VIDEO- Audience told: tripartite alliance has lost its way

The tripartite alliance has lost its way – the ANC is unlikely to change its current course, a split in Cosatu is imminent and SACP is divided.

This was the view of political analyst Professor Steven Friedman and United Front (UF) national secretary Mazibuko Jara at the Dispatch Dialogues at the Guild Theatre on Tuesday night.

They were dissecting Friedman’s new book Race, Class and Power: Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique of Apartheid, which looks at Wolpe’s ideas to engage with issues affecting modern day South Africa.

Both agreed that a coordinated, organised community-based mass movement was the alternative that could reclaim power back for the people.

The mass movement, other than sporadic disgruntled protests by residents, was among issues currently being considered and to be initiated by the UF.

This comes amid divisions grappling Cosatu following the expulsion of Numsa and general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.

Questions were asked from the floor about the alliance’s trajectory, race and class relations and the relevance of marxist political theory in South Africa.

Friedman said he did not think the ANC would be able to change its course.

“I doubt that is capable of happening until the ANC is out of power because I cannot see the ANC in power reinventing itself. There are too many hands in too many goodies.”

He said new people had been absorbed into the elite, but exclusion which existed before 1994 still exists.

He said Cosatu faced a split because its leaders were trying to be members of a “club” which ordinary trade union members could not join.

“There is a growing gap between the leadership and membership. That gap has to be addressed and closed.

“One way of closing that gap is for leadership to realise that they need to be in touch with members and that’s difficult to achieve if leaders are complacent.

“The other way is involuntarily by accident. We are looking at a split in Cosatu and that will lead to two unions who compete for members.”

Friedman said there were two SACPs – one of younger people who were joining not to get rich but to install an alternative to the leadership. “If the current leadership does not get pushed out then it will get older and nature will take its course.”

Jara said the ANC had hit a social development ceiling after 20 years and had turned on the poor.

“The ANC has been exercising it’s political interest to impoverish society,” Jara said.

“It has taken conscious and deliberate decisions that marred economic growth.

“What we have in the ANC now is a national bourgeoisie not willing to take decisions that can structurally and systematically transform the SA economy.”

He said attempts to control society through mechanisms such as the secrecy bill and giving more power to tribal elites, both of which signified decay.

Jara said the country was likely to see a “long painful” period of political reconfiguration leading to social political economical power being shared by a larger number of people.

“My biggest fear is during that period is whether we are going to get social upheaval of the right-wing kind that the ANC itself cannot control before the (mass-based) political forces are ready. then we are all in trouble.”

Jara said Cosatu’s era as an independent revolutionary movement was gone.

He was less hopeful than Friedman about the future of SACP.

“The SACP amounts to the most organised faction in the ANC. Any possibility of renewal has been killed off.” — msindisif@dispatch. co.za