South Africa’s left like a weak Achilles heel – analysts

The fragmentation within the left in South Africa is not new, but the division among its components had weakened it, causing it to leave the poor in the lurch, say experts.

Political analysts Prof Ntsikelelo Breakfast and Dale McKinley said various segments of the left in South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, did not see eye to eye on the way forward to achieve their goals of a socialist society and as a result they worked separately.

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Left actually abandons poor

Breakfast said the state of the left had caused it to abandon the poor that it claimed to represent, while society remained divided between the poor and the rich.

“The left’s market, the poor, is there because if you look at our society, there is a binary between the haves and the have-nots. So, we are not talking about the lack of markets to which the left can pitch its message.

“The issue is the failure of the left to put itself on the map as a force to be reckoned with and that is because of the fragmentation within the itself,” Breakfast said.

Breakfast, from Centre for Peace Security and Conflict Resolution at Nelson Mandela University, said because of their different theoretical outlooks, the left appeared fragmented because its segments used different strategies to achieve its goals.

For instance, the SA Communist Party (SACP) is in an alliance with the ANC to pursue its twostage struggle of national democratic revolution and the deferred dream of economic emancipation.

The PAC adopted a class collaboration approach and joined the government of national unity.

This contradicted its socialist orientation to work with the DA and to be in the same structure as the right-wing Freedom Front Plus, a successor of racist Conservative Party founded by Dr Andries Treurnicht.

The Azanian People’s Organisation pursued scientific socialism mixed with black consciousness.

The “new left” comprising Julius Malema’s EFF and Umkhonto weSizwe party (MK) of Jacob Zuma pursue a radical left agenda, but are accused of being opportunistic pseudo-socialist left parties.

McKinley said the fundamental reason for the left weaknesses historically was the division between those who participated in the ANC alliance and those outside that had not been resolved.

The traditional left – SACP and Cosatu – being part of government and the independent left and the social movement had always been a divide.

“That is why there was a Cosatu split and the splitting of unions that made the left even weaker and there is no more sort of unitary federation.

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About being inside the ANC or outside

“The fundamental is about the different understandings of whether it’s better to be inside the ANC alliance or to stay out, and not compromise the left values and be a watchdog that is critical and dissenting,” McKinley said.

“Ideologically, there has been a lot of questioning which direction to go because of the sense that there is no alternative and that made some forces to retreat into the shadows, trying to be introspective about where they are going,” McKinley said.

Breakfast said although the ANC was no longer a hegemonic force in politics, the left was unable to challenge its dominance. He said the SACP had a genuine grievance against the GNU formation because the structure was a creation of white monopoly capital.

This view was shared by analyst Sandile Swana, who said the GNU was the idea of big business backed by a neoliberal lobby in the ANC that favoured cooperation with the DA.

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