“We do not agree to this marriage of convenience to consolidate white monopoly power over the economy and the means of production. This is a grand coalition between the ANC and white monopoly capital.” (Speech to the South African parliament by Julius Malema, Commander in chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters, June 2024)
The general election that took place in South Africa on 29 May 2024 marked another stage in a 30-year process of degeneration of the African National Congress (ANC). From a position near unassailability in the years immediately following the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC’s mass electoral base has dwindled to the point where it has now had to form what leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters Julius Malema has called a “grand coalition”, with several wholly pro-capitalist parties including the Democratic Alliance and the Inkhata Freedom party.
ANC losses in the most recent election reflect a further evolution of the crisis of capitalism in South Africa. In particular, they are a result of the impact that compromises made by the ANC in the early 1990s (as the apartheid system was being dismantled) have had on the life of poor proletarians.
The unfinished liberation struggle
South Africa is a country that has produced great wealth for domestic capitalists and imperialists alike, both in the time of direct colonialism and under the apartheid system. The country has significant deposits of iron ore, platinum, manganese, chromium, copper, uranium, silver, beryllium, and titanium, all of which valuable minerals are mined there. The country’s famous gold, coal and diamond mining operations also continue to be extremely profitable.
The black South African proletariat was subjected to brutal hyperexploitation by both British and Boer capitalists during the colonial and apartheid eras. It was the resistance of these workers which powered much of the militant struggle against the apartheid regime as it entered into its final crisis period in the 1980s.
Current president Cyril Ramaphosa first rose to national prominence as leader of the South African National Union of Mine Workers (NUM), which waged heroic struggles against the capitalist class, the apartheid government and the Anglo-American mining monopolies that stood behind them.
The wealth of South Africa under the old apartheid system, brutally extracted via the labour of the black proletariat, flowed partially to the white capitalist class inside the country but especially to the monopoly capitalists in London and New York. South Africa under apartheid was an important part of the US imperialist-led system, both as a centre of profit-taking and as an outpost of imperial reaction on the African continent.
It was from here that wars were launched against the People’s Movement for the Liberation (MPLA) in neighbouring Angola (then a Portuguese colony). From here that the rule of the racist regime of Ian Smith in what is now Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) was supported. And from here that the attempt to crush the freedom struggle led by Frelimo in Mozambique (also a Portuguese colony) was centred.
The reactionary settler-colonial regime in Pretoria was finally pushed to the point of collapse by a combination of the ANC-led liberation struggle, with the black proletariat at its centre, and a series of defeats inflicted upon it by the liberation forces in Angola and Namibia (formerly South West Africa).
Crucial to this was the magnificent role played by the Cuban armed forces who were sent to support the Namibian people’s struggle. The racist regime, sensing its own imminent collapse, acted to prevent a revolution by making concessions. What its leaders sought was to stave off the threat of revolution by ending the apartheid system.
The South African capitalist class and its imperialist backers were fortunate in that at the time the apartheid system was being pushed to the brink of collapse, the treacherous clique of Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR had recently pushed the people’s democracies of eastern Europe and the great Soviet Union itself to the point where successful counter-revolutions had been carried through.
Thus the global balance of forces shifted drastically. The ANC lost its principal external ally and the masses lost the socialist motherland that had been the main inspiration for all those struggling against imperialism since 1917.
It is in this context that the concessions made by the ANC leadership during the negotiations of 1994 must be understood. The dropping of the core economic demands of the ANC’s Freedom charter were part of the price demanded by the South African capitalist class and their US-British imperialist masters for the dismantling of apartheid.
What emerged from the negotiations was thus a compromise: whilst the racist government and legal system had been replaced, the class structure of South Africa remained largely untouched.
The ANC’s Freedom Charter of 1955, the programme of the liberation struggle, demanded the following:
- The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people.
- The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.
- All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people.
- All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.
- The land shall be shared among those who work it! (Our emphasis)
- Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land redivided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger.
- The state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers. (ANC Freedom Charter)
Had this programme been fully implemented, it would have put South Africa on a path if not to a fully socialist system, then at least to something akin to the people’s democracies of central and eastern Europe. Instead, as the counter-revolutionary wave swept the world, these core demands, aimed at addressing the tremendous poverty and inequality endured by the mass of poor proletarians and peasants, were left unfulfilled.
And so, despite the apparent victory of the liberation struggle in South Africa, the programme enshrined in its Freedom charter was only partially implemented following the first post-apartheid elections in 1994.
Monopoly interests untouched
Whilst the ANC under Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma won sizeable majorities in elections, the discontent of the masses steadily increased over the years. Ownership of the vital mining industries remains dominated by the old (largely white) ruling class and by Anglo-American monopoly capitalists.
An examination of the dominant role still played by these mining corporations in South African economic life can give us a clear indication of what has not changed in the last 30 years.
South Africa is still one of the leading producers of gold in the world, and its gold mines remain in the hands of many of the same companies that were dominant during the colonial and apartheid periods. Corporations like Gold Fields, for example, which was originally founded by the notorious British imperialist Cecil Rhodes.
In platinum mining, one of the dominant companies today is Impala Platinum Holdings, whose African-sounding name conceals the fact that it was originally a subsidiary of Union Corporation, one of the original gold mining monopolies in British South Africa. The other corporation which controls much of the country’s platinum mining is Sibanye Stillwater, another native-sounding spin-off from the Gold Fields corporation.
