Why communism appears to be gaining favour in South Africa

South African Communist Party general secretary and South Africa’s higher education minister Blade Nzimande addresses the party’s 3rd special congress in Soweto in June.
Sowetan/Vathiswa Ruselo

The South African Communist Party reported an upsurge in membership at its recent 3rd special congress. Its membership now stands at about 220 000.

Does this indicate that the Left is gaining momentum or is it only a cyclical spike?

The SACP’s membership has gone through cycles over the years reflecting important political developments (see table below). A comparison suggests that these figures are still relatively small weighed against those of its partners in South Africa’s governing alliance that brings together the communist party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the African National Congress, which leads the alliance.

Cosatu had 1.9 million members before its biggest affiliate, the metals union Numsa, with 300 000 members, was expelled in 2014. The ANC passed the one million mark in 2012.

The SACP, formed in 1921, is the oldest communist party in Africa. It is one of only 20 parties which survived the anti-communist purge after independence. Many other parties, like the Popular Movement for the
Liberation of Angola and Mozambique Liberation Front, officially changed their party ideologies in the 1990s from Marxism-Leninism to Social Democracy.

But the SACP continued to be Marxist-Leninist. It is the only communist party on the continent which is part of a governing alliance, similar to those in Brazil, Venezuela and Nepal in recent years.

Membership trends

Changes in SACP membership figures after its unbanning in 1990 and its decision to become an open party went through at least four periods.

• The first was between 1990 and 1996 with an influx of new members, motivated by the SACP’s success with getting the ANC to adopt the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), and its prominence in the first post-apartheid cabinet led by former President Nelson Mandela.
• The second period was the demise of the RDP and appearance of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) as a neoliberal macro-economic policy. The ANC leadership regarded it as “non-negotiable” and in the process then South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki started to marginalise the SACP and Cosatu. Arguably, its marginalisation within the alliance can explain the decline in membership between 1995 and 2002.
• The third period was during President Mbeki’s last term when membership started to increase, presumably because his deputy, Jacob Zuma, solicited the SACP’s support against Mbeki. The expectation was that a Zuma government would restore the SACP’s prominence in government. Zuma’s victory at the ANC’s 52nd national conference in Polokwane in 2007 solidified it.

Five years later the SACP entered the fourth period at the ANC’s Mangaung national conference. Arguably it reached the 150 000 mark partly because of the ANC’s perceived shift to the right with the adoption of its new long-term macro-economic plan, the National Development Plan. The SACP gained support by opposing the plan. This attracted those who had formerly been part of Zuma’s “Polokwane alliance” but were increasingly unhappy with the President.

Organisational problems in the ANC and corruption scandals diverted attention away from a policy turn to the left. Alternative leftist moves were made in 2012-2015 by the Economic Freedom Fighters and the left in Cosatu. It is possible to argue that the same trend to the left is happening in the alliance in the form of a decline in ANC public support - evident in the 2014 elections - and an increase in SACP membership.

Despite its recent difficulties with President Zuma, the SACP has had a resurgence of influence under his administration. At the moment Senzeni Zokwana, Thulas Nxesi, Blade Nzimande, Jeff Radebe and Rob Davies are ministers while Jeremy Cronin, Godfrey Oliphant and Buti Manamela are deputies. They all serve as examples that the SACP is an access point to government.

The rise in membership could be attributed to the fact that it is seen as an alternative option for a political career.

Official explanation

SACP second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila ascribed the growth to success with its campaigns, notably that aimed at restructuring the country’s financial sector.

Also, he said, some new members felt more comfortable to express their activism and criticism of corruption in the SACP than in the ANC. Between the lines it suggests an anti-Zuma sentiment, albeit not shared by most national leaders.

Fault-lines and frustrations between the SACP and the ANC are evident. There is open friction between it and the ANC in Mpumalanga province. In addition, the Young Communists League has taken an openly critical stance towards the ANC.

The idea that the SACP should break away from the ANC and stand as an independent political entity has once again emerged. Some delegates at the special congress called on the SACP to contest elections separately from the ANC in 2016. The issue also surfaced in 2008 at its National Policy Conference.

Several motivations for such a call are possible: a perception that the SACP leadership have been co-opted by President Zuma and his government. There have also been accusations that the Zuma government is no longer pro-worker and pro-poor. This is especially so in the light of Marikana massacre in 2012 and government’s minimalist response to the findings of the Marikana Commission of Inquiry.

