PG Eidelberg
(South Africa)

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
(1979 — 1985):
FROM AFROCENTRISM TO EUROCENTRISM?

Apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union, while ideologically and politically very different, and existing geographically far apart, have shared the curious misfortune of both having disintegrated roughly at the same time — around 1990. While much has been written on the decline of both these systems, particularly during the 1980s, relatively little has been written about how these simultaneous declines converged upon each other, particularly within a general ideological framework. This is partly because little has been published in terms of ideological analysis, dealing with South Africa during this period. The African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa provides an obvious starting point for such an analysis since it was for several decades closely supported by, and thus involved with, the Soviet Union, at a time when official relations between Moscow and Pretoria were virtually non-existent.

By earlier rejecting international capitalism (for example through its 1955 Freedom Charter), the ANC had hoped to transform South Africa into a so-called “non aligned” Third World country. It was hoped that its relative economic independence would permit it to simultaneously enjoy political independence, which, as the movement's name implied, would have been strongly Afrocentric. This paper will argue that the ANC, particularly during the period 1979 to 1985, was forced fundamentally to begin to reorientate its foreign policy, from being an ally of the Soviet Bloc to increasingly becoming a willing partner, albeit a small one, of the international capitalist world. There were perhaps two fundamental reasons for this foreign policy change, one domestic and the other, international.

Domestically, under the growing pressures of economic stagnation from about 1975, the South African state began systematically to dismantle its costly apartheid controls, while still hoping to preserve white rule. In particular, homeland, including influx controls, over the African townships began to be loosened. This change of policy would provide the ANC with the opportunity to infiltrate these townships and once again establish zones of influence there, as it had originally done prior to 1960 — but now to do so in conditions of greater political opportunity. In 1979, in a basic document known as the “Green Book,” this policy was officially endorsed by the ANC leadership. While guerrilla warfare, in operation since 1961, would continue and perforce still rely on Soviet aid, this aid, itself would become a smaller part of the picture. For, along with newly launched urban guerrilla tactics, the ANC now allied itself to political front organisations, such as the United Democratic Front (UDF) and township civic organisations, themselves not directly linked to Soviet support.

Internationally, the Soviet Union, itself a committed patron of the ANC since at least the early 1960s, was likewise beginning to reconsider its own foreign policy towards the Third World. Like the ANC, during the early 1980s, the USSR was becoming disillusioned with its heavy commitment towards anti capitalist allies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Its own worsening economic problems, moreover, were drawing it to increasing accommodation with the ever more rapidly growing economies of the capitalist West. Thus Moscow would ultimately tacitly condone the ANC’s foreign policy reorientation towards the West, during this same period, if only because this reorientation was actually paralleling her own.

1.The watershed of the 1970s: apartheid and South African economic decline

South African apartheid policy was distinguished from the previous, early twentieth century policy of racial segregation by its systems of homelands or “bantustans” — allegedly politically autonomous or even independent states, each with its own apparent ethnic identity. After 1948, these were created from “reserves”, or segregated land in the countryside, set apart earlier for Africans. All Africans, including those domiciled in the townships of the South African heartland (outside the homelands) were automatically obliged, at least legally, to belong to one of these homelands according to the particular individual’s ascribed ethnic or “tribal” origins. A key function of the homelands thus was to control the urban townships. The Group Areas Act of 1950 provided for the first time an effective, state controlled system of urban segregation. It corollary was the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1952, itself providing for effective influx control for Africans moving between homelands and townships.¹

With the development of large-scale manufacturing, made possible by a massive domestic steel-and-electricity industrial revolution from the 1930s,² many Africans had been attracted to the new urban job markets. Manufacturing, furthermore, permitted a relatively permanent and residentially stable African labour force, involving not only the workers themselves but also their families.

It was in fact the rapid growth of the urban African population and its consequent political radicalisation during the second half of the 1940s, with its potential long-term threat to urban stability, which would bring about apartheid. In particular, the radicalisation of the ANC during the late 1940s, in conjunction with the activities of the South African Communist Party (SACP), appeared to provide leadership for any potential mass urban insurrection,³ at least in the long run.

