The old order changeth, giving place to new

The Federal Executive Council of the New National Party (NNP) has decided to recommend to its Federal Congress, scheduled to take place next month on 5 April, that the Congress should resolve that the Party should "disband at 12pm on the day of the final certification of the results of the (next) local government elections".

Following this decision, the NNP Secretary General, Daryl Swanepoel, said: "The NNP is of the firm conviction that the best way to secure a united South Africa is to ensure inclusivity in decision-making; and to achieve this, it is crucial for black, white, coloured and Indian to join forces with the ANC."

Should the NNP Federal Congress accept the recommendation of the Executive Council, this would mark the end of a once mighty political organisation that came to represent everything that was fundamentally wrong with the idea and practice of white minority rule.

At the same time, it would communicate a very powerful message about the extraordinary ability of our people to give real meaning to the goals of national reconciliation, unity in diversity and non-racialism, and a common nationhood. It would confirm the gift we share as a people, regardless of race and colour, practically to communicate the message to ourselves and the world, that we are, together, human beings who belong to one common humanity, regardless of our different histories.

In many parts of the world, including our own continent, we can still see peoples tearing themselves apart in violent conflicts that claim many lives and inflict intolerable suffering on many people. These conflicts are informed by notions that differences in race, ethnicity, colour, culture and religion necessarily lead to conflict and an inability for many nations to live at peace with themselves, despite their diversity.

If the Federal Congress of the NNP elects to reiterate the sentiment expressed by its Secretary General, Daryl Swanepoel, it would make the statement on behalf of all South Africans, that contrary to and because of everything that might be happening elsewhere, we, South Africans, have chosen to take the difficult but noble decision to respect and honour the fact that we are together human beings, with none of us born hating, or born to hate.

The National Party (NP), was formed in 1914, two years after the ANC. History determined that these two historic political movements of our country, standing at opposite ends in the contest between the coloniser and the colonised, would, at least for eight decades, lock horns in a protracted struggle between two epochs in the evolution of human society.

In the end, the cause of democracy and genuine self-determination won over the pursuit of the goals of national oppression and white minority rule. The ANC emerged as the victor, and the NP the vanquished.

However, this did not signify a reversal of roles. It did not mean that whereas those who were black and had therefore been the subjects of white minority domination, would now become the perpetrators of a policy of black majority domination, intent to oppress the white minority. The ANC would not persecute the members of the NP, as the latter had persecuted members of the ANC.

Fundamentally, the eight decades of struggle between the ANC and the NP resulted in the victory of non-racialism and democracy, and the creation of the conditions for the cooperation of the constituencies represented by these two political formations, to build a peaceful, non-racial, non-sexist, united and prosperous democracy.

During the course of our struggle, certainly in the period from 1948, when the NP took power and began to introduce the system of apartheid, to 1990, when the formal negotiations between the ANC and the NP began, one of the strategic goals we pursued was the weakening and the defeat of the NP and the apartheid government it formed.

The NP pursued the same goal with regard to the ANC and the rest of the democratic movement. As a result of this, during the period of apartheid rule, the national liberation movement experienced the most intense repression, which, among other things, claimed many lives, and for some time severely weakened our movement.

But in the end, the brutal offensive failed. The ANC survived and grew from strength to strength, as did the struggle against the NP apartheid regime, for the liberation of the black oppressed. By the end of the 1980s, 75 years after it was formed, the NP saw that it had no choice but to negotiate with the same ANC it had sought to destroy.

Our movement as well thought the time had come for us to negotiate with the NP that had been our sworn enemy, which we had been determined to weaken, defeat and destroy. As it arrived at this position, understanding that the decision of the enemy to negotiate represented a victory of our struggle, our movement came to another important conclusion.

We recognised that it was important that the NP should be strong enough to be able to persuade the majority of the white section of our people it represented to accept the necessity for the negotiations and the outcome of those negotiations, which, inevitably, would spell the end of the system of white minority rule.

Contrary to the attitude we had adopted in the past, now we wanted a strong NP rather than a weakened NP. This was because the peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy required the voluntary cooperation of the white population of our country, an outcome the NP had to campaign for.

As part of our effort to reinforce the authority of the NP over its white constituency, early in the negotiations process, Nelson Mandela boldly described the then leader of the NP and the apartheid regime, FW de Klerk, as "a man of integrity".

