Speaker's Notes for SACP Input at the ANC NEC Lekgotla

Monday, 5 August 2024

“And as in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality” — Karl Marx (1852) Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 

The reason we draw attention to this caution by Marx is that we think the ANC has serious questions to consider, to “…distinguish still more its phrases and fancies…” as a movement from “…its real organism…” and its “…real interests…”, its “…conception of…” itself from its “…reality”. I borrowed these words from the passage I just quoted and adapted them from Marx to outline the task I have proposed for the ANC to consider. This task involves developing a comprehensive evaluation of the May 2024 election outcomes and the 30 years of our democratic dispensation. We propose this task not only for the ANC but also for every component of our Alliance and broader movement.

We have already begun this exercise ourselves. The reason we are making this proposal for the ANC to consider is that, on behalf of the SACP, we have been given the opportunity to address this important meeting of the ANC.

In addition, as the SACP, we have made certain observations from our standpoint about the ANC, based on the dominant policy trajectory in the ANC-led government. Moreover, at the last Alliance Secretariat meeting held last week, we highlighted some points regarding the Alliance, particularly the necessity for its reconfiguration.

We will use this opportunity to compare the points we raised about the reconfiguration of the Alliance with the text of the Statement of Intent signed by the ANC and its GNU partners. We will also briefly touch comparatively on the implications of this Statement for the Alliance and its reconfiguration.

Allow us to start with some pertinent high-level policy issues. In line with the passage we quoted from Marx, I will base this brief policy reflection on what the ANC states in its Strategy and Tactics document, focusing on the problem of neoliberalism.

In the Strategy and Tactics document, the ANC says:

“The cause of social transformation in South Africa is taking place in a global environment characterised by contradictory tendencies in terms of human development and the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism.”

The ANC goes further to say:

“...the global economic crisis which started with the financial meltdown in 2007 underlines the flaws of neo-liberal ideology and praxis. The world is experiencing a poly-crisis reflected in: the rapacious conduct of finance capital, signs of secular stagnation in production and trade; degradation of the environment; and further marginalisation of regions in the periphery of global capitalism.

“Accompanying these multiple crises is the declining legitimacy of the political and business elites. This is a consequence of their inability to address the fundamental questions of social inequality, declining social ethics and mismanagement of such global challenges as migration... Narrow nationalism and chauvinism are on the ascendancy.”

In conclusion, on this this score, the ANC Strategy and Tactics states:

“An element of the poly-crisis is also the dearth of truly strategic leadership. Dominant ideological approaches seek to channel countries, regions and indeed all of humanity into one school of thought. Yet, establishment social sciences – including economics, politics, public communication and opinion surveys – lie scattered like flotsam in a sea of incredulity. They have been shattered by the lived experience of most of humanity. Neo-liberalism has lost its shine, and arguments for weak non-interventionist states have been exposed by responses of their very champions to the financial meltdown.”

Given what the ANC has stated in its Strategy and Tactics document, and taking our analytical cue from the passage we quoted from Marx, the question the ANC must reflect on is whether it has acted contrary to its stated positions by embracing neo-liberal policy prescriptions, particularly in macroeconomic policy. To answer this question, the ANC needs produce and scrutinise a comprehensive 30-year policy review of its own, perhaps apart from that of the government. 

There is an abundance of literature on the measures and forms of restructuring that constitute or stem from neo-liberal policy prescriptions, including those in the policy package known as the Washington Consensus. We reasonably believe that the ANC considered these issues before documenting its correctly conclusions in the Strategy and Tactics document, which clearly states the ANC’s opposition to neo-liberalism. In answering the question we have posed, the ANC faces the challenge of producing a compelling case that it has, in practice, adhered to its stated positions over the past 30 years of our democratic dispensation – especially through government policy.

As things stand, and this is our perspective, the ANC must acknowledge the contradictions between its stated opposition to neo-liberalism in its Strategy and Tactics document and the realities of key ANC-led government policies. This includes not only macro-economic policy but also certain aspects of micro-economic restructuring, such as the liberalisation of network infrastructure like electricity generation, rail, ports, water and telecommunication networks. In addition, the privatisation or auctioning off of the high-frequency broadband spectrum paved the way for the corporate capture of this productive national asset by profit-driven private capital accumulation. Neo-liberal policies in the ANC-led government do not align with the ANC’s stated opposition to neo-liberalism, an anti-thesis of the National Democratic Revolution. 

