The tendency to describe the ANC as a "broad church" is part of a broader effort to deny the working class bias which must characterise the ANC's understanding of its tasks and its analysis of the motive forces, argues Zwelinzima Sizani.
The national liberation movement appears to be undergoing a metamorphosis.
This metamorphosis takes the form of the coining of terminology that is said to be depicting the "true" nature of the ANC, in particular, and the national liberation movement, in general.
The ANC is described and characterised as "an omnibus, a broad church".
Lurking behind this form, and, now, content, is a very serious assault on the character of the ANC, one that those who habour such ideal seem to be winning. This is an unplanned change of the ANC's official principle of recognising the working class as the social class to lead today's revolutionary process, given the fact that the dominant socio-economic system, even today, is capitalism.
History, and the movement from one socio-economic system to a new and higher one, can only be led by the working masses, with the other classes and strata - much as they have to be mobilised and organised under the revolutionary banner being mobilised to play a supportive and a complementary role. The role of other classes and strata should be complementary, because it is the working masses who bear the brunt of economic marginalisation and capitalist accumulation, and for whom the laws governing the movement from one socioeconomic system to another have a direct historical bearing.
Definition of the Motive Forces
The motive forces have been defined differently by various people within the liberation movement, informed largely by knowledge systems of idealist tertiary institutions.
The Dictionary of Philosophy (Progress Publishers, p.280) describes the motive forces thus:
"Motive Forces of the Development of society, essential, necessary and lasting factors society's functioning, progress, development. Idealists identify the motive forces with ideal motives and incentives of man's historical activity, see their origin in immutable human nature, in outside nature, or supernatural powers, or in mechanical combinations of various factors. The classics of Marxism-Leninism proved that man's historical activity is impelled by material factors. They proved that the latter are primary and determining in relation to political and intellectual factors, that they are active and relatively independent. They showed that the working masses are the real makers of history. The Motive Forces of the development of society, in a broad sense include social contradictions as an ultimate condition of self-development and self-motion; the progressive activity of social subjects, which resolve these contradictions; the motivation for this activity (needs, interests, etc.) According to their composition and function the motive forces of the development of society are divided into natural (demographic and geographic) and social factors; the social into material and economic factors, socio-political and spiritual, objective and subjective. The major general historical motive force is the Mode of Production of material goods. The main specific motive force for all antagonistic socio-economic formations is the class struggle..."
What has become dominant in the ANC is the idealist definition captured in the second sentence of the above definition of the motive forces. This is the result of defining the ANC as "an omnibus, a broad church"; interpreted as saying that the ANC is open to influences from any quarters, including elements that may, quite consciously, want to downplay the space that has to be created for the working class to undertake its role (much as membership statistics may indicate otherwise) of moving society to a national democratic revolution (NDR) stage. Without a conscious working class bias in the thrust of our revolution's trajectory, capitalist and racist relations will continue to beset our society.
On the whole, capitalist relations are inherently discriminatory, and have, in our society's past, been used to discriminate against the black majority.
The ANC submission to the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) discussed this: "At a societal level, racism exists in the context of social institutions, economic relations and patterns of political power, which reproduce themselves and change over time. Prejudice and the commission of discriminatory actions reflect a historically specific system that legitimises and, in a perveted sense, gives moral sanction to the political oppression, economic exploitation, and inequitable treatment of a segment of society. It entails the exercise of political, economic and social power and control over racially defined categories of people by a dominant racial group." (Submission of the ANC at the World Conference Against Racism, NGO Forum, 2001) The implication is not that the working class have to go it alone in changing society. The other classes have to be mobilised and organised by this very same working class under its black, green and gold banners.
This seemingly insignificant issue, of how we define the motive forces of this revolution, has very serious implications for how we map tactics for the future and in the short to medium term.
This issue reflects an assault on the character of the movement. This is not articulated forthrightly, but is couched even in documents of the movement.
The ANC Gauteng 2004 Base Document (pp.21-30), prepared as a discussion document ahead of the provincial conference, relegates the working class to a third priority after women and youth. This is perhaps presented under the guise of the fact that Gauteng has more young people (two-thirds of the population is under the age of 35). Compared to other provinces this is not particularly high; in South Africa as a whole 70% of the population is below 35.
To identify the motive forces "with ideal motives and incentives of man's historical activity, [and to] see their origin in immutable human nature, in outside nature, or supernatural powers, or in mechanical combinations of various factors" is an unmitigated conscious effort to underplay the importance of the working class. When this was being contested at the time of the drafting of this document, the argument was that we should be pragmatic - the population of the province is young, and therefore our focus should be on this strata (albeit one that is not directly involved in creating wealth for the country or in the movement of society from one socioeconomic formation to a higher one).
The argument that we need to focus on the youth because they are the future of our country is ageist, simplistic and didactic. It does not recognise that we have to start now in putting the main motive force at the centre of the NDR, and start now to create a seamless environment for this class which bears the future of humanity to be the actual driving force of this revolutionary process, as against the present national democratic dispensation.
The focus on the well-being of non-core strata like the youth, the middle class and the emerging black bourgeoisie is misplaced. It shifts attention to the development of policies that are unmindful of working class interests and needs.
