South Africa as a Beacon of Change

Since 2020, I have not written anything about South Africa. At the time, however, my correspondence to the SACP, initially about a Covid report, was published as an open letter in Umsebenzi, the mass circulation magazine of the South African Communist Party, edited by Blade Nzimande, then General Secretary, now Chairperson of the SACP. But with one of the most advanced democratic constitutions in the world, it seems to me South Africa deserves careful study for examples of how to work for social change.

I have long followed political developments in South Africa ever since the 1970s, when I was a supporter of NAIMSAL’s petition, then as a supporter of the anti-apartheid boycott movement, and long subscribed to and read and still read key documents and publications from South Africa. Thus, it makes sense for this to be one of the “beats” which I follow on my substack.

I think it is notable that when Reagan was elected in 1980, the progressive movement in the US immediately doubled down on supporting an end to apartheid literally on inauguration day. I have recently been concerned by the disdainful attitude of some in the US progressive movement, to the effect that “if only” the left in South Africa would just be as radical as “we” are all would better for the people of South Africa. Also, I have been concerned by a shift away from recognition of the lessons of Joe Slovo’s Has Socialism Failed. For instance, the notion of “racial capitalism,” which Trotskyists in South Africa pushed in the 1970s but was long discredited there. Now it is a veritable cottage industry among some on the left now in the US. Why not gendered capitalism or monopoly capitalism?

The lessons Slovo drew were part of an unfortunately short-lived tendency on the world left which I called a “revolutionary-democratic” tendency, although the SACP often called it a “radical democratic” approach, no doubt due to its recognition that the national democratic revolution was the order of the day, not any socialist revolution. In any case, what I wrote was not a prescription for South Africa but just my own views on the nature of progressive pragmatic social change that focused on addressing human needs. At the time I shared a ling to what was, at the time, my taxonomy of right, center and left in its variety varieties. The link I shared is still good and is here. But my current analysis as updated since is here: A Taxonomy of Five Versions of Conservative, Liberal, Progressive and Left as Utopianism, Libertarianism, Pragmatism, Authoritarianism or Patrimonialism. I had delayed developing it due to problems with the bottom row, which I now think I have corrected: patrimonialism not individualism/monarchism.

But the current dilemma in South Africa is one example, I think, of confusion of the various political positions on the left, between reform and transformational reforms, and “revolution”, and so forth. I’m in boxes 11 and 12 but think box 11 is the sweet spot for working to achieve mass support for an alternative to neoliberalism. We need transformative reforms, for sure, that make a difference. The SACP continues to work for just that kind of approach. See its October 2024 memorandum. This is an example of how a mature left can strive for social progress even with a society still under the influence of monopoly capitalism, and without resorting to ultraleft rhetoric.

The recent tactical shift in electoral strategy at the local elections level by the SACP in SA should light a match under the feet of all the CP and ANC affiliated individual activists to re-double their commitment to the radical democratic nature of the NDR, expose the false radicalism of the ethnonationalist newcomers to the political arena, and retain what Raymond Suttner has called nonracialism, which has long been the tenet of the CP/ANC/COSATU alliance, which can continue at many levels despite contestation of local seats.