Tito Mboweni, ex-governor of the South African Reserve Bank, recently joined government’s economic bureaucracy after a few years in the corporate world to grow his private business interests. His return to the state bureaucracy signifies more than another example of the revolving door between a rich politician and arch capitalist that typifies the ANC and their parliamentary rivals. It also lays bare the decomposition of the governing party, barely emerging from one scandal just to plunge into another monstrous mess.
Mboweni’s Bravado – Capitalist Convictions
President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Mboweni as the finance minister when Nhlanhla Nene resigned after a few months into his second stint at the helm of national treasury. In effect, Nene was forced to resign after confessing to his engagements with the notorious Gupta brothers during his testimony at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into ‘state capture’, a superficial investigation into corruption scandals involving a few high-profile government officials.
Mboweni is the third finance minister in a brief but stormy baptism of Ramaphosa’s ‘caretaker’ administration, completing the final term of their ousted president, Jacob Zuma. Since his euphoric ascent to the presidency, Ramaphosa has been hoping for and preaching stability, unity and peace whilst upheavals engulf him (See: APDUSAN, Vol 24(1), July 2018, pp1-3). As evidence of these crises, consider the ongoing economic meltdown and anarchy that manifests in the growing debt burden, exchange rate collapse, unemployment and inequality. These catastrophes, in turn, stem from a rotten socio-economic system with its own stubborn logic, devastating the lives of working people.
Added to this economic catastrophe is the socio-political turmoil and acute factional strife within the governing party a few months before the 2019 national elections. Appointed to bring stability to the finance ministry and tasked with appeasing and winning the confidence of capitalists, Mboweni’s bravado stirred an uproar within the party and the tripartite alliance shortly after delivering government’s medium term budget plan. His call for speeding up the full privatisation of state owned enterprises at an investors’ conference in New York seemingly contradicts ANC policy of securing ‘equity partners for SOEs’. Some speculated that Mboweni’s foolhardiness in New York would cause a rift with President Ramaphosa, two men with such similar paths towards self-enrichment. Unsurprisingly, neither the State President nor the Public Enterprises Minister (Pravin Gordhan) renounced Mboweni’s statement. They just repeated their hollow policy of finding ‘equity partners for SOEs’ when COSATU begged for Mboweni to be chastised. After all, does privatisation differ in substance from giving investors ownership in SOEs under capitalism?
Loyalists with sentimental faith in ANC politics reduce this debacle to a clash of personal taste and style – or Mboweni’s own opinions. This distorted view hides or overlooks, deliberately or not, the ideological premises of the finance minister’s words and deeds. It fails to see this saga as a reflection of self-seeking petit bourgeois politics; the ideology entrenched in the Freedom Charter and anti-working class policies the governing party promotes. The irreversible rot in the ANC originates from the logic of this ideology.
Neoliberal State Managers, Incipient Bourgeoisie and Corruption
Ramaphosa, we may recall, defeated his rival for the ANC presidency by a slim margin at their December 2017 conference. His was not a landslide victory but one hinged on a fragile truce. Factional infighting at all levels of the party plunged their 54th national elective conference into chaos. Compromises to bridge the divisions within their ranks and uphold the façade of unity have not lasted. Costly battles in courts to resolve intra-party hostilities drag on in many regions of the country, subjugating how the party operates to bourgeois court judgements instead of progressive principles. (See: Mail & Guardian, Ghostbuster cleans up ANC branches, 16-22 November 2018, p16)
Voting at the 54th national elective conference was in line with ANC traditions. Branch delegates, supposedly representatives of a vague social base, voted overwhelmingly for black elites and capitalists to consolidate their control over the ANC leadership and apparatus. What matters is not the nominal categorisation of delegates but the social class interests they consciously or unconsciously safeguard. Inside this party regime, on which social class can voting delegates model themselves but the ambitions of the dominant force in the party – established and aspirant black capitalists? These are the nouveau riches cultivated with insidiousness through state procurement tenders for black economic empowerment (‘tenderpreneurs’) and co-optation into big businesses.
In this situation, the makeup of the 80-member National Executive Committee of the ANC and Ramaphosa’s inner circle, particularly his handpicked council to attract investment, is telling in itself. The president’s investment council, for example, includes his capitalist ilk and the neoliberal superstar coached by the IMF and World Bank, Trevor Manuel. Malusi Gigaba, implicated in a string of scandals, occupies the fifth position in the NEC, which is the highest decision-making body between ANC elective conferences. Tito Mboweni narrowly missed out on being part of the top 10 in this powerful leadership body! More often than not, a NEC position is a gateway to a lucrative member-of-parliament seat as well as richer networks in the business world. Managing a neoliberal state at the behest of a bourgeois minority (coupled with self-enrichment by any means necessary) dictates ANC politics today. This political mission of the ANC fans a toxic and highly contagious political competition inside and around the party. The faithful on the party’s periphery, adept at sanitising the ANC’s hideous politics and in justification of their own allegiance, uphold the false hope of organisational renewal, regeneration and restoration of democracy inside their structures. With the 2019 elections fast approaching, and campaigns to win votes shifting into top gear, such spin-doctoring and blatant lies will intensify.
Growing Resistance for Anti-Capitalist Political Alternatives
Sporadic, fragmented but growing resistance to social injustices, gender based violence, xenophobia, exploitation, land theft, poverty and state repression must guard against entanglement in ANC factional strife. For the warring factions inside the ANC are united in their faith in capitalism, steeped in liberal tutelage to downplay or conceal the system’s relentless attacks on working people. Failing to break from the ANC, in terms of its ideological and organisational traditions, is bound to frustrate, demoralise and misdirect the fightback of trade unions, landless peasant organisations, social movements and student formations. Rallying protest movements behind fallacious slogans such as the ‘Radical Interpretation of the Freedom Charter’ would be just as self-defeating.
Instead of channelling anti-neoliberal protests into these political dead-ends, the need for a movement to unite struggles of working people based on anti-capitalist political demands is ever more pressing. It would be a grave setback for our struggle if this anti-capitalist political movement limits its agitation and mobilisation to parliamentary elections. Instead, we must unite all forces of resistance around a minimum political demand: a democratically elected Constituent Assembly under the full control of working people and free from protections for privileged minority interests.