A-Infos (en) South Africa, Zabalaza* #6 April 2005 - THE PRESIDENT FROM THE SKIES vs. THE AUNTIE WHO SAYS "NO!"

[a-infos@ainfos.ca]

From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca

The growth of new social movements in post-apartheid South Africa has attracted a lot of media, academic and police
attention over the past decade. The Centre For Civil Society
(CCS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal organised the Social
Movements Conference to bring together a range of academics,
activists and representatives of the COSATU, SANCO and the
South African Communist Party (SACP) to debate five broad
themes that cut across 17 different movements. Two main points
of debate emerged.

PRO-GOVERNMENTAL vs. ANTI-GOVERNMENTAL FORCES: IS THERE A POSSIBLE COMMON "LEFT PLATFORM"?

     Project co-director Adam Habib (Human
Sciences Research Council, HSRC) in his
introductory remarks stated that: "The
social movements occupy a continuum
from the counter-hegemonic to the rights-
based," from those which advocated "the
overthrow of the state and the establish-
ment of socialism" to those that worked
within the system. Patric Bond (Centre for
Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal,
CCS) said he saw this as "a temporary
problem" that would be resolved either by a
combined state strategy of conces-
sions and repression, with the
resulting demobilisation of the new
social movements, or by a split in
the ANC Alliance itself.
     Such a split has been long antic-
ipated by opponents of the Alliance
or of some of its constituent organi-
sations, but the Alliance has shown
itself to be resilient against such a
challenge. Certainly, it appears that
a dramatic vertical split, separating
the Alliance into its components, is
highly unlikely while a less obvious,
slower horizontal split, with all
Alliance partners bleeding member-
ship at the grassroots level, is a
process that is already underway.
     It is interesting that the state-as-
entity in its own right (as distinct
from the government) has become a
point of debate once again, espe-
cially in the light of how it either
accelerates or impedes social
progress. Activists' ideological attitude
towards the failed state-capitalist command
economies of the former Soviet Bloc tend to
colour their views of the state.
     In the red corner, the most outspoken
critics of the "democratic" and "develop-
mental" nature of the state and current gov-
ernment policies were Anti-Eviction
Campaign (AEC) militant Ashraf Cassiem,
independent researcher Ashwin Desai,
Peter Dwyer of the Alternative Information &
Development Centre (AIDC), Anti-
Privatisation Forum (APF) spokesperson
Dale McKinley, and Landless People's
Movement (LPM) national organiser
Mangaliso Kubheka. Their basic position
was that massive job-losses, water & elec-
tricity cut-offs, all under the ANC's Growth,
Employment And Redistribution (GEAR)
economic austerity programme were hurt-
ing the poor, and that the government had
unreasonably turned its guns and dogs
against those protesting this situation.
     In the yellow corner, the most outspo-
ken critics of the supposed "imposition" of
foreign socialist ideology onto the social
movements were Michael Sachs, of the
office of the ANC secretary-general, SACP
spokesperson Mazibuko Jara, Young
Communists League (YCL) executive Buti
Manamela, Donovan Williams of the SA
National Civics Organisation (SANCO), and
Neil Coleman of COSATU. Their basic
position was that the ANC government had
made massive strides over the past decade
in securing labour, gender and basic ameni-
ties rights despite the crippling legacy of
apartheid, and that the social movements'
anger at government was misdirected,
becoming, by opposing the ANC's new
democratic order, de facto anti-democratic,
so they should rather join forces.

picture: Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee march against
   electricity cut-offs,

    Sihle Mkhize, of the Association for
Rural Advancement (AFRA) and a board
member of the National Land Committee
(NLC), noted that the new social move-
ments "were described as ultra-Leftist, but
their activities were largely within the ambit
of the [South African] Constitution." Mkhize
recalled a point made earlier by McKinley
(APF) that despite the ANC's attempts to
  riminalize the social movements, 99% of
all criminal charges brought against
activists over the past 10 years, some for
offences as serious as arson and attempted
murder, had resulted in acquittals.
     The ARN noted that while the social
movements of the apartheid era had been
established as a deliberate anti-state count-
er-power (popular civics, street committees,
militia etc), the new social movements were
often springing up in massive squatter
camps where the state simply did not exist,
bar perhaps the odd police raid for illegal
immigrants. People with no experience of
the state other than a policeman's boot
once in a while had either no, or at the very
least, an estranged, relationship with the
state, but it was really the vacuum of
any state structure in these areas
that generated the development of
mutual aid movements to address
social concerns where the state had
no capacity.
    Thus many social movements
were extra-state rather than anti-
state, a product of vacuum rather
than of adversarial relations, as they
have often been seen by the ruling
party. In other words, they have
adopted a "counter-hegemonic"
position out of necessity, not ideolo-
gy. The formation, development,
structure, aims and alliances of such
movements were markedly different
from those in more formal serviced
areas: the difference being between
people fighting for access to water
and those fighting against cut-offs.

