Debate needed on Cosatu's SACP agenda
October 2, 2009
 By Terry Bell
On Wednesday, SAfm was to have broadcast a discussion and debate about last week's Cosatu national congress. On Tuesday, the programme was canned: the topic, it was said, had been "done to death".
However, several more politically astute trade unionists begged to differ. Having read through the 3 703-word final declaration of the congress, they felt there was still much to be discussed; much that has been missed by the media. In particular, there is the question of the underlying philosophy - the politics - enunciated quite clearly in the document.
The passages dealing with this put forward an idea of the future political dispensation for South Africa. This is despite the fact that Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has, on more than one occasion insisted - correctly - that Cosatu is a trade union federation, not a political party. However, this is another area where Cosatu appears to wallow in contradictions related to political parties and policies.
The congress not only reiterated its support for the governing alliance, it made even clearer its prime allegiance to the SACP as the vehicle to achieve the goal of a "socialist" South Africa. According to the medium-term vision adopted in 2005 by the SACP, this "socialist" vision would be achieved by seizing control of all aspects of society, including Parliament.
SACP members already dominate the leadership of Cosatu and of the Big Four unions in the federation, although the claimed membership of the communist party - at 73 000 - is less than 4 percent of the claimed membership of Cosatu. Although comprising just 11 percent of the latest audited ANC membership figures, SACP members are also very well represented in the leadership structures of the governing party.
SACP chairman Gwede Mantashe is the secretary-general of the ANC, while Blade Nzimande, the party's general secretary, is now a cabinet minister, along with one of his central committee members, Noluthando Mayende-Sibaya.
Deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin is a deputy minister.
However, as some critics have pointed out, there have been senior SACP members in previous cabinets, including the one that adopted the now much maligned Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy.
SACP cabinet ministers at the time, including the then party deputy chairman, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, raised no objection to the introduction of Gear, which Cosatu and the SACP now refer to as the "1996 class project".
"The institution, and the position held within it, changes the individual, the individual does not change the institution," notes a "confessed cynic" trade unionist, pointing out that any dissidence simply means that the individual loses the position and lists not only Fraser-Moleketi but other former SACP ministers, such as Alec Erwin.
But, according to the Cosatu declaration, times have changed: Polokwane signalled a new direction. "The installation of the new government, led by comrade Jacob Zuma, provides a new opportunity to redefine and strengthen the state; and to refashion state-society relations," states the declaration.
Cosatu pledges to "grasp this historic opportunity to maximise workers' gains" and commits the federation to "build Marxism-Leninism as a tool of scientific inquiry", with the object of building "a socialist movement coalescing around the SACP".
The critics, several of whom regarded themselves as Marxists, point out that Cosatu is very short of any clear definition of what is meant by Marxism-Leninism or socialism, other than that they are supposedly embodied in the SACP. However, the federation's political commission has now been mandated to "develop a detailed programme for the transition to socialism". This must include "a vision for socialism in the 21st century".
Cosatu maintains that it is seeking "ideological clarity about where we are; what the forces ranging against the strategic interest of the working class are; who are our allies; and clarity about the international ideological warfare." But the critics also point out that the federation has already outlined the broad tactics necessary for the eventual achievement of "working class hegemony" in decreeing that the SACP is the party of the working class.
The SACP is therefore seen as the vehicle for the transition to a socialist goal as defined by Karl Marx. However, critics, among them older members of the former "workerist" tradition that played a leading role in the formation of the modern trade union movement, maintain that the ideas of the SACP are the antithesis of the theories propounded by Marx or even Lenin; that they owe much more to the policies of the former Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin.
These policies include the concept of "socialism in one country" and of the need to pursue "stages" of a democratic "revolution" toward a "socialist" climax. A "vanguard party" is seen as the means toward this end.
What mainly concerns many critics is that the model society promoted by the SACP remains a version of what existed in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
In the words of the late anti-apartheid activist Joe Slovo, when he was the chairman of the SACP, these were regions of "really existing socialism where the element of democracy was missing". However, Marx maintained that socialism amounted to the extension of democracy from which it follows that without democracy there can be no socialism.
The last SACP congress in exile, held in Havana, Cuba in 1989, also declared that, in "socialist" countries, "a new way of life is taking shape in which there are neither oppressors nor the oppressed... in which power belongs to the people." That was only months before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the mass uprisings that overturned "communist" rule in countries such as Romania.
Ironically, the chairman of that congress and reputedly one of the main authors of that "Path to Power" document was former president Thabo Mbeki, then a politburo member of the SACP.
Given this often confusing situation, the point that the critics make is valid: Cosatu and the country at large need to debate what the SACP sees as the future dispensation for this country - and how it will be achieved.
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