The run-up and sequel to the Cosatu-led (and SACP-supported) two day protest action against privatisation, poverty and escalating food prices, have reinforced within us one overriding conviction. It is time to stop turning policy debate, implementation and evaluation within our alliance into a continuous trial of strength. If, as the South African Communist Party (SACP), we have to mobilise and struggle for consistent and progressive policy-making, then mobilise and struggle we shall.

But annual show-downs, easy labelling of each other, point-scoring, flexing of muscles, might make for media entertainment, but these things are having an extremely negative impact on the possibilities of fostering enlightened and sober policy processes. The intra-alliance war of labelling and attrition also impacts seriously on the morale of our shared mass constituency. It is time to show leadership.

There are many dangers in brandishing an ultra-left label, without specific identification of who this ultra left is.

Firstly, such labelling without proper specification acts as a substitute to a proper and sober analysis of the challenges facing our movement in this current period. Secondly, such labelling shuts the debate on the very fundamental questions relating to the economic development path to be followed in a democratic South Africa. This is not the time to shut and close this debate, ostensibly on the grounds that all our policies are inherently correct by virtue of being our policies. Instead we need to open the debate on this subject widely, both within our structures as well as in the broader public domain. Thirdly, and much more seriously labelling is factionalising rather than uniting. As the President of the ANC correctly warned in his address to the Cosatu Central Committee in 1998, to label one another as “ultra-left” or “right-wing” is to call for a fight, even amongst comrades.

To quote the ANC President in full, "But then, we must not fall victim to the easy temptation to label one another as this or that school of thought, and thus close the dialogue among ourselves. Indeed, 1 have noticed that these days some comrades seem to think that the attachment of political labels, like the labelling of different brands of beer, is some honourable revolutionary occupation.

This one is ultra-left. The other is neo-liberal and another is right Wing. Sometimes, when we are supposed to think and analyse, the complex situation we all face demands, we resort to throwing around swear words. And all of us know that to swear at somebody is to look for a fight and not a discussion, even among those who might call one another comrades." Fourthly, such labelling without identifying this ultra-left, in the wake of protest action by allies, actually serves to strengthen and elevate this tiny and marginal ultra-left to be a force that it is not. It also weakens our very struggles to defeat ultra-leftism within our ranks.

At its 11th Congress the SACP took a resolution to support the Cosatu protest action against privatisation. Like the ANC and Cosatu, we said at the time that our preference was that this matter should be resolved through internal alliance discussions. We still believe that it is eminently possible to resolve differences through discussions and engagement. Unfortunately all initiatives and engagements prior to the two-day protest action failed to resolve this matter. We supported this action because, as our 11th Party Congress political programme says, there has been a serious conflation in practice of restructuring and privatisation.

Our view is that whilst restructuring of the parastatals is necessary, this must not be equated to simple privatisation. We believe that it is important that we discuss and agree as an alliance on which parastatals and public functions should remain in the hands of the state, including the modalities to ensure this. This has not happened. Instead the argument for restructuring on a case-by-case basis is happening outside of this overall strategic agreement and understanding – a matter that is creating enormous problems and misunderstandings.

As a communist party, we are opposed to the privatisation of the provision of basic services and the weakening of the strategic capacity of the state to decisively intervene in the economy in favour of the workers and the poor. Much as we are faced with the reality of the overwhelming dominance of private capital, the harnessing of such private capital must be done through collective discussion on the strategic and tactical approaches to be adopted, such that we strengthen rather than weakens the capacity of the state in implementing a developmental agenda. There is no single corner of our broad national liberation movement that has all the wisdom on how to advance and consolidate our democratic revolution.

The SACP is absolutely convinced that there are (on paper and in principle) no serious differences within the alliance on restructuring. The ANC’s impressively democratic and highly participatory National Policy Conference (27-30th September) once again underlines the point.

The Conference adopted a wide range of draft resolutions for finalisation at the ANC’s 51st National Conference in December. Among the draft resolutions are several dealing with the restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While these draft resolutions on SOEs do not depart from existing ANC policy resolutions, they strongly reinforce key progressive perspectives.

What are the key aspects of ANC policy on the restructuring of SOEs?
The National Policy Conference resolutions affirm that “a number of parastatals, including provincial and municipal enterprises are a significant strategic public asset that must be included as an integral component of our approach to building an active developmental state”. Given this fundamental strategic point of departure, the ANC resolutions call on us to

* strengthen and consolidate existing efforts to redirect the parastatals towards meeting the developmental goals of the country”;
* continue to involve all social partners in discussions on restructuring of state-owned assets as outlined in the National Framework Agreement, and …ensure the creation of similar instruments at municipal and other levels”, and
* ensure “these entitites are continuously monitored and evaluated against the goals of a developmental state.”

These policy recommendations are all absolutely spot-on, and the SACP warmly endorses them. Of course, it is important to recognise (and the SACP DOES recognise) that the ANC is not a socialist organisation. (It is not an anti-socialist organisation either.) The ANC’s approach to the restructuring of the public sector is informed by a progressive but relatively open-ended, “balance of evidence” approach. The SACP’s long-term socialist strategic perspective favours an extensive and dominant public sector in our society. We make no apology for approaching current policy debates informed by this longer range perspective. However, we accept that the ANC approaches the topic in a somewhat different way. Whether an SOE should be wholly or partially privatised or not, whether an existing private entity should be nationalised, or whether a new publicly-owned entity should be created – from an ANC perspective, these choices depend on the balance of evidence in each case.

The SACP is comfortable with this “balance of evidence” approach, adopted by the leading formation within our tripartite alliance. We believe that the case for a powerful, active and strategic state and parastatal sector is overwhelming in a country like our own, with the developmental challenges we confront.

So why then has there been such intra-alliance turmoil on this front?

