By Trevor Ngwane
There is too much suffering, hardship and desperation in South Africa. Everyday life for the working class and the poor is becoming unbearable as the millions face rising levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Hunger, crime, gender-based violence, load shedding, alcohol and drug abuse, and other social ills, have become an ordinary part of the lives of too many people.
Indeed, despair seems to be winning over hope, anger is replacing patience, even as the search for solutions continues. The masses look to the leadership of the national liberation movement, now ensconced in positions of power and privilege, running state entities and private corporations, enjoying the good life, but the leaders are undeniably failing to alleviate the social conditions.
Instead, the head of state, President Cyril Ramaphosa, and his governing party, the ANC, are embroiled in corruption scandals, internecine strife and reputational damage with serious electoral consequences for their hold on power and ability to meaningfully intervene to address the crisis. Can the masses look to the SACP, the self-proclaimed vanguard of the working class, for salvation?
The SACP is in a tripartite alliance with the ANC and Cosatu. It claims to be the guardian of the interests of the working class and the leader of the struggle against capitalist exploitation and for socialism – a system where workers will run society and thereby enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Recently, the SACP General Secretary, Solly Mapaila, told delegates at the Cosatu 14th National Congress, held in September, that the SACP was ready to contest elections in its own name. The tripartite alliance allows SACP members to run for elections, but they can only do so under an ANC ticket. This time the workers’ vanguard declared its intention to intervene directly and save the day for the class it represents.
Mapaila’s speech struck a chord with the worker delegates who had refused to be addressed by Gwede Mantashe, national chairperson of the ANC and Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy. The conference booed Mantashe off the stage, apparently in anger at the ANC government’s anti-worker policies, such as its refusal to honour an agreement to increase the wages of public sector workers.
The workers’ parliament debated and passed a motion in support of voting for the SACP rather than the ANC in the 2024 elections. It seemed as if, at last, Cosatu was going to break alliance and vote for a party of the working class rather than for the ANC, which has arguably proved to be a party that protects the interests of the capitalist bosses.
“Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness,” writes Vladimir Lenin, the Marxist leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, explaining why we should scrutinise and contextualise grand statements of intent, such as that made by the SACP General-Secretary at the Cosatu congress.
It turns out that this was not the first time the SACP has talked about contesting the elections on its own. At its 2017 National Congress, the SACP resolved to contest elections independently, but when the 2019 national elections came, it did an about-turn, refraining from doing so, saying it was pleased with the ANC’s efforts to renew itself.
A closer reading of its 2017 national congress reveals vacillation and doublespeak. Its then-general secretary, Blade Nzimande, then Minister of Higher Education, talked of ‘a road map’ to contesting elections independently that was ‘highly nuanced’ whereby ‘On our side, we don’t want to break the alliance, we don’t see a contradiction in maintaining the alliance and us contesting the elections’.
Nonetheless, in December of the same year, a by-election in Metsimaholo in the Free State provided an opportunity for the SACP to contest local government elections in its own name. The experiment was a sobering flop, with the SACP winning not a single of the 21 wards it contested. It is interesting that this testing of the waters followed the axing of Nzimande as a minister in a Cabinet reshuffling conducted by then-President Jacob Zuma.
The burning of its fingers in Metsimaholo followed a relentless campaign the SACP had waged inside and outside Cosatu to get the National Unions of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) expelled from the union federation. The reason for this expulsion in November 2014 was because Numsa had, at its 2013 Special Congress, resolved to pull out of the alliance, stop supporting the ANC in elections and form a workers’ party to lead the struggle for the emancipation of labour.
This bold move by Numsa was partly inspired by the Marikana massacre, which exposed the class character of the ANC state as the enemy of the working class. It was also a result of disillusion by Numsa with the SACP and Cosatu leadership support for Zuma, which helped him become president of the ANC and the country, thus facilitating his new role as Number 1 in ‘state capture’, kleptomania and looting.
‘Arise ye workers from your slumbers! Arise ye prisoners of want!’ rings the opening lyrics of The Internationale, the anthem of the socialist movement. But South African workers cannot expect salvation and support for the socialist struggle from the SACP despite this party’s radical posturing and mouthing of communist slogans.
For decades, it has been supporting the ANC, a capitalist party whose mission, as workers saw in Marikana, is to defend bosses profits and the continued exploitation of labour. Its chief role is to contain and sabotage the struggle for socialism. Its leaders are invested in securing positions of power and privilege in a capitalist state. Its zigzag politics are part of a well-rehearsed stratagem and effect of jockeying for positions inside the ANC. Its false radicalism distracts the working class from fighting its true enemy.
Even if the SACP were to contest elections independently, which it won’t, it would, on victory, hand over those seats to the capitalist ANC under whose banner it has subordinated its red flag.
*Trevor Ngwane is the director of the Centre for Sociological Research and Practice, University of Johannesburg.
