Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 119, June/July 1994
4 PAGES OF ANALYSIS, EYEWITNESS REPORTS AND INTERVIEWS FOLLOWING THE SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTIONS
On 26 April millions of black South Africans queued for the first time to choose their own government: it was an historic moment, as the world’s press were not slow to tell us. After the count, manipulated to comply with the contesting parties’ power-sharing commitments, the ANC were the overwhelming victors; their chief partners the National Party, which had presided over 45 years of unprecedented racist tyranny; their programme committed to a free market economy, dressed up with a more-than-modest reform programme which they are widely predicted, even among their own supporters, to underperform.
Ten years ago South Africa was on the brink of revolution as the masses challenged white minority rule. A new trade union movement was capable of mobilising millions of workers and was committed not only to liberation but also to a socialist future. The banned liberation movements were openly supported by the masses and were committed to socialism — the largest, the ANC, had a long history of collaboration with the South African Communist Party (SACP), with many communists in its leading ranks. The ANC’s programme was avowedly socialist:
‘In our country more than in any other part of the oppressed world, it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even a shadow of liberation.’
(ANC: Strategy and Tactics, Morogoro, April 1969)
The outcome of the election, which is not even a shadow of liberation, requires a response. Has the most promising revolutionary situation transformed into historic defeat? Has the ANC achieved a democratic revolution? What will be the consequences for the black working class and the oppressed? FRFI has consistently promoted revolution in South Africa and been prominent in giving solidarity to the liberation struggle. We have these questions to answer.
It was precisely at the point when the revolutionary direction of the liberation struggle in South Africa was at its critical moment, that the ideologues of the ANC/SACP began to crack under pressure. On 12 June 1986 Botha, then South African President, announced the second State of Emergency in the space of a year. By August, between 10-12,000 people had been detained without trial, and 250 killed. Consumer boycotts, rent strikes, detainee hunger strikes, miners’ strikes and massive protests were bringing the country to its knees. Within eight months of its inception, the trade union confederation, COSATU, had called the two largest strikes in South African history, openly proclaimed its socialist aspirations and pledged its support for the community. Jay Naidoo, General Secretary, stated COSATU’s particular high regard for the street committees which were the embryo Soviets of the townships. Hundreds of thousands of school pupils refused to register for school.
The white business community in South Africa was terrified, the imperialists were terrified and, as history has shown, sections of the ANC and SACP were quaking in their boots. It was at this moment that Mandela began secret talks with his jailers, the ANC held secret talks with white businessmen, and, to mark the 65th anniversary of the SACP, General Secretary Joe Slovo addressed a rally in London where he began to outline the ideological basis for a ‘peaceful road to socialism’.
The nationalisation of the land, the mines, the banks and monopoly industry enshrined in the ANC’s Freedom Charter, was transformed by Slovo into ‘immediate state measures’. Gavin Reilly, chair of Anglo-America, Slovo proposed, would agree to such measures in ‘truncated form’. ‘Disparate forces’, socialist and non-socialist, would be part of the liberation front led by the ANC; a ‘mixed economy’ would be necessary. In order to cement the relationship with ‘disparate forces’, the drive towards a socialist future in South Africa ‘within a truly democratic framework, could well be settled in debate rather than on the streets’. Revolutionary victory for the working class was to be postponed to a vague and uncertain future.
‘We believe that the kind of victory to be aimed for in the coming struggles must provide a launching pad for the creation of conditions which will make it possible to work for a socialist future.’
At the time FRFI (Issue 62, September 1986) carried a critique of Slovo’s speech, pointing out that the direction Slovo was taking would lead inexorably to stifling the struggle at the point of national liberation in the interests of the bourgeoisie and at the expense of the working class:
‘It is true as Slovo says that the revolution is a continuous process. It is also true that it goes through strategic and tactical phases — including a national democratic phase in the case of South Africa. But “the ingredients of the later phase” will only “mature in the womb of the earlier” if the Communist Party asserts and defends the independent interests of the black working class at each and every turn. Communists neither put forward the demand for a socialist republic now in South Africa (Trotskyism) nor fail to assert the primacy of the working class until the victory of the national democratic revolution (Menshevism).’
(David Reed, ‘Communists and the South African Revolution’, FRFI 62, September 1986)
It cannot be too much emphasised that Slovo’s speech took place in the context of a live revolutionary struggle in South Africa, on a scale that neither the ANC nor the SACP had ever experienced. Slovo’s speech was the first sign that this was a test of commitment to the interests of the working class which the SACP and ANC were likely to fail.
