This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
A socialist approach to the consolidation and deepening of the National Democratic Revolution
The proletariat alone is capable of carrying the democratic revolution to the end ... the main task of the proletariat at the current historical moment is to carry the democratic resolution ... forward to the end ... any minimisation of this task inevitably results in the working class being transfiwmed, from the leader of the people's revolution into a passive participant in the revolution tailing behind the liberal bourgeoisie." (Lenin, 1907)
At the SACP 9th Party Congress in 1995 we identified the consolidation of the national democratic revolution (NDR) as the most important task facing our Party and the national liberation movement as a whole. This strategic perspective was grounded in the new political situation - the ANC's victory in the South Africa's first democraticelections in April 1994. At the 9th Congress we characterised this event as a democratic breakthrough that qualitatively shifted the balance of forces in favour of the mass of the people and placed the NDR on a new plane.
This breakthrough marked the political defeat of the apartheid regime, and more generally, the strategic defeat of colonialism of a special type (CST), the specific character that capitalist rule had assumed in our country. This strategic defeat opened up the possibilities for a bloc of forces, led by the ANC, to establish bridge-heads into political power. However, as much as this electoral victory advanced the goals of the NDR, it did not signal the completion of the tasks facing the national liberation movement.
When we adopted this position, we were clear that advancing, deepening and defending the NDR would involve a protracted struggle. Apart from the relatively unfavourable international context, dominated by imperialism, our NDR is also threatened by the weight of the past in the present, by the huge backlog of poverty, unemployment and skewed development we have inherited, and by a range of minority class and other social forces within our country, determined to defend ill-begotten powers and privileges. Though strategically off-balance, for the moment, at the political level, these forces continue to possess significant power, and they are actively endeavouring to regroup. In a sense, the revolution is encumbered by the very things it seeks to overcome.
1. The character of the NDR
Like many third world societies emerging from authoritarian and colonial rule, South Africa's struggle to consolidate democracy, reconstruction and development has to be directed at several interrelated challenges, key among them are the national, class and gender contradictions.
None of these contradictions can be resolved in isolation. In South Africa, the fundamental basis of CST was the national oppression of the black majority as a necessary condition for the economic exploitation of black workers. These interrelated realities underpinned the specific growth path of capitalism in our society, and have resulted in asociety that is one of the most unequal on earth. Patriarchal oppression was integrated into, and vastly extended under, CST as an equally necessary component in the reproduction of this minority rule dispensation.
The main strategic objective of the NDR, the overcoming of the legacy of centuries of colonial and decades of special colonial oppression, has to be addressed in the context of overcoming the national, class and gender contradictions in their relationship to each other. It is within this strategic framework that the deepening of the revolution should be approached by our Party.
1.1 Class struggle in the national struggle
In particular, we must guard against a mechanical, stageist approach to these interconnected challenges. We must reject attempts to confine the present phase of the NDR to a simple "deracialisation" of capitalism, which seeks to postpone working class struggle against capitalism to some distant "second stage".
A simple transfer and more "equitable" sharing of some of the existing white-monopolised ownership and management powers within the framework of the present capitalist system will only scratch the surface of the legacy of racial oppression in our country. The particular colonial growth path of capitalism in South Africa involved mass land dispossession, forced labour, and the hostel system. Central to CST capitalism was the coerced and racialised reproduction of a huge reserve army of "cheap" labour (through the reserve/bantustan system, Bantu education, forced removals, pass laws, the domination and destabilising of neighbouring countries, and many other features). The legacy of this capitalist growth path is still with us, in land shortages, mass unemployment, homelessness, high levels of illiteracy and low levels of skill development, huge inequalities in physical infrastructure within our country, and our region.
This legacy will not be transformed by the mere deracialisation of the board-rooms. It is not simply the "equitable" sharing of some economic privileges to a new elite that is required. The thorough-going transformation of economic power relations has to be undertaken within the context of the NDR itself. The deracialisation of board-rooms and of the management function can only be justified if it is part and parcel of this broader transformation programme.