This surprised many at home and abroad, who knew that even as they engaged in negotiations, the ANC and the NP would treat each other as opponents, having, perhaps, quietly decided that they should no longer describe themselves publicly as enemies.

An even more challenging test of the ability of our movement to sustain its strategic determination to contribute to the credibility of the NP as the authentic representative of white South Africa came when the NP decided that it required the express mandate of the white minority, to engage in the negotiations that had already started.

To achieve this objective, it organised an all-white referendum in 1992. The strategic decision we had taken to accept and project the NP as our credible interlocutor resulted in our having to adopt the paradoxical position not to oppose what, in reality, amounted to giving the white minority the right to veto the process of negotiations.

This meant that our movement that had opposed white minority rule from its foundation, 80 years before this referendum, would now tacitly acquiesce to a process that to all intents and purposes ceded the exclusive right to white South Africa to decide for all our people whether to opt for peace or to choose the madness of a catastrophic racial war.

Whatever the theoretical, conceptual and principled difficulties posed by these positions, we nevertheless reaffirmed that the peaceful transition from apartheid required that the NP should secure the mandate of its constituency, which held all the reigns of state and economic power in our country.

Accordingly, we did not oppose the racist referendum, and quietly urged white South Africa to participate in the referendum, to give the NP the mandate to continue to engage our movement in negotiations, to end the system of apartheid.

When the results were announced that 68.6% of the white electorate had voted in favour of a negotiated settlement, we too celebrated not only the mere fact of this result, but also the reality that our negotiating partner, the NP, enjoyed sufficient authority to be able to commit more than two-thirds of the white population of our country to a peaceful transition from an apartheid to a non-racial society.

We did not contest the statement FW de Klerk made in the aftermath of the referendum, as he celebrated his 56th birthday in Cape Town, that, "Today we have closed the book of apartheid.'' We were very interested that the party of apartheid, the NP, should play a major role in closing the book of apartheid.

During the course of the negotiations we also came to understand that it would be unreasonable of us to expect that the NP and its constituency should accept immediately to lose all executive power, as a result of the first democratic elections in our country that would, inevitably, result in an outright victory for our movement.

We therefore proposed that we should treat the first five years of democracy as a transitional period, during which the NP would be guaranteed a role in the process of governance. This led to the adoption of the constitutional provisions, which, among other things, resulted in the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU).

When we heard in 1996 that the now New NP, the NNP, was considering withdrawing from the GNU, we advised the NNP leadership not to take this step. Despite its claims that it brought experience in governance into the GNU, which we did not have, we were certain that we would be able successfully to govern our country, even after the NNP withdrew from the executive.

However, we urged the NNP to stay in the GNU to avoid the situation according to which its white supporters might respond to the absence of their representatives from the executive, as well as their definition of themselves as "the opposition", by deciding actively to oppose the new democratic order.

The leaders of the NNP decided to ignore our advice, driven by the serious concern and worry that the then Democratic Party (DP), led by Tony Leon, was succeeding to win the support of the traditional NNP constituency that had, as yet, not fully accepted the historic transition from apartheid rule to a non-racial and non-sexist democracy.

More than anything else, narrow partisan concerns about the electoral future of the NNP persuaded the leadership of the NNP that its future lay in playing a role as our country's "official opposition", rather than as a junior partner in the GNU. This leadership thought it had the possibility, once it left the GNU, to win back those who had come to see the (liberal) DP as the best guarantor of white interests.

This same reasoning led to the NNP agreeing to join the DP to form the Democratic Alliance (DA). Once more, we advised the leaders of the NNP against this, explaining to them their historic responsibility to help "close the book of apartheid". Once more, the leadership of the NNP refused to accept our advice.

Speaking in Malmesbury in 1926, the founder of the NP, the Boer General JBM Hertzog, then Prime Minister, told the supporters of the NP that:

"Next to the European, the native stands as an 8-11 year-old child to a man of great experience - a child in religion, a child in moral conviction; without art and without science; with the most primitive needs, and the most elementary knowledge to provide for those needs. If ever a race had a need of guidance and protection from another people with which it is placed in contact, then it is the native in his contact with the white man."