The government has drawn flack for policies considered to be neo-liberal and that socio-economic inequality and poverty are increasing under the current government.

The thinking wing of the party

The party retains a cache. There is still prestige attached to it as the governing alliance’s “thought leader”. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa referred to it as such at the SACP’s latest special congress. He continued:

Throughout the years, the SACP has played a critical role in the ideological development of the liberation movement. Its contribution to the revolutionary theory of two stages and their notion of apartheid as a “colonialism of a special type” are a few examples.

Activists with a strong ideological inclination will be more attracted by the SACP than by the ANC. Being associated with it has its own pull factors, including the lure of intellectual sophistication.

The SACP’s growth is therefore symptomatic of several factors of which frustrations in the alliance are possibly the most important.

Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South Africa

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

ANC conference: governing party blew chance to regain South Africa's trust

South African President Jacob Zuma closing the governing ANC’s policy conference.
EPA/Stringer

The 5th policy conference of South Africa’s governing African National Congress
started on an ominous note. The party’s stalwarts had opted to stay away because they wanted the party to call a consultative conference first to focus on the organisation’s problems. The ANC’s leadership refused.

In fact, their call infuriated President Jacob Zuma. He mocked them in his opening address. The stalwarts – who include luminaries such as Frank Chikane, Sipho Pityana and Cheryl Carolous – are viewed by some as the link to the progenitors of the liberation struggle. Could their stay away spell a curse?

By the end of the conference Zuma appeared buoyed, dubbing the conference a success in his closing address. But, a success in achieving what? This question is pertinent because the conference came amid growing public discontent about the way the country is run, intensified by adverse assessments of rating agencies as well as the fact that the economy is in recession.

Are the outcomes of the conference likely to assuage the consternation about the future of the country? Can they in anyway contribute towards extricating the country from the morass it’s in? Or, are South Africans simply grasping at straws by asking these questions?

Losing leadership of society

The ANC appears to have lost claim to being a leader of society. Just before the 2016 local government elections, its own research pointed to an increasing “trust deficit”: less than 50% of respondents saw the ANC as a leader of society. This is an ignominious indictment to a once glorious movement. Isn’t that perhaps where the focus should have been at the conference - regaining people’s trust by taking them along in the policy discussions?

An opportunity for this was missed as the policy discussion was contrived as an ANC affair. This is odd for a governing party. Its existence ought to be anchored in society and should always pursue the public interest. As the American senator Elizabeth Dole once put it:

The best policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.

The policy conference didn’t reflect this character. The ANC’s policy deliberations were held in closed sessions. The media wasn’t allowed in. Only snippets were presented to the public. Media reports depended on press briefings and interviews. The ANC was largely talking to itself.

Being a leader of society is a function of making people part of the process of how the party intends to lead. And it should always be amenable to the views that emanate from society, not only from its members. The ANC is not just a political organisation or a liberation movement. It is a governing party. How it responds to its responsibility of governing is the business of South Africa’s 55 million citizens.

A delegate at the ANC’s 5th National Policy Conference.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

An elitist approach to policy disengages society. Society only reacts to the outcomes of policy discussions if it’s not engaged in dialogue. This spawns antagonism as democracy is fudged in the process.

The consequence of this is a “trust deficit”. This is where the biggest danger lies. A “trust deficit” questions the very legitimacy of the ANC.

Vacuous discussions

The ANC’s gatherings are no longer moments to assert the significance of pursuing societal interests. As presidential hopeful Lindiwe Sisulu put it:

The (policy) conference was not about issues, it was about which side is pushing which issue.

Was it, therefore, choreographed machinations to gauge the preferences of the branches in the presidential race? One is inclined to think so, especially in the context of Zuma’s remarks at the end of the conference in which he proposed that whoever loses the race to be president should automatically become the deputy president of the party.

This proposal is outrageous. It accepts factionalism as part of the ANC’s organisational makeup. It seeks to institutionalise and accommodate factionalism rather than expunge it. Is this perhaps what the president was referring to when he spoke of success?

The other disturbing part of the conference was that vulgarity held sway while sanity was heckled and shouted down, scorned as proxy for white monopoly capital.