From the Freedom Charter:
‘THE PEOPLE SHALL SHARE IN THE COUNTRY’S WEALTH! The national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to the people; The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole. All other industries and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people; …
THE LAND SHALL BE SHARED AMONG THOSE WHO WORK IT! Restriction on land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land redivided amongst those who work it, to banish famine and hunger; …
ALL SHALL BE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW! No one shall be imprisoned, deported or restricted without a fair trial; …
THERE SHALL BE HOUSES, SECURITY AND COMFORT! All people shall have the right to live where they choose, to be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security; Unused housing space to be made available to the people; Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful and no one shall go hungry…’
By 1990 Slovo was using the opportunity of ‘reform’ in the Soviet Union to abandon the central tenets of Marxism and to expand on his ‘peaceful road to revolution’ thesis. The dictatorship of the proletariat was ditched in favour of faith in the adaptability of bourgeois democracy and the possibility of peaceful progression. This was the cue to abandon not just the struggle for socialism, but also a thorough-going national democratic revolution led by the working class.
From 1986 onwards the ANC systematically demobilised the trade union movement and the anti-apartheid struggle inside the country. The union confederations were consistently split on the basis of support for the Freedom Charter. By 1990 the unions were tied to the struggle for economic improvement, on the grounds that politics was the province of the liberation movement. After Mandela’s release and the unbanning of the liberation movements and the SACP, the internal leadership of the struggle was systematically replaced by the leadership in exile. Over the next four years, mass action was simply a tool in the various stages of negotiations, only to function as a threat when negotiations broke down.
At the same time millions of dollars poured in from western imperialist governments which had recognised that the future stability of South Africa as a source of super-profits lay not with their previous allies, PW Botha and the National Party, but with a potential black government which could control and discipline the working class. Slovo linked his recantation of Marxist principles to Gorbachev’s reform of the Soviet Union, but the real basis was not in the realm of ideas but at the level of material reality. Imperialism was offering to help the ANC to power under certain conditions.
Today, in 1994, we do not have to prognosticate on the direction that the SACP and the ANC will take. Slovo, as one of the ANC’s chief negotiators, ensured that the white civil service, including the police and army, would remain in place in a power-sharing deal which will last for the next five years at least. None of the ANC’s leading figures, including the avowed communists and socialists, believes that socialism is even a possibility in a world where they argue that the balance of class forces has changed dramatically.
If we accept this as true and that Slovo et al are simply acting pragmatically in difficult circumstances, but will launch the struggle for socialism when conditions improve, then why were the first shifts in position apparent in 1986 at the height of the revolutionary struggle? Further, even if present conditions are difficult, in what way does the ANC’s current programme both defend the interests of the working class and enhance its prospects for future liberation? In other words, has the ANC/SACP, in Slovo’s words, provided ‘a launching pad for the creation of conditions which will make it possible to work for a socialist future’, or has it simply gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie?
The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) sets out promises for the next five years: 1.5 million new houses; electricity for 2.5 million homes; free education; 2.5 million jobs through an expansive programme of public works; the redistribution of 30 per cent of arable land. The ANC estimates this will cost £7 billion, although other estimates are ten times higher.
In comparison to the realities of life for the majority, these targets do not even come into the category ‘modest’. 8 million black people live in squatter camps; 23 million have no electricity; unemployment stands at 50%; 12 million have no access to drinkable water; 42% of households live below the minimum living level, with 4 million close to starvation; illiteracy affects half the black population, higher than Zambia or Lesotho. In 1991, 6 out of 10 black male adults had no income whatsoever. Even if the RDP is achieved, it will be a drop in an ocean of deprivation.
According to Trevor Manuel, ANC Economics Chief and now Minister for Trade, Industry and Tourism, the RDP targets will be achieved without tax increases or a boost in government spending, simply by slashing defence spending, streamlining the 1.2 million civil servants and improving tax collection. This will not be so easy: defence and security ministers Joe Modise and Sydney Mafamundi are already arguing for more money to buy aircraft and ships, and the security forces have been swelled by the inclusion of thousands of ex-MK soldiers; civil servants have protected status under power-sharing. This leaves only improved tax collection. In the context of no tax increases, this can only mean a drive to collect taxes and rents from the majority.
Mandela’s own priorities have been to reassure the business community and the white majority that they have nothing to fear from the ANC in power, and at the same time to minimise the expectations of the majority. At the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, just before the elections, he reiterated this: ‘We say that the economy of this country must be built on sound market principles. The RDP is a document based on common sense, and there is absolutely not a single sentence about nationalisation; Mandela has never been a communist, and is now clearly not even a socialist, but Slovo the ‘communist’ makes essentially the same point about the RDP:
‘It is not compromise. It’s in the nation’s interests to make transformation as peaceful as possible. We will win the election, but we’ll be in office, not in power. The structure of apartheid is still here with a white police and army. That will have to be changed slowly, giving opportunities for all, but at the moment we need them, they have the skills.’
