OUR COMMUNIST BRETHREN HAVE FAILED US BY SIDING WITH SHADY CAPITALISM

THE SUNDAY TIMES
JOHANNESBURG, SA
By Mondli Makhanya
Mar 22, 2009

‘What is the socialist agenda in ensuring the ascent of someone whose alleged activities were anti-poor?’

If you have never been to a conference of the South African Communist Party, you have been missing out. Their conferences are a study in morality and contradiction.
The comrades gather at one or other venue with a mission to redefine the country and create an equal society.

On the lawns of the conference venue you will find dozens of buses that have transported the ordinary membership — workers, peasants and community activists — to the conference.

On the lawns you will also find luxury sedans and 4X4s that have brought the party leadership and the capitalist friends of the communists to the conference.

Inside though, the language is the same. The workers, the peasants and the privileged communists all rail against the evil capitalists whose money has paid for the conference.

Lots of noise gets made about the iniquities of the system and what needs to be done to create a socialist Nirvana.

At the end of the meeting there are noble resolutions about what the communists should do to change the world.

In commissions and conversations there are great critiques of socialist experiments in other parts of the world and the lessons to be learnt from the mistakes and successes of others.

But slowly receding from the consciousness of the SACP is a great work by one of our own communists, Joe Slovo, the majestic paper titled “Has Socialism Failed”.

That paper was written in 1990 in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in the Eastern Bloc. It was a searing critique of what had gone wrong with the socialist ideology — which had as one of its central tenets the building of good, human-centred societies.

But, argued Slovo, socialism had suffered from “distortions” which had led to it becoming as undemocratic and inhumane as the capitalist system.

In the paper, Slovo advocated reforming socialism to make it what its theoretical founding fathers had meant it to be.

“The way forward for the whole of humanity lies within a socialist framework guided by genuine socialist humanitarianism, and not within a capitalist system which entrenches economic and social inequalities as a way of life,” he wrote.

“Socialism can undoubtedly be made to work without the negative practices which have distorted many of its key objectives.

“But mere faith in the future of socialism is not enough. The lessons of past failures have to be learnt. Above all, we have to ensure that its fundamental tenet — socialist democracy — occupies a rightful place in all future practice.”

Slovo’s paper was meant to guide socialists everywhere as they recovered from the devastating blow dealt to them by the fall of the Iron Curtain. More importantly it was meant to guide the then recently unbanned SACP as it grappled with a world that had dismissed its beliefs as outmoded.

I must state upfront that I have a lot of time for communists. They are generally good people who believe in the goodness of human beings. They are very hard workers with searching minds that continuously interrogate the universe. They normally have a heightened sense of morality and shun the corrupt ways of many politicians. Most communists I have met take the notion of public service very seriously.

You may disagree with them ideologically, but hell, you need their conscience.

However there are times when communists go bad. When lust for power gets the better of them.

The SACP is in that space right now.

A force that once had the potential to be a conscience of the republic is instead at the forefront of those taking us in the wrong direction.

It is the SACP, the supposed vanguard of the workers, the peasants and the poor, which has been prominent in pushing for the installation of a president who has been the dearest friend of some of the shadiest capitalists in the country.

SACP activists have been among the most active in the battle to ensure the country never finds out what these shady capitalists may or may not have paid this presidential candidate to fulfil their needs.

Which begs the question: what is the socialist agenda in ensuring the ascent to power of someone whose alleged activities were intrinsically anti-poor?

At the risk of over-quoting, I would like to refer to a paper written by SACP member Mazibuko Jara, titled: “What colour is our flag? Red or JZ?”

“What signals are we sending to the public about our positions on corruption, the rule of law and public confidence in state institutions? What is the level of strategic confusion in our activist and mass base on all these issues?

“There is also something wrong when the left in the alliance finds itself uncritically on the same side as emerging capitalist Don Mkhwanazi, corrupt businessman Schabir Shaik, and an ANC Youth League suckled on the largesse of the late Brett Kebble. What can possibly unite us with these elements?”

It is a question that the Blade Nzimandes of this world should ponder as they carry the servant of shady capital into the big building on the Tshwane hill.