Socialist by name, capitalist by nature

ONE of the most interesting comments from a leading South African politician I have heard recently was from Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa. He was quoted in the Weekly Mail & Guardian as describing himself as “a capitalist with a socialist instinct”.

Given Ramaphosa’s riches – he is a multimillionaire in his own right who bid almost R20m for a buffalo cow shortly after the Marikana massacre (for which he allegedly helped create the preparatory climate) – this throws up several important questions about the political party that rules our country at present.

Is the ANC still a movement with socialist persuasions?

The party is sending out numerous mixed messages these days, of which Ramaphosa’s is but the least.

On the one hand, when reading its documents one can see that the Marxist-Leninist phraseology, which permeated the ANC/South Africa Communist Party (SACP) alliance in struggle times, still often holds sway.

For instance, some weeks ago the ANC issued a discussion document entitled “Reflection on the Balance of Forces: Is the National Democratic Revolution in Danger?”. When I read it, I was almost transferred back to the 1970s and 1980s, when the SACP completely dominated the ANC leadership.

First of all, the “National Democratic Revolution” (NDR) is still given a place of honour in this (and many other) documents. Anyone who knows something about the ANC/SACP alliance’s struggle history will know that the NDR is a communist concept which basically means the first phase in a two-phase revolution.

The original idea comes from Vladimir Lenin, who decreed that communist parties in the third world had to identify a “revolutionary bourgeois movement”, infiltrate and take over its leadership, and then use it to remove the colonial regime. The second phase, the socialist revolution, could be relatively easy as the communists would already occupy all the levers of power.

In the document, Lenin is quoted to underline the importance of approaching practice with the correct theory. With this in mind, the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc is described as the alteration of the “balance of forces in favour of imperialism”.

And imperialism, we are reminded, “has plunged humanity in a perpetual socio-economic crisis. The high levels of poverty, inequality, unemployment, disease and underdevelopment confirm our long held view that the capitalist market economy cannot resolve its own contradictions.”

This is nothing less than unadulterated Marxist-Leninist ideology.

That the SACP holds such views is to be expected, as this party has never made a secret of the fact that it refuses to learn the lessons of 1989-1991, when the Marxist-Leninist nightmare disappeared, accompanied by the wild jubilation of those enslaved by it.

But, although the document was clearly drafted by an SACP ideologue, it is no SACP document. It is supposed to be an ANC document.

Also, none less than President Jacob Zuma recently repeated an old SACP ideological pillar, that one part of the South African population (the rich whites) was colonising the other (the poor blacks). This was the concept of “colonialism of a special type” which, Joe Slovo used to boast, was the one original ideological contribution of the SACP to Marxism-Leninism.

On the face of it one could, therefore, conclude that the SACP is once more supplying the tail which is wagging the ANC dog.

But appearances may deceive. And Cyril Ramaphosa is the perfect metaphor to describe the place where the ANC/SACP alliance is right now.

Its words and propaganda notwithstanding, there is no way one could call the alliance Marxist-Leninist at present. Not even vaguely socialist. Not when you see what they are doing, in contrast to what they are saying.

Ramaphosa is a multimillionaire. Jacob Zuma uses your and my tax money to have a palace complex (Nkandla) built for his personal use. The Air Force’s limited flying hours are used up to ferry him and his guests between Durban and Nkandla.

We see a widespread tendency to put Zuma cronies in key positions. The ANC openly boast that they want to control “all levers of power”. And when one of these “levers” - Public Protector Thuli Madonsela - turns out to be fiercely independent, in accordance with the constitution, she is pilloried as “counter-revolutionary” or even “a CIA agent”.

We had a weapons procurement scandal in which fingers were pointed at Zuma himself, although he has hitherto managed to evade prosecution. Nary a week goes by without the independent media uncovering another corruption or mismanagement scandal from within the heart of the ANC.

What does all of this tell us? What it doesn’t tell us, is that the ANC/SACP is indeed a socialist, Marxist-Leninist movement.
In contrast, it tells us that the alliance is a corrupt, capitalist movement in which the strong exploit and oppress the poor.

But many people tolerate that, because the ANC still has the aura of a liberation movement about it. It is the ANC that brought freedom, liberty and human dignity.

Alas. Even Ramaphosa’s “socialist inclination” pales before its capitalist practice.

* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.