(Independent, 19 April 1994)
The ANC will not have outright power because it negotiated a power-sharing deal and doctored the results of the election to ensure consensus. The apparatus of apartheid is still in place because Slovo proposed to protect it. The compromise is with the bourgeoisie even though Slovo is not prepared to admit it — and the interests of the working class have been superseded by those of ‘the nation’.
The real dynamic of class forces at work may be demonstrated by the percentage change in incomes between 1975 and 1991. By 1991 at the height of recession, the top fifth of black people had received a 40% rise in income, whereas the bottom two fifths had seen their incomes reduced by more than 40%. For Asians and ‘coloureds’, the vast majority saw substantial income rises. The ANC’s commitment to ‘market forces’ will accelerate this trend. Well before the election the ANC leadership had removed itself from the townships, moving into luxurious accommodation in white suburbs, and more importantly, choosing as arbiters of its programme not the needs of the black working class, but the hopes and fears of big business and an aspirant black bourgeoisie.
In the end Mandela and his government have to choose between the majority and the likes of Harry Oppenheimer: their interests are irreconcilable. Mandela is a creature of the moment, the darling of imperialism and every smooth-talking social democrat. His much-lauded patrician qualities (reflected no doubt in an almost all-male cabinet) will not keep him in power if, like that other modern miracle-worker Gorbachev, he fails to go as far as his imperialist and bourgeois masters require. The ANC’s programme is not a launching pad for socialism; it is a demonstration of how far the ANC leadership is willing to dance to imperialism’s tune.
The real test of the next five years will be whether the erstwhile communists and socialists will be able to reconcile the working class to the rigours of the free market. Slovo is sure that he can. Asking how he would deal with a demand for pay rises if the Finance Minister Derek Keys (National Party) said there was no money, he responded: ‘I will tell the workers they cannot have the money. They must remember the 50% who are unemployed. They will take this from me because they know I am their friend.’
Lenin in 1920 recognised the dangers of the likes of Slovo, whose aim is to reconcile the working class to bourgeois rule:
‘Opportunism is our principal enemy. Opportunism in the upper ranks of the working-class movement is not proletarian socialism but bourgeois socialism. Practice has shown that the active people in the working class movement who adhere to the opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie itself. Without their leadership of the workers, the bourgeoisie could not remain in power.’
(Lenin On Britain, p523, Moscow)
The opportunists will not have it all their own way. South Africa’s working class movement has, in the recent period, held back its struggle in the interests of destroying white minority rule. This is not the same as defeat. The history of class consciousness in the South African working class and oppressed movements is not superficial, it is deeply rooted in centuries of struggle against false promises and betrayal.
Carol Brickley
The new cabinet:
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- President: Nelson Mandela (ANC)
- Vice Presidents: Thabo Mbeki (ANC), FW de Klerk (National Party (NP))
- Justice: Dullah Omar (ANC); Deputy: Chris Fismer (NP)
- Defence: Joe Modise (ANC)
- Safety and security: Sydney Mafamundi (ANC)
- Education: Sibusiso Bhengu (ANC)
- Trade, industry & tourism: Trevor Manuel (ANC)
- Foreign affairs: Alfred Nzo; Deputy: Aziz Pahad (both ANC)
- Labour: Tito Mboweni (ANC)
- Post, telecommunications, broadcasting: Pall() Jordan (ANC)
- Health: Nkosazana Zuma (ANC)
- Transport: Mac Maharaj (ANC)
- Provincial and constitutional affairs: Roelf Meyer (NP); Deputy: Mohamed Vali Moosa (ANC)
- Land: Derek Hanekom (ANC)
- Public enterprise: Stella Sigcau (ANC)
- Housing: Joe Slovo (ANC)
- Correctional services: Sipho Mzimela (Inkatha)
- Finance: Derek Keys (NP)
- Agriculture: Kraai van Niekerk (NP)
- Sport: Steve Tshwete (ANC)
- Home affairs: Mangosuthu Buthelezi (Inkatha)
- Minerals & energy: Pik Botha (NP)
- Welfare and population: Abe Williams (NP)
- Minister without portfolio: Jay Naidoo (ANC)
- Arts, culture, science: Ben Ngubane (Inkatha); Deputy: Winnie Mandela (ANC)
- Environment: Dawie de Villiers (NP); Deputy: Bantu Holomisa (ANC)
- The final breakdown of seats in the Constituent Assembly was: ANC 252; National Party 82; Inkatha Freedom Party 43; Freedom Front 9; Democratic. Party 7; PAC 5; African Christian Democratic Party 2.
A vision of democracy
Hannah Caller and Richard Rogues spent two weeks in South Africa to observe the elections: they returned with eyewitness reports and interviews with representatives of liberation movements.
