Content provided in partnership with
From racial to class apartheid: South Africa's frustrating decade of freedom
Monthly Review, March, 2004 by Patrick Bond
South Africa's independent left will continue growing under these conditions. Organizations that repeatedly challenge the ANC and capital include social movement and community activist coalitions such as the national Social Movements Indaba, the Johannesburg Anti-Privatization Forum, the eThekwini (Durban) Social Forum, and the Western Cape Anti-Evictions Campaign, as well as a variety of sectorally-specific groups: the Education Rights Project, the Environmental Justice Networking Forum, Jubilee SA, Keep-Left, Khulumani (apartheid victims support group), the Landless Peoples Movement, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, the Treatment Action Campaign, Youth for Work, and sometimes the inconsistent SA NonGovernmental Organizations Coalition. Information about their struggles is regularly found in mainstream news outlets, but the local independent left use media such as the Indymedia Web sites, the journal Debate: Voices from the South African Left and its e-mail discussion list, and Khanya Journal. Other left infrastructure includes think tanks and training institutes such as the Alternative Information and Development Centre, groundWork, the International Labour Research and Information Group, Khanya College, and the University of Natal Centre for Civil Society, most of which have useful Web sites. There are, as well, some militant sections of COSATU, especially municipal workers.
- Most Popular Articles in News
- The Ten Best Laptop bags
- Tata plans cheapest-ever car for Indian market
- GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD
- Corn is good for you; Corn is not only a tasty treat, but also a cereal that ...
- THE 50 BEST STYLISH HANDBAGS TO CARRY
- More »
However, divisive conflicts have emerged within South African's independent left movements, especially over how to relate to the SACP and COSATU. Opinions vary greatly on how far to attack the ANC itself, and carry into debates over whether (and when) to form a left political party, and whether to call for a boycott or a spoiled ballot in the 2004 national elections. In addition, there remain traditional South African problems with sectarianism among small political parties and factions. Another major dividing line emerged over how to articulate South African reactions to the Zimbabwe land issue and to the imperialist-aligned section of the Zimbabwe opposition. Nevertheless, my own sense is that many of these splits and conflicts will be resolved in the coming decade, when a realignment of the broad left under a broad-based workers' party umbrella is likely.
Two remarks sum up the situation in South Africa. First, "The government is utterly seduced by big business, and cannot see beyond its immediate interests." Second, "domestic and foreign left sectarian factions ... accuse our movement of having abandoned the working people, saying that we have adopted and are implementing neoliberal policies. These factions claim to be pursuing a socialist agenda. They assert that, on the contrary, we are acting as agents of the domestic and international capitalist class and such multilateral organizations as the World Bank and the IMF, against the interests of the working people." These quotes, respectively from the (neoliberal) editor of the newspaper Business Day in June 2003, and from Mbeki's address to an ANC policy conference in September 2002, reveal an elite awareness that the 10th anniversary of South African freedom will not be a cause for celebration by those who had hoped for a genuine break with apartheid. Perhaps the 20th will allow us a more encouraging report.