Maintaining a consistent class perspective is critical in our present conjuncture. At present, in South Africa there is often considerable sensitivity (at least rhetorical) to race and gender matters – class is all too easily forgotten.
An anti-capitalist class-struggle cannot be held over to some later stage of our transformation process. This is why the SACP has, since our 9th Congress in April 1995, advanced the slogan: "Socialism is the Future, Build it Now!"
1.2 Gender struggle in the national and class struggle
Likewise, overcoming gender oppression in our society cannot be delayed as if it were a "side-issue". Nor, as history has taught us, can we make the assumption that the oppression of women will simply wither away under some future socialist dispensation.
Neither the NDR nor socialism can be consolidated unless we simultaneously and self-consciously attack gender oppression. CST and the specific capitalist growth path in our country involved the appropriation of existing patriarchal customs and traditions, and their articulation into the reproduction processes of CST capitalism.
This articulation saw the vast exacerbation of the coercive features of pre-existing patriarchy. In particular, the brunt of the reproduction of a massive army of reserve cheap labour was borne by the unpaid (and hidden) labour and effort of millions of women. The reproductive functions often carried (at least to some extent) by society at large in other developed economies (by way of pensions, public education, health-care and housing, and municipal water and power infrastructure) has been borne, at huge personal cost, by millions of black women in our country (and in our region). It is they who have had to care for the young, the sick, the unemployed and the aged. It is they who have had to spend their lives fetching water and fuel. The legacy of this continues to impact dramatically upon the life-opportunities, resources, and general marginalisation of the women of our country and region.
We must reaffirm our view, as the SACP, that there can be no true national liberation nor socialism without the progressive eradication of gender inequality and patriarchal practices and institutions.
The resilience of patriarchal institutions and practices has largely, though not exclusively, been reinforced by ideologically projecting women's oppression and gender inequalities as part of ''normal", "acceptable" and "long-standing" cultural traditions. The institution of chieftaincy, once a focal point for anti-colonial resistance, is a stark example of how colonial oppression and racialised capitalism can appropriate, preserve and transform "traditions", subordinating them to the purposes of national oppression and class exploitation. While "traditional" values, however distorted they may have become, need to be handled sensitively, the SACP must he prepared to speak up honestly about and deal fearlessly with the abusive character of many "traditions".
It would be wrong to attribute patriarchal practices only to the oppressor or to dominant ruling blocs. Within the working class and the poor, these practices are prevalent and harsh. The heaviest burden of the social conditions under which the working class and the poor live falls mainly on women. Patriarchal attitudes, coupled with the general social distress and dislocation felt bythe poor of our country, also results in extremely high levels of domestic violence and abuse, directed against women and children. Hence the importance of consciously combating patriarchy as a necessary component of mobilising and strengthening the working class as a political force for itself. In fact, the working class cannot be raised to the level of a political class for itself, without at the same time consciously challenging patriarchal attitudes and practices within this class.
1.3 The national question in the class and gender struggles
The relationship between national (or gender) oppression and class exploitation is not a relationship of "form" to "content". National and gender oppression are not merely formal, they are all too real in themselves. They have a history, they are institutionalised, and they have a relative autonomy from class exploitation. The one cannot simply be collapsed or explained by the other. Likewise, one or the other oppression will not simply wither away because another of the oppressions has been overcome.
These three realities are, as we have been arguing above, deeply interconnected. For this reason, the SACP also believes that the struggle against these oppressions cannot be separatecl out into different "stages" of struggle.
However, the SACP continues to affirm the centrality, in the present South African reality, of the national question. The legacy of racial oppression directed at blacks in general, and Africans in particular, continues to be the dominant feature of our society. It is for this reason that, as Communists, we have worked over decades with non-Communist comrades to build a powerful ANC. It is for this reason that, as South African Communists, we recognise the leading role of the ANC. It is a leading role that we seek to constantly build, as Communists.
