The New South Africa and the Socialist Vision Thomas K. Ranuga Many books analyzing South African politics during and after apartheid have appeared on the Left over the past three decades. What sets Professor Ranugas book apart and makes it invaluable is that it is written by an African With a revolutionary Marxist perspective. Professor Ranuga is a supporter of the Workers Organization for Socialist Action (WOSA), led by Dr. Neville Alexander. This book provides a concise and clear analysis of the political origins and evolution of the major African nationalist and Marxist political parties and organizations in South Africa for the past seventy years.
Understanding the ideological evolution and interaction between Marxists and nationalists in South Africa in the context of world political upheavals is essential for comprehending why the South African revolution was deferred by an "historic compromise" between the main liberation forces led by the African National Congress (ANC) and the apartheid government of De Klerk.
An active participant in the South African liberation movement, Ranuga authoritatively analyzes the historical roots of the revolutions derailment. He explains how a failure to fuse Marxism with African nationalism allowed the forces of compromise to win hegemony in the liberation movement.
Much of the book is a fascinating and informative exposition of Marxian and African nationalist responses to the rise and consolidation of racial-capitalism, from the birth of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC) to today. The National Question and the ANC
While recognizing that the concept of a "nation" can be defined by objective factors i, Protestor Race 2s such as territory, language, culture, etc. as well as subjective ones, Professor Ranuga eschews narrow formalist, criteria, stating that nationalism of the oppressed is "the political desire by a self-willing people to rid itself of internal and/or external domination so as to achieve the objective of self-determination leading ultimately to the creation of a nation state. In the case of South Africa, the dispossessed and historically dominated people are the African majority and hence the rise of African nationalism in that part of the world."(p.9)
Tracing the present political reality of South Africa to the ideological roots of the African National Congress which was founded in 1912, Ranuga points out that the "ANC was, strictly speaking, not a nationalist movement for national liberation and independence" but essesentially a civil rights organization. Their ideology is deeply rooted in the European Christian/liberal tradition of the English speaking Cape Province. The nation, for the ANC, has never been "an African nation evolved and based 32 International Viewpoint on the democratic principle of One person, One vote or majority rule, but a multiracial nation based on the notion of a pluralistic sharing of power or representative government. The ANC was therefore not aiming at the establishment of a nation-state based on the government of, by, and for Africans, with all those who owe their allegiance to the African nation-state being considered Africans...theirs is a liberal type of nationalism as opposed to the orthodox type of African nationalism."(p.10)
Ranuga extensively explores the rise of orthodox African nationalism (which in South Africa was founded by Antone Muziwahke Lembede), and its evolution in subsequent organizations such as the Pan African Congress (PAC) and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM, led by Steven Biko). Ranuga cuts through the slander that these orthodox nationalists are racists. He explains that they do not exclude whites from a future African state; rather their concern is that the dispossessed African majority must recover possession of the land. White people are welcome to stay: provided they accept the rule of the African majority. This is quite different than the "power sharing" strategy of the ANC, which is: Blacks can participate in the government, provided that they accept the actual rule of the white minority. White Working Class and Racism
Much of the responsibility for the failure of Marxism to fuse with orthodox African nationalism can be laid at the doorstep of the South African Communist Party. During the 1922 white miners strike in the Rand, which aimed at stopping the government from hiring more Black workers in the mines, the all-white mine workers union raised the slogan "Workers of the World, Fight and Unite for a White South Africa. The Communist Party supported this racist strike. Incredibly, they issued an appeal to Africans "for interracial solidarity against the background of a situation where the overwhelming attitudes of the strikers and their leaders were patently hostile to Black workers...The divisive effect on labor solidarity was beyond measure."
Closely examining the evolution of the African National Congress, the Pan-African Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement over the next seventy years, Ranuga concludes that "In the final analysis, aversion to communism had more to do with the fear of domination or cooptation by Whites than with the ideology of marxism per se."
The ideology of the Communist Party was far from Marxist however. What the book makes clear is that the evolution of the official positions of the SACP, after a brief support for the idea of a Black Republic, quickly evolved toward a position that Black liberation could be achieved without the Black working class taking power in its own name and for its own interests: in other words, that democracy could be implemented without a Black-led socialist revolution.
A Non-Sectarian Approach A Man Contorion Annroach
Thus the alliance of the SACP to the ANC in the 1950s was not based upon winning the ANC to a Marxist program. On the contrary Ranuga shows how the current program of the ANC, the 1955 Freedom Charter, is a liberal document.