The truth is that white monopoly capital is a dishonest narrative. Coupled with the narratives garbled in rhetoric on the radical transformation of the economy and land reform, white monopoly capital is nothing more than gesticulation of populism bereft of ideological context. In the meantime gluttonous politics is in ascendance. State power is contested for nefarious ends.

Where does this leave the historical mission of the liberation struggle which is about

uplifting the quality of life of all South Africans, especially the poor, the majority of whom are African and female.

Joel Netshitenzhe, a member of the national executive committee of the ANC, came closest to providing an answer. He went to the subterranean dimension of the debate on the transformation of the economy in pointing out that “white dominance in the economy” is a manifestation of a problem, which is “monopoly capital”.

To use the phrase “white monopoly capital” is to reduce the policy debate to polemics and to spawn untenable interventions. As Netshitenzhe further explained:

[the] relationship between the ANC and monopoly capital in particular, but also capital in general, is one of unity and struggle, or if you like, cooperation and contestation.

This irked the proponents of the white monopoly capital narrative who responded by displaying vacuousness and a lack of analytical depth on policy matters.

It appears as if the contestations in the conference hardened attitudes instead of facilitating policy choices. They intensified policy stalemate. This is perilous to South Africa. Outcomes of the policy conference don’t offer much to write home about. What they did do was to set up the ANC’s December 2017 elective conference for an internecine and bruising jostling for power.

Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Why did Hout Bay explode?

Imizamo Yethu is an example of the complexity of upgrading informal settlements

By GroundUp Staff
11 July 2017

Temporary housing for Imizamo Yethu residents on a sports field in Hout Bay. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

In the first days of July, Hout Bay was at times cut off from Cape Town when hundreds of residents of the Imizamo Yethu informal settlement cut down trees and barricaded roads leading into the suburb. Police and residents fought with each other. One man, Songezo Ndude, was shot dead. The protesters had been living in temporary accommodation on a sports field. We look at what caused this.

On 11 March a devastating fire in Imizamo Yethu left several thousand people homeless. It was one of the worst shack fires in recent history in the Western Cape, but it was neither the first nor the last in Hout Bay.

Fire is a constant risk in Imizamo Yethu. It spreads rapidly because homes are built close together, often less than one metre apart. Fires are common where residents do not have electricity and therefore use paraffin, candles and open flames, or where electrical connections are illegal and unsafe. It is often impossible for emergency vehicles to get to positions where they can douse fires.

Reblocking

Other than providing formal brick housing, another solution the City proposes is “reblocking” (explained here) – creating a formal layout on an informal settlement with spaced plots, services, access roads and pathways. The City has done this successfully before but it isn’t easy, and each informal settlement presents unique challenges.

After the fire, the City announced plans to “superblock” Imizamo Yethu. It committed over R90 million to the project and an additional R44 million for electrification. The problem was that for reblocking to take place, people who had lost their homes would have to wait longer before they could rebuild their shacks.

In April, Mayor Patricia de Lille announced that the community had agreed to the plans. She said at a press conference held with community leaders that reblocking would be done in three months. But even as she said it, some residents had already begun rebuilding their shacks, making it impossible to proceed with reblocking.

Starter kits for rebuilding wait at Imizamo Yethu for rebuilding after reblocking is done. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

Temporary accommodation

From the outset there were mixed reactions to the City’s plans. Many residents supported reblocking, but others faced difficulties while reblocking took place. Victims of the fire were moved to temporary relocation areas – accommodated in tents, two marquees, community halls and other temporary structures.

Some people refused to be moved to these places, which they found crowded and uncomfortable. They chose instead to find shelter on the mountain or rebuild their shacks.

After the April press conference, people were moved out of the marquees and into temporary one-room, three-by-three-metre shacks on a sports field. Many of them were renting shacks, and they were now registered with the City to get shacks of their own.

On top of this, many residents do not trust the City to reblock in an acceptable timeframe. Community leaders say people who were moved to community halls after a fire in 2004 spent a year there before they gave up on being resettled, and rebuilt their shacks. GroundUp spoke to a resident who was moved to make way for roads in 2007. He says he and his family were moved to a temporary home and told it would be for only three months, then later told six months. They have never been relocated.

A map showing the different areas of Imizamo Yethu. The sportsfield Photo courtesy of City of Cape Town. 

