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ANC wins, but anger grows
THE OVERWHELMING majority won by the African National
Congress (ANC) in South Africa’s April election, nearly 70% of the vote, has
predictably been hailed by its leadership and most of the media as a ringing
endorsement of its policies.
This view has been reinforced by the crushing defeat of the
apartheid-era parties. The New National Party (NNP), reduced from 20% in the
first democratic elections in 1994 to just under 7% in 1999, received a
humiliating 257,000 votes (less than 1%). The party that brutally oppressed the
black majority for nearly 50 years has been virtually obliterated and is facing
well-deserved extinction.
The bloodstained Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), that
collaborated with the apartheid regime in slaughtering over 20,000 black people
in the 1980s and early 1990s, has slipped back from 10% in 1994 to just under
7%. More significantly, it lost control of its traditional stronghold, KwaZulu
Natal. It cannot even put together a ruling majority with its new partner, the
Democratic Alliance (DA), despite the failure of the ANC to gain an outright
majority in that province. The increased vote for the DA – an offspring of the
white, liberal, former Democratic Party that served as an opposition under
apartheid – to 12.3% (1.7% 1994, 8.5% in 1999) is due mainly to the fact that it
benefited from the collapse of the NNP. NNP support among people of mixed race,
a majority in the Western Cape, and whites collapsed after it entered an
alliance with the ANC in its former stronghold.
The 10.8 million votes for the ANC do not represent
increased support for its policies. It is still seen as the party of liberation.
And there is no viable alternative. With virtually all the opposition parties
offering capitalist economic programmes fundamentally the same as the ANC’s,
voters had no choice. Many hoped that the promise of increases, however slight,
in pensions, child support and disability grants, of one million jobs in five
years, and the move to supply Aids drugs, signalled the beginning of policies to
address poverty and unemployment.
More significant than the ANC majority is the decline in the
numbers voting. After a strenuous effort, the Independent Electoral Commission
pushed the number of registered voters to 20 million. Another seven million did
not register. Only 48% of under 25-year-olds registered. Fifteen million voted,
down from 16 million in 1999 (75%) and 19.5 million in 1994 (89%). The ANC’s
landslide represents only 38% of eligible voters.
The 70% vote is a poisoned chalice. The smashing of the
capitalist opposition parties by the masses has removed all the ANC’s lame
excuses for policies that have led to eight million unemployed, 57% living in
poverty, and 650 people dying every day from HIV/Aids.
The ANC is now the main party of the capitalist class. In
1994, the ANC vote was massaged downwards to prevent it from gaining the
two-thirds majority necessary to change the constitution. In the 1999 election
hysteria, the ANC miraculously fell short of a two-thirds majority by the exact
number of votes for one seat. This time round, the markets have taken the 70%
majority in their stride. Since the floor-crossing episode in 2000, when many
opposition MPs went over to the ANC, it has had a two-third’s majority anyway.
The ANC has earned the trust of the capitalist class which rewarded it by
donating R13 million (£1.1m, $1.9m) to its election campaign.
Committed to the creation of a black capitalist class, the
ANC’s policies will create further misery for the working-class majority. The
continued growth of the black capitalist and middle classes will accelerate
class polarisation. This will fertilise the soil for the development of a mass
workers’ party. Last year, a survey of the Congress of South African Trade
Unions (Cosatu) affiliates revealed that one third of workers would support the
formation of a workers’ party.
The Cosatu leadership, as part of the Tripartite Alliance
with the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP – only supported by 4%
in the Cosatu survey), campaigned for the ANC. But over 6,000 members left the
chemical workers’ union, when they were denied a vote on whether Cosatu should
remain part of the Tripartite Alliance, to join an independent union. The
campaign for a mass workers’ party on a socialist programme will find an
increasing echo in the next period.
Weizmann Hamilton,
Democratic Socialist Movement,
South Africa
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