Cde Blade Nzimande was elected General Secretary of the Sacp at its recent 10th Congress. Dinga Sikwebu, Numsa national education officer spoke to him about the Party’s tasks, its role in the Alliance and in Government and its work with Cosatu and its affiliates.
Significant sections of the labour movement have been disappointed with the pace of change over the last four years. What is the SACP's assessment of the performance of the ANC-led government?
I would say that there's been enormous progress on many, many fronts.
Look at the area of social services -- government over the last four years has opened more than 500 clinics that are catering for more than 5-million people. These people now have access to primary healthcare, perhaps for the first time ever.
Also in the area of water and electricity and even in education, we have made enormous progress.
The challenge, really, is around implementation. This is not something we really understood. It's becoming clearer now. That is why the Party’s own programme and campaigns are now focusing on the question of building people's power, so that people participate.
What has added to the implementation problem is the demobilisation of the mass movement. This is having a severe effect on implementation and the monitoring of that implementation.
Where has government not made progress?
Since 1994 our economy has begun to grow. But government’s macro-economic policy – GEAR -- is putting a lot of constraints on some of the things that could have been done.
Would you say that the lack of delivery in the areas that you've mentioned is a direct result of GEAR?
GEAR has constrained spending in areas where we could have seen much more increased spending. I think that we have been particularly harsh on ourselves with the budget deficit targets.
But I wouldn't say where there's been lack of delivery, it's primarily because of GEAR. It would be wrong to say that, because there are many, many other constraints that we have.
What are other constraints?
There is the question of capacity in many of the provinces. That leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes money has been allocated, but it has not been spent.
There are subjective weaknesses like mass participation. It is absent in many, many respects.
Another subjective constraint arises out of differences in people’s views of the role of the state, and the role of the private sector. There are sections of our own movement who think that privatisation is the route to go.
Now that we are in government, there is also the danger of careerism and patronage. Some comrades have stopped thinking through their heads, they think through their stomachs. Their main consideration in what they say or do is whether that will enable them to gain positions or not.
And there is the temptation on the part of some of our own comrades who are in power, to surround themselves with people who are going to be "yes-men". This is also what the President of the ANC pointed out at the Mafikeng Congress.
The only way to deal with these problems is to build strong, democratic and accountable organisations. Patronage and careerism threaten those traditions within our own formations.
The recent Congress of the Party came out against GEAR. It characterised the policy as an "inappropriate macro-economic framework". What significance does the SACP attach to the fact that having been elected on the basis of the RDP, the ANC is now pursuing a policy that is antithetical to its mandate?
We believe that GEAR undermines the RDP. Its key assumption is to lure foreign investors. By default it then relies on the private sector to try and drive the development process.
That is why the SACP is putting a lot of emphasis on discussions within the Alliance. We want to ensure that we move together as the Alliance to find an appropriate macro-economic model that will advance the goals of the RDP.
Some say that government is no longer following the RDP. I don't think our comrades in government are doing that deliberately. GEAR does undermine some of the key objectives of the RDP. We said that at our Congress, and we are still saying it now.
One of the key challenges for those who are critical of GEAR, is to begin to develop alternatives. And I think the SACP’s 10th Congress actually did lay a basis for that.
Can you outline this briefly.
Firstly, we are saying we must develop an active industrial policy. Which industries is the government targeting for development? Which industries are likely to create jobs and which are likely to address the social welfare of our people? That is the core out of which you then develop an appropriate macro-economic framework.
GEAR does the opposite. It starts as a macro-economic framework that is not rooted in any particular industrial strategy.
The national democratic revolution (NDR) is being contested by class forces who would like to see the development and consolidation of a non-racial capitalism in the country.
At the helm of this kind of approach, is an increasingly arrogant white monopoly capital. Monopoly capital would like to align itself with sections of the emergent black bourgeoisie and hopefully to also co-opt -- not only the middle classes, but even sections of the working class -- into a new, non-racial capitalist order.
The struggle for the consolidation of the NDR is essentially a class struggle. There are forces around the working class that want to advance the national democratic revolution so as to strengthen the working class bias of government. On the other hand, there are sections of the liberation movement who themselves are interested in some kind of non-racial capitalism with a human face.
There is this class struggle, and class contradiction. The ANC itself is a broad movement made up of various class forces. That's not the problem. The issue is how does the working class make sure that it asserts its own hegemony during this phase of our struggle.
What is the balance of forces in the battle that you are talking about within the broad movement? Most of the time people talk about the forces contesting the ANC without ever saying in whose favour is this "battle for the soul of the ANC".
