AFTER five days, four thick texts and a crash course in Marx, t he Young Communist League (YCL) concluded its latest “political school” on Friday, unmoved by this month’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The 45000-strong YCL is looking to groom new leaders to take the struggle forward. It is also preparing for next month’s special congress of the South African Communist Party (SACP), expected to make key policy pronouncements, such as whether it should contest elections under its own colours.
Many in SA see the party more as a pressure group for the poor than a pure socialist movement. However, it has not jettisoned the original idea of a class revolution, even though since the Berlin Wall’s demise, socialism is no longer fashionable.
Moreover, the lived realities for the majority in SA, which include growing inequality, joblessness and a failed health and education system, make the promise of a more equal society alluring, even if it is discredited in most of the developed world. “My view has always been that as a result of the Berlin Wall’s collapse it was not necessarily communism that failed; it is greed that compromised the revolution,” says YCL Free State secretary Life Mokone.
After the April election, 14% of the African National Congress’ elected representatives, whether MPs or local councillors, were members of the SACP, the party said.
They include Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande, Trade and Industry Minister , Deputy Transport Minister Jeremy Cronin and Yunus Carrim, his counterpart in the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
Davies addressed a plenary meeting of the political school on the global financial crisis and its implications for SA.
“The greatest danger that we are faced with as the current youth leadership is to make a distinction between what is a slogan and what is a policy matter,” says YCL N ational S ecretary Buti Manamela.
Marx — voted the ninth most popular influential thinker by a recent British survey — finds appeal here. “For us communism is in the future, capitalism is in the past,” says SACP central committee member George Mashamba.
The four readings used at the school are packed with selected writings from Marx’s well-known works, and include recent leftist perspectives on climate change.
“All this time I used to think that climate change was a natural cause, only to find out that it is caused by the capitalist system,” says 23-year-old Mpumelelo Mokoena, one among the mix of mainly under 30s.
Most are already in leadership posts at provincial or national level. “Before, I used to think that communism was a place where we shared everything, until I was conscientised about it,” says Portion Muhlolai, 23. “I realised that most of these comrades from the YCL had a lot of content, and that there was much that I didn’t know,” she says.
Cuba’s social progress is a particular source of admiration. “We’re much richer than Cuba yet people are dying without medicine in SA,” says Mashamba. Muhlolai blames the US embargo on Cuba for halting progress, while Mokone says China “remains a beacon of hope for a working class struggle”.
Nzimande, also national secretary of the SACP, provides an overview of the communist movement in SA, saying due to racial divisions uniting workers across racial lines in SA has never been achieved. But he is not pessimistic. “Communists never give up because we have the theory and revolutionary practice,” Nzimande says.
Manamela says the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union “was a failure of democracy and not socialism”. He says even right-wing parties, especially in Europe, are now adopting the rhetoric of the l eft.
The global financial crisis may be pointing to the fact that “we may see socialism in our lifetime”, Manamela says. Even service protests in SA are an indictment of capitalism. “For us it’s a revolt against an economic system that is not delivering,” he says.
Even the close economic ties between the US and China are significant. Nzimande says the present economic crisis could be laying the foundation for the decline of the US as an economic power. “The US has never been dependent on another country like today ,” he said.
Unpacking youth as a social force in SA reveals interesting patters. This group forms the majority of voters, they are the main perpetrators of crime as well as its biggest victims. It remains a potent force for change, hence the YCL’s determination to provide an alternative platform. Socialism and left ideas may have gone down like a lead balloon elsewhere, but here it continues to resonate.
johwaw@bdfm.co.za