DAZZLED BY CAPITAL THE ANC AND THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY

Jabulani ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo, a brilliant intellectual steeped in Marxist theory, was one of the ANC’s fiercest internal critics. At the height of the struggle, when the party started to trade thoughts with the apartheid regime, Mzala charged that the ANC had been wooed by big business to give up the armed struggle. He died in 1991, a few years before SA’s first democratic elections, and soon after the events recounted in this edited extract from the new book The Lost Prince of the ANC: The Life and Times of Jabulani Nobleman ‘Mzala’ Nxumalo, 1955–1991, by Mandla J Radebe, published by Jacana ...

In 1990, Mzala contended that, since the unbanning and the release of political prisoners, many more openly “heretical” ideas were being expressed in meetings. He thought the leadership no longer had control and thus could not silence the critics. He was simultaneously predicting and advocating that the present powerholders were “simply caretakers and that in December there will be quite a cataclysmic change. December won’t be anything like Morogoro and Kabwe, where things were tightly controlled.” By “December”, Mzala was referring to the first consultative conference of the ANC to be held inside the country. He was basing this prediction on the reaction after the Groote Schuur meeting where “branches berated [secretary-general Alfred] Nzo for not consulting about what positions the ANC would take, and not reporting back afterwards”. On May 4 1990, the apartheid government and the ANC met; in what later became known as the Groote Schuur Minute, an agreement was reached on a common commitment towards the resolution of violence and intimidation, commitment to stability and a peaceful negotiation process. According to Mzala: “There were angry people at the London branch meeting when he [Nzo] came there later; they said, ‘we are not just journalists waiting to take down notes on what the line is now’. Earlier when Walter Sisulu came to Lusaka the first time, he was bombarded with a storm of protest and complaints against the leadership about the lack of democracy.”

By means of his forthright engagements, including his writing, he was prepared to rock the boat. He was not confined by the need to toe the party line at the expense of the truth

After a detailed talk, to which [John] Gerhart and [Thandeka] Gqubule-Mbeki listened attentively, Gqubule-Mbeki entered the discussion. In agreeing with Mzala’s observation on a potential revolt, she said similar dissatisfactions were expressed at a big Natal meeting after Groote Schuur where questions

on the democratic process were posed. She observed the emergence of a clash of cultures. On one hand, the leadership in exile had developed a particular style of leadership, largely influenced by the concrete conditions of being an exile organisation. On the other hand, activists inside the country, steeped in the tradition of the MDM [Mass Democratic Movement] and UDF [United Democratic Front], were clear on democratic process and accountability. According to Gqubule-Mbeki, the older generation from exile and those from Robben Island lacked the democratic experience of the UDF.

Mzala was pinning his hopes on the December consultative conference. “There is going to be a huge shake-up,” he predicted, believing that the powerful would include the likes of Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota and some ex-prisoners. “It won’t be like the last two conferences,” he said, referring to Morogoro and Kabwe. But there would be a demand for democracy mainly due to the experiences of 1985 in Kabwe, which he still resented. Mzala considered the traditions arising out of the UDF’s premise of accountability to members as a possible catalyst for change. No-one, he said, would tolerate delegates being there who weren’t elected, and the “doctoring” that had been experienced in the past.

Though still out of the country, he was nevertheless convinced that the picture the people at home had of the ANC was far removed from reality. This, coupled with the fact that exile returnees had not yet had the time to learn about activists inside the country, made for a complex situation. Still, he was convinced that it was imperative that the ANC elect an “internally based” leadership at the conference, “people who have the feel of the situation on the ground which the exiles can’t have”. He also thought that, up until then, only a small proportion of the exiles had returned.

Of course, history would prove Mzala wrong, as many exiles participated in the conferences and emerged to occupy senior leadership positions, but he would not be the last to raise this concern. ANC critics across ideological lines have lamented the malign influence of exiles on the organisation’s culture, couched as it was in secrecy and a lack of internal democracy because of its exile years. Some have located this “lack of internal democracy” in the organisation’s continued adherence to Leninist principles such as “democratic centralism” and the desire for “absolute party discipline” on the part of members. To date, there are still calls to even rethink Marxism along democratic lines. Thus, the “vanguardist Marxism” associated mainly with hierarchical communist parties and adopted by national liberation movements like the ANC is now considered obsolete by some in the quest for more internal democracy.