The new form of urban planning which group areas and influx control represented, revealed a growing government preoccupation with the need to control urban revolt. Townships were segregated to isolate the inhabitants so that any riot or rebellion could easily be cordoned off. Streets were built in rigid parallel and perpendicular formation to make them easily accessible to armoured cars in case of insurrection.⁴

From about 1975, however, there began a sudden and ever more rapid loosening of homeland controls over the African urban townships, symptomising the erosion of apartheid.⁵ Apart-heid became discredited, even among its most ardent supporters, and not only because of its alleged “internal contradictions”.⁶ More to the point, it could not adapt to South Africa’s suddenly noticeable long-term economic decline⁷ as a result of unexpected long term changes in the world economy. Temporarily higher prices for gold were more than outweighed by the oil price rise of 1973 (which would last thirteen years) and the general stagnation in western imports and investment for the rest of the decade.⁸

In the long term, steadily worsening terms of trade for primary products and greatly increasing competitiveness for high technology imports would cause growing pressure, already during the 1970s, for a free-market economy no longer restricted by costly apartheid controls. In particular, the need for skilled manpower in manufacturing became far more acute than before.⁹ The black labour force had to be trained and, parallel with this, a black middle class allowed to grow. Both requirements were incompatible with institutionalised racial segregation and an economy based on cheap, and therefore regimented black labour.

However, the political price of removing apartheid controls would be high. If the homelands until then had served to insulate the townships from ANC influence, so the growth of township independence as a result of the erosion of home-land controls would be accompanied by a resurgence of the ANC as a force in the townships. The state's attempts to continue banning the ANC could not but be undermined by its simultaneous dismantling of the very apartheid infra-structure needed to keep the movement under control. Apartheid, in other words, could not be “reformed”. It could only be undermined and with it, ultimately white rule, itself.

2.The transformation of the ANC (1979-1983)

The ANC's turn to guerrilla warfare in 1961, itself a reaction to the organisation's banning one year earlier by the apartheid National Party government, made it necessary for the organisation to establish strong diplomatic and military ties with the Soviet Bloc.¹⁰ From the beginning, it had been decided to wage guerrilla warfare from bases located outside South Africa and whose terrain of operations would be primarily in the South African rural areas. Not before 1979 at the earliest, with the gradual loosening of apartheid controls, would the ANC be able to change its policy to one of launching guerrilla war primarily in the townships and general urban areas.

The sudden and dramatic Portuguese decolonisation of Angola and Mozambique in 1974, was followed by the rapid instal-lation of pro Soviet governments in both countries. For the first time, it became possible to infiltrate with some degree of success, guerrillas into South Africa. Simultaneously, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC guerilla wing, began to develop urban guerrilla cells. However, the ANC still saw this as largely an extension of rural guerrilla warfare,¹¹ with the towns still playing an ancillary role.

Similarly, although the 1976 Soweto uprising appeared as a challenge to MK's traditional predominantly rural and military orientation, in fact, there was to be no attempt on behalf of the ANC to change strategy for more than another two years. Soweto, like the earlier Portuguese decoloni-sation of Mozambique and Angola, was interpreted by MK as serving primarily to increase its opportunities of launching more guerrilla incursions into South Africa. Urban incursions, themselves, were meant to be short term and seen by the ANC in military rather than in political terms.¹² The ANC's fundamental outlook would in fact only begin to change as a result of the decline of apartheid controls over African townships, during the second half of the 1970’s.

It was not until 1979, in a report to the ANC National Executive Committee (the so-called “Green Book),” that a definite change in policy would occur. Firstly, guerrilla warfare was from now on to assume a predominantly urban township orientation. Secondly, instead of being primarily a military concept, guerrilla warfare would now emphasise a much broader spectrum of insurgency, including most notably links to legal and semi-legal mass organisations.¹³

The ANC sought in particular to identify itself with the newly formed township civic associations which appear to have been strongly influenced by their middle class constituents.¹⁴ It has been suggested in fact that “civics were seen as representing the ‘community’, which meant the stronger, more articulate and educated, less cautious township residents”.¹⁵ The civics not only formed a natural opposition force to the government but also represented the most influential grass roots township organisations.

The long term significance of this new alliance can not be over-estimated. Such an alliance would entail the ANC’s transformation into an organisation of predominantly middle class, as opposed to multi-class, orientation. The effect would be the scaling-down of the ANC’s institutional ties with organised labour. These ties, predominantly through the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), had, for the previous quarter of a century, been so close as to be symbiotic, forming an organic whole.

The founding of the UDF in 1983 would be the result of the alliance between the ANC and the township civics. This, in turn, would entail a far reaching reinterpretation of the original ANC Freedom Charter, a document in many respects comprising the basic tenets of the ANC’s ideological outlook for the quarter of a century after 1955. The original Freedom Charter had supported a multi-class alliance between the black middle classes and black organised labour.¹⁶ It will, on the other hand, be argued that by 1983, the UDF would be interpreting the Freedom Charter in a direction more relevant to the middle classes and less to the needs of organised labour. In turn, this would make the ANC’s own position increasingly less incompatible with that of international capitalism. The alliance of interests with the Soviet Union, so evident for the past twenty years, would as a result lose its original raison d’être.

