Opportunism in Zuma’s call for radical change

The South African Communist Party (SACP) is finding its voice in a spectacular way. Its stance after it emerged from its central committee at the weekend on the Zuma-led administration’s sudden commitment to radical economic transformation was instructive.

While the need for economic transformation is not in doubt, Zuma’s sudden lurch in this direction mere months before his term as ANC president ends smacks of opportunism and hypocrisy, particularly because it was never given real content after it was passed as a resolution in Mangaung.

The question is whether this administration can be relied upon to bring about the structural and systemic change required to transform the economy and deal with inequality. A glance at recent events shows it cannot.

Such change was promised in Polokwane, when Zuma took over, but those who handed him the post soon realised it wasn’t to be.

In fact, there were attempts to quash the push for change through the suppression of then ANC Youth League president Julius Malema’s call for economic freedom. Malema proclaimed in 2010 that the league would support any leader who would implement its radical economic programme.

Because Zuma was not that person, the league was hauled through a disciplinary process, its leaders were expelled and it was disbanded.

The league is making similar noises today, but they fit into the agenda of those really pulling Zuma’s and, in turn, the ANC’s strings — the Gupta family and its vast patronage network.

The left in the alliance cites the Mangaung conference’s adoption of “radical socioeconomic transformation”, coupled with the adoption of the National Development Plan (NDP), as a contradiction. Sections of Cosatu began agitating against the NDP and, during an alliance summit in 2013, it was agreed that changes to the economic and labour chapters were necessary.

But it was not to be. Follow-up meetings were poorly attended, by the ANC in particular. By the 2014 elections, the NDP was still at the centre of policy-making. In the interim, the voices of those in Cosatu pushing for a more “radical” economic stance were quashed.

Zuma’s allies in the federation began to act against its then general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which had historically pushed for radical transformation of the economy.

In December 2013, Numsa held a special congress in which it resolved that the ANC had lost its way, that Zuma had to go and that it would move to persuade Cosatu to leave the alliance.

This was the final straw in the federation’s long-running factional battle between the rebels and those resistant to changing the economic status quo in the ANC. The axing of Vavi and Numsa was placed on ice by a faction-ridden, listless ANC until the 2014 polls had come and gone.

But it was sealed in November 2014, when Numsa — with 350,000 members — was expelled from Cosatu.

Still, there remained voices in the alliance continuing to push for more meaningful economic change, which led to a three-day alliance meeting in 2015 that Zuma himself had suggested.

Again, meaningful discussion on the economy was averted at that meeting but, significantly, the summit declaration highlighted problems in the organisation that marked the “entry-point for corporate capture and private business interests outside of our formations to undermine our organisational processes”.

Now, here we are two years later and this phenomenon has become well and truly entrenched.

“Policy shifts with a radical-sounding air are being announced randomly. Existing and even deeper looming crises in the water sector, or in revenue collection, or in the payment of social grants are left unattended for apparently factional reasons, while ministers performing patriotic service in extremely difficult circumstances become the targets for sustained and factionally orchestrated undermining,” the party said, referring to the now weekly attacks on Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

“Over the past two months, this factional behaviour has sought to recalibrate its public positioning somewhat. While the Gupta family clearly lurks in the background in many cases, there has been an attempt to downplay links in this direction and adopt a more radical-sounding, Africanist posture.”

The battles over economic policy in the ANC have been there for decades and have manifested in various ways. But never more ominously as when genuine debate is clouded by those bent on personal enrichment of the elite and politically connected.

STILL, THERE REMAINED VOICES IN THE ALLIANCE CONTINUING TO PUSH FOR MORE MEANINGFUL ECONOMIC CHANGE