This racist arrogance ultimately found its most systematic and brutal expression in the apartheid system. Accordingly, when the NP decided to engage us in negotiations, it was signalling its readiness to go through a dramatic sea change in terms of the totality of the policies and attitudes that had made it a distinct political formation.

As we bade Raymond Mhlaba farewell last week, (ANC TODAY Vol 5 No 8), we recalled the words and actions of Braam Fischer, who was an Afrikaner as General Hertzog was, and a son of the then Orange Free State, as General Hertzog also was. As we salute the latest decisions of the Federal Executive Council of the NNP, we would like, once more, to recall the words of Braam Fischer.

When he addressed an apartheid court in Pretoria in 1966, 40 years after Hertzog made his Malmesbury speech, and shortly before he was imprisoned for life, Braam Fischer, born in 1908, six years before the NP was formed, said:

"I was a Nationalist at the age of six, if not before. I saw violence for the first time when, sitting on my father's shoulder, I saw business premises with German names burned to the ground in Bloemfontein, including those of some of my own family. I can still remember the weapons collected by my father and his friends who were bent on preventing a second outbreak.

"I saw my father leave with an ambulance unit to try and join the rebel (Afrikaner) forces (which opposed the Botha-Smuts decision to ally South Africa with the British Empire during the First World War). I remained a Nationalist for over twenty years thereafter and became, in 1929, the first Nationalist Prime Minister of a student parliament.

"I never doubted that the policy of segregation was the only solution to this country's problems until the Hitler theory of race superiority began to threaten the world with genocide and with the greatest disaster in all history. The Court will see that I did not shed my old beliefs with ease.

"It was when these doubts arose that one night, when I was driving an old ANC leader to his house far out to the west of Johannesburg that I propounded to him the well-worn theory that if you separate races you diminish the points at which friction between them may occur and hence ensure good relations. His answer was the essence of simplicity.

"If you place the races of one country in two camps, said he, and cut off contact between them, those in each camp begin to forget that those in the other are ordinary human beings, that each lives and laughs in the same way, that each experiences joy or sorrow, pride or humiliation for the same reasons. Hereby each becomes suspicious of the other and each eventually fears the other, which is the basis of all racialism.

"I believe no one could more effectively sum up the South African position today. Only contact between the races can eliminate suspicion and fear; only contact and co-operation can breed tolerance and understanding. Segregation or apartheid, however genuinely believed in, can produce only those things it is supposed to avoid: interracial tension and estrangement, intolerance and race hatreds.

"All the conduct with which I have been charged has been directed towards maintaining contact and understanding between the races of this country. If one day it may help to establish a bridge across which white leaders and the real leaders of the non-whites can meet to settle the destinies of all of us by negotiation and not by force of arms, I shall be able to bear with fortitude any sentence which this Court may impose on me.

"It will be a fortitude strengthened by this knowledge at least, that for twenty-five years I have taken no part, not even by passive acceptance, in that hideous system of discrimination which we have erected in this country and which has become a byword in the civilised world today.

"In prophetic words, in February 1881, one of the great Afrikaner leaders addressed the President and Volksraad of the Orange Free State. His words are inscribed on the base of the statue of President Kruger in the square in front of this Court.

"After great agony and suffering after two wars, they were eventually fulfilled without force or violence for my people. President Kruger's words were: 'Met vertrouwen leggen wy onze zaak open voor de geheele wereld. Het zy wy overwinnen, het zy wy sterven: de vryheid zal in Afrika ryzen als de zon uit de morgenwolken'. ('With confidence we lay our case before the whole world. Whether we win or die, freedom will rise in Africa, like the sun from the morning clouds.')

"In the meaning which those words bear today, they are as truly prophetic as they were in 1881. My motive in all I have done has been to prevent a repetition of that unnecessary and futile anguish which has already been suffered in one struggle for freedom."

Ultimately, the leadership and membership of the NNP had to decide whether the challenge they faced was to adapt what the founder of their party, General Hertzog, said in 1926, to the realities of the 21st century and the new democratic order in our country, or to do something else.

In a truly historic decision, the NNP has decided that it must make a clean break with what Hertzog stood for, as Braam Fischer did. Like Braam, its members have every right to appropriate to themselves the words of Paul Kruger - whether we win or die, freedom will rise in Africa, like the sun from the morning clouds - which it has done!