As the night wore on, Mzala dished out insights on the ANC that not many had brought to the fore up until then. In his frank assessment of the revolution, Gerhart was struck by his “unpompous” and “undefensive” attitude. He did not pretend to know it all, but was forthright and honest in his engagements, gracefully accepting facts he was unaware of. Throughout his exile years, Mzala had developed a penchant for critical thinking even where it went against the grain. By means of his forthright engagements, including his writing, he was prepared to rock the boat. He was not confined by the need to toe the party line at the expense of the truth. Obviously, up until then he had kept some of his most robust criticism of the ANC to himself and some of his close confidantes. For some reason, he had considered the platform to engage Gerhart and others in the US as an opportunity to reveal some of his harsher views about the movement.

As he continued with his critique, he used SOMAFCO [Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College] as a point of reference, expressing doubts that the acclaimed school had lived up to its purpose of providing a good “alternative education”. He argued that the college had not taught people critical thinking or how to be objective. In 1985, Mzala had argued that the educational approach of the liberation movement should be to produce trained cadres who would advance the objectives of the revolution. This included producing people who would use their education to improve the conditions of the oppressed and exploited classes.

Repeating a similar view now, he argued that the “alternative” of SOMAFCO was just a counterideology that had not prepared students to be serious and objective intellectuals so badly needed. In that sense, he argued, SOMAFCO had not been any different than what it was supposed to combat. In fact, stalwarts like Harold Wolpe, Seretse Choabi and Henry Makgothi were also critical of the school for not being what it was intended to be. “An example was the work programme where students were supposed to do weeding, etc., on grounds. What was this for? There was never a coherent policy linking practical dirty work to [the] ANC ideal.” However, he singled out Senti Thobejane — studying in the US at the time — as one of the few bright lights, “but mainly the graduates just vanish and make no contribution”.

Returning to the question of the UDF, he laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the exile ANC for its inability to correctly read the emergence of this organisation. He thought the ANC leadership was unsure how to view and relate to the UDF. “Major errors were made,” he said, with leaders such as Govan Mbeki, without substance, believing that the UDF’s structures were very weak and, as such, had no actual popular base. Mzala disagreed with Mbeki’s views on his appraisal of the UDF’s strength and his conclusion that, as such, the influence of Indians and non-Africans became disproportionate.

For Mzala this lack of leadership was manifesting itself in various facets of the organisation, including the slowness in setting up structures on the ground after the unbanning. This led to complaints from veteran leaders such as Govan Mbeki about resources being concentrated in Johannesburg. Instead of letting the Rivonia Trialists languish, argued Mzala, they should be sent to areas where there were no organisers. He was told by some people in northern Natal that in their area neither the ANC nor Inkatha had ever come to organise, and these were people who were likely to join whichever party came to them first.

Instead of using the preparations for the December conference as an excuse for lack of time, he felt that this was precisely the time to mobilise the people around the ANC’s objectives. Thus, he invoked the speech by Joe Slovo in Cape Town where he said negotiations were not a substitute for popular struggle. And yet, argued Mzala, Slovo and the ANC

Mzala still regarded as ‘delusional’ the notion that the government’s retreat was because of ANC pressure. He likened this suggestion to the organisation falling ‘victim to its own propaganda’

were in fact “acting like they believe it is”. Mzala lambasted the ANC for not having a plan in place for popular struggle, let alone armed struggle, to keep the pressure on. “In fact, Slovo speaks like he believes there can be a resolution with the government through the ‘elites’,” and this displayed a mentality of people who “are in a historical waiting room”.