Firoz Khan (University of
Stellenbosch) made a similar point,
noting that the new social movements
sprang up as a result of the "deficiencies of
developmental planning practice", of the
disjuncture in democratisation of the
apartheid state that saw "citizens still suffer
routine violation of their rights" despite their
"formal status".
     Trevor Ngwane (Soweto Electricity
Crisis Committee, SECC) said that the ANC
had been attempting to disrupt the realign-
ment of the working class - as a class in its
own right with its own identity, separate
from the interests of the expanded bour-
geoisie - by diversions such as sport and
patriotism, but that "the unions, COSATU
and the social movements must oppose
this."
     He earlier said that: "The ANC leads the
attack on the working class. That is
notwithstanding the good that it has done.
This does not preclude alliances with
COSATU and SANCO rank-and-file. The
ANC has found itself having to rely on
heavy-handed policies instead of hegemo-
ny. In South Africa, there is race identity,
nationalism, gender, class, youth, etc.
What we need is a `new person' to over-
throw capitalism - and this will only happen
through struggle."
     Ngwane's point was taken up by Sachs
(ANC), who suggested that alliances could
be struck between the social movements
and progressive members of the adminis-
tration, saying: "Surely, the Jo'burg City
Council is not a monolithic bloc of neo-liber-
al guys waging a war on the poor? The
political elite is not the same as the eco-
nomic elite." He noted that the recent
Diepsloot "rebellion", as he termed it, over
rumours of the forced removal of a shack
settlement north of Johannesburg, had
been waged in part between local ANC
and SANCO factions.
     But he warned against the
"European proposition" that what mat-
tered today was no longer the contest
between Right and Left, but between
"centres of power and the periphery".
He claimed that the ANC government
had a higher expenditure on social
services than European governments
at the height of their welfare states, so
the government could not be regarded
as a "mechanism for neo-liberalism".
     The theme of some form of
engagement between social move-
  1
ments and the Alliance was probably
best expressed by Coleman
(COSATU) who noted: "One shouldn't
gloss over serious differences [but] we
need to distinguish between strategic and
tactical alliances. We need to engage.
There is no monolithic state, no monolithic
government or monolithic Alliance... We
need to build a Left platform within the ANC
and the Alliance and without it. In 2002, rel-
atively progressive decisions were made at
the ANC Congress."
     Coleman earlier provided the delegates
with a brief historical sketch, from
COSATU's perspective, of recent ideologi-
cal shifts in the Alliance, saying: "The peri-
od from 1996 [the year of the ANC's shift
from the social-democratic Redistribution
and Development Programme to the neolib-
eral GEAR] until 2001, COSATU was ham-
mered by Right-wing forces in the ANC
[some of whom even wanted to] cause a
split in the Alliance, but in 2001 and 2002,
those forces were defeated. Then from
2002 until now, we've focussed on issues of
economic policy. And we made a break-
through yesterday on the anti-terror legisla-
tion. The possibility of a new developmen-
tal path is being explored."
     Coleman claimed that "COSATU has
relied on the power of its constituency,
 rather than on its historical relationship with
 [the ANC] government." His overarching
 message to social movements was that
 with "a refusal to engage, the danger is that
 you cede the ground to other forces.
 Without a national platform between Left
 forces and a Left-of-centre government, all
 your gains are under threat." Bond sug-
 gested that a new common Left platform
 could be "de-commodification", based on a
 combined struggle for free basic services,
 and against cost-recovery, privatisation and
 their offspring.