Also, as we all should know, neoliberalism attacks state participation in the economy, in favour of profit-driven capital accumulation interests in targeted sectors.

After the 2008 global economic crisis, state network sectors became a major target for neo-liberal agendas, as profit-driven capital accumulation interests sought new fields for the accumulation of society’s wealth on a capitalist basis. Targeting and opening up infrastructure networks that have hitherto been in the hands of the state of SOEs was a key neo-liberal policy direction. This approach was enforced by institutions like the IMF- and World Bank-backed OECD through their “recommendations”. The OECD outlined the neo-liberal policy reforms in its annual publication, Going for Growth: Economic Policy Reforms. Those interested can refer to the 2017 publication for specific recommendations for South Africa.

Where neoliberalism firmly establishes its hold, public entities in the economy, particularly in the productive sector, often fail. While corruption and state capture have certainly contributed to the failure of many public entities, neo-liberal policies and restructuring have also played a role in their decline. Neo-liberals have used these failures to politically attack the public entities and advocate for their privatization or sale. The report by UK university academics and researchers, titled The Great Train Robbery: Rail Privatisation and After, published in June 2013, highlights these issues in a profound way.

Neo-liberal attacks on state participation in the economy aim to replace it with competition among private capital accumulation interests for the maximum share of profits. Many neo-liberal policy reforms are designed to substitute state involvement with competition that prioritizes profit maximisation for private capital interests.

Take electricity generation as an example: after fully implementing neo-liberal policy reforms, competing private capital accumulation interests will emerge as a de facto collective monopoly in electric power generation. The decommissioning of old state-owned electric power stations, without a commensurate or greater state investment in new, environmentally friendly electric power generation capacity, will diminish state participation in electric power generation, converting the state from a producer to a procurer. 

We must also use this opportunity to highlight the connection between neo-liberalism and corruption, including state capture. This connection is evident in the way neo-liberalism drives the “tenderisation” of state functions or operations in public entities. As documented by the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, corruption predominantly manifests in procurement processes, particularly in tenders. 

On closer examination, it becomes clear that neo-liberalism is not opposed to state intervention per se. What it seeks is state intervention, but not on behalf of the working class – instead, it aims to secure state intervention to serve profit-driven private capital accumulation interests. The policy reforms that benefit private capital accumulation interests, which neo-liberal policies ultimately prioritise more often than not at the expense of the working class, are implemented through state intervention or the role of the state.

In developing a comprehensive evaluation of the May 2024 election outcomes, the ANC needs to candidly assess whether neo-liberalism has contributed to its continued decline. It is our view that it has. In major metropolitan areas or provinces where the working class is most concentrated, the ANC’s support has fallen significantly below 50 per cent. Although the working class benefited from commendable advancements in human and workers’ rights and social progress following our April 1994 democratic breakthrough, the working class has, on the other hand, experienced the negative impacts of neo-liberal restructuring in both the public and private sectors.

Outsourcing, which has led to workers being externalised and exploited by tender bosses, has severely impacted the affected workers. Attacks on collective bargaining, including those by the government due to its mishandling of the public service bargaining process in 2018, have also had a detrimental effect on the working class. 

In the private sector, neo-liberal restructuring, including worker retrenchments, has negatively impacted affected workers. As the May 2024 election campaign intensified, capitalist mining bosses seemed to be competing with each other in terms of retrenchments, all amidst a crisis-high unemployment rate. With an unemployment rate of 41.9 per cent, South African had a population of 12.1 million unemployed active and discouraged work seekers.

We can attribute the situation to COVID-19, the bursting of the global commodity super cycle of the 2000s, or even the global economic crisis of 2008. However, the extent to which these crises have impacted employment and unemployment in our economy reflects deeper, policy-related issues. Let us be clear: the lowest official unemployment rate in our democratic dispensation was 16.5 per in 1995. From the end of 1996 onward, unemployment surged to crisis-high levels above 20 per cent and has worsened over the years, never returning to 20 per cent, let alone falling below it. Throughout, the expanded unemployment rate that includes discouraged work seekers has been worse than the narrowly defined unemployment rate. 

