Liberation war and/or counter revolution?

Every time people write about this subject – be it academics, politicians, business people or even revolutionaries, they always do so having taken side of either those in power or on the receiving end of power dominance.

It’s on extremely rare occasions were the class perspective is given the prominence and context it deserves.

The South African liberation struggle, much as it has taken a national form, its class content has always been a contested subject within both Congress Alliance and outside of it, in, for instance organisations such as the PAC of Azania and other left organisations including the ultra-leftists like Unity Movement and others.

At some point, the SACP was accused by these left organisations of being an “ANC tailist”. That was absolute rubbish because at that time, the SACP cadreship in the ANC not only held key positions, but gave political directions to the Alliance.

But today the opposite is true and the SACP has become the “ANC tailist”, just like these left organisations said.

Academic Dr Neville Alexander, Alec Erwin and many other ultra-leftists, had regretted their stance against the ANC softly non-class approach during the struggle. They had realised, very late of course, that had they joined the ANC earlier on they could have been part of a vibrant organisation and its leadership, and influenced its direction in favour of the working class.

Today we are arguing about the challenges of the Congress Alliance and the South African struggle in general, and yet we don’t want to confront the objective realities as they present themselves to us. We’ve also not only lost moral high ground, but we are behaving as and are indeed cowards who want to save their skins at the expense of the revolution.

For us to be able to move forward, we firstly need to address the elephant in the room as to who really sold out our revolution. Many people are pointing fingers somewhere else while others are cautioning us from pointing those fingers, even where they genuinely should be pointed.

Their cautioning, most of the time, is done for their own selfish reasons and has nothing to do with the organisation or revolution.

During the (democratic) negotiations, the ANC leadership, both from exile, prison, and the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), found out that the infiltration by the enemy in all our structures of the ANC and Umkhonto Wesizwe (MK) in particular, was beyond comprehension. Therefore, even during the talks about talks, it became clear that the only way forward was to negotiate or risk a disintegration of the movement. This revelation was and remains a very uncomfortable topic to the ANC even today.

So, when the negotiations were concluded and the 1994 national elections were held and the ANC ascended to power, the Mandela administration was cognizant of this fact. The unilateral lifting of the armed struggle at the time when negotiations were far from conclusion, points to this reality.

Despite all this, the leadership was able to determine the political programme for the country to follow. It was not perfect we know, but it took us to a specific direction.

For instance, with the African Renaissance that was pursued subsequently, with all its shortfalls, we knew that the final product was to be the beneficiation of Africans of the mineral resources at the end of the day.

It was the diversion from that programme led our country and continent to where we are today – the brink of a politico-economic collapse. It was not white monopoly capital or the lack of implementation of radical economic transformation, if you like.

We, therefore, need to reflect as to where this whole diversion comes from, because if we don’t trace it back, we won’t be able to address it.

The sure thing that has put us where we are currently was greed, and nothing else. The Polokwane programme was a well-planned illegal process by some ANC leadership to sell out our country to the highest bidder. It was designed to stop all programmes of African beneficiation, save for themselves, because it was about themselves and not the South African populace.

The behaviour by comrades of entitlement is not new, in fact, it was hatched at Polokwane. This albeit the pretence of innocence by these comrades about the damage their actions caused to our country.

Do South Africans need ANC in its culture current form? I know they don’t, but that the opposition in our country has no direction, that doesn’t mean the “ANC would rule until Jesus returns”, as Zuma once foolishly proclaimed.

People are not standing up because they are afraid of anything, but because they have lost hope that our country will ever be change.

• Ndzipo Kalipa is social commentator, an Alliance activist and a former trade unionist.

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