Zuma’s ‘transformation’ a ruse

The recent and newly found zealousness by President Jacob Zuma to pursue radical economic transformation is nothing but a ruse.

The fact is we have been here before and have seen nothing that resembles anything radical in the economic policies implemented under the Zuma presidency.

What is different this time is that Zuma is using the call for radical economic transformation as a pretext for decisively implementing the agenda of the state capturers.

Considering the time left for him as both ANC and state president, he is under enormous pressure to implement this agenda before he leaves office.

The Russians want to start building the nuclear stations they have possibly been promised and want to do so before president Zuma leaves office.

The Chinese want to give us a loan so their companies can build us the uMzimvubu Dam, something possibly agreed between them and Zuma.

The Guptas are ready to have the entire state machinery at their beck and call as a final push towards the complete capture of the state.

The president is also desperate to evade prosecution after he leaves office.

It is this understanding that has had some of us confounded by the ANC’s response to the State of the Nation address by Zuma.

The ANC secretary-general came out owning the president’s call for radical economic transformation as if it reflected ANC agreed positions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What Zuma presented to the nation was his plan to salvage himself from prosecution and the commitments he has possibly made to the above-mentioned interests.

If not how come there is no detailed, branch-informed ANC programme on radical economic transformation as propounded by the president?

Frankly the ANC in its current organisational form and with its prevailing ideological hodgepodge cannot go beyond the economic reforms it has already put in place. It is neither ideologically nor politically strong enough to pursue a thorough radical economic transformation on its own. Without a strictly defined ideological posture, accompanied by a detailed and radical programme for economic transformation, talk of radical economic transformation is just that, talk.

The ANC is so disintegrated and so ideologically confused that its main political enemy has, in recent times been defined exclusively as “monopoly capital”. In this regard, we seem to have abandoned all the rational early theories about the nature and character of the South African political struggle.

Consequently, the theory of the relationship between national, class and gender questions and South Africa’s political contradictions have been pushed aside for a single pursuit.

All of this is being done without due regard to the organisational and ideological deficiencies of the ANC.

In my view, the ANC in its current form and acting within the prevailing South African conditions, will only be able to foster meaningful economic transformation through a multi-stakeholder social pact that puts inequality at the centre of its trade-off agreements on economic transformation.

The argument that the ANC can solely use political power to leverage “radical economic transformation” is misplaced. Such an approach ignores the mutually dialectical influence between the economic base and the superstructure.

Karl Marx’s Economic Determinism teaches us that the political superstructure, which includes the state, cannot be immune from the prevailing economic production system, and vice versa.

In this sense and mindful of the relative autonomy of our democratic state, any approach that treats political power exclusively from economic power is theoretically flawed.

It is, in fact, a recipe for political populism, the type of which we have now become accustomed; a naked form of populism that delivers a lot of slogans that signify nothing.

To further elucidate this point, it is common cause that our political leadership is so enmeshed in the economic structure that it has become difficult to distinguish whether their actions are informed by political or personal economic considerations.

State decisions are highly contested among and between the political leadership factions precisely because many of the ANC leaders have vested economic interests as directors in multiple boards of private companies.

In this regard, it is easy to conclude that this “struggle” against monopoly capital is actually a struggle amongst capitalist sponsored proxies that contest the policy direction of the state and its tenders.

In the final analysis, it becomes a struggle between individual capitalists and monopolies. Accordingly, this “struggle” sees nothing wrong with capitalism as a system per se, but concerns itself with a form of capitalism that is acceptable to the proxies and their sponsors.

As we know, monopolies are the highest stage of capitalism as a system. In this context, the capitalist system naturally mutates into something more complex due to the development of production relations.

As this happens, the system unwittingly makes itself more vulnerable to the working class struggle as it will result in more workers being easily organised into a few big unions. In this way the power and unity of workers can easily ensure a decisive pursuit of the class struggle.

How monopoly capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction is a subject that needs a more careful study by the working class itself.

In conclusion, the ANC has an historic responsibility and duty to tell the people of South Africa the truth about what it is that it can do for them.

The ANC must tell the people the truth about the enormous challenges we face as a country and the role the people can play in this regard.

It is high time that a conscious programme is devised by the ANC to empower citizens through correct and accurate information about the state of our nation to ensure their meaningful contribution. The ANC should not hide or obfuscate its shortcomings so as to score cheap political gains through misinformation and lies. We need more hands on deck to ensure we discharge our historic responsibility to lead and govern better.

Mzukisi Makatse is a member of the ANC. He writes in his personal capacity