Moses Kotane (1905-1978), former Secretary-General of the South African Communist Party (SACP), is the subject of a biography written by the recently passed Brian Bunting (1920-2008).
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
by Buti Manamela
The national question and nation-building
The issues of nation-formation and nation-building will remain in our society for a while given the fact that racism was and still is, rooted in all institutions of society. However, the resolution of the national question cannot remain a permanent feature of our society. If this were to be the case, the historic mission and mandate of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) would be defeated, mainly because it is about attaining a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.
The 2007 Strategy and Tactics document of the ANC says:
"The main content of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is the liberation of Africans in particular and Blacks in general from political and socio-economic bondage." It goes further to declare that this, "…means uplifting the quality of life of all South Africans, especially the poor, the majority of whom are African and female."
It is important to emphasise that the target for the NDR is the poor because the objective of our struggle is to unite all the oppressed in our country for the formation of one nation.
The 1969 ANC Morogoro Conference succinctly confirmed the need for the unity of the oppressed and their drive towards defeating Apartheid in the following lines:
"The African…is not the only oppressed national group in South Africa. The two million strong Coloured community and three-quarter million Indians suffer varying forms of national humiliation, discrimination and oppression. They are part of the non-white base upon which rests white privilege. As such they constitute an integral part of the social forces ranged against white supremacy. Despite deceptive and, often, meaningless concessions they share a common fate with their African brothers and their own liberation is inextricably bound up with the liberation of the African people."
The objective linked to this is not only the defeat of white supremacy, but also that if we were to advance nation building and nation formation - we also have the task of "…liberating the white community from the false ideology of racial superiority and the insecurity attached to oppressing others". It is important to note that this is not merely a tactical consideration but a strategic objective to liberate the most oppressed of all "in the league of the oppressed" whilst in the process "liberating the oppressor".
"But none of this detracts from the basically national context of our liberation drive. In the last resort it is only the success of the national democratic revolution which - by destroying the existing social and economic relationships - will bring with it a correction of the historical injustices perpetrated against the indigenous majority and thus lay the basis for a new - and deeper internationalist - approach." (Morogoro: 1969)
Therefore, the attainment of a national democratic society can only lie in the destruction of Apartheid's social and economic relations and the continued existence of such relations. There are clear signs that the form and content of our national democratic revolution is still facing a long path towards attainment.
Historically, the twin threats to this strategic objective in our society and our movement have been "white racism" on the one hand; and narrow African chauvinism on the other hand. These twin threats have always manifested themselves in the super-structural institutions of our society. It would be suicidal to deny the continued presence of racism in our society, but even more dangerous for the attainment of national unity and nation-formation is the denial of narrow African chauvinism.
The danger of these twin threats is articulated in Nelson Mandela's famous Statement from the Dock:
"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
These twin threats are not on an equal pedestal. The dominant contradiction that faces our society is national contradiction, whilst the fundamental one is class contradiction. Emphasis should also be made that the reason why we need to deal with both in almost equal terms is that the narrow African chauvinism is not an effective tool of defeating racism, but can also act to reinforce racial tensions as people may withdraw into their racial cocoons.
In essence, the task of "liberation of Africans in particular and blacks in general" lies in the success of the movement in using the platform of building a non-racial society. The two, meaning, the task and the platform, are mutually inclusive and interconnected and failure to maintain this interconnection exposes the inability to
overcome white racism, on the one hand, and black chauvinism, on the other.
Let us look at both threats each in turn. In our society there still exists white racism that we should confront, expose and deal with. The figures released by Commission on Employment Equity (CEE) shows that white people occupy 74% of senior positions in the private sector. This is a serious indictment on white capital's commitment to honour their role in nation-building and nation-formation.
Fraught race relations will remain for some time in a nation where everything, from division of labour, composition of national sporting teams, political preferences, cultural preferences and every social facet of our life was historically determined on the basis of race. We need to intensify progressive nationalism and ensure that it triumphs against this.
This means affirming blacks in the economy, changing the division of labour at both junior and senior level in both the public and private sector; transforming social relations in education, access to health, shelter and also ensuring that we begin to confront problems of equality and wealth distribution by breaking the back of racism and racial exclusion.
Narrow African chauvinism is a tendency and dangerous phenomenon of seeking to redefine the objective of the movement at different periods as installation of African majoritarianism. The National Liberation Movement has always been able to transcend beyond this narrow perception and strategic objective of the NDR as it recognised that ours is Colonialism of a Special Type.
Those who held this "elitist" view always combined their narrow objective with an anti-communist agenda that sought to isolate and distinguish between "white revolutionaries and white reactionaries". This elitist tendency has always hid its narrow objective under the veil of seeking to represent the interests of the black majority. The tendency emerged with the breakaway of the PAC from the ANC by Leballo; the expulsion of the Group of Eight immediately after the Morogoro Conference; and now recently, the breakaway by Shikota. (For more on this, see Mavimbela's article titled "The Shikota Phenomenon - A Counter-Revolutionary Tendency").
Thus, the Strategy and Tactics of the ANC from Morogoro declared that:
"Those belonging to the other oppressed groups and those few white revolutionaries who show themselves ready to make common cause with our aspirations, must be fully integrated on the basis of individual equality. Approached in the right spirit these two propositions do not stand in conflict but reinforce one another. Equality of participation in our national front does not mean a mechanical parity between the various national groups."
It further went on to declare that the "Coloured and Indian people have often in the past, by their actions, shown that they form part of the broad sweep towards liberation."
Morogoro further declared the elitist nature of those who opposed the main content of the NDR by declaring that "our nationalism must not be confused with chauvinism or narrow nationalism of a previous epoch. It must not be confused with the classical drive by an elitist group among the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so that they can replace the oppressor in the exploitation of the mass."
This tendency can only lead to, and may even strike concessions for, either modernised forms of black or white Bantustans . They may not see the need to break the barriers, economic or political that is entrenched in many localities in our country. They may even seek to promote some of these tendencies. The main reason why it would seek to do so would be to lazily assume elitist leadership of society by wishing away whites in order to easily attain a "nation".
Equally, this tendency stems from the narrow definition of nation as being defined through language, race and culture whilst undermining progressive elements and the realistic challenges of the national formation in our society. Because of its backward nature, like its twin of white racism, it may pretend and sugarcoat some of its more conservative demands with legitimate demands for nation building.
But this tendency is even more dangerous for us as the youth as we face the challenge of nation building for a future South Africa. Our role as youth formations is to lead all young people, irrespective of their culture, without patronising them into constituting quotas or seeking to attain parity. The Progressive Youth Alliance has, for instance, the task of winning the coloured and white population in the Western Cape over to the objectives of the NDR instead of seeking to outgrow them by importing young black South Africans from the Eastern Cape.
It is a challenge also for us to win over, and not to hate, young white South Africans in our universities to appreciate our objectives of a national democratic society as a way of "liberating [them] from white supremacist ideology". We also have the task of winning over the Indian youth in KwaZulu Natal on the same objective. We need to accept them into our fold without question their credentials or scaring them off with limited, narrow and elitist "black paranoia".
The progressive and epochal Morogoro (1969) document states that:
"Until then [the attainment of liberation], the national sense of grievance is the most potent revolutionary force which must be harnessed."
And what will easily constitute the national sense of grievance remains the class question. This, of course, is the debate for another time.
Buti Manamela is an ANC Member of Parliament and the National Secretary of the Young Communist League of South Africa
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