FOR THE PEOPLE: It remains to be seen how the newly appointed minister of higher education, Blade Nzimande, will fight for the rights of the under-serviced masses
Nzimande rose to his position as part of the crusade to dislodge Mbeki, not on the basis of sustained mass conscientisation
Now in Cabinet, Blade Nzimande risks losing touch with the people he represents, writes Mazibuko K Jara
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
If the SACP under Blade Nzimande is as politically powerful as S’thembiso Msomi suggested two weeks ago, then are we about to see a fundamental shift of power away from capitalism ? How will the likes of Nzimande exercise their new-found political power? How should we understand power as lived by Nzimande as a politician and the party he leads?
Given the SACP’s new position of power, its leaders in government are subject to extreme moral, social and financial temptations. Will they insist on a progressive morality that rejects the freebies from capital ? What social image and personal values will they seek to assert?
On his third day as the powerful minister of higher education, Nzimande showed how naked and vulnerable his power is. In response to questions from militants at the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa mini-congress, Nzimande equivocated on the extent of transformation required at higher education institutions and whether poor students should continue to be excluded from higher education simply because they cannot pay.
Nzimande’s responses are a marked departure from the transformative and de-commodification perspective that the SACP should stand for. No matter what personal political power Nzimande commands, he is holding political office in a capitalist state, and he is vulnerable to the allure of capital.
Already, there must be pressure on Nzimande to be “presentable” as a government leader. In protecting and advancing its interests, capital has succeeded in acting on and through the ANC-led state of which the SACP is now part.
This is helped not in the least by the fact that the ANC and SACP have no interest in disturbing the power structure that guarantees their political leadership. Since 1994, we have not really seen government leaders showing affinity with the people and using that to challenge inequality and the inequitable division of social and economic power.
Nzimande is coming into power as the traditions of selfless organisation, solidarity and of basic service to the people are on the wane, and in the absence of critical political conditions for the change that he should stand for.
Nzimande rose to his influential position as part of the crusade to dislodge the disastrous Thabo Mbeki. His rise was not on the basis of sustained mass conscientisation, which would have focused on the patient work of building ordinary people as critical, conscious, self-organised and engaged social agents with social power, voice and capacity.
By its very nature, the Jacob Zuma ascendancy was antithetical to sustained mass conscientisation. It was about the demobilising politics of grievance. Like a hunter who has finished off his prey , Nzimande is forced to go and hunt again. This means sustained power battles displacing progressive mass politics.
The SACP’s and Nzimande’s vulnerability creates conditions for Mbeki-like insecurity, paranoia, factionalism, mistrust, drive for personal power and strategic disorientation.
Nzimande’s power over the SACP has given him huge leverage to influence the ANC. If this is to be maintained, not only will amendments have to be made to the SACP constitution (allowing him to cease to be a full-time SACP employee), but he must now also navigate a thorny path, holding back elements within the SACP from overtly challenging the capitalist government he serves in.
Despite the positive moral force that Chris Hani was, the majority of his successors are not innocent of “Gucci socialism”. If there is to be a break with capitalist consumption, Nzimande must lead the needed attack on the trappings of power and uphold critical vigilance again capitalist accumulation and consumption values.
Otherwise, the chauffer-driven cars, the huge subsidies and other benefits of incumbency put even leftist politicians in the position of having a stake in the current order. Even more disempowering to a striking worker is the image of Nzimande lunching with Patrice Motsepe at a private suite during a football match. The same worker has a right to ask whether Nzimande would lead a strike against Motsepe’s exploitative companies. How will he now, as a minister, be able to take up the cause of mass struggles with any legitimacy?
Nzimande and other SACP members in parliament can no longer rail against “right-wing forces in the ANC that are against the SACP”, “a biased media that is in cahoots with capital” or “ultra-left forces in the SACP”. Such populist rhetoric avoids the patient work of building mass power and rather glorifies the role of the leader as the protector of the masses. As the SACP’s deputy general secretary, Jeremy Cronin, noted in a 2008 article for New Agenda, “The ANC’s 2007 national conference created a situation in which there is the danger of further fragmentation and factionalism, palace politics, a politics of revenge and of rear-guard fight-backs”. To paraphrase Cronin, it is time for a politics of the people. Nzimande is now further removed from this kind of politics.
Comrade Jara is a member of the SACP.
No comments:
Post a Comment