For example, the charter does not address "the central question relating to the historical injustice of land usurpation and forceful removal of the African people to make room for White settlers".It was the SACPs support for this liberal program rather than for a revolutionary African nationalist program that allowed it to ally with and simultaneously reinforce the reformism of the liberal ANC. While revealing the real history and nature of the ANC/SACP alliance, Professor Ranuga calmly addresses the issues in language that would not offend a Black member of the ANC or SACP. He is respectful of the stature of Nelson Mandela in the liberation movement and gives due credit to the revolutionary role of specific SACP leaders, such as Chris Hani.
"When Chris Hani, the SACP chief and ANC National Executive Committee member, was assassinated in April 1994, the Left lost one of its most militant and committed advocates. This was one revolutionary individual who was ardently trying to promote a socialist agenda, and in fact just two weeks before he fell to an assassins bullet, he was in the process of canvassing for a national conference of all forces and individuals on the Left to discuss and redefine the socialist program in South Africa. His revolutionary dream never materialized, but the militant reaction of the workers and young comrades to his untimely death made it abundantly clear that the socialist cause he had so courageously espoused had deep political resonances and a potential for proliferation."(p.141)
Ranuga sees the 1949 Programme of Action of the Congress Youth League, which provided the ideological fuel for the 1952 Defiance Campaign, as a nationalist program that briefly broke with the old ANC liberal tradition. However, this nationalist direction was reversed with the adoption of the 1955 Freedom Charter which reasserted the liberal political perspective of the ANC
At the same time, Ranuga explains why the very terms of the current "Historic Compromise" will not allow the Mandela government to end the oppression and exploitation of the African majority, let alone resolve such basic questions as the restoration of expropriated African land to its rightful owners. "The ANC, whatever its declared aims to implement reform, will be hampered in its efforts by entrenched constitutional principles agreed to before the national elections.
These "constitutional principles" commit the ANC to the preservation of private property, which in South Africa is owned by the white minority. If the ANC does not step over these "constitutional principles" and "continues along the path of trickle-down economics that is reminiscent of the Reagan
administration in the United States, the ANC government may resort to more conservative and possibly authoritarian measures that could lead to a widening gulf between the owning and working class.
Hence the thesis that the basic tasks of the South African democratic revolution remain on the agenda. According to Ranuga, the responsibility for completing that revolution falls on the Black South African working class, the class that is the object of exploitation of the system of racialcapitalism. Although at the present historical conjuncture, a socialist victory is not imminent in South Africa", Ranuga foresees that if the, "ANC government of National unity fails to deliver on its promises, then the spirit of peace and goodwill could be seriously threatened as Black leaders, now waiting in the wings, come forward with more radical solutions such as nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, equitable distribution of wealth through taxation, and the restoration of land forcefully taken from its rightful owners."
Although this is not likely to occur during Mandelas presidency, the very nature of the "historic compromise" between the liberation forces and racial capitalism means that the tasks of the South African democratic revolution will only be solved by the African working class, who will eventually create their own working class government and thus re-open the road to socialism for South Africa and the world. An Invaluable Theoretical Tool
At the beginning of the book, and running through it as a theme, is a profound quote from Frederick Douglass; "Power concedes nothing without a demand." It is an urgent reminder that it has taken the sacrifices and commitments of countless numbers of Africans just to arrive at the present tenuous compromise in South Africa. But for committed revolutionary Marxists the goal remains the seizure of political power by the masses of Africans. In order for that to happen, theory first has to seize the masses.
The formidable weapon of revolutionary Marxism in the hands of a thoroughly organized and highly politicized labor movement can pose a serious challenge to racial capitalism and therefore pave the way for an alternative and qualitatively superior way of life. In other words the combination of marRemember xism as a weapon of theory and organized black labor as a political force can ultimately bring the capitalist system in South Africa to its knees and achieve the just and ideal society envisaged by true marxism.(p.131)
For Professor Ranuga that qualitatively superior way of life can best be summed up in the African proverb "umntu ngumntu ngabanye abantu" , that is: a person is a person through other people, a concept of compassion, co-operation and sharing which is the very anti-thesis of the sheer greed inherent in free-enterprise capitalism. * Reviewed by Jim Miles & Vera Wigglesworth Published in 1996 (154 pages) by Humanities Press, 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716-1289 (902)-872-1441