When we argue that the national question is central to the present South African reality we are essentially recognising the major base around which a massive social movement needs to be sustained, in order to ensure the ongoing momentum of transformation. It is no accident it was a national movement, led by the ANC, that strategically defeated the political ruling bloc in the early 1990s. It is no accident (nor is it an "unfortunate historical legacy") that the mobilised mass base of the ANC (and SACP) is overwhelmingly black in general and African in particular. A sense of black and particularly African national grievance, and of national identity and pride remain crucial motive forces for our ongoing democratic and socialist transformation struggles.
Of course, in the decades-long history of the Communist Party in South Africa, and indeed of the ANC, these national traditions have always also been non-racial and open in character. Our nationalism has nothing to do with chauvinism, or with the sectarian denigration of othercultures, languages or traditions. Our national traditions are also dynamic and evolving. Our strategy as the SACP, for the present conjuncture, is to help organise all socialists, all democrats, all working people, black and white, into the struggle for democracy, reconstruction and development within the context of the African realities of our country, and our continent.
2. Assessing the present conjuncture
Part of the strategy of our opponents is to sow demoralisation about the "lack of progress" since the democratic breakthrough of April 1994. Sometimes the implied message of this campaign is racist ("blacks are incompetent"). There are also some on the left who, unwittingly perhaps, take up the same demoralisation campaign, with loose talk about the "betrayal" of the revolution. The fact that such a campaign exists should not deter the SACP from making an honest assessment of progress, or the lack of it, since April 1994. There have, undoubtedly, been hesitations and mistakes, and the medium and longer-term outcome of the transformation process is far from clear.
2.1 Achievements
It would be strategically and historically stupid, however, not to grasp the massive process of transformation that is under-way in our country. Without going into substantial detail, there are several broad areas that must be high-lighted:
"There are numerous other areas in which there have been significant, or at the very least partial advances - from the deracialisation and more strategic targeting of pensions and other welfare grants, to the progressive transformation of the public broadcaster and the licensing of numerous community radio stations. There is not a single area of South African life, from sport to transport, that is not in some way caught up in the struggle for transformation.
The SACP forcefully rejects the idea that "nothing has changed" in South Africa, or that "the revolution has been betrayed".
However, the SAC' is also deeply conscious of the massive crises that still afflict our society - the crisis of mass unemployment, of poverty, and of high levels of criminal violence, in particular. All of these problems have their roots in the objective legacy with which we are having to deal. Resolution of these problems is also hampered by the still active presence in our society of class and other social forces that are determined to defend their own ill-begotten powers and privileges from the past.
2.2 Strategic shortcomings
But the question must also be asked: Have there not been strategic, subjective short-comings on the side of our liberation movement in the period since the April 1994 breakthrough? Have we used the relatively more favourable balance of forces within our country to maximum effect?
The SAC' believes that there have been such strategic shortcomings, and that these shortcomings relate, essentially, to four broad andinterrelated areas:
We believe that the budget deficit reduction targets are arbitrary, based as they are on macro-economic models derived from a largely unreconstructed Reserve Bank. GEAR embodies, in its core fiscal and monetary policies, a neo-liberal approach that is at variance with our reconstruction and development objectives. Much of GEAR, and indeed much of government's evolving economic policy has shifted progressively away from ANC economic policy in the first half of the 1990s, which underlined the interconnectedness of growth and development, which envisaged a major emphasis on growth led by domestic and regional infrastructural development. More and more, there has been a shift towards the assumptions of an export-led growth, based on the myth that deregulation and liberalisation, more or less on their own, will make the South African economy "globally competitive".
Above all, macro-economic hopes are increasingly pinned upon the massive (but unpredictable) inflow of private sector investments. The role of the new democratic government is more and more centred upon creating an "investor friendly" climate, rather than on leading an economic reconstruction and development process. The economy also continues to be held hostage by a Reserve Bank implementing narrow monetarist policies, focused on very high interest rates.