3.The ANC’s transformation and the reinterpretation of the Freedom Charter

The Freedom Charter has been described as non socialist and as moderate on economic issues. And yet it in fact advocated a far reaching, radical restructuring of the South African economy at the expense of large scale domestic white and foreign capitalist interests.¹⁷ This policy, involving widespread economic nationalisation, would have removed competition from both domestic and multinational interests and as such have benefited small African entrepreneurs, and not just the working classes. Politically, it would have also meant the substantial loosening of ties between South Africa and (western) international capitalist economies.¹⁸ In marked contrast, the ANC's strategy of overthrowing white rule, from the 1980s, would be greatly facilitated by the support of international and also national capitalism. The coming to power of ANC rule, by this scenario, could only serve to reintegrate an increasingly beleaguered South Africa into the international capitalist world.

The Freedom Charter envisaged joining the so-called “non aligned” bloc of countries, such as Egypt India, Indonesia and Ghana.¹⁹ All such societies maintained multi-class societies, including their native bourgeoisie. In particular, they subscribed to foreign policies pursuing economic independence from the capitalist great powers, most notably the United States and the United Kingdom. Although they championed multi-class, non socialist societies, their foreign policies implicitly supported the Soviet Bloc more often than not,²⁰ in sharp contrast to the predominantly middle class outlook which the ANC later began to assume during the 1980s.

After 1961, and the turn to armed struggle supported now also by the Soviet Bloc, the ANC continued its hostility towards American and British imperialism. Likewise, it continued to support Afro-Asian non alignment,²¹ now qualified, of course, by the movement's new dependence on Bloc military support. The issue of guerrilla warfare was itself interpreted as a natural evolution of 1950s ANC policy. It was argued that the Freedom Charter had itself, after all, provided a revolutionary long term policy. The ANC and its allies were thus simply carrying out this revolution by armed struggle — the only way possible, in view of the Nationalist government's own unyielding attitude.²²

This thesis of continuity between the formulation of the Freedom Charter and post 1961 policy can further be illustrated. For ex-ample, Joe Slovo, who played a key role in writing the Freedom Charter, would subsequently be appointed by the SACP in 1961 to set up the MK guerrilla organisation. Slovo’s ANC counterpart in setting up MK, Nelson Mandela,²³ had likewise been involved in writing the Freedom Charter²⁴ and had written an authoritative com-mentary on the Charter, shortly after its original appear-ance.²⁵ Likewise, the ANC's policy of nationalising major industries, as outlined in the Freedom Charter, would continue after 1961.²⁶

Only with the 1979 Green Book, committed to redirecting guerrilla warfare to the townships, would the Freedom Charter’s multi-class outlook begin to be questioned. The embryonic concept of what would, four years later become known as the UDF can already be found in the Green Book's appeal for the creation of legal and semi-legal organisations, leading to a broad national “popular front”.²⁷ The UDF, itself, would encourage mass participation, regardless of any particular ideological outlook. Prospective members were expected only to subscribe to a national liberation struggle opposing white domination, and to seek a unified state based on the principles of equal and universal suffrage.²⁸ It has often been assumed that the UDF directly supported the Freedom Charter, but did not dogmatically impose it,²⁹ or, alternatively, that the UDF was “non-ideological,” avoiding controversial aims for the sake of unity and mass mobilisation.³⁰ It can, however, be argued that this spirit of “compromise” itself indicated a sign of a new ideological outlook at variance with the Freedom Charter, and thus a retreat from confrontation with large scale domestic, as well as with international capitalism.

The UDF in fact was subscribing to a predominantly urban middle class, petty bourgeois agenda, rather than simply pursuing “a fundamentally non-ideological target of strategic unity”.³¹ The UDF's leadership, for example, like that of the civics, consisted mostly of professionals, white collar workers, and students. Much less represented were busi-ness people or industrial workers.³² To be sure, the UDF was hardly closed to business people, as indicated by the subsequent affiliation of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (NAFCOC) in 1985.³³ Many members of the UDF, of course, appear to have professed a strong preference for socialism.³⁴ Yet this must have reflected an ideal rather than an expectation in practice. Indeed, none of the major independent unions within the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) ever seem to have joined the UDF. In similar fashion, the Congreess of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), would commit itself, from 1985, to a similar policy of non partici-pation in the UDF.³⁵ For their part, the UDF and the civics were active in the townships rather than in the factories.³⁶