They have every right to take possession of Braam Fischer as their hero, as the millions who struggled for our liberation did many decades ago, moved by his commitment to human dignity for all, which he restated in the Pretoria High Court when he said that he had chosen the life of an outlaw, "to keep faith with all those dispossessed by apartheid".

Braam Fischer died of cancer in 1975. His jailers, fellow Afrikaners, released him provisionally into the custody of his brother shortly before he died, to protect themselves from any possible accusation that they might have murdered him.

After he was cremated, the oppressor apartheid regime took possession of the ashes, to ensure that even they would not serve to inspire the masses of our people to intensify the struggle to end the reign of the illegitimate power that had imprisoned the entirety of the people of our country within the larger apartheid walls.

But as the spirit of Braam Fischer could neither be destroyed by the intense fires of the crematorium, nor imprisoned by the apartheid jailers who seized his ashes, no power anywhere could block its impact on the contemporary political descendants of the cause he had espoused "at the age of six, if not before".

At the final moment of the dissolution of their party, the leaders and members of the NNP will be inspired to know that the example they will have set would live forever as a permanent tribute to the nobility of millions of South Africans, who dared to take the tide at its flood, to reaffirm and celebrate our common humanity. All members of the ANC will feel privileged to welcome the former members of the NNP as their comrades, fellow architects of a new South Africa of which Braam Fischer would be proud.

Debating Empowerment

Collective effort needed to achieve fundamental change

The starting point for the ANC's approach to economic transformation in general, and black economic empowerment (BEE) in particular, is the demand of the Freedom Charter that "the people shall share in the country's wealth".

Fifty years have passed since the Congress of the People, but the economic conditions that the Freedom Charter demands we eradicate have not disappeared. Indeed, for four of those five decades, the campaign of dispossession was brutally intensified. The last remnants of African wealth were systematically expropriated, as houses were demolished, families forcibly removed from their lands, and black entrepreneurial endeavour ruthlessly crushed. Perhaps with foresight, the human engineers of apartheid sought also to suppress the accumulation of knowledge, information and education among black people, factors that have become the most important productive assets in the twenty-first century economy.

This is the historical basis upon which our economy remains divided into two economies - a first economy, which is globally integrated and fast growing, and a second economy, which remains mired in poverty and underdevelopment and which is incapable of self-generating growth.

Inspired by the Freedom Charter, it is the vision of the democratic movement in South Africa to overcome the two-economy divide and create a united and integrated economic system, in which fragmentation and injustice are consigned to history. This is the only sustainable basis on which to build a genuinely non-racial, non-sexist, prosperous and democratic South.

Progressive agenda for empowerment

The thrust of all our programmes is to achieve these objectives. Black economic empowerment is one of a range of interventions designed to actively transform our society. What is required is not the acceptance or rejection of BEE as such, but the development of a progressive and democratic agenda for BEE.

The elements of such a progressive approach to BEE should include a focus on 'transformation' rather than 'transfer'. 'Transfer BEE' refers to the ceding of existing assets to individuals in a manner that does not alter the economic structure of society. 'Transformation BEE', by contrast, refers to processes of empowerment that result in the creation of new markets, new investments, and new drivers of domestic demand in the economy. Black economic empowerment should be linked directly to the expansion of the economic base and the restructuring of society. Rather than being a cost, black economic empowerment should become the driver of new growth.

This does not mean that we should reject the transfer of assets. Against the historic background we have sketched above, the simple transfer of assets in order to deracialise ownership patterns are important in their own right. But we must be constantly vigilant and closely monitor and engage with such processes to ensure they go beyond mere transfer and become a platform to advance real transformation.

Black economic empowerment should be consciously fostered as a programme to break down the divide between the 'two economies'. New growth, new markets and new investments must focus on the development of the second economy, and BEE beneficiaries are uniquely placed to take advantage of these opportunities.

Black economic empowerment should be directed towards the development of productive assets among the masses of our people, particularly the rural poor. This includes physical assets, but equally important the intangible assets associated with education and knowledge.

