Whose interests does the ANC serve?

Whose interests does the ANC serve? 
 
By Dale T. McKinley (January 2003)
 
 
In the words of South African (and ANC) President Thabo Mbeki, 
"the question cannot be avoided for too long", especially in light 
of the recently concluded 51st Congress of the ANC. It is a simple 
and straightforward question, but one that most South Africans have 
avoided for far too long. It is time to ask, explicitly -whose 
interests does the ANC serve?
 
The genesis of a related, but differentially aimed kind of question, 
arose during the political battles that were being waged between the 
ANC leadership and the so-called 'ultra-left' late last year. 
Obviously fed-up with the increasingly strident and confident left-
wing critiques and public actions aimed at him and the party/
government he heads, not to mention the embarrassment of being shown-
up publicly by left forces during the all-important WSSD, Mbeki, 
asked - "whose interests do they (the ultra-left) serve"? Indeed, the 
question, and answer, had already been posed/provided by an earlier 
ANC Political Education Unit paper that claimed the 'ultras' were 
"waging a counter-revolutionary struggle against the ANC (by) siding 
with the bourgeoisie and its supporters . to confront the ANC and 
our democratic government". 
 
And so it was, like so many political zealots armed with a pre-
ordained understanding of who, and what, the real enemy of the 
'revolution' is, that Mbeki and the ANC leadership marched into the 
organisation's 51st Congress. Using language more akin to that of a 
proto-fascist than the spokesperson of the 'people's party', Smuts 
Ngonyama captured the task at hand  - "we will deal with any attempts 
and tendencies to hurt the ANC and each of its alliance partners. 
We are in the process of cleansing each of the alliance partners of 
these tendencies". Not surprisingly, the "cleansing" of such 
"tendencies" outside the alliance was already well advanced.
 
Once the Congress got underway, it soon became clear, at the level of 
leadership, what was meant by such 'cleansing'. Despite the 
opportunistic mea culpa politics of various leaders of the ANC's 
supposedly 'critical' alliance partners (COSATU and, especially the 
SACP), alongside their behind-the-scenes efforts to ensure sizeable 
'left' representivity on the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC), 
the 'left' was left out in the ANC political wilderness. The newly 
elected NEC is a who's who of Mbeki acolytes, most all of whom are 
members of an emergent black bourgeoisie far removed from the 
working class interests of those they claim to serve. There was no 
room for any genuine working class leaders, having all been 
thoroughly 'cleansed' over the last several years.
 
As to the outcomes of the much-publicised political and ideological 
'debates' at the Congress, they only serve to further confirm the 
ANC's abandonment of the interests of the majority of South Africans.  
For example, the answer as to who constitutes the main 'motive force' 
of the ANC's so-called 'National Democratic Revolution' is to be 
found, not in pious rhetoric about the poor and working class, but 
in the ANC's approach to overcoming one of the most fundamental 
obstacles to socio-economic justice and equality in South Africa, 
apartheid-capitalist property relations. 
 
The ANC Congress's answer that, "deracialisation of ownership and 
control of wealth", is the key to addressing this obstacle fits in 
nicely with the building and consolidation of an emergent black 
bourgeoisie as the engine of change in the 'new' South Africa. 
Let's be honest - it will not be the interests of South Africa's 
poor and working class that will be served by a process of 
'deracialisation' within the context of continued capitalist 
property relations. After all, since when has any emergent bourgeoisie 
made common cause with the poor and working class as a means towards 
committing class suicide? 
 
On the role of the state in effecting meaningful social and economic 
change within South African society, the Congress provided further 
clarity as to the interests that the ANC seeks to truly serve. The 
core approach to the 'restructuring of state assets' will remain one, 
as the relevant Congress resolution so clearly states, of ensuring 
"the transfer of assets to the private sector".  No mention here of 
the specific interests of the poor and working class, simply a naive 
addendum that the approach should "strengthen our developmental 
agenda". Ergo - when the "developmental agenda" itself is driven by 
a declassed 'deracialisation' that predominately empowers a new 
black bourgeoisie, it should not be difficult to figure out whose 
class interests will be served by the ANC's approach to the 
"restructuring of state assets". 
 
