YCL CONGRESS EDITION - South African Communist Party

CIVIL SOCIETY
The Civil Society
Conference, the NDR and
the liberal onslaught
We need to avoid being manipulated by the agenda
of anti-majority, right-wing liberalism
BY JEREMY CRONIN
“In the art of war, each belligerent chooses
the terrain considered most advantageous
for its battle for the offensive and tries to
impose that terrain on its adversary, so
that it is put on the defensive. The same
goes for politics ... ” (Samir Amin, “The
Battlefields Chosen by Contemporary
Imperialism”)
The truth of Samir Amin’s observation
is particularly evident in
the current South African reality.
Those in our society who are
opposed to fundamental transformation
naturally seek to shift politics on
to a terrain that they calculate is most
favourable for them to put us on to the
defensive.
They seek to produce a particular
reading of South Africa that, they hope,
will dominate on the air-waves, in the
print media columns, and generally hegemonise
public debate. If you succeed
in shaping the terrain, then you shape
how most of us then often unconsciously
begin to understand our challenges and
how we respond to them in practice.
As things have shifted, these antitransformation
forces have adapted their
tactics. For instance, with the implosion
of Cope, they have once more swung
much of their attention and hopes away
from the party political terrain and back
towards “civil society”. But the underlying
strategic agenda remains the same
– to constrain the democratic state, to
weaken and divide the majority, to sow
popular demoralisation about government,
and to mobilise against what is
supposed to be a dire threat to our constitution
emanating from the “ruling
elite”.
We should, of course, not be in denial
about the serious gaps opened up
for this line of attack by real weaknesses
within the state and the ANC and our Alliance
formations. In particular, there is a
compradorial and parasitic rent-seeking
stratum within our movement, often
linked to a demagogic populism that
has little respect for legality or the Constitution.
As we have argued elsewhere,
anti-majoritarian liberal forces are happy
to provide a media megaphone for this
demagogic populism – the better to be
able to condemn us all. The existence of
this phenomenon (what we have called
“the new tendency”) creates space for all
manner of anti-ANC forces. This is why it
is absolutely imperative that the government,
the ANC and its alliance partners
together lead the process of dealing firmly,
and without fear or favour, with the
scourge of corruption and demagogy.
However, using the gap created by
this minority “new tendency” within
our own ranks (and seeking to present
There is a compradorial
and parasitic
rent-seeking stratum
within our movement
its antics as the “real” ANC), the antitransformation
forces seek to displace
the liberation movement’s strategic hegemony
with their own anti-majoritarian
liberalism. In essence this consists in trying
to displace the idea of an ongoing national
democratic revolution (NDR) with
a politics of “civil rights claims”. This is
done by establishing a false dichotomy
between the realisation of civil rights
in SA and the NDR, with the latter portrayed
as the “enemy” of civil rights and
the Constitution.
Civil rights ‘versus’ the national democratic
revolution – a false dichotomy
Liberalism exists in SA in two basic forms
– a right-wing, free market, anti-majoritarian
liberalism and a more centre-left
leaning, NGO/“social movement” liberalism.
There are differences between
these currents of liberalism, but they
share a common fundamental paradigm
and, for a variety of reasons, there has
been a growing practical convergence
between them in the recent period. In
our current reality liberalism (in both its
versions) seeks to shift the centre of our
national debate:
From the necessity for a radical structural
transformation of our society (notably,
placing our economy on to a “new
growth path”) ... to a debate about defending
civil rights (as if radically transforming
our economy was not fundamental
to the real consolidation of civil
rights for all South Africans) .
From the necessity of organising and
building people’s power both outside and
December 2010