I think that's a critical issue. The SACP’s 10th Congress tried very hard to grapple with that question. If you look at the balance of forces now, one would say that ideologically and internationally the balance of forces has shifted in favour of the capitalist classes through the dominance of neo-liberalism throughout the world.
The collapse of the Soviet Union has put left forces on the defensive. But I think that this balance of forces, if you look in South Africa now, is not just a one-way street.
In South Africa, we have the capitalist class being arrogant and having an upper hand. But we have a working class that still remains a very powerful force in this country.
The problem is that at the moment the working class is fighting a defensive battle. It is defending the gains that it has made.
But I think that over the last three to four months, things have begun to change. Opportunities for the working class and its allies to tilt the balance of forces in their own favour, are beginning to emerge with this current international crisis of capitalism.
Some comrades tend to think that the current crisis will automatically shift the balance to the working class. It won't. Unless the working class is organised in such a manner that it is able to exploit this crisis and this weakness of the capitalist class, it won’t tilt that balance.
That is why the Sacp’s 10th Congress tried to reposition itself to be able to play the leading political role as the political vanguard of the working class.
With due respect comrade to the issue of the balance of forces nationally, what I was referring to, is the balance of forces within the ANC. For many years the SACP has set its task as building a working class-biased ANC. Is the posing of this task and this question in this way not sometimes an avoidance of taking clear stands on how the "battle for the soul of the ANC" is panning out?
We wouldn't like to cast the battle as the "battle for the soul of the ANC". The key task is the battle over the direction of the national democratic revolution. If you like, the ‘soul’ of the national democratic revolution.
And how is that battle panning out?
You can’t exclude the international factor, because the international factor is not just an external factor. It's a key component of the national balance of forces. That is why I emphasised the issue that internationally, the balance of forces is tilted in favour of monopoly capital. This has also had an impact here.
And if you ask me at the moment, I would say that impact has put the left forces in South Africa on the defensive.
Even so, the ANC, still remains largely an organisation that is rooted in the working class. Who is the membership and support base of the ANC? It's the working class and the poor.
This can help ensure that the ANC maintains a working class bias. Even though, as I've said, there are certain class forces within the ANC who are coming up now, openly, to say that we must develop a capitalist South Africa.
We have a very strong labour movement. It needs to ensure that it deploys that power to defend this democracy, but not a liberal bourgeois democracy. It must defend democracy that's oriented towards the working class!
What you are seeing now is a very fluid situation. Fluid, because the future can go either way depending on the strength of the two contending forces – capitalists and the working class.
I think it largely, though not exclusively, depends how the working class mobilises itself as a political force. The key task and challenge for the SACP now, is to mobilise the working class as a political force for itself.
We must ensure that within the next three to four years we fuse the working class movement and the socialist ideology with appropriate organisational campaigns. That that will decisively tilt the balance of forces in favour of the working class and its allies.
For many people within the labour movement the SACP is somehow an accomplice in what has happened in South Africa over the last four years. With many communists occupying key positions in government, it is argued that the party cannot absolve itself from what has happened in terms of the policy that has been pursued by the government.
We do take collective responsibility. However, we must not depart from the fact that there are certain things that are happening in government that we're unhappy about. But we believe that the only way to deal with that is through the Alliance processes and the Alliance structures. The resolution of those problems will depend on the strength that the working class itself has.
Government is subject to a whole range of pressures. I don't think that we should ignore that reality. There is the imperative of national reconciliation and national unity. We must not undermine that.
Government can't just do things its own way all the time. There are objective situations that might determine, for instance, that government makes certain compromises for the sake of defending our democracy. That is what comrades need to understand.
For instance, there are these discussions between the ANC and the IFP at the moment. I don't trust the IFP! I still believe that the IFP is a counter-revolutionary and an anti-working class organisation.
But if it means forging some kind of a relationship with the IFP so that we separate it from other counter-revolutionary forces, particularly the white right wing, we need to do that; provided we are clear about what we are doing.
How does the party deal with the fact that many communists in government are not only implementers of the policies which you've just said that the party's not in favour of, but speak passionately about some of these policies. Is there a contradiction between this and the anti-GEAR stance of the party?
The differences over GEAR should make us realise that there is a lot more that we do agree on in the Alliance.
The tasks we agree we have to do as the alliance are:
I myself, I'm a communist, I'm the chairperson of the parliamentary committee on education. I'm passionate about the education polices that we are implementing, because I think they're right. I think they're correct. I think that they're based on the reconstruction and development programme.