‘As we flew into Jan Smuts airport on 19 April the regime was supposedly no longer in power. The country was being administered by the Transitional Executive Council (TEC). De Klerk had proclaimed a State of Emergency in Kwazulu-Natal with Mandela’s blessing. The National Peacekeeping Force (NPK) had been withdrawn from Thokoza township and confined to barracks; the SADF had been sent in to stop the carnage. Already the attempt to create a supposedly impartial Security Force during the elections had failed.
At an Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) training session we learnt that Inkatha would probably be joining the electoral process. The existing ballot papers had nineteen Parties contesting the elections to the National Assembly; the IFP would be affixed to the bottom with a sticker. The presence of so many Parties was unexpected to us and confusing for the electorate. The streets are full of posters and the newspapers stuffed with advertisements. The ANC will give ‘Jobs, Peace and Freedom’. The National Party say ‘We’ve made the change — be sure of a better life’, or ‘Vote NP, keep the Communists out’. The Democratic Party say ‘Vote for us, No Murderers, Torturers, Corruption’. Within hours of the announcement of their inclusion on the ballot the Inkatha Freedom Party have posters and advertisements proclaiming ‘IFP — A Power for Good.’ The South African Defence Force are ‘A Force for Reconciliation’. Shell wants us to know ‘Enough tears, enough blood, it is time for peace’. Eskom the Electricity Company ‘would like to assure you that everything possible is being done to maintain your electricity both during the elections and in the future’. The 23 million black people who have never been supplied with electricity seem to be forgotten.
The ANC offices in Johannesburg are the target of a bomb in which ten people are killed. There are nine explosions in 24 hours, six at polling stations. A right wing group called the ABB claim responsibility.
There is no public transport system here. There are some trains and buses to transport labour from the townships to the industrial and commercial areas and back again. Then there is the dangerous, informal transport in ‘taxis’ if you don’t mind waiting an hour or two in a queue every morning and every night. Apart from this, without a car you don’t travel around. Travelling from the plush residential areas of Constantia and Bishopscourt and downtown Cape Town, it is like another country entering the nearby townships of Guguletu, Khayelitsha, Langa, Nyanga, Mitchells Plain, Crossroads and the squatter camps. The Group Areas Act may not be on the statute books of the ‘New’ South Africa, but it remains a grim reality for the majority of the population. In the impenetrable townships, brick shacks with corrugated iron roofs, miserable impersonations of houses, are arranged in serried, cramped rows. In most backyards there are outbuildings with no water or electricity. How many people live there is anybody’s guess. There are no street signs, little lighting, shops are set up in people’s front rooms, schools are dilapidated prefabs surrounded by barbed wire. The single sex hostels still exist, where men are forced to eke out their short, brutish lives in conditions you wouldn’t force an animal to live in. In adjoining squatter camps naked children play next to open sewers. Rows of crosses mark graves, packed as tightly together in death as they were in life.
On Tuesday 26 April we go to Pollsmoor Prison. The Electoral Act was amended only after thousands of prisoners went on hunger strike for the right to vote. 21 prisoners set light to their cells in protest and died because the fire was not extingnished. In the afternoon we observe voting at Groote Schuur hospital where Dr Christiaan Barnard performed his pioneering heart transplants while white only ambulances left black people to bleed to death on the side of the road. At midnight the old South African flag is lowered and the new flag raised. Nkosi Sikele is sung and immediately afterwards they sing a verse of Die Stem, the anthem of fascist white minority rule.
On Wednesday 27, the first full day of voting, Rolf Meyer and Pik Botha cast their votes in Orlando West in Soweto. No white people live there of course, but it makes for good television. 18 people are injured in a bomb in Jan Smuts airport. We visit about ten different Voting Stations. In Langa people started queuing at 4am and there was a stampede when the Station opened at 7am which took nearly an hour to control. It rains heavily in the morning but people stand patiently for hours in order to vote. In other areas of the country people stand in the blistering sun. In Rylands, a so-called ‘Indian’ township, we are told most people are voting National Party. The NP have been giving out loaves of bread with NP stickers on them. They have been telling people formerly classified ‘coloured’ and ‘Indian’ that the ANC will take their houses and jobs and give them to the blacks. We are shown a church and a mosque that received R250,000 from the NP to set up soup kitchens and pay off water and electric bills.
We see busloads of voters from Khayelitsha where hardly any Voting Stations have opened. There was a hunger among the people to vote. We saw massive queues of people waiting to exercise for the first time this most basic of democratic rights and, for a country with such a history of political intolerance, in relative peace and safety. By the evening of the first day of voting it has become clear that there have been serious irregularities and abuses of the electoral process.
