Another December. Another political congress. Place: the now famous town of Polokwane. From 9 to 13 December, close to 1000 grassroots communist delegates will debate the role and positioning of the South African Community Party (SACP) in the new economic and political situation. As the biggest political gathering of communists in South Africa, the SACP’s 2^nd Special National Congress will be held at the same University of Limpopo where the historic Polokwane conference of the ANC took place only two years ago. What are the key challenges facing the congress?

When Amandla! interviewed comrade Jeremy Cronin on the eve of the last SACP Congress in July 2007, he said

“The Congress comes at a time when we all recognise that the post-1994 honeymoon is long over and that our country is at a critical crossroads. Hard and brave choices have to be made by the progressive movement in South Africa. And this year hopefully as the SACP, within the context of a ruling alliance, we can help the country cross the Rubicon. The direction of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is at stake. There is a chance of decisively advancing and consolidating and defending it. For a variety of reasons, there is also a chance we could throw away that opportunity.”

Indeed, hard and brave choices were made, with the long overdue ejection of Thabo Mbeki as president of the ANC and from the state presidency being the most important choices. But what opportunities and spaces exist for a working class and left advance where it matters? How will the SACP leadership exercise their newfound political power? Are we about to see a fundamental reconfiguration of power away from capital and its state?

The SACP discussion document released for this congress (entitled: “Building Working Class Hegemony on the Terrain of a National Democratic Struggle”) is an important point of reference for all concerned with the struggles of poor and working people.

 The SACP’s political analysis and position

For the first time since 1994, the SACP is close to if not at the very centre of political and executive power. From this new vantage point, the SACP discussion document spends a significant amount analysing the current political situation through the prism of developments in the ANC. The main purpose of this document is to assert the “relevance and vitality” of its long-standing strategic perspective that “a national democratic revolution (NDR) strategy as the most direct route to [a] socialist South Africa”. In summary, the SACP understanding of this reality is optimistic that the working class can win progressive changes given what is described as a “new climate for more open and tolerant debate”.

The document also warns of lurking dangers from capitalist interests within the ANC. In response to this, the SACP calls for a “politics of working class hegemony” in a situation which presents major opportunities for “a politics of mass-driven, state-led radical transformation on the terrain of a National Democratic Revolution”. There is insufficient attention on the power and role of capital.

 It’s the economy that matters

More than the political situation, it is the economy that matters. In this regard, the SACP discussion document starts with an excellent analysis of the global economic crisis and the possibilities for transformation of the South African economy it offers. For the SACP the global economic crisis presents an important opportunity for the ANC-led state to introduce transformative social and economic policies that can structurally transform the South African economy in order to overcome under-development.

Within this perspective the document puts forward five key proposals – these being a state-led industrial policy programme that prioritises job creation, the alignment of trade policy to industrial policy, the alignment of macro-economic policies to a new developmental growth path, an effective state planning capacity, the strategic deployment and coordination of state companies to advance a different developmental growth path, with a particular focus on infrastructure investment. Good enough, so far.

But how does this relate to reality on the ground? A telling moment was the delineation of policy options chosen by the Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordan, when he released the three-year Medium Term Budget Policy Framework (MTBDPF) in parliament at the end of October. Whilst the SACP and COSATU have focused their attention on clipping Trevor Manuel’s powers, the MTBDPF was a clear statement confirming continuity with the neo-liberal GEAR economic policies. For its part, the SACP positively acclaimed this MTBPF even expressing satisfaction with the punted 7.2% budget deficit and funding of the public infrastructure investment programme as indicative of a shift from GEAR. These two measures are not transformative in any sense. As the SACP should understand from its excellent analysis of the global economic crisis, state counter-cyclical measures are required by capital in order to overcome the recession.

Even more important will be the content of the public infrastructure programme: Will it be economic infrastructure that transforms apartheid geography and economic flows or will it be infrastructure that reduces costs for business?

In order to decisively deal with the inordinate class power of capital that is rooted in the monopoly ownership of the economy and the power of finance capital, the SACP should be leading a concerted fight for the introduction of prescribed assets legislation to direct investment by financial capital, state control of currency exchange rate, and ensuring effective exchange controls as part of a longer-term fight for the socialisation of key industries.

Also important are industrial policy, trade policy, and inflation targeting. When it comes to industrial policy, decisive action is required now, the most important being effective and adequate state support for worker takeovers and ownership of failing companies in the key sectors of the economy that are affected by the global economic crisis. Also key here is a decisive shift to a zero-carbon economy that green socialists elsewhere have argued is the basis for mass employment and equity on an ecologically sustainable basis.

On the social policy and infrastructure the state should have introduced a universal basic income grant, increased expenditure for health and education (to rehabilitate collapsing infrastructure and to make space for the National Health Insurance (NHI), a massive housing programme that should be undertaken to overcome the segregated cities and towns. Instead of a privatised Bus Rapid Transport system, the state should introduce a decent public transport system based on the expansion of the rail and bus system which integrates the townships at the periphery of the city and the rural areas. This social and infrastructure expenditure would be financed by the withdrawal of massive subsidies that go to capital, prescribed assets and raising levels of corporate tax.

