This is Part Four of a four-part series. Read Part One here, Part Two here and Part Three here.

From left: PA leader Gayton McKenzie. (Photo: Shelley Christians) | Good party leader Patricia de Lille. (Photo: Gallo Images / ER Lombard) | IFP President Velenkosini Hlabisa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Darren Stewart) | DA leader John Steenhuisen. (Photo: Gallo Images / Laird Forbes) | President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo: Shelley Christians)

The Government of National Unity (GNU) represents the consolidation of neoliberalism under the leadership of the ANC and DA. This success, as argued in Part 3 of this series, is simultaneously an aggravated outcome for the tens of millions of people who have never heard of (virtually nameless) neoliberalism. It is, moreover, a result that could be replicated in the 2026 municipal elections.

Can anything be learned from the French who have faced and avoided a not dissimilar situation? Faced with the likely election of a once openly fascist president, the French broad left came together to create the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire – NFP) in a matter of several days. Most surprising of all is that they won both the presidential election and control of the French parliament. Making this spectacular achievement possible was the prior existence of several broadly left political parties and other organised groupings.

The nearest equivalent in South Africa is the mass-based trade unions – represented primarily by Cosatu, and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which had 319,108 members in 2019, making it one of South Africa’s largest political parties (Tom Lodge, Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party 1921-2021, p.462).

Thus, both Cosatu and the SACP merit close attention when considering what happens when the anticipated opposition to GNU reaches mass proportions.

The question is whether the predicted failures of a neoliberal GNU are sufficient to shatter the delusions that have kept both Cosatu and the SACP desperately hanging on to their marriage to the ANC. The ANC has now most publicly begun an affair with the DA. The still-to-be-answered question is whether the ANC’s unfaithfulness will be enough for the ditched Cosatu/SACP to finally file for divorce.

My answer covering both organisations is a definite and immediate “No”, alongside a possible “Yes”.

The ‘No’ part of the answer

Although Cosatu and the SACP are closely linked, they need to be discussed separately, beginning with Cosatu.

Cosatu

Members of unions affiliated to the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) march in Cape Town. Cosatu’s leadership remains faithful to the ANC, despite its loyalty not being reciprocated, says the writer. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks)

Cosatu has the distinction of being the first to reject any coalition with the DA. On 4 June 2024, Cosatu’s General Secretary, Solly Phetoe, announced:

“As Cosatu, we reject an ANC/DA partnership, and we reject it publicly. We reject any coalition with the DA.”

The ANC’s ignoring of Cosatu’s emphatic rejection is just a recent addition to Cosatu’s years of battering by the ANC and repeatedly disappointed hopes.

Nonetheless, Cosatu’s leadership remains steadfast in its faithfulness to the ANC. To dispel any speculation, they were quick to announce their disavowal of any divorce.

Describing Cosatu as “the anointed representative of South Africa’s labour movement”, Sarah Smit, a Mail & Guardian journalist who is critical of neoliberalism, writes that the GNU is a “political shift (that) tests Cosatu’s influence”.

It is more than a mere “influence test”. The Cosatu leadership publicly acknowledges their absence of influence while expressing their continued loyalty to the ANC. The inclusion of what Cosatu’s parliamentary officer and often national spokesperson, Matthew Parks, considers to be more conservative parties in the new government will, he says, be no more than a learning curve for Cosatu:

“We’ve already had difficulties at times with the ANC-led administration. It is going to become more complicated … (It) is going to be a real challenge. We’re going to emphasise the need to put in place clear principles of what we expect: parties that respect the Constitution, the rule of law and the fight against corruption.” 

Almost as an afterthought, he added: “Equally sacrosanct for us are the labour laws and the transformation agenda.”

Cosatu’s First Deputy President, Mike Shingange, underscored Park’s assessment when briefing the media after their central executive committee (CEC) meeting. In a TimesLive report on the meeting headlined “Cosatu ‘unable to influence ANC’ during GNU consultation talks: union federation says snub from its alliance partner is not unusual”, Shingange observed:

“We have always maintained we are an alliance of three independent components — Cosatu, the SACP and ANC. We are within our rights… to take decisions the best way we see fit, even if it is to the disagreement of our alliance partner. … We indicated our view, which is to form a minority government. … We want to (be) separately … briefed and… consulted, understanding that even when you are consulted it doesn’t mean your views must be taken into consideration — but at least we are asked for our view.”

