Daily Times

The South African ruling party African National Congress (ANC) suffered a serious defeat in the recent local elections throughout the country. The ANC nationally received 53.9 percent of the vote; the Democratic Alliance polled almost 27 percent, while the Economic Freedom Fighters’ party on the left polled 8.2 percent of the vote. The ANC lost its majority in the party’s stronghold of Nelson Mandela Bay, losing in key metro cities like Port Elizabeth, Pretoria and the capital Johannesburg. This is a very serious setback for a party that negotiated an end of apartheid under the careful eye of USA imperialism.

Under the leadership of Nelson Mandela the ANC came in to power in 1994 with the black majority population having huge aspirations. They were looking forward to a life free of apartheid but, more importantly, they were yearning for a life free from poverty, unemployment, inequality, squalor and degradation. In the last two decades we have witnessed hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear, an alarming increase in unemployment, and spiralling inflation with costs for the basics such as electricity, water, food and rents skyrocketing.

Expressing the indignation of the workers, Jay Naidoo, former general secretary of COSATU in an article titled, “Can’t you hear the thunder?” wrote: “All they see is the obscenity of shocking wealth and the chasm of inequality growing. The platinum mines they toil in, for a pittance, yield a precious metal that makes exorbitant jewellery that adorns the necks of the affluent and catalytic converters for the expensive cars the middle classes drive. The workers live in hovels, in informal squatter camps, surrounded by poverty and without basic services. All they experience is a political arrogance of leaders who more often than not enrich themselves at the expense [of] the people. They are angry and restless.”

The ANC programme of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is a tragic farce, limited to tiny black elite mainly from the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Cyril Ramaphosa, former head of NUM and heir apparent for the ANC leadership, is close to apartheid era corporate bosses, the Oppenheimers, running the diamond and gold mines, and on the board of the mining giant Lonmin, which was at the centre of the massacre of the Marikana miners of 2012. In 1994, the ANC ceased to be the party of the liberation movement and transformed itself into a political party that followed the western capitalist model. The tragedy at Marikana was the consequence of the decisive contradiction when a powerful union such as NUM is linked to a political party, such as the ANC, pursuing neoliberal, anti-working class policies.

The SACP and COSATU’s slogan of “deepening the unity of our Alliance” is de facto complicity of supporting the ANC’s neoliberal policies. The SACP had support in the townships, and COSATU-affiliated unions in the workplace could have brought out the workers and oppressed to overthrow the rotten capitalist system.

After 22 years of the end of apartheid the class and racial disparity has worsened to the highest in the world. According to a global research, about 80 percent of South Africa’s 54 million citizens are black, but most land and companies remain in the hands of white people, fewer than 10 percent of the population. Among blacks the unemployment rate is 28.8 percent, compared with 5.9 percent amongst whites. Almost two-thirds of whites spend more than 10,000 rand, around $625, on their monthly living costs, compared with eight percent among blacks. Only 10 percent of those in the formal sector are unionised, whereas 60 percent of the working population are employed in the ‘informal economy’. Economic growth’s decline has exacerbated unemployment, inequality, and macro vulnerabilities. The weak economic outlook has made the regime go for even greater cuts on living standards of ordinary South Africans. In the 2016/17 budget, the government announced tax measures to reduce the deficit and debt burden at about 51 percent of GDP.

The number of people living in shacks has gone up since the fall of apartheid, from fewer than one million in 1995 to about 1.4 million today. Poverty figures are also on the rise, with four million South Africans living on less than a dollar a day, up from two million people in 1994. Many blacks say they live in a “cappuccino” society, with a lot of black coffee at the bottom, a layer of white foam on top of that, and a sprinkling of cocoa on the very top, for show.

In the black-majority townships such as Soweto, many blacks feel that political freedom has brought them little more than a few changes, and it is the same old white-dominated economy. The ANC came to office in 1994 promising to create a “Rainbow Nation” in which the entire population would share the economic benefits of the mineral-rich country.

Class tensions have been developing for several years, while the ANC pursued free market policies with spiralling unemployment and exposition of the ANC leaders. President Jacob Zuma came to power promising jobs, housing and services provisions, but he has accelerated the pro-business policies, resulting in growing poverty, misery, deprivation, disillusionment and anger.

The conditions exist for a social explosion. Deep fissures are opening up in the South African national and black liberation movement, as fundamental class conflicts re-emerge with immense force under the impact of global failure of the capitalist system. These will only widen, as government attempts to carry out the dictates of the international markets and diseased capitalism in terminal decay.

The experience of South Africa glaringly illustrates that racial, national, gender and religious oppressions can only be decisively obliterated by the victory of the class struggle. In the coming period there could be a massive eruption of class struggle, pitting of millions of workers against the bourgeois nationalist ANC or any other capitalist government leading to the overthrow of the profit system through a socialist revolution in South Africa. Such a revolutionary transformation in the region’s most important country would spread like a wild fire throughout the black continent.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at lalkhan1956@gmail.com