While not rejecting the activities of those who seek to profit from the BEE process, a progressive and democratic agenda for BEE should focus on strengthening the non-profit, developmental sector that seeks to build assets and capacity among the poorest. This sector includes the emerging developmental microfinance movement and the cooperatives sector.

Conscious agents for change

To achieve such outcomes BEE should be led and directed by agents for change who are able to act collectively in a manner consistent with our vision of the future. Left as individuals, without the support of organisation, those participating in BEE transactions can easily be led down the path of least resistance, that of narrow-based enrichment.

Only as part of a coherent movement, with clear goals and common ideals can we hope to achieve the outcome we desire. The beneficiaries of BEE transactions have a particular role to play in this regard. They must be at the front-line of combating the negative tendencies that have undoubtedly cast a shadow over the programme of BEE.

Capital never behaves philanthropically, at least not to an extent that would interfere with its profits. As we have already noted, apartheid has dispossessed black people of all forms of productive wealth. Capital is largely concentrated in the banks, insurance companies and pension funds that make up our highly sophisticated and globally integrated financial sector.

It is good that we have such an advanced financial sector. However, observing that blacks own no capital, and realising that capital is not philanthropic, means that the only way that blacks can participate in 'transfer' BEE is by buying debt from the banks. Given these realities, in large measure it is the banks that have been the primary beneficiaries of this type of private sector-led BEE.

The private sector also engineers BEE to focus on a very narrow base, especially in respect of the transfer of ownership of assets to individual b eneficiaries. Certainly, the freedom we fought for includes the freedom to trade, and through their individual efforts there is nothing inherently wrong with individuals participating in many deals. However, it should not be (and it is not) the objective of the democratic movement or the purpose of government policy to support or advance such multiple, narrow based empowerments.

As agents for change we must also resolutely oppose and defeat all forms of fronting. In the context of 'fronting' and 'renting out', the 'broad based' provisions of BEE that we seek to advance can sometimes be reduced to an attempt at wholesale theft, where 'broad-based' partners can on occasion become, knowingly or unknowingly, the agents which lend credibility to narrow self-enrichment.

Genuine empowerment must focus on the black entrepreneurs who build viable and sustainable businesses. These are the real agents of transformation because the end result of their work is the consolidation of wealth in a manner that will eventually result in their own independence from existing white corporate financing.

Such entrepreneurs, by thus consolidating their wealth and securing their own financial independence, will be able to empower others in turn, and will be able to reap full advantage from the new vistas of opportunity that emerge as we integrate the second economy into the first.

Once endowed with sufficient capital to sustain themselves over the long run they will thus be able to contribute to the broader moral, political and economic imperatives of BEE that we pursue.

Indeed, it could be said that there are three types of empowerment beneficiaries: the 'deal-maker', the 'manager' and the 'entrepreneur'. There is nothing wrong with black people making deals that add no particular value to the economy but enrich themselves personally. But as a democratic movement the focus of our empowerment programmes should be (and are) squarely on the entrepreneur.

We also require much more work on the small and micro-enterprise aspects of BEE. Empowerment will continue to be regarded by many as a narrow, elite-based affair, unless clear and evident programmes are seen to benefit the small entrepreneur and the micro-enterprise. Perhaps this aspect of BEE has not received so much attention because it is much more difficult to engineer. It requires us to address the problems of access to credit, the challenge of skills development, including mentoring, and shifting the focus of our empowerment programmes from the 'deal maker' to the 'entrepreneur'.

The entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of genuine empowerment have a powerful ally in the form of social capital. In our country the state controls large amounts of capital, either directly or indirectly, that can be deployed in terms of an agenda that is not solely determined by the imperatives of profit maximisation. But social capital is not confined to the state. For example, huge assets are controlled and directed by pension funds, in which the union movement plays an important role.

Institutions such as the National Empowerment Fund, the Umsobomvu Fund, the Industrial Development Corporations and others have the potential to shift empowerment towards a much more broad based and entrepreneur-focused paradigm.

Capital cannot be depended upon to transform itself. Rather than genuinely respond to the needs of transformation, it will seek to advance its own worst features through the programme of BEE.

As a movement, we seek not only the deracialisation of ownership, but also the fundamental transformation of the economy to the benefit of the masses of our people, who continue to live in conditions of poverty and underdevelopment. Rather than throwing up our hands in the air and decrying the regrettable features of capitalism, it is our duty to act to achieve different outcomes. Whereas capital cannot lead transformation, it is the duty of the democratic movement to do just this.