He concluded by saying that Cosatu had “screamed” as loudly as it could.

The still-to-be-answered question is the extent to which these leadership views are shared by other Cosatu affiliates and, no less importantly, their own rank and file.

The SACP

A day after Cosatu proclaimed its rejection of any ANC alliance with the DA, the SACP did the same. Its Political Bureau statement on 5 June announced the first of what was to be similar statements over the next days:

“To maintain strategic consistency, the SACP is against seeking a coalition arrangement with the right-wing, DA-led anti-ANC neoliberal forces. The core of the DA-led neoliberal forces, highly supported by dominant sections of capital, mainly the white bourgeoisie whose roots can be traced to the era of colonial and apartheid oppression of the black majority, organised itself into the so-called multiparty charter.

“This grouping also received support from Western foundations… The votes and number of seats from the May 2024 national and provincial government elections offer coalition permutations, with the features of a developmental and transformation purpose-driven ANC-led Government of National Unity, excluding both the DA and the MKP. 

“The SACP will actively pursue this to become the outcome of the ANC-headed alliance coalition engagement process – both within the alliance and publicly through campaigning and mobilisation of the working class. This strategic task, outlined in our programme adopted during the July 2022 Fifteenth National Congress of our party, is crucial in defending and advancing the interests of the working class against its strategic adversaries.”

All this – including its implicit separation of both itself and the ANC from any prior neoliberal contamination and its “mobilisation of the working class” – belong to the SACP’s fantasies.

The SACP’s ultimate self-deception is still being revolutionary. The SACP’s General Secretary, Solly Mapaila, having already declared that “we are clear about our anti-capitalist agenda” and having “urged the ANC not to “complicate” matters but saying it “must” instead establish a minority government, was quick to declare:

“With the minority government, we can rule and put the revolutionary agenda clearly on the table. The forces of neoliberalism of the DA as well as the forces of distraction of counter-revolutionary forces symbolised by MK must be equally rejected.”

In keeping with its delusions, the previously mentioned Political Bureau statement observes that “rolling back austerity measures and other neoliberal policy prescriptions will be crucial for achieving an economic turnaround”.

The SACP is wilfully blind to its own meek acceptance of neoliberalism when it comes to who did the rolling out now requiring rolling back. The SACP did little to nothing to stop the “rolling out” when it had a majority of members or sympathisers sitting as ANC MPs and was well represented in Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet.

Adding to its acceptance of being disregarded on the GNU is the ANC’s contempt signalling the SACP’s far from new irrelevance to the ANC.

Consider, for instance, the Alliance Summit Declaration of 1 September 2013. This now virtually forgotten declaration merits some retelling, given its relevance to where we are today.

The Alliance Summit Declaration began with a reaffirmation of the ANCs 2012 Mangaung national conference’s “imperative of advancing, deepening and defending a radical second phase of our democratic transition. Unless we make significant inroads in addressing the challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment, the democratic constitutional gains of the first phase of our transition will themselves be eroded.”

Revolutionary alliance

They noted that “only a united revolutionary alliance” could “consolidate” the promises made to the new South Africa of 1994. They pledged themselves to ensuring that the economy, among other things, “lessens exposure to currency and other market volatilities”.

The summit commissions focused on “practical interventions, practical programmes and policies to take forward a radical second phase of the transition”.

The alliance partners commended the government for “substantial advances with the state-led infrastructure plan and growing success with industrialisation efforts”.

Welcoming the government’s Green Paper on Land Reform, it importantly recognised that the “land question is also an urban issue”. It accordingly called for the intensification of programmes responding to the “challenges of those living in squalid informal settlements” and identified the “rollout of the sanitation programme as a major priority”.

They recognised the need to take forward Mangaung’s calls for bold forms of state intervention, including through “financial regulation and control” and “progressive and redistributive taxation”.

Reindustrialisation was declared “the centrepiece of our economic strategy”, with reaffirmation for “transformation of our minerals sector”, along with a major programme of minerals beneficiation being “a critical priority for transforming our economy”.

Finally, agriculture and food security were signalled as a “critical area” in which they were “currently underperforming, and in which far more can be done”.

The SACP managed to live with the ANC government which, when not doing anything to implement these commitments of the Alliance Summit, actually did the opposite of what had been pledged.

