CHARLIE VAN South Africa, reviews The transition in South Africa THIS BOOKLET is a marxist analysis of the current situation in post-apartheid South Africa-just over a year after the historic election which gave the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies 82 per cent of the vote, and made the former Robben Island prisoner Nelson Mandela President.
What has happened since?
One thing that has not changed is the capitalist system which was underpinned by apartheid. Mandela and the nomics of the so-called free market, the sanctity of private property and the profit motive.
Of the course the ANC never gave socialism as their goal—although their government allies the South Afncan Walled palaces for the rich... Communist Party and the COSATU unions did.
But now even the reforms promised by the Freedom Charter have been put on the back burner. The IMF and World Bank have to be placated.
But if international and local capital. ism are relatively happy with mandela's conduct of the oconomy, there is growing assaustaction people suffering the grinding poverty and worsening iving standards As a township inhabitant told me. "1 used to live in a township shack without the vote, now i live in a township shack with the vote".
A wave of angry protests and strikes have went the country. Iwo posters read democracy doesn't pay the rent and we soled for a better life not a biller life.
The numher of hors lost to strike acavity an ine tirst quarter of the year was more than treble last years. Sinke activity is likely to remain at high levels for the year Why have things gone so wrong? What has happened to the miracle posed to produce? Why is it that a government which contains leading members of the Communist Party and former COSATU leaders are not able to satisfy even the most elementary of the masses' noeds?
Since the end of apartheid it has become respectable once again to buy South African wine and food. The profits of wealthy farms of Paarl. Wellington and Stellenbosch are rocketing.
Tourists are taken of tours showing them the opulent living styles of the farm owners. But they do not get to see the conditions of the workers.
One Paarl farmer allegedly paid his workers as little as R.1.90 (E0.32) after deductions, along with a bottle of wine Workers are punished with deductions for backchatting the farmer and failing to call him baass.
Brecker blames the failure of the ANC-led revolution to deliver on the compromise with the former whites. only government and the other bourgeois parties-including Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party. The deal was principally brokered by the late SACP leader Joe Slovo.
The ANC promised:
'All apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside. People shall share in the country's wealth' "All shall have the right to occupy land where ever they choose.
"There shall be work and security *There shall be houses, security and comfort.' The SACP's strategy flowed naturally from its subservienee to the sidlinist/Menshevik theory of the revolution in stages—the national first stage. The state established was not bourgeois, but a revoraton acmocracy some here between capitalism and socialism. The reality is somewhat different—unbridled capitalism.
Against the theory of stages the revolutionary left argued that although the struggle would beein on the terrain of democratic revolution it would. of necessity, in order to acmeve is ocmocratic goals against an intransigent bourgeoisie, transform into socialist revolution acter of apartheid capitalism and the urgent social needs of the black major. ily. the mass demand for immeosa d solutions to their pressing problems The Transition in South Africa is available for £2 plus 50p P&P from:
Charlie van Gelderen, 40 St. Vincent's Close, Girton, Cambridge CB3 OPE. All money goes to the Alternative Information and Development Centre. Cape Town so please give as much as you can afford. A limited supply is immediately available so some orders may have to wait until further supplies arrive from South Africa. Cape Town shacks for the poor (land, housing. health. jobs, and so on) could not be mer whinour dispossessing the bourgeoisic.
It would be a combined and uninter. rupted revolution. The struggle for so. cialism was. in this sense. on today's To feed the hungry. to cloth the naless. to protect the children, to educate the illiterate, requires seizing the commanding height of the economy and abolition of market-orientated delivery going beyond capitalism.
this is necessary mentation of these burning demands implies a redistribution of at least 70 per cent of national resources. And that means taking them awdy from prisdic would oe permanent revolution th practice.
Socialist Outlook 101 • May 11, 1996.