This requires us to unite in a common programme to realise the goals of the Freedom Charter. It requires that we act together, as black entrepreneurs, the progressive union movement and the agencies of government to realise an authentically transformative and broad-based approach to black economic empowerment.

It is only if we are able to unite in a collective endeavour for fundamental change that we can hope to influence the logic of capital and ensure outcomes that genuinely transform our economy.

** Kgalema Motlanthe is ANC Secretary General. This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the latest edition of the ANC political discussion journal, Umrabulo.

More Information:

• Umrabulo 22

The Sociology of the Public Discourse in Democratic South Africa / Part VIII

Frame problems and solutions, label identities, and assign value!

In Part II of this series, entitled "Who shall set the national agenda?", we quoted Mteto Nyati who had written that, "In South Africa the fight is really about who sets the national agenda. Should it be the African National Congress (ANC) or should it be the white elite?"

In this second last article of this series we return to this question, which we described then as "the most fundamental issue at the base of the Tutu-Mbeki Debate". We have borrowed the title of this article from David Sogge, whom we cited last week.

Sogge had said: "[Ideas] define and rank categories by which we pay attention to issues or overlook them. They frame problems and solutions, label identities, and assign value." He had argued that "producing and transmitting policies and discourse, and filtering out and de-legitimising others, are essential vocations" of the "most powerful players" among those who provide aid to the developing countries.

We have used David Sogge's words as the title of this article to state the task that faces our country's progressive movement in the battle of ideas, having agreed with Mteto Nyati that in South Africa the fight is really about who sets the national agenda.

The title makes the straight-forward suggestion that our country's progressive movement should deliberately and vigorously present and promote its own ideas, to set the national agenda. It makes the statement that because of the way ideas in society work, if our ideas succeed in this regard, they would produce the results indicated by David Sogge.

Our ideas would serve to identify the principal challenges facing our country, as well as the appropriate responses to these challenges, ensuring that these determinations become the dominant factors guiding the actions of the nation as a whole.

In this way, the ideas of the progressive movement would serve as the scale the nation would use to rank the issues it is facing, "assign values" to various matters, "filter, legitimise and de-legitimise" various policies and proposals, and so on.

In other words, by ensuring that, while fully respecting all the democratic precepts and practices spelt out in the Constitution, to which we are committed, the progressive movement engages in the political and ideological struggle in such a way that its ideas emerge as the dominant ideas in our society, it would succeed to continue to set the national agenda.

The obverse of this is also true. If the progressive movement fails to do this, its opponents will ensure that their ideas emerge as the dominant ideas in our society, and thus succeed to set the national agenda.

In last week's article, we devoted considerable space to European and US "left" and "right wing" views about the issue at the centre of this series -the battle of ideas. We did this deliberately, to make the unequivocal statement that it would be entirely wrong and ill-advised for the progressive movement in our country to minimise or downplay its responsibility to work for the victory of its ideas.

Understandably, the neocons in the US are not shy to state that because they deliberately engaged the political and ideological struggle, and found the money to fund this struggle, "there is now a robust debate in American intellectual life between conservatives and liberals. The one-sided debate, dominated by the left, is a thing of the past", as James Piereson put it.

One of the leading rightwing intellectuals in our country, Hermann Giliomee, had sought to explain and justify the need, the duty and the right of the conservative forces in our country to be as aggressive as the US neocons in advancing their political and ideological agenda. As we noted in Part VI, Giliomee had said: "In South Africa the countervailing power that opposition parties can develop in the next decade or two cannot depend on numbers. It has to lie in the generation of alternative ideas, alternative policies, and a quite different interpretation of our history than the one the Struggle wishes to impose. The power of the opposition will lie in the weight of the opinion it holds, the strength of its convictions, and the degree of support that it can attract both from the electorate and from enlightened opinion in developed countries whose firms are likely to invest."

According to their own account, the US neocons deliberately set out to ensure that they win the battle of ideas and thus create the conditions for them to "to dominate (the US national agenda) for some time", as explained by some British journalists.