Sibanye Stillwater bought out the holdings of Lonmin in 2019, the latter company being the direct descendent of the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company (Lonrho). In diamond mining, the dominant position still belongs to the De Beers Group, also founded by Cecil Rhodes.
These details help us to understand the nature of the compromise that ended the apartheid system. Imperialism gave up ruling via overtly racialist means, but the economic interests of the comprador ruling class in South Africa were largely untouched. A small black bourgeoisie did emerge after 1994 to share some of the spoils, but the South African masses were not cut into this deal.
Meanwhile, the land, possession of which was at the very centre of the liberation struggle’s demands, remains overwhelmingly the property of largely white, large-scale capitalist farmers producing crops for export. The land reforms promised by the ANC were never implemented.
As the EFF’s most recent manifesto pointed out: “Thirty years since the attainment of political freedom, 80 percent of the population continues to occupy less than ten percent of South Africa’s land. Landlessness is still the lived reality of the majority of our people.” (EFF 2024 election manifesto)
Economic developments since the end of apartheid have only highlighted the problems caused by these compromises, leading to increasing discontent amongst the masses. While South Africa’s economy had been steadily growing in terms of GDP, peaking at 5.6 percent growth in 2006, it crashed in 2007, caught in the toils of the global crisis. (GDP growth (annual percent) – South Africa, World Bank)
Since then, the economy has not recovered to its pre-crash growth rates and was once again badly affected by the disruptions unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic. (Economic growth muted as 2023 draws to a close, Statistics South Africa)
Even in the period of growth, the benefits were barely felt by the South African working class. According to a 2022 report commissioned by the World Bank, South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. It is estimated that 55.5 percent of the population live below the poverty line, and this situation has steadily worsened over the last decade. Today, unemployment stands at 32.9 percent, with youth unemployment a staggering 45.5 percent.
This is the direct result of the failure to implement the Freedom charter in 1994. The South African government remains indebted to imperialist financial institutions such as the IMF, and has a total external debt of $164bn, 40.6 percent of GDP.
In recent years, there has also been a severe energy crisis in the country consequent on the government’s failure to develop an energy infrastructure that can keep up with growing demand. (Why South Africa is mired in an electricity crisis by Michael Cohen, Bloomberg, 13 December 2023)
Against this backdrop of growing frustration, a major split took place from the ANC in 2013. Julius Malema formed the Economic Freedom Fighters, who have since risen to become a major force in South African politics.
More recently, former president Jacob Zuma formed a new party named ‘uMkhonto weSizwe’ (MK) following his removal from office and subsequent criminal trial. The new party is named after the armed wing of the ANC, in which Zuma played a leading role and for which he spent time incarcerated in the notorious Robben Island prison.
Although Zuma has been damaged by many allegations of corruption, he still carries a certain amount of prestige from his record of undoubted heroism during the anti-apartheid struggle, and this esteem his party to come third and become the official opposition during the recent election.
Multipolarity and class struggle
Imperialist commentators are always keen to highlight the ‘positive results’ of the ‘democratic’ ending of apartheid. This is because the west managed to successfully delay the coming of socialism to South Africa, largely thanks to the counter-revolutions in Europe.
Meanwhile, the much-vaunted achievement of ‘democracy’ has been found to be an empty prize indeed. Support for the ANC has been steadily draining away as the pro-capitalist policies of successive governments have maintained the dominant role of imperialist monopolies, keeping the masses poor and dispossessed.
On the international front, however, ANC-led governments have forged close relations with both the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation through the Brics organisation. South Africa’s military has taken part in joint exercises with its Russian and Chinese counterparts. Under pressure from the EFF, the ANC government also took legal steps against the Israeli regime at the International Court of Justice.
Thus while its domestic support base has been shrinking, the ANC has continued to carry out something of a progressive role internationally. The weakening of the US imperialist-led order, which has been laid bare by the Russian special military operation in Ukraine and Al-Aqsa Flood operation in occupied Palestine, is presenting the South African masses with fresh opportunities to break free from the lingering grip of imperialism.
The class war waged on South African workers and peasants by the monopolies that dominate their economy remains a brutal one, however, and is leading to the ever greater impoverishment of the masses.
The struggle against the apartheid system was essentially a national-liberation struggle, aimed at freeing the South African masses from the brutish domination of the mining monopolies and imperialist-aligned big landowners, who used the savage racialist system to enforce their rule. The heroic sacrifices made by the masses during this struggle forced the white ruling class and its imperialist backers to make democratic concessions.
Without the implementation of the minimum set of demands contained in the Freedom charter, without the nationalisation of the mining monopolies and the expropriation of the big landowners, the masses will continue to be impoverished by a capitalist-imperialist system that is plainly incapable of developing the country in an all-round way that brings benefits to the working class.
When looking at the conditions endured today by the poor workers in South Africa, the following words by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels come to mind:
“It (the bourgeoisie) is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.” (The Communist Manifesto, 1848, Chapter 1)
The South African masses’ move away from their former loyalty to the ANC is a sign of deep discontent, an indicator that the completion of the freedom struggle remains their core demand. Today, not only is the domination of the country by the monopolists becoming ever more intolerable, but the balance of class forces worldwide is also shifting.
Opportunities for fulfilling the liberation programme are opening up as imperialism continues to weaken. The time is coming when the masses will decide that the circumstances that forced their movement’s compromises three decades ago no longer exist.