The SACP acknowledges that some progress has been achieved on the economic front. Growth, even if it is still very low growth, has been restored to the South African economy, after over a decade of negative growth. A much more progressive and transparent budgeting system has been introduced, and important work on budgetary reprioritisation is taking effect. There has been progressive (if not sufficient) reform of the tax system. Our new democratic government has been able to overcome a serious foreign currency reserve situation which we inherited, immediately on assuming office.
However, in acknowledging all of this, the SACP believes that nearly two years of GEAR are beginning to confirm our concerns. Growth targets are not being met, the arbitrary
The African Communist A2budget deficit targets are wreaking havoc on all of the other good work we are doing in socio-economic transformation, and, above all, the small growth that has occurred has been accompanied by persistent structural unemployment, indeed there have been net job losses, with hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs in the last two years.
These four inter-related areas of strategic uncertainty (in locating ourselves globally, macro-economic policy, the developmental state, and in how to sustain the mobilisation of our mass base) are matters of serious concern to the SACP, and indeed to many within our broader alliance. We have taken up these questions systematically within our alliance, and in public debate. We welcome the agreement that no policies are cast in stone, and that there should he. ongoing intro-Alliance discussion on these and other key strategic matters.
The SACP, for its part, commits itself to playing a constructive role in the unfolding NDR. Thousands of SACP members are active in government at all levels, and in the legislatures. The SACP, together with its alliance partners, has been prepared to assume collective responsibility for governance. Insofar as the Party expresses robust criticism, it is not from some safe, holier-than-thou, comfort zone. Nor do we level criticism in order to score points. Our critical concerns have one principal motivation only - a failure to address weaknesses in governance and in our broader alliance could pose a threat to the very deepening and consolidation of the NDR itself.
To understand what is at stake, it is important to briefly consider the present social and class realities of our society.
3. The social and class realities of South Africa
South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world. Income inequality is sometimes measured by the Gini co-efficient, which allows for comparisons across countries. In terms of this measurement South Africa has "among the highest income inequality in the world" ("Key Indicators of Poverty in SA"). In 1992 the World Bank calculated that 51,2°%b of annual income went to the richest 10% of the population (it was 8% in 1975). Less than 3,9% of income is earned by the poorest 40% of the population. Similarly, in 1995 the RDP Office reported that the poorest half of the population accounts for only 10% of consumption, while the richest 5% accounts for 40% of consumption.
These gross inequalities in our society correspond largely (but not exclusively) to race. In 1993, 54% of Africans, 25% of coloureds, 8% of South Africans of Asian origin, and less than 0,5%) of whites were calculated to be living in poverty by the World Bank.
Nevertheless, there have also been some fairly dynamic changes within this general pattern. Over the last two decades huge disparities have begun to open up among Africans. The mean income of the lowest-earning 40% of African households declined by almost 40% between 1975 and 1991, while the richest 20% of African households (representing 5,6 million people) soared by 40%. In 1975, less than 10% of the richest 20% of households in South Africa were African, by 1991 that figure had risen to 26%.
These very significant shifts within the majority African population of our country reflect important class dynamics, that the SACP must understand very clearly.
In part, the shifts are the consequence of the capacity, from the second half of the 1970s through to the 1990s, of increasingly organised African workers (drawn largely from the semi-skilled ranks of the working class) to make significant wage gains. However, it would be a grave error to argue (as some do) that redistribution through effective wage negotiations, has created a "black labour aristocracy".
Organised African workers are, typically, connected to the unorganised and to the unemployed by extended family networks. This occurs in the context of a society in which there is very little effective social wage, and in which the potentially cushioning capacity of independent peasant farming (for the unemployed, the young, sick and old) has been reduced to a minimal reality. Urbanisation levels in
In the context of all of this, the wage packet of an employed African worker is typically redistributed through an extended family network, and is made to cover high costs for items like transport (exacerbated by apartheid geography and an undeveloped public transport network).
