[DEBATE] : Suren Pillay / 'New traditions in liberation politics'

[Sean Jacobs]

Suren Pillay:
"Short of a complete revolution, what the left needs to think about is  
how to influence political power and policy-making more effectively in  
a democratic South Africa. Relying on tactics and strategies honed in  
the trenches of liberation politics are unlikely to realise  
progressive political objectives and more likely to regurgitate its  
problems and our crisis. If the right wing of the liberation movement  
is about to seek a new democratic voice in the form of a political  
party, it's not clear that the left has found it yet."

New traditions in liberation politics
SUREN PILLAY: COMMENT - Oct 18 2008 06:00

Compelling as it may be, getting too absorbed in the intrigue of  
palace politics and personalities will lead us away from clarity in  
this crisis.

We are witnessing the convulsions of the tripartite alliance and a  
shift in state-party relations in South Africa, at the heart of which  
is the difference between a liberation movement and a political party.  
Between the habits of the old and the challenges of the new, each  
claiming to uphold the "traditions" of the ANC and the tripartite  
alliance, something had to give.

Besides the competition over who benefits from the spoils of BEE, the  
Terror Lekota initiative represents the alarm of the elitist  
nationalist traditions of the ANC, confronted by the less coherent  
Zuma coalition of populist left nationalists, among whom the spectre  
of "tribalism" and disrespect, for both judicial law and customary  
law, seem to be flourishing. Competing recourse to the traditions of  
the ANC, embodied in the Freedom Charter, is actually about the  
struggle to determine its "traditions" in the years ahead rather than  
the past. It's about both the ideas it upholds and the way it gets  
things done.

The ANC as a liberation movement has forged practices it claims are an  
integral part of its identity: collective leadership, supposed absence  
of careerism, democratic centralism and grass-roots-driven mandates.  
The overall organisational aim was the creation of a single united  
identity; the overall organisational effect was the strength of the  
clenched fist rather than the dangling fingers of an open hand. The  
ANC up to now has been able to marry its ideas and practices with  
remarkable success.

But what makes for successful political manoeuvring in a liberation  
movement facing repression does not translate easily into a liberal  
democracy. Liberation movements emphasise a collective identity, while  
parliamentary portfolios, by their very nature, individualise  
political power. Ministers are responsible for their portfolios and  
are accountable to a Constitution, to a Parliament and to the party.

Individuals will inevitably "interpret" mandates in their own ways and  
many different interest groups will try to influence the thinking of  
an individual minister, in proper and improper ways. This is the new  
normal.

The tripartite alliance may have been a formidable arrangement as an  
oppositional unity, but its future can really only be symbolic. Former  
president Thabo Mbeki felt the tension between "the movement" and the  
state, putting a solid wedge between the alliance partners and the  
presidency. How much this had to do with his own ideological  
preferences and how much of it was the result of a structural logic  
that will be forced on any future head of state, we will see.  
President Kgalema Motlanthe will soon learn, and later, perhaps, Jacob  
Zuma too.

What the SACP and Cosatu, and factions within the ANC have to think  
about carefully is whether their current "success" in removing what  
they see as obstacles to their inability to influence political power  
will actually solve their problems. They may be buoyed by their  
presidential purge, but this is short-sighted. If they don't realise  
that the problem is more complex than the individual style of a leader  
then they are soon going to find themselves plotting again for the  
removal of a political leader who will feel the pressure of the global  
economic and political forces, of local pressures, including business  
and the new black elites, to make policy that reflects myriad  
contending interests.

Short of a complete revolution, what the left needs to think about is  
how to influence political power and policy-making more effectively in  
a democratic South Africa. Relying on tactics and strategies honed in  
the trenches of liberation politics are unlikely to realise  
progressive political objectives and more likely to regurgitate its  
problems and our crisis. If the right wing of the liberation movement  
is about to seek a new democratic voice in the form of a political  
party, it's not clear that the left has found it yet.

Suren Pillay is a senior research specialist in the Democracy and  
Governance programme of the HSRC and senior lecturer in Political  
Studies at the University of the Western Cape

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-10-18-new-traditions-in-liberation-politics




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Sean Jacobs
Concerned Africa Scholars
Online at http://concernedafricascholars.org/