RW Johnson: To SACP boss – are you a Marxist or a racist? Cannot be both.

Solly Mapaila, head of the South African Communist Party, is troubled by what he calls the ANC's "class suicide" in its alliance with the DA. Yet, his critique seems more rooted in racial politics than Marxist ideology. As the DA ministers make strides in cleaning up governance, Mapaila's focus shifts to race and resentment, questioning the nature of his own analysis. Can Mapaila remain a Marxist while fostering race-based antagonism?.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..By R.W. Johnson.Naturally, Mapaila feels most antagonism for the third white man in the DA team, its leader, minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen – the fact that the DA also has a black minister, Siviwe Gwarube at Basic Education is passed over in embarrassed silence. But the fact is that, of all the DA ministers, Steenhuisen poses the least threat to the ANC. Apart from the fact that Steenhuisen knows nothing about agriculture, his ministry is in chaos. .Not a little of this derives from Steenhuisen's bizarre attempt to appoint Roman Cabanac as his chief of staff. This triggered such huge resistance from the DA that after a fortnight Steenhuisen was forced to announce that he was dismissing Cabanac. However, he did this by announcing it publicly to the Cape Town press club, somewhat to Cabanac's surprise. He compounded this error by failing to go through any of the labyrinthine procedures for dismissal under South African labour law. The result is that Cabanac is still there, rolling up to the office every day and it could now take many months and endless legal procedures as well as much money in order to get rid of him..However, great as the DA resistance to Cabanac was, it paled in comparison to the fury felt by the black civil servants on whom Steenhuisen now relies. Their animosity has not been cooled by the fact that Steenhuisen, who seems blithely unaware of other people's feelings, has also chosen a whites-only team for his office. The result is merry hell. Because many of these appointees do not have the minimum educational requirements, Steenhuisen has had to ask for special dispensation to appoint them. But his letter asking for this to the minister of Public Administration, Mzamo Buthelezi, has never arrived to the minister although it has been leaked to the press – clear evidence of sabotage, perhaps within Steenhuisen's own department. In general Steenhuisen has given a maximally clumsy demonstration of how not to be a minister..Read more: 🔒 Premium RW Johnson: Deluded politicians living in alternative realities – curse of the New SA.There is particular hostility within the Agriculture ministry towards Annette Steyn, whom Steenhuisen had nominated as his spokesperson. As a DA MP she had accused various people in the ministry of corruption and they have not forgiven or forgotten this. Again, Steenhuisen might have thought of this before appointing her….Moreover, once Cabanac's appointment was announced all Steenhuisen's senior appointments were subjected to exhaustive security clearances. On top of which, because most of Steenhuisen's appointments have not yet been ratified, they have also not been paid for three months, causing further unrest. Perhaps as a result, Steenhuisen still has to make a number of other appointments. The whole situation has not been made easier by Steenhuisen's absences abroad. Under these circumstances it would be difficult for Steenhuisen to be much use to the white monopoly capitalists that Solly Mapaila so hates, or indeed to anyone else. It's a pity about the farmers..It is true that Mapaila is not quite on the level in his vituperation against the GNU because he fails to explain why the various Communist ministers in the government – including the party's chairman, Blade Nzimande – are still happily cashing their ministerial salaries. None of them has uttered a word against the GNU and, on the face of it, they all seem perfectly happy about it. And one of them, David Masondo, has just given a speech against prescribed assets which any capitalist would be proud of. .There is, of course, an interesting question as to why Blade Nzimande has just been demoted from Minister of Higher Education to the much lesser ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. True, there was a huge fuss going on at Higher Education about large amounts of student loan and grant money which had gone missing. And some people had been so rude as to accuse Blade of corruption, something which none of us can possibly believe. It is, though, interesting that Blade has accepted this demotion without a single word of protest, which is quite surprising given that he had been minister of Higher Education for fifteen years, having come to power as one of Jacob Zuma's most passionate supporters. .There is, though, a basic question about Solly Mapaila's attitude. He tries to put this in Marxist terms by talking of the ANC committing "class suicide", though one wonders which class he means ? After all, as a result of the GNU the Rand is stronger, the fuel price is going down, bond rates have fallen, the national debt is suddenly more payable and there is more talk of new investment. All this is very good news both for the black working class and middle class. And it's certainly not bad news for Ramaphosa and those ANC leaders who launched the GNU..Read more: 🔒 RW Johnson: Cyril's dilemma on Motsoaledi, ANC's ineffective, financially ignorant health minister.Perhaps the key is just to listen to Mapaila:."…the DA doesn't represent an iota of the interest of our people. It's a party of white interest, of the white minority. It has inherited the colonial regime's interest, the imperial regime's interest, the apartheid regime's interest….It just wants a black person to remain subservient to white people. This is the deepest pain one feels every day because our leaders, the political elite, committed this criminality of joining forces with the DA.".The interesting thing here is that Mapaila completely abandons class analysis. Instead, it's all about race and his imaginings of a return to the bad old days when blacks were subservient to whites. But does he really believe such a thing is possible in a country where whites are now only 8% of the population ? And has he not understood that only a minority of DA voters are white nowadays ? Perhaps even more to the point, is Mapaila just a racist ? .It's best to be frank about these things. In the long struggle against apartheid the basic understanding at grass roots was that it was a struggle against the whites. It was probably inevitable in a country so obsessed by race that this would happen. And if you listen to Julius Malema you realise that he echoes this perfectly. His language is entirely race-based. He wants "to cut the throat of whiteness", as he puts it. He doesn't use class terms. Sure, he'll inveigh against "white monopoly capital" but the key word there is "white". Pretty much the same seems to be true of MK, though up till now its message had been more garbled. And these are the parties that Mapaila would like the ANC to ally with: clearly the idea is an anti-white alliance. A purely racist conception. .And the point about that is that it is completely anti-Marxist. I am reminded of the struggle of my old friend, Jean Suret-Canale, a leading member of the French Communist party. Suret, who had had a heroic career in the French Resistance and who was on the party's Central Committee, was also a great Marxist historian of Africa. He was, though, completely out of sympathy with the Africa-centred theories of history associated with Cheikh Anta Diop. Diop had argued that really ancient Egypt had led world civilisation, that most of Greek mathematics – Euclid, Pythagoras etc – had actually been taken from Egypt. And that ancient Egyptians had been black, which meant that Black civilisation had led the world, had been unfairly despoiled and robbed but must be restored to pride of place. Similarly, .Diop's sort of historical nonsense has, of course, been widely taken up both within Africa and among black Americans. (There are even some white academics in South Africa who have, disgracefully, fallen in behind Diop.) Suret simply said that the whole theory rests upon the highly disputable notion that ancient Egyptians were black. And that no Marxist could possibly accept a theory based upon the colour of someone's skin. He knew, when he said that, that he would be unpopular (as he was) but he was a Marxist through and through and could not speak otherwise. I admired his courage. And I wish Solly Mapaila would confront this issue. He may not have read Suret-Canale so let me quote Vladimir Shubin, the great Soviet mentor of the ANC. Shubin always insisted that the ANC was fighting for "the anti-apartheid majority" and not "the black majority". As a Marxist he could not accept racially defined groups. So this is Mapaila's choice. He can either be a Marxist or a racist but he can't be both..Read also:.🔒 RW Johnson: The new opposition emerges🔒 RW Johnson: GNU's bad faith bargaining hid the tapping of Ramaphosa's probable successor🔒 RW Johnson: Election'24 will be SA's showdown of all showdowns

RW Johnson: To SACP boss – are you a Marxist or a racist? Cannot be both.

Related Stories