Much more significant in the acceleration of inequalities among the African population have been:
All of these shifting classdynamics remain markedly racialised and gendered. While half of the South African population lives in rural areas, almost two thirds (63%) of Africans are in these areas, against a far smaller proportion of coloureds (16%), Indians (5%) and whites (9%). It is African women, more than any other group, who suffer most from unemployment (47% are estimated to be unemployed). Likewise, it is Africans generally (1,03 million) and African women in particular (772,000), who make up the majority of people (1,7 million) working in the typically low-wage or unpaid informal sector.
While there have been some significant shifts in the 1990s in terms of the upper middle strata, the 1995 October Household Survey of the CSS still found that fewer than 4% of African males and 2% of African females were in managerial posts. The corresponding figures for Coloureds was even lower (3% of males, 1% of females).
Interestingly, the same October 1995 survey found that approximately one third of all South African workers were unionised, with membership being highest among African male (390/u) and female (36%) workers, with white female workers (17%) being the least likely to be members of unions.
It is on the terrain of these still highly racialised and gendered, but nonetheless shifting, class and social realities, that a variety of political formations and agendas are seeking to shape the post-1994 South African reality.
4. Threats to national democratic transformation
In propagating the perspective: "Advance, Deepen and Defend the Democratic Breakthrough", the SACP acknowledged in 1995 that the trajectory of the transitional process was uncertain, and that our strategic goals would have to he struggled for in the face of opposition forces.
The 1994 democratic breakthrough represented a strategic political defeat of CST, white minority rule was no longer viable. But the breakthrough did not of itself affect substantial powers and privileges accumulated in the past. Positioned powerfully within the economy, some of our state institutions (like the judiciary and security forces), and in parts of the media and other important civil society structures, are social forces from the former ruling bloc.
These forces have, basically, three strategic options:
These strategic choices are,obviously, outlined here in a very schematic way. Social forces do not necessarily act with complete clarity, often there is a hedging of bets between different options, and there are interconnections between different forces pursuing different agendas.
Bearing all of this in mind, it is still useful to seek to define from which quarter the most serious threat to our NDR is posed. It is precisely confusion in this regard that can lead to strategic differences within our national liberation movement.
4.1 A counter-revolutionary threat?
In a society in the midst of a far-reaching transformation process, it would be naive to ignore the danger of counter-revolution. This applies even more forcefully to a country (and region) like our own, emerging out of three decades of armed conflict. Apartheid, in attempting to prolong itself, developed a host of dirty tricks networks, disinformation structures, a culture of subterfuge and the abuse of state resources, the vast expansion of private security forces of all kinds, and the amassing of large quantities of weaponry. Much of this legacy is now at the heart of the violent crime problems that we confront.
However, the SACP is convinced that the counter-revolutionary threat should not be over-stated in our present situation. Disinformation about an elaborate right-wing (and sometimes even a "left wing") counter-revolution has been one of the ploys used by the old apartheid intelligence structures, in an attempt to extract concessions from the ANC.
Counter-revolutionary forces currently lack any serious mass base, nor do they enjoy any significant economic backing. Neither the major imperialist powers, nor the major South African corporations, are seriously considering this option. Clearly we need to monitor and deal effectively with pockets of potential counter-revolution. Above all, we need to ensure that, through our own conduct, we do not create room for manoeuvre for these forces, This means, amongst others things:
While vigilance is certainly required, it would be a serious strategic miscalculation to project our liberation movement and our new democratic government as besieged, as threatened on all sides. A position that calls for the bureaucratic "closing of ranks" in the face of perceived "counter-revolutionary" activities on all fronts will, in the end, become self-fulfilling. Our liberation movement enjoys massive support, and extensive legitimacy nationally and internationally. We must foster with confidence the political andmoral hegemony that we do, in fact, enjoy.
