Publication: Sunday Times Issued: Date: 2005-11-20 Reporter: Xolani Xundu Reporter:

Presidency has Created ‘Parasitic’ Black Elite

 

Publication 

Sunday Times

Date

2005-11-20

Reporter

 Xolani Xundu

Web Link

www.sundaytimes.co.za

 

Cronin calls for ANC overhaul, review of electoral system and BEE

South African Communist Party deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin says the Thabo Mbeki presidency has alienated the ruling party from the people and created a “parasitic” and excessive, ANC-aligned black business elite.

In a hard-hitting internal document analysing the post-1994 South Africa, Cronin also breaks ranks with his party’s embracing of Jacob Zuma as a representative of the Left.

He argues that the central feature of the Mbeki presidency was not about a revolutionary transformation *2 of society but about driving “a restoration of the capitalist accumulation *1”.

In a paper entitled “The people shall govern — class struggles and the post-1994 state in South Africa”, Cronin said Mbeki sought to build a strong presidential centre within the state, in which the leading cadre was made up of a new political elite and a new generation of “black economic empowerment managers and capitalists”.

Cronin argued that there was a need to open up for much more rigorous assessment of “the doleful history of BEE”.

He said that players in emerging black business most closely associated with the ANC and the state did nothing to advance job creation.

“It is, rather, excessively compradorist and parasitic ”, reliant on special share deals, affirmative action, BEE quotas, fronting, privatisation and trading on its one real piece of “capital” — access to state power — to establish itself.”

He also argued that Mbeki’s modernisation of the ANC has reduced the secretary-general’s office (currently occupied by Kgalema Motlanthe) to administrative tasks while the office of the president dominated politics.

“The attempted modernisation of the ANC has also involved a deliberate strategy to marginalise the SA Communist Party and the Congress of SA Trade Unions, and even to provoke a walkout from the alliance,” he said.

He described Zuma as a “Congress traditionalist, with a strong working-class/peasant demeanour about him” who does not represent the left in the ANC alliance.

He called for the rebuilding of the ANC, a review of the current proportional representative electoral system and a “radical” review of BEE.

He said there was a need to re-build “an ANC that is capable of leading popular struggles on the ground, an ANC in which organisation and popular politics are reconnected.

“This is not just a matter of head office redesign, but also of ensuring that gate-keeping, narrow careerism, and plain corruption are eliminated from the branch-level up.

“The Zuma crisis, the constant round of corruption scandals, and growing township disaffection with perceived or actual corruption in local government, have created an important opportunity in which a principled ANC-led offensive against corruption becomes possible and desperately necessary.”

•To access Cronin’s document, go to www.sundaytimes.co.za

With acknowledgements to Xolani Xundu and Sunday Times.


*1  Sock it to 'em, Comrade.

*2  Now let's see what Il Presidente has to say about this white, communist [*3 counter-] revolutionary.

*3  (2n); (2n+1) - choose most appropriate - n starts with 0.