Rebuilding, demolitions and interdicts

In the first days after the fire on 11 March, some shack owners started to rebuild. The City immediately responded with demolitions. On 19 March the City obtained a court interdict against people rebuilding their shacks. Residents continued rebuilding nonetheless. Members of the community did not in the end oppose the interdict, and it became a final order of the High Court on 1 June.

The City did not enforce the interdict while it was engaging with the community.

Some residents did agree to stop rebuilding and kept to this. However, in Madiba Square area of Imizamo Yethu, there were some demolitions with voluntary dismantling in late March. Part of this area was then reblocked.

Others however wanted the City to present clear plans on paper with timeframes and a memorandum of agreement. These were not forthcoming and so they rebuilt. By the end of May, the area for reblocking was almost completely filled with shacks.

Differences

Divisions in the community for and against the reblocking, but more specifically on how it is to be implemented continue.

Immigrants who live in the settlement were also wary of how they might be treated in the City’s formal process.

Many of the people displaced by the fire are already listed as beneficiaries for the Imizamo Yethu housing development project. Some of them have large shacks and rent out space or rooms in their shacks. Beneficiaries of the housing project want it completed before reblocking takes place. Then, when they are moved to their RDP houses, they will give up their shacks.

The people who have been renting from them will then be resettled in the informal settlement, but this time with it having been reblocked. This latter group (who rent shacks) appears to make up most of the people who have remained in temporary houses provided by the City, and not rebuilt.

Residents from Imizamo Yethu wait for Mayor Patricia de Lille to arrive after protesters demand to see her in person. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

Protests erupt in July

Since the City obtained its interdict on 19 March and the mayor announced reblocking on 13 April, only a small section of Madiba Square has been reblocked.
Many people expected the City to act on the interdict and commence demolitions after 1 June, but the City did not act.

Frustration over delays in reblocking and anger about the absence of a memorandum of agreement with the City bubbled over in July. Protesters said they were tired of having to live in temporary shelters with seemingly no end in sight. They had also had to endure an awful Cape Town storm while in the temporary shacks. They took to the streets in violent protests.
The Mayor then recommitted the City to accelerating reblocking.

But to do this, the City will have to relocate or persuade over a thousand people who have signed a petition against being moved, and remove or demolish the hundreds of homes that have already been rebuilt.

A showdown is looming. Zara Nicholson, spokesperson for the mayor, says: “It has become necessary to enforce the … interdict due to the intimidation, threatening, harassing and assaulting of persons on site working on the super-blocking … There has been and will be further engagement with affected persons. If engagement fails, we will proceed with an eviction application.”

The City has made mistakes in the reblocking process. Residents remember unfulfilled promises. But the multitude of un-nuanced tweets and Facebook comments condemning either the City or the protesters show a lack of understanding of how complex and frustrating the situation is for all involved.

A mother and children walks through Imizamo Yethu as riot police monitor the settlement. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

---

Published originally on GroundUp .

---

Watershed judgment clarifies limits of religion in South Africa's public schools

School children wave a South African flag after visiting the Nelson Mandela house museum in Soweto.
Reuters/Henry Romero

A High Court in South Africa recently handed down a landmark ruling with far-reaching implications for religion in the country’s public schools. The court decided that a school may not promote a single religion, or brand itself as such. This means that a school cannot, for example, call itself a Christian school.

The case was brought by an education lobby group – the Organisasie vir Godsdienste-onderrig en Demokrasie OGOD – which challenged the fact that six public schools had identified themselves as Christian.

According to the country’s constitution, religious observances can take place at state institutions - including public schools - provided it’s done equitably and that attendance is voluntary.

The court acknowledged this, ruling that religious observances, including praying, are distinct from the religious ethos of a school and are, therefore, to be allowed at public schools subject to the requirements of the Constitution.

The confirmation of the constitutional right to religious observances in public schools is a celebration of South Africa’s unique relationship between religion and state. The court’s judgment recognises that religion plays a large role in South African society. As such, the right to follow a religion is embedded both in the country’s Constitution as well as in practice. This means that South Africa isn’t a secular state. As the judge pointed out: it wasn’t the courts responsibility to pick sides between those who are religious and those who are not.

According to the country’s policy on religion and education a secular state adopts a position of impartiality towards religion and other worldviews. It also represents an attempt to “completely divorce the religious and secular spheres of a society, such as in France or the United States”. This is not the case in South Africa.