4.2 Constitutional opposition forces
In the present conjuncture, our multi-party electoral dispensation is basically aligned around a national liberation movement (the ANC), enjoying overwhelming majority support from those historically oppressed by CST, and various political formations that represent (or seek to represent) classes and other social forces that benefited, or believe they benefited, from the past.
The PAC is a minor anomaly within this general alignment. The PAC seeks to represent the same constituency as the broad ANC-led alliance, but since its formation as a break-away from the ANC in 1958, it has lacked any serious (still less consistent) politics. Since 1958 it has manoeuvred back and forth, tactically, seeking to project itself as somehow different from the ANC, while awaiting for some mass disillusionment within ANC ranks to swell its own. In short, throughout its history the only real consistency in PAC politics has been opportunism. A similar opportunism, for the moment even more vague than that of the PAC, is to be found in the newly launched UDM. More than a year after its launch, the UDM has still to announce its political programme, or even basic manifesto.
The central dynamic of our National Assembly (and of other legislatures) is the engagement of a national liberation movement, striving to advance the momentum of transformation, with other political parties (notably the NP, IFP, FF and DP) that, in various ways, seek to slow the pace of change, and to preserve islands of pre-existing power and privilege (whether in education, residential areas, in "traditional" customs, or in the economy). These parties do, indeed, represent actual, albeit relatively small, constituencies.
It is in the interests of the consolidation of the NDR that these various constituencies are represented within the new, non-racial democratic dispensation. The SACP is unambiguous in its support for our multi-party dispensation, and in its support of the right of a range of political formations to he represented therein.
The ANC-led alliance should, however, not assume that constituencies are unchanging, or that they are timelessly in the pockets of this or that political formation. For a variety of reasons, significant numbers of historically oppressed people still vote for parties like the NP and IFP. Without abandoning our principled, strategic commitments, the ANC-led alliance must constantly seek to broaden its base (including its electoral base).
The SACP believes that for as long as the realities of South African society are marked by vast disparities between a large majority who remain the victims of the legacy of the past. and a small minority with hugely disproportionate economic power, the present fundamental alignment of electoral forces should be sustained.
In other words, ensuring a massive, numerical majority within the framework of a common (but broad) progressive electoral platform is essential. The SACP believes that not only should our tripartite alliance be sustained, but that (at least for the foreseeable future) the SACP should not mount a separate electoral effort, albeit within the context of an ongoing alliance. Naturally, this position is one that will be reviewed in the light of changing circumstances.
But what threat to the NDR do the constitutional opposition parties represent? In themselves these parties are able, in certain respects, to play a blocking, obstructionist role - often relying on provincial or local level powers to do so. But they are incapable, in their own right, of developing a strategic project with any hope of redefining the social and political terrain. Part of the reason for this incapacity is their inability to sustain support in their own core constituencies on the one hand, and yet simultaneously put together a feasible appeal to a broader (usually non-racial) constituency that could mount a serious electoral challenge. By and large, all are operating on the terrain of diminishing constituencies and the partial if miniscule growth of one (the DP, for instance) is usually at the expense of another of these minority parties.
Strategically these parties are positioned, therefore, little differently from the PAC and UDM. They are all dreaming of some cataclysmic shattering of the ANC and its alliance. For this reason, the breaking of the alliance is a central and strategic objective of these forces.
However, constitutional opposition forces are not confined to political parties - more significant are a host of economic, cultural, sports and media institutions, often with substantial power completely disproportionate to the actual numbers they represent. Included in these opposition forces are a range of networks in strategic places, like the judiciary and the Reserve Bank which, either consciously or from habit, seek to obstruct the policies of the ANC-led government.
It is important to understand that, whatever their sympathy for these various oppositional forces, the capitalist class in South Africa, and the major international imperialist powers, are well aware of the improbability (in any foreseeable future) that they will ever, singularly or collectively, mount a majority political project. The support for these forces from the side of big capital is muted by this strategic consideration.