Giliomee argues that our own right wing should do the same thing. He states that unlike the US neocons, it is incapable of getting the numbers that would give it an electoral victory. Nevertheless it should work to dominate the South African national agenda by ensuring that "the weight of the opinion it holds", backed by its domestic constituency and international rightwing opinion, gives it the strength to be "the countervailing power", the opponent of the progressive movement.

Mteto Nyati has said that, as in other countries, the central issue we face is who shall set the national agenda. And as Mzimkulu Malunga had said, cited in Part VI, "in the battle of ideas, energetically propagated ideas will have the upper hand. Organisations like the Democratic Alliance, and academics at places like the universities of the Witwatersrand or Cape Town, dominate the news pages and the airwaves because they are always knocking at the (media) door tirelessly selling their ideas."

Mteto Nyati went on to say:

"The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe, Archbishop Desmond Tutu's criticism of the ANC leadership, Zackie Achmat's lawsuits against the health department, Helen Suzman's criticism of President Thabo Mbeki's private jet and Tony Leon's criticism of SA's constructive engagement in Zimbabwe are not unrelated and neutral events...

"Africa's renewal has never been a priority for SA's white elite...

"Some whites have no interest in rebalancing management and control of SA's economy. That this group is vocal in its criticism of empowerment should come as no surprise."

If we take on board what Mteto Nyati said about the effort of the neocons to "provide thought leadership to the black majority", as well as comments by other observers, we can see that the vigorous efforts of our "elite" to sell its ideas has led to the situation in which the national (media) discourse is dominated by the issues Nyati mentioned, such as HIV and AIDS, Zimbabwe, black economic empowerment, the attitude of the ANC towards democratic debate, and others. With regard to these, the 'policies and discourse' advanced as the core of the national agenda, naturally reflect the preoccupations of our neocons. The neocons hope and work to ensure that their ideas become the dominant ideas in and of the nation, as explained by Professor Giliomee. Naturally, they also believe that their ideas will succeed to 'filter out and de-legitimise' other and opposing ideas.

They trust that our people as a whole will use the ideas of our domestic right wing to 'define and rank categories by which we pay attention to issues or overlook them, frame problems and solutions, label identities, and assign value' to issues that might emerge as part of the national agenda and discourse.

Thus our neocons strive to present their 'policies and discourse' as constituting the very heart of our national discourse and agenda. As part of this, they seek to 'filter out and de-legitimise', or 'assign (an insignificant) value' to the policies and discourse we, "the Jacobins", present as the defining elements of "the transformation agenda" which the neocons, led by the DA, oppose.

These defining elements include such issues as the pervasive impact of racially defined poverty on our country - which affects in a fundamental way such matters as various diseases, including immune deficiency, as well as certain crimes; the stubbornly persisting apartheid racial and gender imbalances in terms of the distribution of wealth, income and opportunity; the manifestation of racism and racial discrimination in our country; the challenge of the second economy; the restoration of the dignity of the black people; and our national tasks with regard to the challenges of the African Renaissance and defining the place of Africa and the African Diaspora in the global community of the 21st Century.

The outstanding success of the rightwing is that though these issues have not disappeared from the national (media) discourse, they nevertheless do not enjoy the high public (media) profile attained by the issues selected by the rightwing as the matters on which they are ready to go to war, as they pursue the objective to "provide thought leadership to the black majority".

In response to this, the progressive movement must take to heart the observation made by Mzimkulu Malunga, when he wrote: "And what do black organisations do, (compared to the rightwing)? They react rather than work proactively. As for black intellectuals, they have gone underground, opting to mourn quietly behind the scenes. The struggle did not end in 1994, but on this new terrain it is those who are the most assertive (in the battle of id eas) that have the greatest effect. Who says running a country is easy?"

Similarly, Itumeleng Mahabane said, "I would have to place my bets with the neocons emerging as the winners in this war (of ideas), for I fear the Jacobins lack the single-minded focus and purpose of the neocons (the rightwing)."

Mahabane has in mind the single-minded focus and purpose of the South African rightwing described by Malunga. This is the same single-minded focus and purpose explained by James Piereson, which made it possible for him to claim, correctly, that in the United States, "the one-sided debate, dominated by the left, is a thing of the past".

