Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - June 28, 2002
Jaspreet Kindra
Without naming the president, the current edition of the SACP's central committee bulletin Bua Komanisi! takes an implied dig at him in its critique of the "Africanist current" within the ruling tripartite alliance. Among the other currents it identifies are the "pragmatic" and "socialist".
The bulletin says the pragmatists and the socialists want South Africa to be more critical of the "anti-democratic" behaviour of Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF government.
In its critique of the Africanist trend, the bulletin highlights its tendency to move into "denial", referring to Africanist attitudes to HIV/Aids and unemployment in South Africa. It ascribes the proneness to denial to the "shortfall between exaggerated and/or short-term expectations of African renewal or of South African growth and development".
Africanists are said to resort to "subjectivist explanations -- allegations of conspiracies or an overly psychologised explanation for persisting injustices (white racism, or global Afro-pessimism)".
Mbeki and the ANC leadership have alleged a range of conspiracies to undermine the government and the ANC, including claims of an "ultra- left tendency" in the Congress of South African Trade Unions and a plot by pharmaceutical firms on HIV/Aids.
The document does not deny "white racism" and Afro-pessimism, but argues that these are not sufficient to explain persisting poverty and marginalisation of the majority of South Africans.
The SACP document also warns against a "tendency" among Africanists "to exaggerate the possibilities of a continental renewal -- or to associate such a renewal with relatively superficial events". In a clear reference to South Africa's bid for the 2004 Olympics in Cape Town, it cites the hosting of international sporting events as one of the "superficial" attempts to enhance Africa's status.
"This is often linked with a failure to adequately analyse the deeply entrenched, structured character of global capitalism, and its systemic reproduction of Africa's peripheralisation and development."
The bulletin says the Africanist tendency has sympathy for Zanu-PF and its leader President Robert Mugabe, while holding that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change is "an imperialist tool". Africanists identify white farmers and Britain as the cause of stalled land reform, which "lies at the heart of the economic crisis" in Zimbabwe.
It says the pragmatists want South Africa to be more critical "probably" to send positive signals to international investors and "our own capitalist class, that we will not behave like that here".
For socialists, the emphasis is on how "anti-democratic behaviour" is used to "suppress progressive popular forces" including unions and progressive civil society. The bulletin, however, notes that the co-existence of these differing perspectives has "not prevented the development of an effective and unifying ANC and alliance position on Zimbabwe and on a variety of other issues."
Among the weaknesses cited in the socialist current is the existence of two extreme positions, one of which holds that the party should assert its independence by "seeking to distinguish every action we take from the ANC", the other seeking to reduce the SACP to the "socialist desk" of the ANC.
The document also states that the SACP can neither isolate itself from the liberation movement nor tail behind the ANC.
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