Written by What’s the issue?
• SA’s massive inequality remains: the wealthiest 20% has 60% of the national income.
• The negotiated transition entrenched the constitutional protection of private property.
• Gains were made in water, housing and education access, but these still fall short of Chris Hani’s vision.
LUKHANYO “BHANDA” MTSHINGANA
Despite the NDR, economic power remains in the hands of white monopoly capital. Cde Thembisile Martin Chris Hani famously said: “Socialism is not about big concepts and heavy theory, Socialism is about decent shelter for those who are homeless, it is about water for those who have no safe drinking water. It is about health care; it is about a life of dignity for the old, it is about overcoming the huge divide between urban and rural areas, it is about a decent education for all our people, Socialism is about rolling back the tyranny of the market.” Unfortunately, Chris Hani did not live to see his dream of socialism in South Africa as he was assassinated outside his home in Dawn Park at Boksburg on 10 April 1993 by Janusz Walus, a farright white supremacist and anti-communist. Deepening the NDR The National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is a two-phase revolutionary theory where the first is expressed as a goal to achieve total national independence through the dismantling of apartheid and the development of democracy. Step two deals with the societal change to build socialism. The NDR bonded the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Lenin in “The State and Revolution” (1917) explains that socialism cannot be implemented in a singular way, as countries are different in the challenges they face. He argues against the idea of a single rigid model of the construction of socialism. The NDR, as a class-struggle doctrine, should be tested on how it will achieve socialism by promoting a national developmental state that includes different classes. In South Africa, the oppressor was described through the lens of monopoly capital when it comes to key sectors of the economy. We need to ask ourselves as this generation if the plan was to eliminate capital or deracialise it and lead it towards a development purpose. The NDR’s theoretical proposition was a state driven approach, redistributive approach when it comes to land reform and achieving of an industrial strategy through a mixed economy. It has been 32 years since our country obtained freedom from apartheid rule and saw the ANC take power with its Alliance partners, the SACP and Cosatu, and the mass democratic movement as a whole, where the country saw the first black president in Cde Nelson Mandela. After 32 years, the country continues to suffer from inequality, as per World Bank estimates, as it continues to be one of the most unequal countries with a Gini coefficient of 63% (0.63) with the wealthiest who form 20% of the population capturing 60% of the county’s income while 40% attributed to the poor just surviving on just over 10%. The economic power remains heavily concentrated with large businesses taking up to 76% of the market share, with 95% of smallmedium enterprises sharing or contributing only 24% to the total business in the country. Ordinary black South Africans still struggle to make it to the mainstream economy due to the existence of uneven sectoral transformation in the country. Unresolved monopoly capital crisis From a class point of view, the working class in the country succeeded in the defeat of apartheid and dealt with the oppressive political and legal systems that came with the regime, but economic power remains elusive. The black working class got the right to contest political power, as well as the rights to protest, strike, and organise as individuals and unions, and to form social movements. The negotiated state of South Africa shows evidence of strong constitutional protection of private property for monopoly capital, overwhelmingly male and white, and betrayal of the concept of large-scale nationalisation, which has led to reassurances for investors and continued capital accumulation for the elite. It is clear that our political democracy, while bringing forth some important advances, has contributed to the forestalling of a socialist revolution, while capitalist property relations remain strictly maintained by the previous owners. The executive suit was surrendered, capital was restructured by financialisation, globalisation and the co-opting of a black elite via Black Economic Empowerment policies, and this shows that democracy has not presented a systemic threat to the system, which continues to exclude the majority. These conditions compelled the SACP to contest elections independently to increase the voices of the working class and the poor in this terrain. There are, however, some successes that have been seen; access to clean water and sanitation has been improved in the country, access to education, especially in the tertiary sector, increased through assistance from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, housing, and an increased black middle class who participate in the economy.
Cde Lukhanyo “Bhanda” Mtshingana is a PhD student at Peking University, China, in National Development Studies, majoring in theoretical economics, and an Eastern Cape PEC member of YCLSA
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