De Klerk has now claimed he and the National Party are legitimate. Now, we are told, all are equal in the new South Africa as they face the will of the people in democratic elections. For all the celebrations and the dancing at the advent of the first non-racial elections in South Africa there is a feeling that it’s all been done before. After all, they’ve had the British Trade Union Movement and the British police over to give advice. The party that administered the repression, routinely tortured tens of thousands and mercilessly exploited millions, is just one more party on the ballot paper contesting these elections. In the interests of ‘national reconciliation’ the past has been forgotten. In fact it is in the worst possible taste to mention ‘Apartheid’. The word seems to have gone out of the vocabulary. The process of ‘levelling the political playing field’ has been more about rehabilitating the torturers, the administrators of white minority rule. And how did we get here? Not through the struggle of the liberation movements and the sacrifices made by the masses but because of the vision of the decent, Christian De Klerk.
On 2 May, the night before we left, there was a party that had already been going on for three days in the ANC National headquarters. People had gathered outside for a glimpse of the champagne-drinking celebrities within. After several hours they took to the streets, toyi-toying and ululating, no money in their pockets, spectators at the feast. Now that the election was over the media and the triumphant ANC were being less optimistic in their promises. You will have to be patient, we cannot provide jobs and houses overnight. ‘You will not all get a Mercedes Benz,’ said President Mandela.
The people are being told they must be patient. But when the policeman who shot your child has indemnity and a nice house and you still live in a squatter camp, your patience is strained. And when ten thousand share one tap, and a stone’s throw away each garden has a swimming pool, you begin to ask whether this ‘democracy’ is really what you were struggling for.
‘ANC government – Moving slowly and cautiously’
Interview with Dullah Omar, ANC, Minister of Justice of the new Cabinet.
Why did the Patriotic Front not succeed as a united front to confront the regime?
The failure of the PF was fundamentally due to PAC and AZAPO being opposed to negotiations so the starting points of the liberation movements were different. The ANC was involved in a process, the conclusion of which meant there was no alternative. The international situation and the situation in Africa had changed and there was no alternative to negotiations. Deadlock would have occurred if endless deliberations on negotiations had taken place. They could not delay.
Given the events that took place within the PF, would it be fair to say that the ANC seems to have more contradictions with other liberation organisations than with the NP and the regime?
No. We clearly understood that the PAC and AZAPO were never part of the enemy. We knew that we were negotiating with the enemy.
If the ANC win two thirds of the vote will they then rewrite the constitution?
It is not in the interests of the struggle to do this. This would invite counterrevolutionary forces, therefore the ANC will move more slowly and cautiously. It is in the interests of the oppressed masses to have a period of peace. The regime has caused divisions. Large numbers have been drawn into enemy forces, for example Buthelezi mobilizing thousands. The democratic movements and the trade union movements have failed to break the back of this movement.
The IMF and the World Bank never lend money unless the receiving country is prepared to implement austerity measures. Mandela has also said that investors may repatriate profits and at the same time he is assuring the people that the economy will be run in their interests.
I share this concern with regard to the IMF and World Bank. I hope we will deal with them as little as possible. Policy making should not be controlled by the World Bank and IMF. South Africa is part of an international system. As a socialist it is a sad phenomenon that we are not on the threshold of a socialist society. We need to alter the balance of forces internationally or socialism will not be possible, therefore we must live with the situation where we guarantee investment of investors and they may repatriate their profits.
How will the ANC deal with unrest among the people. Where do you stand on the repeal of repressive legislation?
First of all on the right to strike. They were useful under apartheid but there are still occasions when workers were called on not to strike. There is a need to guard the right to strike in the constitution. With regard to repressive legislation, the democratic state needs powers to detain people and deal with counter revolutionaries.
Including detention without trial?
Yes, even detention without trial is necessary but not isolated from the State of Emergency. To have detention without trial during a State of Emergency is within international law. Section 29 has gone. We should not have had such legislation. The President should have the power to declare a State of Emergency only where there is a real threat to the security of the country. This should leave the provision that it could be contested in court. People detained must have access to lawyers and doctors from the state. There should be no holding of people incommunicado. I have mixed feelings about this as I know that detention without trial was used against those fighting for social change and it is often used against the left. We need to ensure that Trade Union leaders and others are not locked up for dissent but we need powers to deal with right wing forces.
The ANC will soon be in the position managing a capitalist economy. Is the ANC now a national liberation organisation or a partner in a neo-colonialist setup?
I do not think people can step out of the capitalist system. Revolutionary and socialist parties could be accused of managing a capitalist system. Managing a country means having to work within the constraints of capitalism. The question is whether you work for the benefit of the people or the benefit of the exploiters. Why did you not continue the demand for an elected Constituent Assembly to draw up a constitution as opposed to drawing one up before the election? The terrain may have been more favourable if the constitution were to be drawn up after the election, but we would still have been sitting with the same problems of media control and control of the security forces. The central question is the balance of forces and it would not be possible to simply write a constitution without the inclusion of other forces.