Every effort should be made to ensure we produce a youth that is well-rounded and conscious of the role that the working class has to play in the NDR.
The material basis of apartheid was the economy. We should therefore focus our overwhelming attention to the majority class' needs and interests, without being sidetracked by economic issues that 'benefit' individuals.
Motive Forces and the Gains of the Revolution The working class is pivotal in the resolution of the social contradictions that propel society to a higher stage (in our case, for now, the NDR).
Since the working class comprises the majority in society, addressing their needs and interests contributes to the betterment of the lives of the majority of our people.
With regard to the present challenges of the South African revolution, we cannot but begin to put the working class, the black one in particular, at the lead stage of whatever we do, to address all of society's needs and interests.
As we remain committed to the implementation of the Freedom Charter we must improve the mobilisation of this class - an historically necessary catalyst for social revolution. The central pillar to the success of the NDR in our country will always be the black working class in particular.
Why is this so? The ANC's WCAR document says: "At a societal level, racism exists in the context of social institutions, economic relations and patterns of political power..." This implies that there can never be any significant change to the racist and exploitative systemic relations that continue to engulf our people unless we address the material conditions of our people. The definition of the National Question in the 1997 ANC National Conference resolutions is a concise guide to the strategic importance of the working class in the transition to the maturation of our NDR.
"The Strategy and Tactics document defines the motive forces as the black masses, those classes and strata that objectively and systemically stand to gain from the victory and consolidation of the national democratic revolution..." The following sentence only then, "identifies the working class and the poor - in both rural and urban areas - as the core of these forces, the sectors whose material conditions and social position impel them consistently to pursue thorough-going change".
The Strategy and Tactics document is innocently worded to give space to an approach that talks of the masses as separate from the working class - as if one ceases to be part of the masses when one dons overalls at a place of work.
In the development of policy and solutions we tend to mechanically separate the symbiotic connectedness of the black masses and the working class and the poor. This affects the manner in which policy implementation plans are then developed. It then looks as if there is a serious ideological disjuncture between ANC policy frameworks and government ones. This may sound insignificant, but it is a problem that is deepening and may end up rupturing the dialectic relations of a governing party and its government, leading to actual policy frameworks that are at discord with those adopted at ANC Conferences. This situation needs to be arrested.
What is lacking in this definition is the assertion of a people (the majority of whom are the working masses) being organised to wrest the material basis of wealth so as not to be recipients of government handouts, but a bulwark that maps and charts its own organised destiny. Let us move away from utterances such as "benefits for the people", parading ourselves as disbursers of gratitude to a destitute mass.
The movement has to move away from the premise of wanting to provide what the motive forces stand to gain, but begin to commit itself to organising the working masses to be their own liberators, not only in social terms but, most fundamentally, also, in the arena of mass economic emancipation, beyond the broad-based black economic empowerment vision.
At the moment we appear as seers who have all the formulae to resolve our people's plight. This does not mean the movement should not lead. However, the manner and form of that leadership should not be disassociated from the overall involvement of the people themselves, at the helm of whom are and should be the working class.
We might argue that we have put in place structures of civil society to address this and to deepen participatory democracy. However there is not much commitment to, and focus on, empowering our own organisational structures, branches in particular, to begin to mobilise the masses to play a leadership role in organs of civil society like ward committees, community policing forums, etc.
We have at last acknowledged that South Africa is a capitalist country.
But we have not yet reached the stage of defeatism and despair at our situation.
The task of bettering the lives of our people, within the transition from the immediate past colonial set up, should be informed by a necessary shift from a movement that has all the formulae to a position of confidence in the organising of the masses of our people to, together with them, better their lives.
We have assimilated, within our approaches to organising, the liberal form of outreach. The manner in which we allow our structures to flout the frameworks for constituting ward committees, wherein different community sectors have to be mobilised and organised to deepen participatory democracy, is reflective of a laissez faire approach to the organising of the motive forces.
All sorts of excuses are brought forward as to why it is not practical to have active ward committees, when we forget that we have used our own organisational malpractices - like gate keeping - to stifle the intended dynamism of these organs of people's power. We have allowed our structures to have all members of ward committees being card-carrying ANC members -probably as recipients of patronage for what might have been support during elections. There could also be a misunderstanding around the function of these organs of participatory democracy.
Ward committees have a bearing on how we mobilise our motive forces, and get them to be participants in structures of local democracy at community level.
The locus of the struggle to win aerial and ground support from the masses is located also in residential areas, the point at which our structures have to mobilise and organise the working class and other classes and strata.
The membership of the movement is overwhelmingly working class. But that does not translate into the dominance of working class ideology and politics in ANC discourse. Usage of working class ideological methodology and terminology is frowned on and regarded as "outdated thinking". However, tools of analysis are not about what is fashionable or acceptable, but should be informed by what best and objective tools need to be utilised to analyse and come up with solutions to problems facing the people. Idealist and bourgeois tools of analysis are by far much ancient than working class ones.
Zwelinzima Sizani is the ANC Political Education and Training Secretary in Gauteng.
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