The disagreements in the Alliance around restructuring and privatisation are of such significance that our political approach to them cannot simply be determined by the success or otherwise of a single protest action. The cumulative effects of an unresolved working class grievance in the medium to longer term can have very serious repercussions, and therefore bold and decisive leadership on the part of all in the alliance is required in the here and now to resolve such matters.

At its 11th Congress the SACP properly located these disagreements by characterising the current political conjuncture as that which is principally a struggle to deepen the national democratic revolution on a terrain of capitalism. This particular conjuncture is manifested by, amongst other things, struggles to confront the reality that whilst the liberation movement, of which the SACP is a part, has deepened its hold over state power, economic power still remains in the hands of the very same class forces as under apartheid – a white bourgeoisie with deepening links to global capital. Government has indeed over the last 7 years recorded many achievements and progress in tackling the social deficit inherited from apartheid, as well as deepening democracy and bringing political stability to the country.

Deepening the NDR is fundamentally a struggle to confront and seek to address the deeply intertwined national, class and gender contradictions. The difference however between economic power in the current period and during the apartheid regime, is that now private capital has been “liberated” from the global stigma of apartheid and its political contradictions, thus strengthening and deepening the processes of capital accumulation and opening global opportunities for this capital. But this mobility and “liberation” of the white bourgeoisie from an apartheid political order has in turn not liberated the mass of the people of our country from the clutches of poverty.

The neo-liberal restructuring of both the global and domestic economies provides one of the most intractable and hostile terrain on which an underdeveloped country like ours is seeking to address poverty and deepen democracy. Whilst government has made significant advances in tackling the social deficit inherited from apartheid, in many ways neo-liberalism is reproducing and deepening instead of addressing the national, class and gender contradictions that the NDR seeks to resolve. In other words, the consolidation of the national democratic revolution is threatened by the very same contradictions it seeks to address. It is these contradictions that the revolutionary alliance is faced with, and the debates, tensions and disagreements that flare up now and again within the Tripartite Alliance are about how to confront this contradictory reality and challenges. This is the backdrop against which we should understand the unfolding debates within the Alliance.

It is also our view that between stated policy positions and actual practice there are real dangers of serious slippage and confusion. If the balance of evidence is, indeed, measured up against the kind of developmental objectives quoted above from the ANC National Policy Conference, then there should be no serious problems at all. But sober and collective policy development and evaluation is constantly undermined by all kinds of pressures. There is the role of an aspirant and emergent black capitalist strata for whom privatisation offers a chance for private accumulation, with most restructuring involving a designated “empowerment” stake. All too often what parades as “black economic empowerment” is really personal enrichment at the expense of public property, and effective black economic DIS-empowerment.

Then there is the often close, even incestuous link between these emergent strata, senior management in the parastatals, and some senior government cadres. There is, alas, sometimes a thin line between legal (but problematic) policy and actual corruption. The recent debacle around the forestry privatisation deal has underlined these problems all too well.

At the end of 2000, government added one more pressure onto the restructuring of SOEs. It is pressure that further compromises the possibilities for a sober, balance-of-evidence policy-making process. At the end of 2000, in the Medium Term Budget Policy Framework government, for the first time, projected a massive R40 billion over three years from privatisation proceeds. Until this time government had steadfastly (and correctly in our view) declined to put clear monetary targets on privatisation proceeds. Whether this switch of policy was motivated by the failure of GEAR’s anticipated major flows of foreign direct investment, or by the escalation of costs of the arms procurement package, we do not know. Government budgeted for R18 billion from privatisation in the financial year 2001-2, and came nowhere near. There is now considerable budgetary pressure to sell, to sell big, regardless of market conditions. This, too, does not contribute to a climate in which a sober, balance-of-evidence, discussion can take place.

Finally, government is also continually goaded by the private sector in general, and by most of the mass media to “accelerate privatisation”, “to show the unions who’s really in charge”, to “go”, as a recent Business Day editorial graphically puts it, “the whole hog”. Accelerated privatisation is turned into the litmus test of whether government is “really in charge”. Privatisation becomes the badge by which we prove to potential foreign investors that we are really serious about creating an “investor friendly economy”.

These (entirely ideological) arguments were trumpeted continuously and very loudly in the run-up to and in the immediate aftermath of the Cosatu-led protest actions. Interestingly, within days of the October 1 and 2 protest actions, even the more intelligent independent (and even some pro-business) media commentators were beginning to wonder whether they had not over-played their hand.

Of course, most of the commercial media hailed “government’s tough stance against Cosatu”, and presented the protest actions as a “failure”. But quite quickly there were many second thoughts. Having goaded government into being “tough” and having mocked the perspectives of the SACP and Cosatu, many wondered if they had not gone too far.

“Why debate the issues when a label will do?”, the Financial Mail (October 11th) asks in an editorial. It is not as though the Financial Mail has been an innocent bystander in the labelling of the left, but having encouraged the trend, even it is uncomfortable with the way in which some within the Alliance bandied about the term “ultra-left”. The editorial notes how the label is being used “to cauterise growing and vocal unhappiness in the ruling party’s alliance partners, Cosatu and the SACP – as well as in the new social movement. Ask for a definition of ‘leftist’ and the answer is inevitably woolly.” The Financial Mail worries that this “trend is dangerous…it reduces the intellectual space for political debate and public dissent.”
Even our ideological rivals in the financial press can recognise what should be obvious to all within the alliance. It is time to stop turning intra-alliance policy debate into labelling and brinkmanship. It is time to create the climate within government, within the ANC, and across the alliance, in which serious and complicated challenges are discussed intelligently and soberly, without fear or favour. It is time to ensure that the broad and progressive strategic policies upon which we all agree are, indeed, implemented in practice and not hijacked.