History in the new South Africa: an introduction - Det danske ...

NEC of the ANC during 1994. Reacting rather testily to an editorial in the SACP’s newssheet
Umsebenzi, Nelson Mandela castigated the SACP as an unworthy organisation, which
owed its place in democratic South Africa to the ANC. Instead of defending the SACP, its
former Chairman, Joe Slovo, and its then General Secretary, Charles Nqakula, retreated
before Mandela’s attack and apologised for the offending article.
Relations between the ANC and its communist ally have deteriorated even further and faster
under Mbeki’s presidency. Neither COSATU nor the SACP had become reconciled to the
adoption the Growth and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy piloted through Cabinet during
Mandela’s incumbency. As the ANC government proceeded with its speedier implementation
after 1999, repeated exchanges between the ANC leadership and its allies ensued. These
escalated as the policy areas of difference between the ANC and its allies seemed to multiply.
By 2001, these included not only the restructuring of state assets, but also the HIV/AIDS
pandemic.
Perhaps over-confident that it could win over the rank-and-file members of COSATU
affiliates, the ANC leadership took the issues that divided the alliance partners to both
COSATU and SACP conferences. The SACP came in for particularly harsh criticism and was
repeatedly warned that it was straying from the course pioneered by its previous leaders, J.B.
Marks and Moses Kotane, who had been content to allow the SACP to survive as a secret
communist network operating within the ANC, but with no independent profile. When the
SACP was legalised in 1990, it shed a fair number of its erstwhile members. Consequently
there was a massive intake of new members, drawn from the trade unions, the civics and other
mass organisations after the SACP’s first internal congress in 1992. Buoyed by the popularity
of its General Secretary, Chris Hani, the SACP grew fast, reaching a high point of 89,000
paid-up members in 2002. It also underwent a period of intense internal discussion about its
future role, especially in the light of the collapse of Soviet socialism in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union. The outcome of these discussions was a decision that, as the party of
socialism, it should begin to carve out an identity distinct from both the ANC and the failed
socialist projects in Eastern Europe. To achieve the former, it did not project itself as the
vanguard of the second phase of the revolution but instead, spoke boldly about the particular
interests of the working class within the alliance. It appealed to the rich vein of indigenous
South African radicalism to which South Africa’s communists had made a distinctive
contribution. Unaccustomed to an SACP that not only differed with, but publicly criticised,
positions adopted by the leadership, many in the ANC reacted very negatively to the positions
the SACP pronounced. By January 2002 it was not uncommon to hear the epithet ‘ultraleftist’
applied to the SACP’s leadership. This reached its nadir when two fairly senior ANC
leaders, Josiah Jele and Jabu Moleketi, penned a polemic directed against the SACP’s
leadership. Both sides to this acrimonious quarrel pulled back from the brink towards mid-
2002. An ANC policy conference, in anticipation of the national conference, resulted in a
wide-ranging consensus on most issues. At the national conference that December, all the
delegates from the president down reaffirmed the importance of the tripartite alliance.
There is little dissent within the ANC over the area of foreign affairs where the Mbeki-led
government has made its most decisive mark. With an energetic Foreign Minister in the
person of Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa has been punching way above its
weight. Mbeki’s presidency, or rather his foreign-policy profile, has been facilitated by South
Africa’s assumption of the headship of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and of the
Commonwealth. When the OAU changed itself into the African Union (AU) in 2002, South
Africa also became chair of that continental body. In addition, in the first three years of
Mbeki’s tenure, South Africa has hosted four major international conferences – that of the
Commonwealth, the World Conference Against Racism, the World Summit on Sustainable
Development and lastly the African Union.
South African foreign policy has as its central plank the creating of space for Africa and its
people to define their own future by exploring and offering viable, indigenously-evolved,
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