The court also upheld the right of school governing bodies to draft the religious policies for their schools in line with the Schools Act and the Constitution.

This is a watershed ruling in South Africa. The judgment has provided South African courts with the unique opportunity to interpret religious freedom in the public school system beyond just religious observances.

And although the case only involved six public schools with a Christian ethos, it will affect all 24,000 public schools in the country. All public schools will have to review their policies on religion to be in line with the decision. Public schools, whether branding itself as religious or not, will have to scrutinise how it deals with religious diversity.

In general, the case offered wins and losses for both sides. Although school governing bodies maintain their institutional authority to draft religious policies, the ruling means that they will now be under greater scrutiny. On the other hand, the organisation that brought the case got the legal backing it needed to require public schools to stay away from a single faith ethos.

Lost opportunity

The court affirmed the idea of celebrating diversity in South Africa and that public schools with a single faith ethos can hamper this. It balanced the right not to be excluded with the constitutional value of diversity. Hence its concern with public schools maintaining a single faith ethos.

But the case was rather disappointing in its superficial to zero analysis of human dignity, equality, religious freedom and diversity – all enshrined in the country’s constitution. The court only gave a short analysis of diversity, dedicating most of its decision to technical matters.

For example, having declared that South Africa was not a secular state, the court failed to analyse and discuss what religious diversity should look like in a “non-secular” state specifically. No deeper analysis was done about the meaning of diversity in the South African context. It was merely reiterated that, as declared in past court decisions and the Constitution, South Africa should celebrate diversity.

The nature of the right to religious freedom and the notion of “equity” received limited attention. The court therefore missed a wonderful opportunity to provide a critical analysis of the importance of religious diversity and religious freedom in the country.

For a case that is to directly affect more than 24,000 public schools and hundreds of thousands of pupils and teachers, one would have expected a more careful analysis. A critical discussion on the meaning of diversity when it comes to religion would have been useful and timely.

In some sense, the broader South African society lost. A critical analysis of the constitutional issues like diversity would have given the court’s final decision due weight and made it more credible.

Georgia Alida du Plessis, Research Fellow in Public Law, University of the Free State

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Ocean View forms human chain to highlight crime problem

Residents claim 13 murders so far this year but police won’t release stats

By Thembela Ntongana
10 July 2017

Residents of Ocean View form a human chain to show unity in the fight against crime in their area. Photo: Thembela Ntongana

Residents of Ocean View formed a human chain on Saturday to show unity in the fight against crime in the area.

Nervous to identify themselves out of fear that they would be endangering their lives, residents we spoke to said 13 people have been murdered this year in their community. The latest victim, GroundUp was told, was a teenage girl who was raped and murdered.

But South African Police Service (SAPS) spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Andrè Traut said that due to a national moratorium, he cannot release crime statics for the area. “Sporadic incidents of gang related violence are reported in Ocean View which can be attributed to the drug situation in the area,” he said.

This is the second time this year that the community has come together against crime. In April residents demonstrated at the entrance to the township.

On Saturday attendees ranged in age from children to pensioners. Many held placards with pictures of family members or friends that have been murdered.

“We want to speak but we are scared. … Your life becomes in danger,” said a resident.

Residents have been asking that Ocean View be recognised as a gang area, where special gang units can be deployed. Community leader Sharon Daniels told GroundUp that in a meeting in 2015, they were told that they do not meet the criteria for the area to be identified as a gang area.

Lieutenant Colonel Traut said: “Various crime combating initiatives are applied to address the situation. However, due to the operational nature of thess initiatives, the details thereof cannot be disclosed.”

Ocean View shares its police station with Masiphumelele which has crime problems of its own. The latter has had a number of violent protests over the lack policing in the area. The protests resulted in Masiphumelele getting a mobile police station.

Gatvol

Community leader Patrick Joseph told GroundUp that the human chain is a cry for help from the community. “We want to create awareness of what is going on in the community. We can no longer sit around in silence and watch. We want to bring focus to Ocean View,” he said.
Joseph said that they want to develop an action plan with the City to deal with the issues faced by the community.

“To use the word gatvol is a compliment. There are much stronger words I can use. Our kids should not die in vain. Every life counts,” said Joseph.

---

Published originally on GroundUp .

---