Surely this is a defeatist position. You have decided that socialism is not possible. Capitalism still spells poverty, degradation and misery, South Africa will be no different. What of the road Cuba has taken?
Cuba today is retreating, now it is guaranteeing investment and repatriation of profits, but Cuba’s example is the lesson we must learn. The crisis in Cuba means I am less flexible on this question. I feel I am right on the balance of forces in the world. Everyone would agree. It would be a defeatist position if I was saying socialism should be abandoned and capitalism is better. I am saying that socialism is not possible at this stage.
THE LAND QUESTION AND THE INTERIM CONSTITUTION
The 1913 and 1936 Land Acts robbed black people of land ownership. Under Apartheid 87% of the population had only 13% of the land allocated for their use. 71 % of all arable land is under the ownership and control of 60,000 white farmers. Half the black population live in rural areas. Five to six million labour on white-owned farms. There are substantial numbers of seasonal farm labourers, most of them women, the poorest of the poor. In advance of the election, white farmers have been systematically evicting land tenants who have farmed plots of land, in some cases for a hundred years, but have been unable to own them in designated white areas. ANC land-policy adviser Joanne Yawitch admits there will be huge fights because ‘we lost the battle of the birthright’ in the constitution. The transitional constitution creates a number of new institutions including a ‘Land Rights Commission’. Chapter III of the Transitional Constitution Section 28 states ‘No deprivation of any rights in property shall be permitted otherwise than in accordance with a law … Where any rights in property are expropriated pursuant to a law such expropriation shall be permissible for public purposes only and shall be subject to the payment of agreed compensation’. The expropriation will be ‘for public purposes only’, capable of very narrow interpretation – such as road or public building only. The Transitional Constitution will be subject to legal challenges. It could be that the Government of National Unity will be prevented from any land redistribution.
‘The issue now is socialism’
Interview with Benny Alexander, General Secretary, Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.
The elections in Azania/South Africa were elections not to choose a government but to endorse a pre-agreed settlement between the African National Congress and the National Party. The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) took part in the elections with disappointing results — only five seats in the new Constituent Assembly.
Benny Alexander, Secretary General of the PAC, spoke to FRFI about the new situation in Azania/South Africa.
‘The reason why the ANC will fail, in spite of our sincere well-wishing, is because it has decided not to take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, to leave the capitalist system intact.
The African National Congress and the National Party have already agreed on going to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).
The programme of the IMF and the WB will have the following results. In order to increase our resources and our wealth we will need to cut down on all government subsidies. In order to get immediate cash to attend to social spending, we must sell raw materials abroad, which will kill manufacturing. We will then be advised to devalue our currency to encourage foreign investment. All this is going to cause the working class to suffer more.
The masses did not reject the PAC in this election. The masses fell for the propaganda that said if you don’t vote for Mandela you get De Klerk. So they voted for Mandela, but they still believed that Mandela would pursue policy programmes akin to those of the PAC. So we still remain very much relevant.’
Benny Alexander explained why the PAC entered the elections, given the PAC’s awareness of the process and the outcome.
‘We took part in the election because it was going to end white minority rule; to that extent there is a positive aspect. Unfortunately we underestimated the impact of the media programme. We thought that on the ground we could counter the onslaught by the media.’
He thinks that those who did not take part in the elections, ‘did so out of reasons which amount to ideological bankruptcy. It is a struggle all the way and whilst you are clear about that you cannot stay out of a contest for political power.’ It is clear that fraudulent activity was allowed to take place during the conduct of the elections without being exposed, in order for the results to be acceptable to the future power-sharing government and the imperialist influences: ‘Things which in any European and North American country would have immediately led to the election being declared null and void, are being accepted because people are saying, in terms of African standards it is good enough for those people. The view of the Independent Electoral Commission and the international community, particularly European and North American governments, is fundamentally a racist approach in analysing this election.’
The important issue that now arises for organisations in Azania/South Africa is the question of taking the struggle forward. The PAC will not be taking part in the Government of National Unity (cabinet), but will be in the parliament as an opposition force. Benny Alexander told FRFI how they see the new situation:
‘We have changed our strategic framework because the stage of the struggle has changed. Changed from a white-ruled capitalist system to a neo-colonialist imperialist dominated order. The struggle has moved to a class struggle. Our struggle was of all the classes of the African people led by the working class. We are no longer fighting a multi-class struggle against white domination, we are now fighting a working class struggle against the bourgeoisie.
‘Outside parliament we have to continue mass struggles for housing, health, jobs, and interpret these things so that the movement itself can have a proper class orientation. We will also have to increase our ideological work.’