If you look at how the ANC has responded to issues raised by COSATU recently around the Eskom Amendment Bill, privatisation of municipal services, demutualisation and all other issues, one gets a distinct feeling that since the 10th SACP Congress, where the party and Cosatu came under criticism from President Mandela and Deputy President Mbeki - the ANC has drawn a line which says here - no further. There are no substantive concessions on what Cosatu raises, the ANC leading officials have also gone on a public offensive to criticise Cosatu and SACP. Do you get the same feeling?
We are not taking the criticism from the ANC, as they did at our party Congress, negatively. But we do think the tone of that criticism was unprecedented and very unfortunate. Raising criticisms in that manner does not contribute to dealing with the kinds of issues that we have to deal with. Instead it can lead to the hardening of positions.
We don't interpret the criticism as ‘the drawing of the line’. The SACP's response to that simply is this: we are an independent formation. We are not a watchdog. We are nobody's lapdog. We are neither the lapdog of the ANC, nor the lapdog of Cosatu.
We raised things at our Congress, Congress reaffirmed certain things that we stood by. If the ANC happens to disagree, we will have to go and discuss those things within the context of the Alliance.
But as the Alliance we do need to talk about how we handle public criticism, I think that it is important, because we are an Alliance.
But it must not be muzzling. There must be a difference between finding a way of handling public criticism and muzzling. As the SACP, we are not going to be muzzled by anybody.
I don't think that a line has been drawn. The fact that there are working groups now, and the Alliance Summit is likely to be held soon, is a sign that no lines are being drawn. In any case, you can't be in an Alliance and draw lines.
In the light of what happened at the 10th Congress of the SACP, the party’s Central Committee was given a mandate by Congress to arrange a bilateral meeting with the ANC leadership. Newspaper reports mentioned skirmishes between the party and ANC on the date of the meeting. Has the meeting taken place?
Unfortunately it hasn't taken place, although there is commitment on both sides. The report that the ANC was not willing to meet with us, was misleading. We just haven't had time, because we wanted a serious meeting to discuss a whole range of issues, particularly those issues that are related to what happened at our Congress.
The Central Committee has further mandated us to pursue that meeting, and also to raise our concerns about some of those criticisms raised by the ANC leadership. We thought that some of them were either biased or simply not well informed.
The Central Committee was very strong that we need to go and correct some of those impressions. But the aim of that bilateral is not just to correct each other’s perceptions; it's to identify real issues to deal with so we can move forward.
At the last Cosatu Congress there was a resolution on providing resources to the party. Has anything been forthcoming?
Slowly! We are busy discussing with all the affiliates. All the affiliates are positive; it's just a matter of time. We are hopeful that very soon - within the next month - we would have tied up everything.
The COSATU Congress resolution made mention of the establishment of SACP industrial units at different workplaces. Has there been any discussion on this issue within the party? What will the relationship be between these industrial units and union structures?
In our first Central Committee after the party Congress, this issue was raised. I've asked some comrades who are communists and Cosatu members, to develop a discussion document on this matter, as a matter of urgency. But preparatory work on this issue has been done.
With COSATU we're jointly producing a document on socialism. This will be going through to all COSATU structures so that we can set up socialist forums, industrial units and inform whatever activity is being done on the ground already by workers themselves.
We’ve said that SACP industrial units should not replace union structures -- shopstewards structures and Locals. Party industrial units should be forums where workers who are members of the party are able to come together and discuss key strategic political questions that could then inform whatever union work is being done.
Ideally, it would be good when forming industrial units to focus on different workplaces. Of course, in some other situations it would not be like that. You might want to bring together a number of factories in a locality and form an industrial unit that represents that entire industrial area. This approach would bring together workers from different sectors. The workers would be able to come together and discuss socialist politics, generally.
What reasons would you give to shop stewards who read this magazine to motivate them to join the SACP?
Well, first of all I think that the most important message for me is that those shopstewards should become agents for socialism.
It is important that shop stewards deal with union issues -- conditions of service, wages, challenging employers on retrenchments and so on -- but shopstewards should also be able to look beyond that.
The struggles in which unions engage, will never come to an end, as long as South Africa still remains a capitalist society. Shopstewards are a very important layer of not just the labour movement, but of the socialist movement as a whole. They are there, directly leading workers on the shopfloor. Shopstewards should see themselves as agents for socialism.
Shopstewards must also make an effort to educate themselves more about socialism. I'm not saying they aren't - but that's still a task.
Shopstewards must ensure that workers continue to support the communist party so that it is a strong party. They must make workers understand that the ultimate resolution of their problems is in a socialist South Africa, and that a socialist South Africa is not only possible, but it's absolutely necessary.
