Talkin’ bout no revolution
It is now a fact that the ANC national executive committee was divided on the question of whether the “national democratic revolution” is still on track. The acrimonious debate should have asked a related question: Are we in a state of bourgeois democratic reform or a feudalist revolution similar to that of the French and English revolutions?
The communists were teachers of our revolutionary theory, a task they abandoned when the South African Communist Party (SACP) abandoned Marxism-Leninism under Joe Slovo to become a mass party, which Harry Gwala said would make the party “amorphous”.
Gwala, along with Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Brian Bunting, opposed Slovo. Later, Ronnie Kasrils agreed with them, admitting that this was a big mistake.
Today the SACP is useless. It cannot be a teacher of revolutionary theory or discharge its vanguard role in relation to the working class, peasants and the poor.
Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Senzeni Zokwane says something different to what Blade Nzimade, Solly Maphai, Thulas Nxesi and other SACP leaders say about what needs to be done to put back on course the democratic revolution that was aborted at Polokwane.
This revolution emphasises the centrality of working-class leadership — the principal motive force should be workers. During the struggle, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa — not the South African Democratic Teachers Union or the National Employers United of South Africa — were the backbone of Cosatu.
In the ANC and SACP’s Path to Power and Strategy and Tactics documents, the writers speak about the working class as a primary motive force of change. What has gone wrong with this theory? Why are the Economic Freedom Fighters now able to attract the poor and the working class in urban areas?
It is because the character of the ANC has changed. It is led by a feudalist who has turned the movement into his sugar daddy or blesser. We are faced with issues such as the Marikana massacre, #FeesMustFall and the enrichment drive by leadership — in which more than 80% have direct or indirect business interests in government, making them tenderpreneurs, for whom political power must yield self-enrichment, not power to the people.
Some councillors got on to election lists because they manipulated people to commit arson, as we saw in Mandeni, where workers and youth burnt a factory, leading to the loss of 2000 jobs. In KwaDukuza, three sugar-cane trucks were burnt. Now ANC members kill ANC members for positions.
The enemy of the ANC is now the ANC — not racism or class exploitation. The SACP and ANC have degenerated into associations of mobsters who shout revolutionary slogans by day but by night are hunters of gold.
Before and after Marikana, the SACP further factionalised the mineworkers by siding with Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, Lonmin and the NUM. Yet now Cosatu has chosen to campaign for Cyril Ramaphosa to succeed Jacob Zuma as president. The union federation is opposed to a preferred Zuma family candidate, who will be backed by beneficiaries of the Saxonwold shebeen — Ben Ngubane, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Collen Maine, Brian Molefe and those who have benefited from the moral weaknesses of Number One.
The moral and ethical degeneration of the ANC is the principal cause of the abortion of our national democratic revolution. —