As though the 2013 Alliance Summit had never happened, it talked tough in 2018. With no equivocation, it was clear about expecting due respect from the ANC as a condition for supporting the ANC in the 2019 national election, or it would instead contest that election as the SACP.

Warning

Listen, as a brief reminder, to Dr Alex Mashilo, the then SACP’s spokesperson. He warned the ANC that the SACP would not be party to its election plans unless its relationship was redefined in a clearly outlined document stating how the two parties would collaborate. The SACP’s decision to contest the elections hangs in the balance, he told the Mail & Guardian. He notified the ANC that if it did not redesign the way the alliance operated, the SACP had a standing resolution to contest elections without the governing party:

“Reconfiguration of the alliance must happen within three months and is going to be very important for elections because the SACP conference resolved that when we contest elections, it should be under the umbrella of the reconfigured alliance, or without it… The SACP is not prepared to campaign only to experience what we have experienced under the leadership of (former president Jacob) Zuma, which we had experienced under the leadership of (former president Thabo) Mbeki.”

In case Mashilo’s message wasn’t clear enough, Blade Nzimande, the SACP’s general secretary, followed it up.

“Our country needs the ANC, but the ANC needs to respect the country. Don’t take the country for granted. In order to lead our country, we need to listen to what the people say”. 

What could be clearer? The ANC’s only action was to do nothing.

According to journalist Govan Whittles – the source of these quotes – relations between the SACP and ANC reached an all-time low in 2018 when the SACP accused then president Jacob Zuma of wanting to purge their leaders from Cabinet positions. Nzimande and a number of senior SACP leaders were not re-elected to the ANC’s National Executive Committee.

The SACP still did nothing other than falling dutifully in line. As it has again done now. The GNU attests to the irrelevance of the SACP, as far as the ANC is concerned; an irrelevance, should a date be required, that goes as far back as Mandela’s introduction of a “non-negotiable” macroeconomic policy (GEAR) in 1996. The SACP acknowledges GEAR to be the ANC’s formal adoption of neoliberalism, although its usual reference to this singular step is its coded “1996 class project”.

Sarah Smit of the Mail & Guardian thankfully reminds us of the SACP’s long forgotten paper of May 1993, titled “The role of the SACP in the transition to democracy and socialism”. Recognising the critical role of the ANC in this cause, it noted that the SACP should not adopt an autonomous role unless “the national liberation project is successfully hijacked by some liberal project”.

Such is the power of its self-deception that it evidently still doesn’t think the “hijacking” has taken place. As columnist Tom Eaton puts it, it’s “like being invited to a party… and genuinely believing the host will be gutted when you don’t show up”.

Other than noting the fact, it is not possible here to go into why the leaderships of both Cosatu and the SACP continue to accept being the battered spouse in their alliance with the ANC.

The ‘Yes’ answer to a possible divorce from the ANC

The South African Federation of Trade Unions is different. It broke from Cosatu precisely because of Cosatu’s unconditional faithfulness to the ANC. But the federation is weak despite the robustness of its General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi.

The General Secretary of Numsa, the federation’s largest affiliate and major banker is at loggerheads with Vavi. Most of the other trade union federations view themselves as moderates but their members are among the victims of austerity and they, at least, are likely to be open to some of the options created when the neoliberal hardships reach a tipping point.

Some of the independent trade unions are already committed to policies consistent with a New United Front. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, for instance, is already building a Labour Party.

A critical role in this “Yes” needs playing by the many small political and other groupings that merit being described as left. The GNU might lead to yet others being formed and to some of the current ones growing. How they respond to the predicted ashes of neoliberalism might yet turn out to be the historical legacy of the 2024 elections.

The “they” in this response crucially involves not how the leaderships of Cosatu and the SACP react. In the unlikely event that they finally let go of their delusions, it would be hard to say whether this would mark a genuine change rather than an opportunistic one.

Much more important would be how the rank and file of both organisations react during the process of the unravelling of the GNU. Collaboration between the leaders of the expressly political groups and the anti-neoliberal/anti-GNU trade unionists and the finally fed up general membership of the SACP would be essential.

Also to be considered are unhappy members of the middle class who don’t turn right. And then there are the 60% of eligible voters who excluded themselves from the May election. Despite the plethora of names on the ballot form, there wasn’t a single one they could vote for. The New United Front would certainly attract at least some of them. All this could lead to a French-like United Front that couldn’t be ignored.