The threat posed to the NDR by these forces is not remotely insurmountable. The SACP believes that the best means to meeting the challenge posed by these forces are, in any case, in line with the general tasks confronting the NDR. We need to foster the unity of our own alliance, we need to press ahead with reconstruction and development to undercut pockets of privilege and to draw those most vulnerable into the process of democratisation. We need to ensure that institutions like the Reserve Bank and the judiciary, aswell as key civil society structures - like the private media, and sports bodies - become increasingly representative and aligned to our developmental objectives.
It is for all of the above reasons that the SACP believes that the greatest threat to the NDR comes not from without, but from within, or rather from the strategic impact upon our alliance exerted by forces fundamentally hostile to the NDR.
4.3 Capital's attempt to transform the liberation movement and to re-define the trajectory of change
The most serious strategic threat to the NDR is the attempt by capital to stabilise a new, "deracialised" capitalist ruling bloc, under the mantle of the ANC itself.
Central to this strategic project is the attempt to re-define the NDR as a struggle:
Around this attempted re-definition of the "NDR" is a potential new ruling bloc in formation, dominated by old and emergent new fractions of the bourgeoisie.
Within the calculations of this project, the old and emerging bourgeois factions will not (and could not) go it alone. The new bloc will seek to present its interests as those of a broader range of middle strata, especially the rapidly forming new black middle strata - professionals, private and parastatal managers, middle and senior level civil servants. "Modernising", "normalising", "globalising", "black economic empowerment" and plain self-enrichment will be among the major themes around which this bloc will attempt to consolidate itself. Socialism, more substantial transformation, and the Freedom Charter are viewed as "baggage from the past". Real issues, like gender oppression, are picked up within this project, but are then largely confined to elite concerns and resolutions, such as ensuring that a quota of women are represented within the emerging public and private sector elite.
This project will not ignore the organised working class. It will seek to incorporate the more organised, more skilled sections of the working class as junior partners within its ruling bloc. Ironically, the very forces that castigate COSATU as an "elite", are the ones that most actively seek to transform strategic sections of this organised working class into an elite. This is the logic of the "first tier" of the proposed "two-tiered labour market" advanced by leading sections of South African capital. This is also one implication of the insistence on whole-scale privatisation - the net effect of which would be to render housing, effective transport, health-care and training accessible only to a small, relatively advantaged section of the working class. This kind ofobjective is the strategic purpose that these forces give to the idea of a "social accord". Of course, the powers and numerical strength of a co-opted tier of the working class will be eroded by the simultaneous extension of a more right-less, more flexible, more temporary, more casualised second-tier of workers.
The strengths of this "modernising" version of the ND transformation process should not be underrated. They include:
However, whatever advantages this version of "ND" transformation might enjoy, it also suffers from major weaknesses:
The project to forge a new capitalist-dominated, non-racial ruling bloc has other contradictions that we should understand. This bloc is likely to marginalise some of the class fractions and strata that were part of the old apartheid ruling bloc. These social forces are, therefore, likely to he threatened by the denicialisation of South African society. While the more strategic white capitalists have the vision and also the manoeuvrability to foster the emergence of black capitalists and managers, this cannot be achieved without impacting upon the vested interests of elements of the white middle strata. The white capitalists might be committed to some form of (co-optive) affirmative action, but they cannot afford to lose the expertise and loyalty of a white managerial stratum. Hence the often slow progress in affirmative action in the private capitalist sector, despite an increase in number of black faces in the corporations.
5. The ND transformation as a thorough-going revolutionary transformation under the hegemonic leadership of the workers and the poor
The trajectory of the post-1994 South African transformation process depends upon many inter-acting factors. Viewed from a class perspective, there are two fundamentally different outcomes that are possible. The first is the scenario we have just considered - the consolidation of a new bourgeois order, based upon persisting class, race and gender inequality, but presided over by a new, non-racial ruling bloc. The alternative is a profound, national democratic process, hegemonised by the working class and poor.