In the years prior to the election, many working class leaders were corrupted. Benny Alexander detailed this process:
‘Big companies like Lonrho took people who were in the labour movement, identified the influential ones and bought them massive houses in the upper-class white areas. When Cyril Ramaphosa was with us he took a position to the left of the PAC within the trade union, now he’s far right because of the way in which they corrupted him. Take one of the upbeat influential members of the Communist Party, like the PWV [area] premier of the ANC, people thought that he was number two to Chris Hani in the Communist Party, but they corrupted him too and he would not be seen within spitting distance of the Communist Party. Mayekiso, one of the most outstanding worker leaders, decided to enter the structures of the ANC. The imperialists bought him two or three properties, corrupted him and he just echoes the sentiments of the bourgeoisie and of the petit-bourgeois reactionaries in the ANC. He defends them ardently and viciously.’
Benny Alexander says the PAC never regarded the SACP as socialists but saw them as ‘left petit bourgeois intellectuals who had mastered the art of abusing neo-Marxist rhetoric. Since their unbanning of 1990, they have even dropped the neo-Marxist rhetoric.
‘Now that all the elite have come together, black and white, you have to fight an anti-neo-colonialist struggle, and therefore there is a need now to form a front and call it clearly a socialist front.’
FRFI also spoke to Michael Siyolo, regional organiser for the PAC, Western Cape. He was arrested on 3 January 1994 along with other senior Western Cape PAC members. They were detained under section 29 of the Internal Security Act, accused of the Tavern shooting in Cape Town on 30 December 1993. They were eventually released on bail at the end of March. They have not been charged yet and no evidence has been brought forward. The arrests of senior PAC members at such a critical time leading up to the elections was not coincidental, and severely hampered their campaign in the Western Cape. Their trial dote has been set for the 20 May 1994.
Free and fair elections?
The final outcome of the election and the decision on whether it was ‘free and fair’ were not subject to an objective test – ultimately it was a political settlement among the main parties.
Every election starts with a period of campaigning. The National Party and the ANC had for all intents and purposes been campaigning for several years. The National Party and the other racist parties had well-oiled and resourced election machinery. All the parties received some IEC funds for the campaign, but the starting point was never equal, and there was never any accounting for expenditure or equality of broadcasting time. The ANC received over R60 million from Africa alone, the PAC received R1 million.
It should be remembered that these were not elections to choose a Government or even a Constituent Assembly, but to install a power-sharing Government of National Unity to administer the country under a Transitional Constitution agreed in advance by the ANC and NP. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) was responsible not only for organising and administering the elections in South Africa, but also for pronouncing whether or not they were free and fair.
The Inkatha Freedom Party entered the election only six days before polling began. Since the ballot papers were already printed the IEC decided that polling stations would be issued with stickers, to be stuck along the bottom of the existing papers, offering the IFP option. By the end of the first day of voting it was clear that many polling stations had not received the stickers. Instead voters had been told to write IFP at the bottom of the ballot paper. In fact these were not included in the count, nor were any ballot papers without the stickers. Who knows how many were disenfranchised in the process?
On the evening of 27 April, the first, main day of voting; with 11.4 million ballot papers missing the IEC decide to print another 9.3 million overnight with the Inkatha Freedom Party option. There was no account of where ballot papers were issued or how many.
A pattern quickly emerged of areas where no voting materials had arrived at all. People stood in queues for hours only to be told to go home. The areas affected were the homelands, notably the Transkei and KwaZulu, whole sections of the East Rand and a number of black townships, in the Western Cape, Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain in particular. The areas affected were, of course, those with the highest concentration of black voters. Johann Kriegler announced an extra day of voting on Friday 29 April, but many people were still queuing for temporary ID on this last day of voting.
The IEC’s main excuse for these ‘problems’ was that South Africa had no common voters’ roll. Readers of FRFI will know that the PAC has been actively demanding the drawing up of a common voters’ roll for over a year. In the absence of registration the IEC had implemented a ballot reconciliation system which was abandoned on the second day of voting with the blasé pronouncement that ‘it wasn’t very important anyway’. Not surprising, as they had mislaid nearly a third of the printed ballot papers. It became extremely difficult to challenge any of the IEC results.
Extremely easy, though, to set up your own Voting Station. Things were helped along by the decision that where there were not enough ballot boxes postal sacks should be used. With vast areas of the Transvaal with no operating Voting Stations, IFP supporters managed to set up over 80 unofficial polling stations in KwaZulu/Natal. By the time the count had been under way for several days IFP and ANC officials decided that there were just ten disputed Voting Stations and that the IEC and the main parties had better accept this otherwise there would be trouble.