Our country's progressive movement has a well-developed set of policies and goals it has set, to realise the goals of the national democratic revolution. It also enjoys the confidence of the overwhelming majority of our people, confirmed in a succession of democratic elections during the first decade of our liberation.

This combination of circumstances would suggest that the progressive movement should have no difficulty in winning the battle of ideas, not allowing the rightwing to "provide thought leadership to the black majority", as Mteto Nyati put it.

We concluded last week's article with Nyati's words, who wrote of "the systemic structures behind the (seemingly) random events that (characterise the battle of ideas in our country)". It is true that these "systemic structures" may favour the rightwing, making it difficult for the progressive movement to propagate its ideas.

Piereson explained the importance of these "systemic structures" in the victory of the US rightwing when he said, "there exists today, in contrast to the 1970s, an impressive network of (rightwing) think tanks, journals and university programs supported (with funds) by conservative foundations... The conservatives (are) writing the books, publishing the magazines, and advocating policies that shape public debate." The "network" to which Piereson referred exists in our country as well.

Nevertheless the progressive movement must also accept its own role in allowing rightwing ideas to thrive, simply because it has been very lethargic in engaging the critically important political and ideological struggle. It must admit that in practice, it has not responded adequately and systematically to the observation made by Mzimkulu Malunga, that, "The struggle did not end in 1994, but on this new terrain it is those who are the most assertive that have the greatest effect."

On 2 March 2005, the 'Cape Times' published an article written by Dr Denis Venter, who was the Executive Director of the Africa Institute during the apartheid years, and therefore one of the ideologues of the apartheid system. Among other things he said: "Clearly, today's political masters share the same characteristics with yesteryear's apartheid apparatchiks: behind the façade of democracy, accountability, reconciliation and transparency lurk the ugly gremlins of authoritarianism and centralist control, political intolerance and retribution, extravagance and boisterousness, arrogance, corruption, patronage, cronyism and nepotism."

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the DA propagates the same view of the ANC, as stated by Helen Zille, DA national spokesperson, in a letter published in the 'Cape Argus' also of 2 March 2005. She wrote:

"Max du Preez hits the nail on the head with his analysis that the ANC and the Nats have much in common...We have often drawn comparisons between the ANC and the NP...

"The ANC's approach is becoming indistinguishable from the racial nationalism of apartheid...Another marked similarity between the new ANC and the old NP is the tendency to centralise power and extend the party's control...ANC MPs, like many of their NP predecessors, prize party loyalty above allegiance to the constitutional principle of parliamentary oversight, leading Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu to bemoan the 'sycophancy' of ANC MPs...

"This is precisely why, unlike other opposition parties, we will never buy i nto the ANC's version of transformation that sows racial division and only benefits ANC-aligned cronies."

The day before, on 1 March, the 'Cape Argus' had reported that in an address to Cape Town Press Club, the former leader of the NNP, FW de Klerk, had said "he did not think it was helpful that one party - the ruling ANC - had 'more than 70% of the vote in any democracy', while all the opposition parties were fighting for the other 30%...De Klerk said the 'cement' which had held the ANC-Cosatu-SACP alliance together - the fight to overthrow apartheid -no longer existed and he expected a realignment similar to that which took place in the old National Party of which he was once leader."

These quotations indicate some of the central features of the sociology of the public discourse in our country, as regards the political and ideological struggle waged by the rightwing, our domestic neocons.

The rightwing propagates ideas that are intended to de-legitimise the ANC and its ideas. It goes so far as to equate the ANC with the party of apartheid, "the old NP", precisely to achieve the objective of de-legitimising our movement, and thus create the space for its ideas to define the national agenda, even if it still does not have the numbers to gain power democratically.

It goes further to present the support the ANC enjoys, as expressed through democratic elections, as itself a threat to democracy. Accordingly, it presents its desire and its struggle to weaken the ANC, and thus strengthen itself, as a noble and disinterested effort to protect the democratic order, which it claims is threatened both by the popular strength of our movement, and its possibility to set the national agenda.

Naturally, the attempts of the rightwing to win the battle of ideas are not restricted only to its efforts to de-legitimise our movement and its ideas ideologically, and weaken it organisationally. They are also focussed on the propagation of what it would like to see emerge as the dominant ideas in our country, the ideas that would set the national agenda.

To be continued...

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