But working class leadership must not, in the first instance, be understood as the mechanical equivalent of leadership by this or that worker organisation (the SACP or COSATU, for instance). Neither trade unions nor working class parties are immune from the dangers of being co-opted into other class agendas. The working class hegemony ofwhich we speak is one that has to be constantly elaborated and contested for within working class organisations themselves, and within the broader liberation movement.
In the effort to build working class hegemony, within our formations and within society at large, the SACP considers the core social constituency of the Party (and of COSATU) - organised workers in the formal sector - as the crucial social force. It is this stratum of the working class that has the collective numbers, and the strategic economic location, as well as the revolutionary organisational traditions, to provide effective social weight to any progressive agenda. The SACP needs to pay special organisational and ideological attention to this critical contingent of the working class.
But the SACP (and COSATU and the ANC) must constantly struggle to ensure that this revolutionary core of the working class, does not isolate itself into a narrow syndicalism or workerism. The battles this core working class takes up, the programmatic perspectives it advances (through our organisations) must provide leadership to and help voice the aspirations of the vast numbers of workers who are unorganised, in the informal sector, or unemployed. The organised working class must constantly deepen its organic links with the urban and rural poor.
The organised working class must draw to its side the great majority of youth, students and professionals - who, in their majority, continue to suffer the legacy of class, race and gender oppression. For these social forces, as with the working class, change will he meaningless if it is not a thorough-going transformation of the power relations of our society.
The organised working class must also seek to win over to its transformational perspectives key elements occupying managerial positions in both the public and private sector. Many of these are drawn historically from the ranks of our liberation movement, and many have professional and moral reasons to associate themselves with a thorough-going national democratic transformation process. There is no reason why social productivity and transformation, rather than profit maximisation, should not be the principal organising concerns of many managers.
The organised working class must even endeavour to provide leadership to the bourgeoisie. This means, amongst other things, engaging diversely with different fractions of the bourgeoisie. The emerging black capitalist stratum must he engaged, and not only on the basis of sentiment, and appeals to black solidarity and "patriotism". The general economic dependency of this stratum on the new democratic state must be used as leverage to ensure that the investment decisions and productive activities of this black capitalist stratum enhance the reconstruction and development agenda. This, indeed, will he the real test of their "patriotism". Many of the dealsengaged in by this emergent faction are also dependent on partnerships with various social funds (notably those controlled by trade unions). It is important to ensure that, in the process, it is the social agenda of the collective owners' of the funds, and not the profit agenda that becomes hegemonic.
Organised workers and their formations must also seek to exert influence over other factions and sectors of capital. There are those sectors that are most dependent upon the growth of the domestic (or regional) market, and those that are less so. There are those sectors of capital that are most involved in productive and infrastructural development, and whose interests are not necessarily identical with other more speculative or finance-based sectors. Organised working class formations must be prepared to engage tactically with these potentially more progressive sectors and factions of capital. They must he drawn, as much as possible, into the agenda of thorough-going national democratic transformation.
Above all, the working class must dare to become the hegemonic class force in our society. While waging a consistent class struggle to progressively abolish capitalism, the working class must not slip into a narrow oppositionist mentality. The working class, and the organisations that seek to represent it, must Clare to assume power, to engage with, transform and hegemonise the state, the legislatures, and key institutions (economic, cultural, and social) of society. This is not an easy, still less an "evolutionist" struggle whose progressive outcome is guaranteed. But this is the working class struggle, within the context of an unfolding NDR, that the SACP, with its allies, must be prepared to wage.
The organisational means for ensuring the simultaneous class-conscious organisation of workers and the broadening of their class agenda to embrace the whole of society, necessitates:
Working class hegemony in all of these organisational and institutional sites cannot be taken for granted, it needs to be constantly fostered, organised and struggled for. We are engaged in a massive historical struggle to transform our society, on the terrain of an unfolding NDR, from a society based on the logic of private profit, to a society based on social need. Critical for the success of all of this are clear sectoral programmatic perspectives, which will be elaborated in the following chapters of this programme.