"For the masses, the days after the elections will be salutary. They will have long and hard battles not just to recompose the mass movement, but also to weeks of concluding) article. THE RECENT evolution of the ANC has opened the door to all kinds of possibilities. At its base the organisation is almost totally disjointed, except in a few regions which function in a quasi-independent way from the 'centre'.
These include central Natal, which is in the hands of the charismatic Stalinist leader Harry Gwala, and the Eastern Cape. The latter is a totally deprived region on the economic plane but one in which the leaders of the mass movement of the 1980s still have influence.
Mandela and the coterie that surrounds him try to complete this demobilisation by constantly appealing for 'calm' and insisting that everything is 'under control'.
Demobilise
The electoral campaign is consciously designed to demobilise whatever militant energy remains. Thanks to the "judicious' counsels of a team of American experts sent directed into a primarily media based campaign.
Moreover, the "mass' meetings organised by the ANC are modelled on the "population consultations' dear to the heart of the American president with 'questions' and 'answers' from a specially selected audience.
The South African left, whose scattered ranks operate both within and without the ANC, has been seen to be largely neutralised since 1990. For example, the trade unionists of COSATU, who wanted to take forward the debate on the programme for economic construction. have had to admit defeat.
Failure
Their efforts to give a mass content to the social issues at stake failed to raise the interest of a substantial part of public opinion.
Of course the lack of enthusiasm in the mass movement is also a consequence of the economic crisis, which severely affects the popular layers: not just the underclass and unemployed, who make up more than 50% of the Black population, but also trade unionists in work. But is this a reason for total capitulation - without even batting an eye lid, as find new people prepared to carry out a left-wing political project based on the masses, outside and probably against, the ANC" Mandela Speaks Sun 13 Feb 1pm NYANGA SOCCER STADIUM
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has been the case since COSATU's special conference last autumn - by becoming part of the ANC's electoral slate even before trying to seriously negotiate about the programme of the organisation? The warnings from certain sectors, notably from within the metal workers union NUMSA, have not been heeded, not least by a good part of the leaders of the trade union left, who have decided to be ANC candidates. This capitulation has been well orchestrated by the 'liquidationist' tendency that controls the Communist Party (including J. Slovo and J. Cronin) and which exercises, particularly on the central apparatus of the trade union confederation, a control bordering on dictatorship. Marginalised The CP is, in fact, trying to use the trade union movement to avoid being totally marginalised by Mandela, who is becoming more and more explicit on his ambitions to 'purge' the CP from a 'post apartheid' ANC. In essence nothing can stop this tendency, at least between now and the elections. The most aware sectors of the masses have more or less given up on the project of influencing the actual march of things, consigning it to a long term issue. Conference appeal The appeal recently launched by NUMSA for a national conference on the future of the 'South African left', endorsed by other popular movements and a few small left-wing organisations (notably WOSA) could, therefore, become an issue of important debate. This is despite the fact that the CP, aware of the importance of keeping its organisational monopoly, is doing everything possible to sabotage the idea. On this point the right-wing liquidationists who control the party are joining up with those nostalgic for Stalinism who, whilst opposed to both Mandela and Slovo, are fearful of an initiative which could by-pass them on their left.
Meanwhile, for the masses, the days after the elections will be salutary.
They will have to engage in very long and hard battles. They need not just to recompose the mass movement, but also to find new people prepared to carry out a left-wing political project based on the masses, outside of - and very probably against - the ANC.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 59, 26 March 1994, Page 9
campaigning, reports PIERRE FRANÇOIS in this second (and