Radical African nationalism not enough to liberate the masses

ANCYL president Julius Malema, and President Jacob Zuma stand triumphantly on stage outside Luthuli House. Next to the ANC which lost its parliamentary majority seats, the EFF suffered the greatest loss as its 9% share of the votes was reduced to 2% in KwaZulu-Natal thus creating a crisis of viability and longevity for this once promising youthful party, the writer says. Picture: Cara Viereckl / Independent Media

By Trevor Ngwane

This week saw the swearing in of Brian Molefe, Siyabonga Gama and Lucky Montana as members of parliament sending a chill down the spines of many South Africans. These three gentlemen allegedly connived to steal billions of rands from Eskom, Transnet and Prasa.

At key moments of the exposure of their abuse of office, their tenure was defended by then president Jacob Zuma who was apparently benefiting from the looting of state resources.

The opening of a new page in the lives of these once powerful men has, for some, turned parliament into a rogues’ gallery and uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) into a robbers’ roost.

MKP dramatically burst into the political landscape in the May 29th general elections, cannibalising ANC votes including dislodging the third placed EFF into fourth place in vote count. Zuma claims to have worked ‘underground’ for several months birthing and incubating the party before its amazing performance in the polls.

Next to the ANC which disastrously lost its parliamentary majority seats, the EFF suffered the greatest loss as its 9% share of the votes was reduced to 2% in KwaZulu-Natal thus creating a crisis of viability and longevity for this once promising youthful party.

Floyd Shivambu, the EFF’s deputy president and chief theoretician, thrust the knife into party president Julius Malema’s back when he defected to MKP. Shivambu and MK stand accused of fratricide as both parties are splinters from the ANC.

Zuma claims that MKP ‘is the final answer to the problems of the country’ and the EFF claims to be ‘the last hope for the oppressed African masses’. Can the EFF and MK win in the struggle to unseat and replace the ANC, their mother body?

Should the working class and the poor believe in and support these parties? Or are they one election wonders that will soon become politically insignificant, a fate suffered by Cope, an earlier split from the ANC?

The EFF was still reeling from the body blow of doing poorly in the national elections when the VBS story hit the headlines. Malema and Shivambu were accused of having received a R5-million alleged bribe from the CEO of the bank which collapsed after being looted by its own management who raided its coffers and robbed the working-class elderly of their savings.

Malema has denied the accusation that he became a millionaire through the corrupt leveraging of his political power during his days as the president of the ANC Youth League. Before his fallout with Zuma and expulsion from the ANC he had famously vowed in public to “die for Zuma”.

For a while, the latter arguably became the poster boy of corruption and state capture in the eyes of many because of his business dealings with the Gupta brothers who became fugitives from the law.

Despite the rivalry between the MKP and EFF, the two parties share a lot in common besides being led by leaders tainted by corruption allegations and prone to run their parties with an iron fist. Like the apple that doesn't fall far from the tree, the politics of both parties are derived from the ANC.

Both their leaderships were trained by the ANC, the essence of their politics is radical African nationalism, both accuse the ANC of having failed to achieve ‘the liberation of black people in general and Africans in particular’. Both call for the nationalisation of land without compensation.

Their ideological and political programmes can be said to be hybrid as witnessed by the innovation of the EFF whose ‘scientific’ doctrine is said to be Fanonist and Marxist-Leninist. The EFF’s 2024 election manifesto suggests that a lot of study and thought has gone into it including its policy on gender which arguably is the most developed and progressive compared to other parties. The EFF also calls for the scrapping of colonial borders in the name of pan-Africanist union.

The MKP presents with a greater degree of hybridity and even contradiction. In addition to its more progressive and familiar radical African nationalist policies, it also wants military conscription for youth as a mechanism to fight unemployment and instil discipline.

It wants the Roman-Dutch law and the South African constitution to be scrapped and replaced by African law that will include increasing the powers of chiefs, kings and queens, and creating an upper parliamentary house for them. Traditionalist sentiments including doses of patriarchy and even misogyny could be heard in Zuma’s numerous electioneering speeches.

It is not surprising that the two parties instil fear and hope among people depending on where they stand politically, socially and economically. Those in favour of the status quo are worried about the perceived disruptive impact of the parties’ policies especially accusing the MKP of anti-constitutionalism.

Both parties embrace their disruptive image with the EFF famously disrupting parliamentary processes and MKP refusing to allow its members of parliament to be sworn in threatening fire and brimstone alleging vote rigging in the national elections.

The rise of the EFF and MKP are symptomatic of the failure of the ANC to significantly eradicate the legacy of oppression and exploitation from apartheid and colonialism. Life has become intolerable and unsustainable for the working class and the poor. Large sections of the black middle class are also dissatisfied given the suffocating stranglehold that ‘white monopoly capital’ continues to maintain on the South African economy.

The radical posture adopted by the MKP and EFF is an opportunistic response by African aspirant bourgeois nationalist politicians who are looking at gathering political support through promising the working class and the poor heaven and earth which, like the ANC that they come from, they have no intention of fulfilling once they enjoy the seats of power, as we saw with Zuma’s presidential incumbency.

These are the limitations of radical African nationalism, which is characterised by anti-imperialism and even anti-capitalism but is not driven by a fighting working class movement which Karl Marx argued is the only class that can consistently and successfully fight and win against capitalist exploitation and oppression.

* Dr Trevor Ngwane is an activist scholar and senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg.

** The views in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The African.