picture: 1999: Protesting the Johannesburg Council's
 neoliberal Igoli 2002

     The point was made earlier by Sakhela
 Buhlungu (Sociology of Work Programme,
 SWOP, at Wits University, who produced
 the study on the APF) that COSATU largely
 addressed the concerns of the fully-
 employed, while the social movements
 focussed largely on the unemployed, leav-
 ing casualised labour unrepresented.
 Coleman responded that "within our affili-
 ates, there is an increasing engagement
 with casuals." This suggested to some del-
 egates that flexibilised labour was a possi-
 ble field of convergence between the organ-
 ised labour and social movements. Peter
 Alexander (Centre for Sociological
 Research, Rand Afrikaanse Universitieit,
 RAU) said that the self-defined working
 class was expanding to include beggars,
 sex-workers and home-keepers, but
 warned that the broader the concept of the
 class became, the further one moved from
 the Marxist labour theory of value.
     Alexander emphasised the fact that
 COSATU had recently been able to
 mobilise marches of some 100,000 workers
 around the public sector wage negotiations,
 so the social movements could ill afford to
 divide the working class by ignoring them.
 Dinga Sikwebu (organiser, National Union
 of Metalworkers of South Africa, NUMSA, at
 Iskor) said: "My interest is in the unity of the
 working class... it's easy to say `NUMSA is
 a sweetheart union', but why are our mem-
 bers in Soweto not finding themselves in
 the APF?"
     Buhlungu (SWOP) noted that organised
 labour and the social movements could at
 least co-exist peacefully in parallel, "instead
 of shouting at each other as if they are con-
 esting the same things." But Cassiem
(AEC) pointed out that a conceptual gap
existed between the way social movements
andorganisedlabour    approached
alliances, saying that the AEC had made
approaches to COSATU, but COSATU had
"wanted leadership-to-leadership contacts,
while we want to access the floor." He
warned that while the Alliance partners
wanted to disregard the social movements,
their own memberships would decline if
they ignored the issues being raised by the
poor.
     Pieterse recalled a quote that "the bal-
lot-box is the enemy of revolutionaries", but
the debate is far from resolved. The most
recent and controversial example of co-
operation between social movement and
Alliance forces is the decision by the LPM
to join the SACP's "Red October" land
reform campaign. This came in for some
withering criticism, and was staunchly
defended in turn. This could be viewed as
the first of Pieterse's forms of engagement:
pressing for a national land summit in
partnership with an Alliance member,
while mobilising the peasantry
autonomously at the base.
 Desai (independent) said: "This
LPM thing confuses me... is it entryism
into the SACP to turn it into a commu-
nist organisation?" This raised a lot of
laughs. Someone else (my handwrit-
ing failed me here) asked whether the
LPM saw it as likely that the SACP
would go as far as land invasions if
necessary, stressing that they would
eventuallybecome necessary.
Kubheka (LPM) said the LPM's "No
Land, No Vote" campaign earlier this
year had seen President Thabo Mbeki
"coming down from the skies begging
for votes. The LPM is not going to be
aligned with any political party... If the
SACP is genuine, we're with them, but if
not, even if the train is going 200km/h, we'll
jump off."
     Kubheka said: "Only if the SACP is with
us are they a true communist party. They
mustn't wear the T-shirt of Ché Guevara if
they are playing, because that man wasn't
playing!" Manamela (YCL) appealed for a
common front, saying that the "unity of the
UDF [United Democratic Front] lead to the
defeat of racial oppression. If we fight, we'll
never get anywhere." McKinley responded
that the basis of unity had to be a class
position, one that the Alliance had "buried"
since democracy.
     So if I could suggest a possible resolu-
tion to this debate (though none was drawn
collectively by the conference), it is that
both "sides" recognise that their opposites
are not monolithic and that a common Left
programme is certainly possible - at least at
rank-and-file level, and especially desirable
between the Social Movements Indaba
(SMI) umbrella formation and other social
movements on the one hand and COSATU
and other organised labour on the other.
     Clearly, the SMI sees COSATU's mem-
bership of the Alliance as bedevilling the
possibility of this realignment taking place,
while COSATU sees itself as sufficiently
autonomous of the ANC and powerful
enough in its own right for this not to be a
problem. In terms of terrain, there appears
to be definite reasons for the two forces to
converge expand to deal with the concerns
of casualised and self-employed labour,
and with the common theme of decommod-
ification. This convergence, it must be
pointed out, aspires to be horizontal (within
the working class) and not vertical (a cross-
class pact). Now that I have dealt with the
main point of convergence, let us examine
the main point of divergence, as phrased by
Bond:

INSURGENT AUTONOMISM OF
THE MULTITUDE vs. PROGRA-
MATIC SOCIALISM

     Bond did not explain his terms, but an
elastic definition of programmatic socialism
could embrace the social democrats of the
Alliance (if one accepts Sachs's assertion
that "all of us here belong to a common pro-
gressive movement"). Moving leftwards
across the spectrum one would find a range
of Trotskyist formations, while the autono-
mists (much as they dislike being pigeon-
holed) and the anarchists represent the
insurgent multitude line. But in practice, all
South African Left revolutionaries would
employ a shifting combination of both pro-
gramme and insurgency, recognising the
constantly changing tensions between the
masses and a revolutionary minority with a
set programme.
     The insurgent multitude position was
perhaps best expressed by Dwyer (AIDC),
who said the Alliance "needed to put to bed
the fear that they [the social movements]
are a mob lead like sheep by charismatic
leaders. The people are not against lead-
ers, but against leaders who are not under
their control... Take care not to reduce
these organisations to their leaders,
because they are much more complex."
Cassiem (AEC) described AEC meetings
as "organised chaos" which operated
according to democratic rules that were not
immediately apparent to outsiders. "We are
not social movements, we are not NGOs;
our members are our communities." Bobby
Peek (environmental group Groundwork)
maintained the legitimacy of direct action,
saying that "engagement can happen in a
variety of ways, militant as well as [formal]."
     The programatic socialism position was
expressed by Jackie Cock (Department of
Sociology, Wits, who compiled the report on
environmental movements),  echoing
Coleman (COSATU) in favour of cross-
class collaboration: "To renounce formal
politics is to leave formal bourgeois state
power uncontested." Sachs (ANC) said:
"The problem in South Africa with academ-
ics associated with the social movements is
that they are close to Northern [hemi-
sphere] analyses, but not to local analyses,"
adding that a definition of the social move-
ments seemed to require the participation
of "middle-class intellectuals and NGOs."
     Jara (SACP) said: "Historically, there is
a tendency in the country on the Left and
outside the ANC: to what extent has that
tendency driven the social movements?"
Sachs had earlier said "the discourse that
says the central divide is institutions versus
the masses is not able to survive," criticis-
ing the "new Left that is outside of and in
opposition to institutional power", saying
this position put them in opposition to the
liberation movements.
     Desai (researcher on PAGAD), hit back
at Sachs' theory of the Northern origins of
the theories being applied by SA intellectu-
als to the domestic social movements:
"Sachs says our ideas come from Europe.
Where does GEAR come from?... Is
Washington closer to us because it's full of
African-Americans?... Social movements
are challenging the trajectory, nature and
form [of GEAR]. A living politics is what is
outside the Alliance." McKinley (APF)
responded to Sachs, saying the transition to
democracy had failed to deal with "the fun-
damental question of private property.
Privatisation is not an issue; it's fundamen-
tal to life."
     McKinley went on to say: "We have a
loyalty to the content of the liberation strug-
gle, while the Alliance has a loyalty to the
form. These grandmothers didn't come out
of some small Trotskyist sect that wants to
smash the state. It's not an anti-ANC or
anti-Alliance thing, its anti-capitalist; there's
a difference between those." He said the
state had "institutionally marginalised" the
social movements. "The amazing thing is
the social movements are reclaiming those
[socialist] traditions while the traditional Left
is disavowing them."
     "The big question," said Habib (HSRC),
"is who makes the choices?", claiming that
"the role of leadership, of an advanced
cadre and of resources is crucial" to the
emergence, development and sustainability
of social movements. Dwyer later put it dif-
ferently, saying: "Leadership is also about
the auntie in Chatsworth who says `No!'"
He did warn, however, that "people who
were against structure, were often in lead-
ership" - a problem that we anarchists call
"the tyranny of structurelessness", the
avoidance of responsibility and the pre-
tence not to be in command thanks to
amorphous, mandateless organisation.
Dwyer said it should be acknowledged that
"these organisations are ideological terrains
and politics with a small `p' can't be pushed
out because it'll come back in the side
door."
     Sophie Oldfield (Environmental and
Geographical Sciences, University of Cape
Town, who did the study on the AEC) also
said that the different traditions that activists
came from coloured their relations with the
state and its "new mechanisms of accumu-
 ation by dispossession [privatisation]." But
under these conditions, social movement
engagements with the state had often tend-
ed to be entanglements with the police, plus
defensive court actions, Desai (independ-
ent) noted: "The state responded to the
social movements with mass arrests, crimi-
nalisation..."
     Independent researcher     Stephen
Greenberg (who compiled the report on the
LPM) said that the "social movements
emerge out of direct grassroots action"
rather than some imposed socialist ideolo-