As the tirades continued unabated, Gerhart began to ponder whether Mzala was not expressing a long-term grievance that the ANC had never taken seriously the strategy of building towards a popular insurrection. From the early 1980s, Mzala had been one of the leading advocates of the people’s war. According to Gerhart, when he worked in the frontline states of Swaziland and Mozambique in the early 1980s, he became fed up with the lack of commitment to this strategy. At one point in Swaziland, said Mzala, “we did something very revolutionary; we downed tools”, and told the leadership in Maputo that “we are not going to stay in place unless there’s more serious effort made to build underground structures in preparation for an uprising”.

As far as Mzala was concerned, the ANC was unprepared for the actual uprising. He said there was a time in the late 1970s to early 1980s when there ought to have been a strategy to capitalise on the groundswell of mass unrest. “They thought that blowing up Sasol and a few episodes like that were so terrific, but something much greater was actually required.” He drew comparisons to the Zimbabwean, Namibian, Mozambican and Angolan struggles where the war was successfully carried into the country as a guerrilla struggle. But in South Africa, he argued, “we never succeeded in achieving this”. For example, on the Zimbabwean struggle he said there was a time when Robert Mugabe made it clear that the fighting would continue at the same time as the negotiations, down to the last possible moment, so as to strengthen the revolutionary side. He also indicated that at some point Tambo alluded to the example of Vietnam, where fighting and talking went on simultaneously, and that it would have to be the same in South Africa. “But MK failed to get anywhere near this.”

When the clock passed 1am, Mzala’s audience was weary, having listened to him attentively for some hours. But he was not done. Mzala ascribed the leadership failure to implement mass insurrection as resolved at the Kabwe conference to the role of South African business. He accused business leaders of convincing the ANC that there was no link between capitalism and apartheid, and they promised to help put more pressure on government. The leadership, said Mzala, was swayed by this seemingly compelling proposition, which was “dazzling”, “infatuating” and “so gratifying”.

Gerhart was still wide awake, and asked whether he thought it was not a case of the ANC trying but failing due to lack of capability to make headway against a much more powerful foe. Mzala responded with a firm no. “That’s too generous an interpretation,” he retorted. He was convinced that the leadership had almost abdicated its responsibility by elevating sanctions as the primary strategy to defeat the government. He thought the leadership had prioritised sanctions more than the armed struggle, especially in the context of FW de Klerk’s admission that they were hurting, as opposed to PW Botha, who downplayed their impact.

He continued: “Businessmen actually visited the leaders in prison and made promises that they would support majority rule. The leaders were impressed, flattered, too easily won over without analysing what these people were up to. They abandoned the idea of a military struggle and settled for the dubious idea [of] business helping them come to power. Businessmen also went to court the exiles, of course. The leaders were ‘dazzled’ by this ... ”

To his mind, this was only possible because MK had failed to make war a reality for the whites. “Thabo Mbeki and Johnny Makhathini had begun to believe that the armed struggle was futile”, and hence, when feelers from the government came, they were receptive. “The feelers were reinforced by the businessmen”, with frontline state leaders like Kenneth Kaunda playing a prominent role, which eventually included an initially reluctant Mugabe. Mzala stated: “This culminated in the Harare Declaration, one case where the ANC did get out in front of the regime with an initiative of its own.”

Nevertheless, Mzala still regarded as “delusional” the notion that the government’s retreat was because of ANC pressure. He likened this suggestion to the organisation falling “victim to its own propaganda”. On the contrary, Mzala attributed the change of tack by the NP to the argument by influential businesspeople, such as Tony Bloom, that apartheid and economic growth were incompatible and so a new system had to be found. Salient in Mzala’s harsh appraisal of the leadership was a sense of irritation at either being outmanoeuvred or betrayed. While he believed this to be the NP’s strategy, his problem was that “the ANC has accepted this too naively” with no “clear conception of what end objectives we are being manipulated towards by the Nationalists. We are still just reacting to their moves, which are much more calculated than our own.”

He maintained that the ANC’s research department — which he thought had always been a sham and hardly researched anything — was unable to play a meaningful role in this process, blaming this subjective weakness for the lack of information and intelligence about the government. He felt that there had been no attempts to formulate future scenarios and hence the movement was falling too readily for the government’s machinations. It was precisely this weakness that made him believe that there would hardly be any open debates on policies in December, because “they won’t be prepared for it with an analysis”.