Charlie Kimber

Prison to parliament

From Socialist Review, No. 174, April 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

Charlie Kimber charts the ANC’s rise to power and asks: what can they deliver?

When the ANC wins the South African elections at the end of this month it will be a victory for everyone who has fought against apartheid. The party which the ruling National Party vowed in 1985 would be ‘crushed like the terrorists they are’ will become the government. The defeat of the racists will be a cause for real celebration. But what sort of change will Nelson Mandela and the ANC bring to the black majority?

Founded in 1912, the ANC was dominated by traditional leaders – chiefs – and intellectuals outraged at the increasing racial domination of whites. In particular they wanted to organise against the removal of the right of non-whites to sit in parliament, and the preparations for a Land Act which would restrict black ownership to 10 percent of the country.

For 35 years ANC leaders stressed ‘Christian values’, non-violence and virulent anti-Communism. Their preferred method of resistance to racism was to petition the British government for equality. Predictably it brought no response.

But the ANC remained true to its principles. Timid and respectable, it turned its back on the growing labour unrest after the First World War. The mining houses and financiers repeatedly used ANC leaders to persuade workers to give up strikes in favour of negotiation and ‘discipline’.

Had it not been transformed, such an organisation would have died after the Second World War. Large numbers of black workers had been recruited into the factories and felt a new power. The miners’ strike of 1946, although defeated, demonstrated a new mood among organised labour. In addition thousands of blacks had fought in a war which was supposed to be about freedom. Instead they returned to find preparations for the full implementation of an utterly rigid policy of racial segregation – apartheid.

A new generation of leaders demanded new methods of struggle and a new spirit of resistance. ‘We are no longer going to beg, we are going to take,’ said one speaker to an ANC conference in 1949. The shift in rhetoric enabled the ANC to remain a viable organisation. It launched a series of mass, non-violent protests designed to attract blacks of all classes into the struggle for democracy.

During the 1960s and 1970s the ANC faced extreme state repression and was virtually annihilated in many parts of the country. It was revived only on the back of the rising worker organisation of the early 1970s and the Soweto students’ revolt of 1976 – even though it led neither the strikes nor the uprising. By the 1980s it was firmly established as the leading anti-apartheid force, both nationally and internationally. The heroic sacrifices of its militants – its leaders refusal to bow down before imprisonment, torture and death – meant the large majority of black South Africans looked to it to bring democracy.

But it always remained a nationalist rather than a socialist movement. It stressed negotiations rather than revolution as the way to bring freedom. It insisted on the need to keep blacks of all classes in a single movement and for the working class to moderate its demands in order to maintain this alliance. Throughout its recent history the ANC has walked a tightrope. In order to secure change from a brutal and determined government, it has been forced to mobilise at least something of the power of the masses and of workers. Without strikes, without huge demonstrations, without the threat to overthrow not only apartheid but capitalism as well, the National Party would never have come to the negotiating table.

But at the same time ANC leaders have always feared that matters would get out of hand, that the masses would not heed their leaders when the time came to stop protesting and start voting for a parliament working inside a black led capitalism.

Since his release in 1990 Nelson Mandela has walked this tightrope brilliantly. He has focused the ANC on talks with the government and allowed nothing to obstruct the path to compromise with de Klerk. But he has also used the pressure of mass action to improve the terms of that compromise and to act as a safety valve for the frustration and the fury of militants who have suffered too much for too long. Mandela has achieved the remarkable feat of remaining by far the most popular black leader and also being the presidential choice of an overwhelming majority of businessmen.

At key points Mandela’s leadership has come under serious strain. After the Boipatong massacre in June 1992 which saw 41 people shot or hacked to death by Inkatha vigilantes backed by the security forces, all the impatience with the slow pace of change bubbled to the surface. Mandela, criticised by the youth for acting ‘like a lamb while the government butchers our people’, called off the talks. The ANC supporters in the trade unions called for strikes. But as soon as the emergency was passed, the negotiations started again.

An even greater trial was the murder of ANC and Communist Party leader Chris Hani a year ago. Spontaneous strikes and monster demonstrations involved millions. The whole country was in ferment. The movement sent a shudder through the capitalists who had envisaged a relatively stable movement from apartheid capitalism to capitalism led by the ANC.

But, as the American Business Week wrote:

‘The ANC passed a test of leadership ... Amid the turbulence it was Nelson Mandela who played the role of statesman. In prime television time for three nights he appealed for calm. Business leaders are beginning to appreciate the ANC’s role.

‘Companies bankrolled many of the aspects of Chris Hani’s funeral. The big mining companies jointly paid more than £140,000 for this purpose while Coca Cola donated soft drinks. “Business has to strengthen the position of that section of the ANC leadership struggling to achieve a relatively stable transition,” explains one senior mining executive.’

The ANC’s election manifesto contains some quite radical promises. It pledges to launch a public works programme employing 2.5 million people over the next ten years to provide houses, water, electricity, clinics, schools and roads. It says there will be tax reduction for everyone earning less than £800 a month (the large majority of black people) and the removal of VAT from basic goods.

But at the same time ANC leaders have made it quite clear there is not going to be any assault on capitalism. In a speech to white farmers, Mandela insisted they had nothing to fear from ANC rule and that their land would not be nationalised. He told businessmen in London, ‘We have issued an investment code which provides there will be no expropriation of property or investments. Foreign investors will be able to repatriate dividends and profits.’ The ANC’s mineral and energy policy coordinator, Pallo Jordan, said last month that nationalisation of mining companies or mineral rights was not under consideration. There is talk that Derek Keys, the present finance minister, and Chris Stals, the chairman of the reserve bank, will be asked to stay on after the elections.

These major concessions to capitalism and increasing unease about how much workers will get from the new government has led to several union conferences discussing the idea of a workers’ party separate from the ANC. The 170,000 strong Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union called on the Cosatu trade union federation to break its links with the ANC after the elections. Against the advice of its leadership, the 220,000 strong National Union of Metalworkers voted to consider a workers’ party and to sever ties with an ANC led government of national unity.

None of this means that workers will not vote ANC. Above all else there is no mass alternative. In addition many workers will want to see the ANC tested in practice before they think about abandoning it.

But it does mean that workers have already begun to move on from asking how to get rid of apartheid to questioning what sort of society will follow the elections. The ANC will remain what it has always been – a nationalist movement whose political direction is dominated by the people who want to see a black capitalism. Given the immense works required to improve black living standards, the ANC’s policies are likely to come under strain in the relatively near future.

It may not be very long before we see the first strikes by workers demanding more than an ANC government is ready to deliver. When that happens the prospects for the emergence of a genuinely socialist current will be massively increased.

Nelson Mandela made a remarkable speech last September. Addressing the Cosatu conference he threw away his notes at the end of his address and declared:

‘How many times has the liberation movement worked together with workers and then at the moment of victory betrayed the workers? There are many examples of that in the world. It is only if the workers strengthen their organisation before and after liberation that you can win. If you relax your vigilance you will find that your sacrifices have been in vain. You just support the African National Congress only so far as it delivers the goods. If the ANC government does not deliver the goods, you must do to it what you have done to the apartheid regime.’

He is absolutely right to point to the failings of movements like the ANC. The task is to build a socialist organisation which can offer an alternative to it.

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