National Democratic Revolution: Cyril has a plan – a big one

Comrades rave about the national democratic revolution (NDR) with the same glittering-eyed zeal that Christian missionaries to Darkest Africa, a few centuries back, enthused about the Resurrection.

But the Resurrection is conceptually simple.

The dead will rise, ascend to Heaven and live forever in glory. The NDR is considerably more complex.

According to the dogma, South Africa is characterised by a “colonialism of a special type”, where whites are the illegitimate oppressors and black people the exploited victims.

In accordance with an unalterable process proclaimed by Lenin, there are two stages to the revolution: national liberation (1994) and then an incremental shift from capitalism to socialism and, ultimately, communism.

The ANC and its communist and trade union allies invoke the NDR with a regularity and fervour that the religiously devout must surely envy.

But is this all just lip service?

For decades now, that has been the view of most local commentators.

Aside from a sprinkling of writers – RW Johnson, Anthea Jeffery and Rian Malan being the most gloomy in their predictions – the consensus has been that the ANC’s NDR is a harmless bunny rabbit that will nibble your fingers, not a vicious shark that will take off your arm.

Jeffery, who is head of research at the Institute of Race Relations, has just authored Countdown to Socialism: The National Democratic Revolution in South Africa Since 1994.

It’s a logical progression of an earlier title of hers, People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa, which touched on the role of NDR ideology in the ANC-Inkatha-National Party political violence of 1984-1994, in which more than 20 000 people died, the overwhelming majority of whom were black.

In the new book, she argues that the failure of President Cyril Ramaphosa to substantively change the disastrous policies that have brought SA to the brink of collapse is not because of incompetence, but rather is rooted in the fact that he is steadfastly trying to implement the NDR.

According to her, the NDR is not a distant dream (or nightmare). It has methodically and sometimes surreptitiously been implemented over the past three decades, making millions unemployable and destroying the economy.

There is more pain to come.

The next steps are land expropriation without compensation and “the effective nationalisation of private healthcare and pensions”.

At this week’s launch of her book, Jeffery spoke of how “democratic socialism” has failed universally.

The reality is “pervasive repression, unprecedented state power and control”, from Venezuela to Zimbabwe.

It will be interesting to see what kind of mainstream coverage, in terms of reviews and interviews, Jeffery gets.

The mainstream media tends to treat the IRR – as it does all liberal and centre-right organisations – similarly to lepers: they’re intellectually unclean and hold dangerously reactionary views.

Whatever one thinks of Jeffery’s views, the arguments she puts forward in support are sturdy.

While I am of the Pollyanna camp that thinks liberal fears of the NDR bogeyman are overdone – economic realities will eventually force the ANC to accommodate private enterprise, if only business leaders had the balls to stand their ground – at present the tide is undoubtedly running strongly in the NDR direction.

The trouble with the ANC’s NDR fixation is that every time things get bad, rather than revise their ideological template, they tend to double down.

Lenin, like God, is all-knowing and will provide.

But, to the ANC’s apparent amazement, the growing economy that is fundamental to all the good things that we desire for our nation, cannot simply be legislated.

fIt’s a reality that will leave both Lenin and Ramaphosa shocked.