As the count proceeded instances of abuse and irregularity on a massive scale had become legion and irrelevant at the same time. Irrelevant because with only 10% of the vote counted the ANC had been declared winners with the National Party as junior partners in the Government of National Unity. Some 10 million ballot papers were discovered in IEC warehouses in the East Rand. An unlocked, unattended car with several boxes of ballot papers was discovered parked outside the IEC headquarters in Johannesburg. Benny Alexander of the PAC was present at a count where there was not a single PAC vote and yet he was standing next to party agents who had cast their vote at the station in question. Ballot boxes were unsealed, or had different number seals from the recorded number when they left the Voting Station. Others were sealed but the lids could be lifted off. Others were open and the ballot papers were all for the IFP, or they were folded together in bundles of ten or twenty so that they could not possibly have been inserted one at a time.
If these elections had taken place in Europe or the US they would have been declared null and void but the prevailing racist opinion of the IEC was that the process was adequate by ‘African standards’. ‘Let’s not be squeamish about it,’ said Kriegler, ‘The parties are in a power game with each other, and if they want to settle there’s nothing wrong with it ethically or legally.’ (Newsweek, 16 May) Nothing wrong with it, unless you are trying to hold a democratic election. In the end the results were tuned to a nicety: the ANC vote fell just short of a two-thirds majority so the white minority need not get unduly nervous; the National Party got just enough to ensure a Vice Presidency for de Klerk; and Inkatha just managed a majority in KwaZulu/Natal, and a suitable number of cabinet posts to fend off civil war. No one else mattered.
The count took a week longer than expected, with strikes by the tellers and interference with the main computer which was never accounted for. Nonetheless, the voting had barely finished before the international observers and monitors were rushing to utter the magic words ‘free and fair’. Hold on though, they may have been premature. The ANC is now divided on whether the deal they struck in KwaZulu/Natal was really a good thing. Since the election Buthelezi has rubbed salt in the wounds, failing to take his national cabinet post seriously, and appointing only three ANC members to junior posts in the regional government. Having given Buthelezi the power-base he needed, sections of the ANC leadership are astounded that he will not play the national game of consensus. Local ANC leaders like Harry Gwala have been at the sharp end of Inkatha’s apartheid-backed terror which has left thousands dead in the last four years, only to see their position aggravated and ignored. There are rumours now that the pay-off for Inkatha’s participation in the election was the gift of one third of regional territory to King Goodwill Zwelathini in person. History may well show that the price paid for the ‘free and fair’ verdict was much too high.
‘Socialism is not dead’
Interview with Azanian People’s Organisation.
Azapo’s position since the beginning of the negotiating process has been that no acceptable settlement could be reached unless the liberation movements were united around a programme of minimum, non-negotiable demands. After the failure of the Patriotic Front, it became clear that a ‘meaningful programme for liberation’ was no longer attainable.
Itumeleng Jerry Mosala, president of Azapo, spoke to FRFI.
‘As Azapo we do not necessarily think that elections in themselves would be a betrayal of fundamental principles. It seemed to us that this election was too symbolic. What they are voting for is not as important as the fact that they are voting.
Our campaign was structured around three issues, the land, the economy and the transfer of power. We argued that the decision to vote or not to vote, in the end would be the decision of our people themselves. We will expose them to an understanding of the process. There was something new, the fact that they had to decide for themselves democratically not only which party to vote for but also whether to vote.
The moment is a powerful one symbolically for people. We recognise that people wanted not to be part of those who missed the opportunity, but we really think that our people deserve more. We have to await the post-election period and go back to the issues. The ANC have gone beyond acceptable compromise within a revolutionary situation.’
Speaking of the coming period, he said:
‘Socialism is not dead. It is absolutely relevant to Azania/South Africa precisely because people are now going to discover that the capitalist solution is not going to deliver the things that they have been promised.
We need to build Azapo to become the true home of all those who are still committed to genuine revolution.
We have refused to have anything to do with the integration into the South African Defence Force. It is very important for Azanla to be reintegrated into the community to enable the community to defend themselves.’
SPORTS IN THE ‘NEW’ SOUTH AFRICA
Reg Feltman, President of SACOS:
‘[Under apartheid] Africans didn’t play many sports – soccer, netball and boxing mainly. They often had to endure over two hours of travelling to and from work. It is dark when they arrive home. There was a bitter struggle to get to facilities. We could offer no sponsorship, no rewards, no facilities, just struggle. We oppose elitism. Anybody and everybody should play sport. Now they talk about multi-racial sport. The South African Cricket Board will say the team has been selected on merit, in reality it has been selected on the legacy of apartheid. The money spent on tours far exceeds the amount of money ploughed into townships. Establishment sports bodies still hold the purse strings and their participants had been coached from a very early age and had all the best equipment. In non-racist sports even the weakest player had a place. Now they play our teams and they beat us. Say we have teams A, B, C, D and E each with twenty players. They say we must form one team with all the best players. So twenty players get to play regularly and eighty players no linger participate, they can only be spectators and they now have to pay for that privilege.