South Africa’s New United Front

Bearing in mind that the failures preceding the collapse of the GNU might result in an even greater political swing to conservativism – including an authoritarian one – what could this New United Front do?

Academic Steven Friedman’s verdict on the 2024 election was:

“The result does not show most South Africans do not want a freer and fairer country – it shows only that those who don’t want it are much better at using party politics than those who do. If the opening which has appeared in party politics is to bring that dream closer, those who dream it need to start organising now.” (email 31/5/24).

Realising the dream still requires considerably more detail, it is with restraint that I offer the elaboration of only one possibility:

‘Capitalism with a human face’

British Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath was obliged to say that capitalism could have a human face following a corporate scandal in 1973. If we are to replicate the French solution to their most recent political crisis (I include myself in this “we”), our United Front should be as open as possible.

This non-sectarianism means moderating our alternatives to neoliberalism by not calling for the removal of capitalism, even though many (again including me) see neoliberalism as the hegemonic form of capitalism. (One can no longer say the “current” form of global capitalism because former US president Donald Trump has led a movement against the globalisation inherent in neoliberalism. This is a departure into one in which each country with the economic might to do so proclaims its breakaway from universal rules to exclusively national ones, often imposed unilaterally. This is what the US is doing in its trade war with China. “Making America Great Again” retains elements of neoliberalism but puts a halter on corporate liberty to import freely what it has outsourced anywhere in the world to maximise its profit. The US-created World Trade Organisation battle ram to force open markets worldwide is no more – at least for the US. Corporations must now stay at home to create jobs and tax revenues.)

Compared with neoliberal capitalism one can facelift capitalism to (some) respectability by ditching neoliberalism, or, more particularly, its privatisations, beginning with the privatisation of once publicly owned and run basic public services like electricity, water, health, education, and many aspects of social services.

Citizens would no longer be customers whose needs are determined by their ability to pay and, to give but one example would go hungry if they had insufficient money. The fiscal discipline of neoliberalism would be an immediate target for ejection. South Africa has the finances to deal with neoliberal austerity and the debt problem it has created, as has been repeatedly demonstrated (here and here). Some sense of solidarity would return to replace the neoliberal ethic that applauds self-interest for, as former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher proclaimed, there is no such thing as society. Many similar values are inherent in capitalism, but steroid-driven neoliberalism makes them worse.

Objectives and values

The objectives and values of this New United Front to emerge from the ashes of neoliberalism already exist. Remember the Reconstruction and Development Programme? More importantly, they are enshrined in our national Constitution. The Constitution has already become a focus of attack because its values and guaranteed socio-economic rights are, at best, seen as fairytales or, at worst, malevolently conspiratorial deceptions.

Ditching neoliberalism would breathe life back into the Constitution, which would be all the more important because, as Co-Founder and Senior Policy Specialist Institute for Economic Justice Neil Coleman observes, neoliberalism’s fiscal ceilings and binding deficit targets guarantee the failure of even approaching the guaranteed socioeconomic rights of our Constitution.

Disagreement among members of the front would be a near certainty given the diversity of political views embraced by the front I’m suggesting. These differences, however, would be settled by the actual practice of a South Africa liberated from neoliberalism.

Our Constitution’s socioeconomic rights, including such rights as dignity, embody the 1996 consensus of what was bloodily fought for over many decades and by millions of people. Whether or not they can be achieved by a capitalism shorn of neoliberalism, or, at best, partially realised, as socialists would predict, is for the people of that time to sort out.

For now, let’s use the time available to begin preparing for that future. In 2011, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu warned the ANC government:

“This government, our government, is worse than the apartheid government because at least you were expecting it with the apartheid government. Your government (doesn’t) represent me… I am warning you. I really am warning you out of love. I’m warning you like I warned the Nationalists. I am warning you. One day, we will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government. You are disgraceful. I want to warn you. You are behaving in a way that is totally at variance with the things for which we stood.”

Let’s move on from Tutu’s anger. Let’s turn his anger to action to “achieve the things for which we stood”.

Giving restored meaning to “new”, as in the “new South Africa”, Tom Eaton invites us to “imagine if we could reclaim that precious word — ‘new’ — in all its power and potential, and use it to talk, debate, argue and, slowly, build something different; something as yet untainted by failure and disappointment; something achievable.” DM

This article is published jointly with the Daily Maverick.