When we invoke the name of “the people” we must ensure that we are clear on what we mean. When we speak of the need for “a people’s budget”, for the calling of “people’s assemblies” we must be clear on what we mean. Who are the “people” that we are referring to? The poor majority? The working class?  The black working class? The working class and landless peasants? Without such specificity it is easy for the actual meaning to become totally lost. Slogans then become hollow political battle cries. Political phrases are taken from one situation and introduced in another without due regard for the real problems and difficulties involved.  In South Africa a people’s budget cannot and will not be drawn up by a parliament that serves the capitalist class and its allies. This much should be clear to any politically progressive person.

Economistic demands must be directed at the ruling class. We should agitate and mobilise around these demands. That we all agree on. But, in the same breath these demands must become the basis on which organisations of the oppressed and exploited advance their own independent struggles, in their own organisations guided by a forward looking political leadership and political programme. Their independent political demands – based on working class political power –   must be the ones driving struggles forward, not regurgitated, hollow ANC political rhetoric. In the absence of this, “people’s organisations” are objectively speaking, essentially doing the same as what the official and unofficial parliamentary opposition is doing: criticise the government policies; making people believe that turning to and relying on parliament to present workable alternatives, is what is required. People’s attention gets turned away from themselves to a ruling elite which has little intention of solving the problems of the poor majority. Casting your vote for the Economic Freedom Fighters or the Democratic Alliance then becomes the sum total of political struggle; something which it clearly is not.

In some circles the South African parliament has been portrayed as “a place of sanctity” that must be protected from abuse by the executive of the state. For 20 odd years this parliament has had the opportunity to pass “people’s budgets”; it never did and never will. For 20 odd years it consistently legislated in favour of the bourgeois class and its allies, against the working class and landless peasantry. Why would it do otherwise now?