The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Post–apartheid Period

Abstract

This article examines the SACP and its role in contesting the hegemonic project of neoliberalism in the post-apartheid period (1994-2004). I discuss the Party's written attacks on neoliberalism, support for the Congress of South African Trade Union's (Cosatu's) campaigns against privatisation, the formation of the Young Communist League (YCL), and the current campaigns surrounding cooperatives and financial sector reform. As the SACP is embedded within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the Party's attempts to critique and fight neoliberalism have remained rhetorical and ineffective. Rather than directly confronting the neoliberal policies of the ANC, the SACP has instead cooperated with the ANC, hoping to pull it more to the ‘left’. The SACP's dedication to influencing the ANC has come at the expense of building a mass base of support that opposes neoliberalism. This approach has ultimately resulted in an accommodation to neoliberalism, and exposes many difficult contradictions for the SACP.

Notes

1. Pressured to conform to the dominant Western paradigm of neoliberal economic reform, the ANC made a conscious and strategic decision to implement GEAR in 1996.

2. For excellent discussions of GEAR and the manner in which it was implemented, see Taylor (2001), Marais (2001), Bond (2000), and McKinley (2001). Rank-and-file members of the SACP and the trade union movement, and many activists within the social movements, have also contributed extensively to the ongoing critique of neoliberalism in South Africa.

3. I use a neo-Gramscian theoretical understanding of hegemony to analyse this concrete situation of hegemonic struggle in South Africa. Dan O'Meara explains: ‘Hegemony … refers to a form of social consensus which legitimises and authorises a particular structure of economic, political, cultural and ideological power, winning for itself the approbation of ”common sense”, as the only reasonable way of seeing things’, in O'Meara (1996), p. 488.

4. It needs to be noted that Pahad was voted off the SACP Central Committee at the 11th Congress of the Party in 2002, largely for his reactionary tendencies on issues such as this. Yet Pahad is still a member of the SACP and is viewed as one of the Party's historic leaders.

5. As stated in each edition of the African Communist on the inside cover.

6. This can be witnessed in correspondence between the ANCYL and Ruth First, Secretary of the Progressive Youth Council, in 1945. Early signs of tension regarding the conflicting agendas and programs of the ANCYL and other progressive youth organisations are evident here. See Karis and Carter, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964, Volume 2, Document 52. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1973.

7. For example, see the SACP's Press Release ‘Young Communist League (YCL) to hold Election Rally in support of the ANC’, 19 March 2004, available online at http://www.sacp.org.za/pr/2004/pr0324a.html

8. For further information on the Mzansi Accounts, see the Banking Council of South Africa's various press releases on the initiative. For example, ‘Mzansi will put full service banking with 15km of the vast majority of South Africans’, 15 October 2004, available online at http://www.banking.org.za/documents/2004/OCTOBER/MzansiAccount.asp. For the Party's support of the initiative, see its press release entitled ‘Mzansi Account: a victory for the poor, no bank charges for pensioners’, 17 November 2004, available online at http://www.sacp.org.za/pr/2004/pr1117a.html

9. The Gauteng Provincial Secretary of the Party is Vishwas Satgar, who is the Executive Directorof COPAC (Cooperative and Policy Alternative Centre). He is active in promoting the growth of the cooperative movement in that province, and across the country.

10. At the time of writing, it was impossible to assess the degree of success the DTSACCO is having; nonetheless, it has been a much anticipated event for many SACP members.

11. The stokvel has been used by South Africans for over 50 years, and is an informal mechanism for communities to participate in banking and savings activities. Participants normally contribute a fixed amount of money on a regular basis, and are then permitted to access funds on either a rotating basis, or when a particular need arises. Another common manifestation of collective financial services is the burial society (a form of self-insurance to cover costs of funerals).

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Notes on contributors

David P. Thomas

David P. Thomas has recently completed his PhD from Queen's University, Canada. He is currently teaching in the Political Science Department at the Universityof Victoria, Canada; e-mail: [email protected].