, the 2nd Deputy President of COSATU delivered a message on the occasion of the South African Communist Party (SACP) 93rd Anniversary. Read the message when you must, but among many other points covered in the speech, of which one is the subject of this short note, it was a message of well wishes and historical reflection on the role of the SACP since its inception. So happy anniversary to the SACP. My attempted readings of the SACP’s history also confirmed that this party has throughout its life played an integral part in progressively transforming South Africa towards a harmonious and prosperous society. However, while perusing the speech, the following paragraph caught my attention: It is today 93 years since the SACP was formed and it is still on the side of workers as the most dependable, effective and non- compromising political spokesperson of the workers. In the spirit of critical appraisal, and in my understanding that within the confines of the alliance structures robust debate is not frowned upon, I wish to spark an unpopular debate about the extent to which the above statement about the SACP, issued on behalf of COSATU, can be taken as objective reality. Is it unquestionably true that the SACP is (1) dependable, (2) effective, and (3) non-compromising? On (1), the question arises: exactly who is the SACP of today dependable to? For example, would the Marikana miners agree that the SACP is a dependable political spokesperson of the workers? How about other workers in other sectors of our exploitative economy, would they agree? I suspect there will be a significant variance among workers on this question. On (2), we must first have a proper appreciation of the historical mission of Communist Parties before we can proclaim that the SACP is, in its present state, effective. Effectiveness, in other words being successful in achieving desired or intended results, in this instance as a political spokesperson of the workers, is presumably a qualitative and a quantitative measure, so indeed we must objectively asses how the SACP has fared in recent years on selected political metrics. In such an assessment, we must desist complacency, sycophancy, and playing to the gallery of platitudes. The last point (3) is potentially the most problematic. It can be strongly argued that the SACP, especially in post-Apartheid South Africa, has actually not been the most non-compromising as COSATU’s 2nd deputy president’s asserts, but rather, it has been one of the most compromising political forces, both theoretically and practically. It has become common cause that since 1994 the SACP could not afford to be uncompromising after all, chiefly because of the so-called local and global balance of forces during that time. In fact, it could be further argued that in post-Apartheid South Africa, the SACP cannot practically adopt an uncompromising stance while in an alliance with other parties, not least the ANC which is both the ruling party and ideologically a broad church. So what could we possibly mean when we say the SACP is uncompromising? If at all, one could labour the point further by seeing the SACP in its present state as not just compromising, but as compromised also! As an ANC member and a patriotic citizen, my humble submission is that it is critically important, in the course of being charged with the enormous responsibility to transform a deeply fractured society such as ours, that as comrades we never cease to interrogate the things we say to each other; we never cease to say the things we mean and to mean the things we say, in speeches, caucuses, or otherwise. The statement above by COSATU cannot properly be said to be a shining example of what I refer to in terms of saying what we mean and meaning what we say. As such, it is our responsibility as ordinary members to call spades when it is necessary to do so. Today the SACP is to many people a shadow of its former self, and as I said, both theoretically and practically. Arguably, the last serious exposition to come out of the SACP was Joe Slovos Has Socialism Failed? This was far back in 1990. That essay was hugely important at the time as there was rampant neoliberal triumphalism on the back of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. These events had brought socialism and communism into sharp focus, and the SACP responded intellectually commensurately to those tectonic geopolitical developments. Today, in 2014, the 21st century trans-nationalist capitalist class and the global capitalist order that feeds it are entrenched even more, predictably exacerbating domestic and international social contradictions in the process. The SACP of all parties knows these things well, but alas knowing it is nay enough. Today more than ever before, the dire human condition calls for a thorough and relentless offensive by Communists, Marxists, and other progressive forces around the world. Instead, the SACP has seen a decline in ideological robustness, a dearth in knowledge-production, some of its leaders are in bed with capital in complex ways, it has been guilty of ruling class excesses, now and again it turns a blind eye to important socio-political events, at times wittingly or unwittingly it contributes to disunity in the alliance and the ruling party, and so on. That is to say that given the recalcitrant structural disarticulation in South Africa, in Africa, and the global south; and given the worsening geopolitical pivots maintained by the global economic system led by the West and slowly shifting to the East, the SACP ought to be the undisputed political force exerting thought-leadership, teaching thought-liberation, and advancing critical consciousness among the rest of us. We have not seen much in the way of this from the SACP of late. This stuff has always been the historical mission of Communist Parties, foreseen by its founders, here in South Africa, and globally as an international movement of progressives. In the ANC, we self-critically speak of organisational renewal, we do this in honest recognition of all manner of malaise that has crept through the cracks of our movement. As a political party, the SACP of course has slightly differing challenges to the ANC, but nevertheless, it seems to me it may well be in need of renewal too. One of SACPs deployees to the ANC, comrade Gwede Mantashe, in his opening address as outgoing National Chairperson at the partys 13th National Congress in 2012, hinted at this when he said it is necessary that we should begin pondering on the nature and character of the [SACP] cadre required to carry us beyond our century. Unsurprisingly, this is the same proclamation made by the ANCs policy of Organisational Renewal. On top of the issue of refining the quality of the cadre, there is the issue I have been alluding to with regards to the lack of thought-leadership shown by the SACP in recent times. In the same address, Mantashe further captures the (intellectual) abyss the SACP finds itself in, although not in so many words: What has always differentiated the [SACP] and its cadres from all others is its ideological scientific analysis. We are now challenged to provide that scientific analysis to the crises facing our democratic dispensation and liberation discourse. How many of us can confidently say the SACP has in recent years fulfilled this mandate of providing scientific analyses to the crises we face? An analysis of the political activity of the SACP, at least in so far as the public discourse is concerned, reveals a party fast becoming reactionary to power struggles in the ANC; furthermore, an analysis of the painfully few Discussion Documents issued at its behest also reveal a party reacting to important national developments such as the drafting of the NDP. Only three policy documents have been produced between 1995 and 2012, etc. It is as if the SACP is revelling in its own peripherilisation within South African politics. That said, if my analysis of the situation holds any water, personally I do not at all think it is a helpless situation. There is too much history to be found in the SACP, there is extensive institutional memory, and there remains a vast network of capable cadres who mean well. So, I think the sooner the SACP embarks on a concerted program of organisational renewal, or something similar so long it is an actionable program that goes beyond platitudes, the better for us all including us in the ANC where we stand to gain from its traditionally pioneering scientific analyses among other things. The sooner all of us in the alliance and within our respective parties calibrate the extent to which we pat ourselves on the back, sometimes unduly, telling ourselves that we are “dependable, effective, and uncompromising without dialectally assessing our intellectual indolence, ideological poverty, and misguided politics, the sooner we will emerge from what can be seen as the intellectual Dark Ages in the Mass Democratic Movement. Finally, the sooner we do not label as anarchists those who dare challenge dominant opinions about the state of the party and our alliance partners, the sooner we will contribute to each others growth and development, and the sooner we will deliver on the mandate given to us by those we proclaim to lead in thought and action. Long live the SACP!
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 17:09:42 +0000
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