Even the seemingly, ideologically innocuous matter of a basic income 
grant to the poor, provided by the state, could not be endorsed by 
the Congress after Mbeki made it clear in his presidential report 
that the ANC should not be party to giving "handouts to the poor". 
However, not a voice was raised during the Congress when it came to 
the role of the state in continuing, and intensifying, the provision 
of public resource handouts, through GEAR-inspired fiscal and monetary 
policies, to the emergent black bourgeoisie and corporate capital. 
Such reverse Robin Hoodism is obviously central to the 'developmental 
agenda' of the ANC.  No doubt, the representatives of those classes 
who had dished out R140 000 to "develop and build relationships with 
the ANC" at the Congress were well enough pleased.
 
When it came to Congress addressing other key components of the ANC's 
stated programmatic commitments to serve the interests of the majority 
of South Africans (i.e., the affordable and efficient provision of 
basic needs and services such as water, housing, health and education) 
all that could be mustered were vague promises and calls to "accelerate 
and strengthen" existing approaches. Seldom has there been a better 
example of vacuous political-speak than that contained in the Congress 
resolution on basic services which, "urged the government to make 
deliberate effort to accelerate the social transformation programme 
through visible and purposeful funding mechanisms aimed at meeting 
the basic needs of all people with a sense of urgency". 
 
Given the fact that a record number of South Africans now find 
themselves in greater poverty and ever-increasing numbers are unable 
to afford and/or access such basic needs, despite the ANC's populist 
claims to the contrary, the ANC's status quo ante approach only further 
institutionalises the inherited class divide and continued 
privileging of the interests of the old, and new, elites.
 
In his presidential report to the Congress, Mbeki, in an apparent 
attempt to underlie the ANC's claims to be acting in the interests of 
the downtrodden, made an impassioned plea for the ANC to adopt a "new 
morality" which he euphemistically captured by reference to an "RDP 
of the soul".  Since it has been clear for many years now that the RDP 
resides in the same subterranean policy depths as the free lunch 
programme for poor schoolchildren, it is hard to imagine the real 
content of the morality to which Mbeki refers. Mbeki and the ANC need 
to be asked what kind of morality is it that encourages and celebrates 
the enrichment of a few at the expense of the majority and defends 
such as a 'right', that effectively imposes a death sentence on the 
millions of poor with HIV-AIDs while calling for a "better life for 
all", that facilitates the evictions of thousands of families from 
their homes in the middle of winter in the name of 'cost-recovery' 
and that effectively supports the systematic oppression of Zimbabwe's 
people by rationalising it as 'constructive engagement'?
 
Try as it might, and it tried very hard at its 51st Congress, the 
ANC can no longer assume the mantle of the political, organisational 
and ideological champion of the majority of working class and poor 
South Africans through proclamations and appearances. While it might 
continue to get some serious mileage from its (relatively) recent 
past as a liberation movement, the contemporary absence of any major 
political competition and its ever-expanding network of patronage, 
the ANC will soon have to face up to its own 'objective and 
subjective' realities.  
 
Those realities combine to show that the ANC is not, as it so proudly 
claims in its Congress documents, a "disciplined force of the left 
organised to conduct consistent struggle in pursuit of the interests 
of the poor". Rather, the ANC has become an organisation fully 
committed to serving the interests of an emergent domestic black 
bourgeoisie as well as both domestic and international corporate 
capital. The ANC can throw as many labels and construct all the nasty 
epitaphs it likes, aimed at those who are willing to face up to such 
realities, but this will not make them go away. The ANC has made it 
choices and now it must live with them.
_____________________________

Dr. Dale T. McKinley
Johannesburg, South Africa
Cell: (072 429-4086)
Email: drdalet@metroweb.co.za