gy. Cock (Wits) asked whether the demand
for decommodification could unite a "new
socialist movement".  Lesbian activist
Donna Smith (Forum for the Empowerment
of Women, FEW) recalled that at a life-
skills-training workshop on Constitution Hill
in Johannesburg, "one young girl said `the
Constitution means nothing to us because
we are fighting for survival'." The black les-
bian community had no social spaces of its
own in the townships, yet regularly suffered
from extreme violence, rape, victimisation,
unemployment and psycho-emotional
health issues, as well as HIV/AIDS.
     These conditions, rather than formal
politics or ideology, forged their identity and
their activism. As Alexander (RAU) said,
the movements were "not just conjured up
by Ashwin and Dale." It was noted by other
activists, that the social movements had
been absent from recent social upheavals
such as Harrismith and Diepsloot, indica-
tions that the grassroots are under extreme
pressure of pauperisation that is not linked
to any ideology, but that also such insurgent
sparks, lacking ideology and an overarch-
ing project, died out swiftly in the night.
They were united merely by what Cock
(Wits) - who had examined a failed social
movement, the Steel Valley Crisis
Committee - called "carnival bonds", lacking
any long-term commitments, research skills
at community level (relying too heavily on
outsiders), and international links.
     Buhlungu (SWOP) noted that organisa-
tions like the APF were not undifferentiated,
with strong debates already experienced
around possible participation in the local
government elections, with more looming
ahead of the next local elections (the SECC
having already decided, he said, to partici-
pate). This debate has proved particularly
fiery, with a range of different opinions
emerging, roughly divided between: a dual
strategy of building an electoral front in
council, to give profile to the grassroots
struggle; or an exclusive concentration on
grassroots struggle, either because elec-
toralism is seen as premature or as a cor-
rupting diversion.
     Khan (Stellenbosch) said the new
movements also arose because of "a con-
testation between technocratic knowledge
and grassroots knowledge" and that if one
protested outside the formal, legal chan-
nels, "you're busted, arrested."  This
amounted to "representative rather than
  ubstantive justice and the marginalisation
of the poor." If the state wanted to call itself
developmental, Khan said, the challenge
was to "tilt the institutional resource base in
favour of the poor." Engagement existed in
three forms, he said: actively bargaining at
the top and applying pressure from below; a
passive "politics of patience" that allowed
matters to develop both within the state and
outside it; and an adversarial "break with
corporatist negotiations" by an emergent
radicalism.
     It seems clear that the social move-
ments engage in all these three forms, shift-
ing according to circumstance, but that a
very real divide, based on a complex inter-
play of class, identity and struggle tradition,
exists between the programmatists (espe-
cially of the government) and the insur-
gents. I would suggest that though this
divide can be crossed, and capital has
shown itself very adept at compromising the
militant working class, it is a divide that his-
tory has shown should never be crossed.
LESSONS FOR THE LEFT
     In the view of the ARN, the lessons of
the conference were threefold: a) a recog-
nition that vast common ground exists
between the social movements and organ-
ised labour in which they should collabo-
rate, autonomously and horizontally
between grassroots affiliates and rank-and-
file members, to build working class unity
and autonomy, outside of the capitalist
bourgeoisie, and against it whenever nec-
essary. We cannot prescribe to the move-
ments whether this collaboration can be
extended to allegedly progressive individu-
als within the administration: that decision
needs to be taken by the constituents them-
selves, though we would warn against col-
laboration with bourgeois forces, noting that
it is irrational to expect a rape victim to find
common cause with their rapist; b) a recog-
nition of the importance of dealing with the
problems some of our constituencies have
with poor internal democracy, organic lead-
ership and access to adequate resources,
in ways that give greater voice to our poor
and marginalised; c) a recognition that the
social movements, however uneven, are an
organic part of the proud, pluralistic tradi-
tions of a century of anti-capitalist anti-racist
working class struggle that has constantly
renewed the true, egalitarian southern
African liberatory project and will continue
to do so as long as class rule remains the
order of the day. We are not anti-democ-
rats, but ultra-democrats.
------------------------------------------------------
    Extracts from an Anti-Repression Network
(ARN) report on the Social Movements
 Conference, Johannesburg, October 28 & 29,
    2004. Full report online at:
   www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,28,10,1472
==========================================
* A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism
 "From each according to ability, to each according to need!"
_______________________________________________
A-infos mailing list
A-infos@ainfos.ca
http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos