The ANC's Patriotic Front: Some critical questions

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"The euphoria about the negotiations, the promised reforms, and the post-apartheid era is already all around us. The leaders in the populist movements have not been unaffected by that euphoria. In fact, it is true to say that they have shown far more enthusiasm than the 18 SOCIALISTACTION FEBRUARY 1992 :p Marna oma ds Last October, delegates from the African National Congress (ANC), the PanAfricanist Congress (PAC), and other political, professional, and religious groups met to form a new Patriotic Front. The front was initiated by the ANC under the premise that it would bring together the Black liberation organizations within a common platform that could be put forward in negotiations with the government.

One major Black organization, however, the Azanian Peoples Organization, was excluded from the conference. More recently, the PAC has broken loose from the front.

Following is an abridged version of a position paper on the Patriotic Front. It was presented by South African activist Andrew Lukele at a meeting sponsored by the Organization of South Africans/Azanians for Liberation Education (OSAALE) in New York City, on Dec. 7, 1991.

The full text appears in the January 1992 edition of OSAALE News, which may be ordered by writing to 899 Davidson Road, Piscataway, NJ. 08854.

The launching of the Patriotic Front (PF), which had its inaugural conference in Durban on Oct. 25-26, 1991, is a noteworthy event that could also be of historical significance. We would hope that it is not a gesture inspired by a desire to enlist the organizations of the oppressed in the so-called negotiations initiated by the regime as part of its program to restructure and consolidate the domination of the existing establishment.

Whether the inauguration of the PF will be an event of significance will depend, in the first place, on whether the PF shall indeed be a united front of all the organizations of the oppressed for the continuation and consummation of their struggle for the destruction and total elimination of the oppression and exploitation of racist-capitalism that has held us captive for so long, preventing us from building our lives and making our history.

Will this PF take all its major resolutions and resolves to the masses of our population to be ratified by them and effected by the might and social force which the masses alone can muster and bring to bear? Will this initiative mark the beginning of an earest effort towards the elimination of sectarianism and the mutual feuding that have been the bane of the liberation movement for such a long time?

Will this alliance have the will and capacity to undertake and carry out a thorough-going democratization of its entire organizational practice and the mobilization of the masses of our population on the basis of strict adherence to democratic principles and practice?

These are important questions, and they boil down to one large question: Is this alliance poised to advance the interests of the masses, the Black working class? That question has to be posed at the very onset.

The economic background The launching of the PF happens at a time when the capitalist system in our country, which has never been bountiful to the Black masses even in its periods of boom, is in the throes of profound crisis.

Economically, the country is in a debacle. According to a survey carried out recently at the instance of Big Capital, the rate of unemployment among the Blacks stands currently at a little over 40 percent. On the projections of that same survey, by 1995 the unemployment rate among the Blacks will have reached 54 percent. In practical terms. This means that very soon, out of every two Black persons, a little over one will be unemployed—without the means of a livelihood.

There are already 7 million Black people who are without housing or accommodation. That means 20 percent of the population of the country consists of people who are homeless. Poverty, malnutrition, and disease are taking their toll on a scale that is enormous and horrifying. ordinary folk."

What do the whole people need to do in order to put an end to the havoc and devastation that the racist-capitalist system is inflicting upon their lives? That is the real question that has to be asked if we must make a real advance towards taking our history into our hands.

Does the PF pose such a question? If not, does it seem that they might? We should put this question to the PF, and say to them: Gentlemen and ladies of the PF, which way are you going? Are you flying to Pretoria and to Cape Town or are you marching to Soweto, to Langa, to Mitchells Plain, and to Cato Manor? And we should insist on simple and straight answers.

The most that these leaders can obtain in Cape Town and Pretoria are slots for themselves in the seat of rulership of the same system of racist-capitalism that has brought this whole misery to the masses of our population and which will continue to heap upon them further misery and wretchedness.

Such an allotment of seats in rulership is what the regime intends to give these leaders anyway, by way of weaning them away from the body of the oppressed people. It is self-deception that would look upon this co-optation as the prize and reward for our struggle.

The regime's "political reform"

We should be clear on another matter as well. The Western capitalist countries are not likely to be of help in this crisis. Of course, they have never let up in giving all manner of support to the regime in South Africa. They have helped this regime morally, ideologically, militarily, and in many other ways. But the hope that they will intervene to relieve the crisis seems very forlorn indeed.

These capitalist countries have their hands full with problems of much the same kind. Concerning the state of the U.S. economy, this is what President Bush's new Chief of Staff, Samuel K. Skinner, had to say just recently: "The people of this country know that the economy is in trouble, and it doesn't make any sense to play games." (The New York Times, Dec.18, 1991).

This is a reluctant acknowledgement of fact, made because it is no longer possible to pretend otherwise. We should realize that the crisis that is presently afflicting the South African capitalist economy is not a phenomenon that is local and peculiar to South Africa.

It is part and parcel of the crisis of capitalism as a world system, occurring at a time when that system is in decline into deeper decadence. A sick part of a sick body cannot, realistically, expect nourishment from the rest of the body which is itself in malaise.

Besides, there is Eastern Europe, which has to be a priority in whatever Marshallaid-type project that they might contemplate. It seems, then, that the South African capitalist economy would have to pull itself by its own bootstraps. Not even the South African regime pretends that this can be done.

Reform, even on the modest scale as indicated above, is not within the capability of the South African ruling classes—certainly not in the prevailing state of economy and society. To compensate for the lack of a true socio-economic reform, the regime must put all its energy and vigor into propagandizing their program of political reform.

Yet, even that political reform does not and will not amount to much beyond an enlarged and dressed-up version of the Bantustan equipment. However, they must present it as the panacea, the magic thing that will cure all evil and usher in a post-apartheid South Africa that will be heaven-on-earth for everyone.

The euphoria about the negotiations, the promised reforms, and the post-apartheid era is already all around us. The leaders in the populist movements have not been unaffected by that euphoria. In fact, it is true to say that they have shown far more enthusiasm than the ordinary folk."

This is especially true of those of them who accepted the doctrine of Stalin about the so-called two-stage revolution. It is comforting to move into a compromising position believing that one has only taken one of the "two steps" towards revolution.

Almost all discourse in South Africa today is dominated by the theme of negotiations and reform. This is the theme that has been introduced and is being orchestrated by the regime. It is echoed throughout the country; and there is hardly any discussion or activity which is free of its resonances.

The question that has to be posed is: To what extent does the PF carry and echo the theme and resonances of negotiations and the so-called reform? Is there a way of looking at the PF as an independent initiative with purposes and objectives larger than and transcending the small aims of de Klerk's reform program?

Demand for Constituent Assembly At its conference, the PF made a declaration for a democratic society. It also affirmed that a Constituent Assembly (CA) shall be the organ for the inauguration of the democratic society.

Both declarations are sound in principle; and they are consistent with the advancement of the interests of the majority of our population, especially the Black working class, which up to now-along with the rest of the Black population-has been laboring under the disability of disenfranchisement, the deprivation of the elementary right to participate in the making of the laws that govern their lives.

This has served to handicap the Black workers immensely in their efforts to defend themselves against the superexploitation that they have been subjected to all along.

Indeed the demand for the franchise has been the premise of the movement for (continued page)

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...Patriotic Front the violence. It seems anomalous that it

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