Therefore, South Africa has been locked into a policy trajectory that has failed to address the post-1996 unemployment crisis, which is accompanied by high levels of income and wealth inequalities. The impacts of these issues remain racialised, gendered and spatialised, with people in rural areas – where there has been no industrialisation during either the colonial and apartheid eras or the 30 years of our democratic dispensation – being the most adversely affected.

There are many factors to consider, including factionalism, ethnic nationalism, corruption, and imperialist machinations aimed at removing the ANC from government. However, if we ignore the impacts of neo-liberalism, including high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality, and failures in government services provision, development and infrastructure maintenance by municipalities and spheres of government, we will not fully understand our electoral vulnerabilities, the reasons for the associated decline and the threats to our democratic sovereignty.

Turning to the question of Alliance reconfiguration, we developed several documents on this issue as Alliance partners. This effort culminated in 2019 with a common Alliance document on reconfiguration. To make a long story short, the ANC requested that we put the document’s implementation on hold until it had consulted with its branches at its NGC. We all know what happened thereafter.

If you examine the principles of consensus-seeking consultation outlined in the GNU partners’ Statement of Intent, you might ask why there were reservations in the ANC with the same principles, not least the necessity for meaningful and extensive consultation, regarding the reconfiguration of the Alliance. Think about this. The last Alliance Summit had was held nearly a decade ago, in 2015. Is this healthy? Other Alliance consultation mechanisms we agreed to in the Ekurhuleni I and II resolutions have since disappeared – that is, they have seen no implementation, and the Alliance Political Council, which we created in 2008, has become inconsistent, although, commendably, it functioned fairly well at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reconfiguration of the Alliance must rectify its weaknesses, fortify its strengths, address the threats the Alliance faces, make it more strategically relevant to seize the opportunities available and move with the times, through the principles of collective leadership and accountability. We need an urgent Alliance Political Council to address this and other issues.  

Given the negative impact of internal divisions on the ANC’s electoral performance, there can be no doubt that the ANC needs greater unity and a stronger Alliance than ever before to avoid further electoral decline. The leadership of the ANC should take this message to heart and re-commit to the reconfiguration of the Alliance as part of the essential unity project.

The ANC needs more than just its own renewal and unity – it requires the renewal and unity of the entire movement and stronger ties with the masses on the ground

Concerning the GNU, comrades might view it as a tactical manoeuvre. To be clear, we all agreed that securing power was a key task. As the SACP, we proposed a minority government with GNU features and expressed our reservations about neoliberalism and state capture, as represented organisationally and politically by the DA and the MKP.

That said, it is important for comrades to understand the strategic implications of tactics. Failing to recognise that there are tactics with strategic implications or consequences can lead to serious errors.

Except for a about two briefing sessions – in the form of Alliance Secretariat and one Alliance Political Council, the ANC effectively locked out the Alliance partners from the development of the GNU Statement of Intent and negotiations with other parties. This went against our agreement to include representatives of the Alliance partners in both the technical and negotiation committees. We will leave this matter here without further elaboration. 

That said, this ANC NEC Lekgotla has the opportunity to shape the direction of the Medium-Term Strategic Plan, which will guide the government for five years until 2029. The ANC’s May 2024 election manifesto outlines some of our key commitments, which we want to see implemented.

It is important to remind this meeting of our targets to reduce unemployment to 6 per cent, eradicate poverty in line with global development goals and radically reduce inequality, all by 2030. We are already falling short of these targets. If no policy changes are made, if the developmental macro-economic policy we committed to in the manifesto is not developed and implemented, and if we do not develop and implement a well-resourced industrial policy as in line with our manifesto commitments, we risk continued failure. Statements like “There will be no change”, promoted by the Minister of Finance, undermine the manifesto and perpetuate the ANC’s electoral decline. To be revolutionary, a movement must be committed to fundamental change. We must change everything that has failed to resolve the problems our people face. Repeating failed strategies in the hope of better outcomes is unwise.

The success of this ANC NEC Lekgotla depends on its ability to improve the living standards of our people and develop our country based on the shared strategy of the National Democratic Revolution.

Dominant sections of capital have clearly demonstrated their intentions by actively funding and participating in efforts to remove the ANC from the government. Subordinating the ANC’s revolutionary programme to the interests of these sections of capital will hinder the ANC’s ability to achieve its historical mission. The ANC needs to win back its support base. This requires a revolutionary programme both organisationally and through government policies.

Issued by the South African Communist Party,

Founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa.

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