Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - Sunday 27 October 2002
Sechaba Ka'Nkosi

Proposals circulating in the organisation suggest that it heightens its interest in key left-wing demands such as a comprehensive social security system and HIV/AIDS treatment.

While the proposals do not suggest that the party backs demands for a basic income grant as a poverty alleviation tool, they warn that social movements behind the demand must not be ignored.

"The ANC needs to reassert its positions clearly and firmly on ideological and political currents that find expression in the current situation, including neo-liberalism and modern ultra-left tendencies, and in the process articulate the movement's position as a force of the Left, organised to conduct [a] disciplined struggle in pursuit of the interests of the poor," states a draft resolution on strategy and tactics.

While reaffirming some of the positions that have kept it at loggerheads with its allies in the trade union movement and the SACP, the ANC tables new proposals that appear sympathetic to the Left and open to discussions with powerful institutions such as the church. In some instances the draft resolutions borrow terminology from the Left and urge the party to do more than just dismiss the Left as irrelevant.

On economic transformation, for example, the ANC proposals say: "The mandates of state-owned [assets and] enterprises must be revisited, evaluated and monitored more closely to ensure that their social and economic mandates (including such issues as procurement, equity and transformation) remain aligned to our development agenda."

The draft proposals also suggest toning down the party's finger pointing at its left-wing allies as an ultra-left faction, in spite of the fact that that issue is expected to dominate discussions at the December conference.

The only take on the Left has been left to individuals such as two senior ANC leaders, Josiah Jele and Jabu Moleketi, who drafted a joint document accompanying the release of the draft resolutions this week.

Quoting extensively from communist icons such as Marx, Engels and Lenin, Jele and Moleketi argue: "The strategy of the ultra-left faction in the national democratic revolution is therefore to use the victories of the national liberation movement in fact to deny this movement the possibility to use the political power in its hands to advance the interests of the proletariat and the rest of the working people, the poor in our country and on our continent."

The wide-ranging resolutions propose radical measures such as making HIV/Aids a notifiable disease and means to address conflicts between most of the party-led local government structures and communities.

In recent months, disagreements between municipalities and communities have given rise to alternative civic movements which have blamed the ANC for water and electricity cuts.

The new proposals say the party should ensure that the attachment of Reconstruction and Development Programme houses by municipalities to recover arrears, as was the case in Alexandra this week, is stopped.

"[The ANC resolves] to ensure that the matter of the attachment of RDP houses by municipalities as part of their credit control measures is investigated and a recommendation made to the 51st conference in this regard," say the proposals.

ANC insiders claim that the party's proposed fundamental shift from its current political outlook comes in the wake of burgeoning social-based movements that are tackling key grassroots demands that the government has largely ignored, and criticism from the ANC's own allies that the party leadership is fast removing itself from its constituency.

But the party remained firm on its macroeconomic reform programme, calling for the endorsement of the government's privatisation programme with more emphasis on retaining jobs in affected parastatals.

"It will be expected that every member of the ANC and its components be supportive of the resolutions adopted," said spokesman Smuts Ngonyama.

"Any member and deployee of the organisation is supposed to take them on board."

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