For its part, the SACP discussion document merely calls for the defence of the public healthcare system (including the struggle to reverse the contracting out of key services), the proper compensation of workers, the overcoming of corruption by senior officials, and active community participation in hospital boards and other participatory structures. This is a limited perspective which does not recognise the continued impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and does not sufficiently take into account the extent and scope of the public health crisis and the resources needed.

Alongside other measures, the above perspectives would challenge property relations that the 1994 “democratic breakthrough” failed to resist. For its part, the SACP discussion document does not raise these concrete economic policy options. This also casts doubt on the SACP’s political will, strategy, capacity and ability to lead social mobilisation to secure a fundamental break with neo-liberal policies and ultimately, capitalism.

 Rural development policy: eye off the ball

Government’s new rural development policy framework is important for the SACP. However, the discussion document merely celebrates the “the dedicated attention to rural development (one of five key priorities in our election manifesto), and the establishment of a new Department of Rural Development” and calls for political work to “ensure a working class hegemony over the process of an accelerated and integrated rural development processes”.

Yet it should be acknowledged that the rural development policy framework seeks to provide better social services in the same apartheid homeland zones and some level of support to new farmers. It is without a wider agrarian reform policy that would redirect the country’s agricultural resources, systems and institutions towards a new agrarian spatial economy. Nor does it set out a transformative vision of the alternative structure and character of a future rural agrarian economy. It cannot just be an aggregation of localised demands, initiatives and projects. It cannot be equated with “service delivery” which refers to the normal business of government, rather than strategic, catalytic role of the “developmental state”.

The voice, weight and impact of the SACP should be felt in the rural development policy debates. Should rural development just create a more mixed farming sector in which broad-based accumulation takes place? Are smallholders the main route to transformation of the rural sector? Rigorous and considered left perspectives are required on how to deconcentrate ownership of key productive resources - land, water, capital – and to democratise the agro-food system through alternative food production regimes, transformed markets, regulation and incentives. Other issues that should be considered are: what kind of support is needed for production and marketing for smallholders, and what all this means for undoing the neo-liberal inspired deregulation and liberalisation of agriculture? It is not only the draft rural development policy framework or the MTBPF that are silent on these questions but also the alliance left.

This critique is to say that the SACP has not shown any will to use the post-Polokwane policy space it publicly claims. Further, it is important to note the absence of an organised rural social force that can determine the terrain of the rural development policy debate. Given this absence, the SACP should be playing a strategic role in this debate whilst also working on the ground to build the requisite mass base. However, the silence of the SACP discussion document and effective SACP absence from rural struggles demonstrate a lack of political capacity and will.

 Where are the people?

As Cronin said in a letter to Amandla!, “through a combination of effective government interventions and public campaigning, we will be able to make progress (and also illustrate the need for a developmental state working with mass power)”. Indeed, the post-Polokwane situation required the building of a mass movement around basic demands and the policy perspectives argued above. Instead, what we see are components of the mass movement concentrated on winning piecemeal concessions, and an SACP that does not give attention and importance to mass mobilisation.

The SACP has led important mass mobilisation focusing on the financial sector and land reform. But the strategy followed in these important campaigns has harnessed mass energies towards boardroom negotiations and far away from sustained mass struggle around concrete demands. We have to ask how workers are empowered by marching to the top of the mountain only to be led down without strengthened organisation and concrete gains.

Key here is direct social mobilisation to challenge capital and build capacity for an anti-systemic economic transformation programme. The challenge is to build a social base to contest existing power relations, deepen democracy, challenge and transform the capitalist state we have, and win transformative economic and social policies. Sustained mass politics means the independent self-capacity and critical consciousness of ordinary people to organise themselves, use their power and act in their own interests thereby challenging systems and building alternatives. Such an approach to building mass participatory politics as a counter-power would deal with “the new elitist tendency .. [seeking]… to lay its hands on these instruments to advance its own factional class interests” as identified by the SACP discussion document. No amount of alliance insider trading will deliver such an outcome.

If the SACP focus was not on this insider trading, it would be uniquely placed to lead the important work of building organised mass power on a sustained participatory, counter-hegemonic and autonomous basis. This would require an SACP that has the rigorous analysis, the political will, programme, resources, activists, patience and openness to work with others and learn from the people.

 The need for a counter-hegemonic left pole

The SACP’s 2^nd Special National Congress is unlikely to see a rejection of the main strategic perspectives advanced in the discussion document. Furthemore it is unlikely that the congress will witness the near-revolution that the 2007 congress saw when grassroots delegates were overwhelmingly in favour of an SACP that contests elections in its own right. For sure, the congress will successfully contain potential elements within the SACP from overtly challenging the capitalist government in which it serves. Beyond the congress, this requires an even weaker SACP which is not embedded in the power of ordinary people.

This raises a difficult challenge for the non-SACP left as well as a wide range of progressive anti-capitalist forces that may be disaffected by the various social, political and economic crises facing our country. Whilst the SACP remains the most important and largest political party of the left, and to which many poor and working people look up to, can the hopes and aspirations of poor and working people solely rest on it?

By Mazibuko Jara