The decline of apartheid, as reflected in the removal of homeland controls over the townships from 1975, therefore, was removing controls over two apparently incompatible interests. On the one hand, black business and the black middle classes in general, were gradually able to benefit from the removal of apartheid restrictions to black com-mercial activity³⁷ as well as gain local political represen-tation, at first through community councils³⁸ and then through township civic associations. On the other hand, the ANC, through these same civic organisations and ultimately through its legal counterpart, the UDF, was rapidly acquiring political hegemony in the townships. While this meant the radicalisation of the township middle classes, it also would mean the gradual identification of the ANC primarily with these same middle classes, and only secondarily with the poor or with organised labour — in effect a moving away from the multiclass ideals of the Freedom Charter.

This increasingly capitalist-oriented direction of the ANC, as already suggested, could not but have important implica-tions as to the ANC's ties with the outside world. Any im-proved ties with the West after all, could only be at the expense of the very close ties developed with the Soviet Bloc during the previous twenty years. And yet, as we shall see, Moscow, by the early 1980s was itself having second thoughts about the desirability of continuing its extensive commitments to Third World regions such as southern Africa.

4.Southern Africa and Soviet economic decline (1975-1985)

Like South Africa, the Soviet Union, itself appears to have begun a long term economic decline from about 1975, falling from its previous (1960-1975) growth rates by some 50%.³⁹ Simultaneously, there occurred a general world economic stagnation, itself aggravated by sharply rising oil prices from 1973. This in itself should have acted as a stimulus to the Soviet economy, itself to a considerable degree dependant on oil exports. The fact that even this advantage was not enough to prevent the Soviet economy's further decline⁴⁰ confirms again the severity and long term character of that decline. Similarly, while South Africa was affected by the world economic decline of the 1970s, that, in itself could not have been her main problem. Not only did the rise of gold during that period act as a partial compensation, but South Africa’s decline, like the USSR's, would continue even after the end of the world recession, around 1982.

A more fundamental cause of decline, in the Soviet Union in particular, although probably, to a lesser degree in South Africa as well, was to be found not so much in the challenges posed by world economic stagnation, but, ironically, in the challenges of economic growth. A heavily bureaucratised society and command economy such as the USSR could not easily adapt to the new technology of electronics, beginning to seriously penetrate the international business world during the late 1960s and 1970s. “It was possible to command the replication of steel mills, based on a known technology, in the 1930s; it was not possible to order into existence a computer industry, based on a new and rapidly evolving technology, in the 1970s”.⁴¹

Both the Soviet Union and Apartheid South Africa were in fact faced with the dilemma of removing bureaucratised political controls so as to adapt to a market economy. Only such an economy would be flexible enough to cope with the new electronics technology in which increasingly rapid innovation was no longer the exception but the rule and which therefore defied any further attempts at central planning. However, while South Africa, did face the necessity of dismantling apartheid, apartheid controlled only a part of her economy, almost “coexisting” with the free market sector. Because prospects of reform were less total and therefore, less daunting, reform could begin more easily and did so, as we have seen, already beginning from the mid 1970s.

On the other hand, because prospects of Soviet reform were so far reaching and thus so demanding and risky,⁴² fundamental reforms there were postponed and did not get under way for a further ten years. In the meantime, however, a serious reevaluation of foreign policy objectives, particularly in the direction of reducing economic and military commitments towards Africa and other Third World countries, would begin, as if to pave the way for more basic, internal reforms later on. This might help explain why the ANC’s own ideological concessions to capitalism already during the early 1980s do not appear to have met any resistance from Moscow.

5.Southern Africa and the question of Soviet disen-gagement (1979 — 1985)

The ANC’s reinterpretation of the Freedom Charter from 1979 was paralleled, albeit on a far broader scale, during this same period, by a reevaluation in Soviet circles of the theory of the “National Democratic State”. This theory had originally evolved during the second half of the 1950s to justify the USSR’s suddenly increased interest in supporting anti imperialist national movements in the Third World. Like the Freedom Charter, it particularly emphasised the expulsion of foreign multinationals from Third World national economies.⁴³ By the early 1980s, this theory was falling increasingly under criticism.

It has been suggested that one major cause of this reassessment, along with increasing problems in the Soviet economy, was due to the USSR's recent disappointments in the Third World, particularly the rise of anti Soviet Moslem fundamentalism in Iran and Afghanistan during this period.⁴⁴ In fact, the two concerns were interrelated and reinforced each other. Mounting domestic economic problems would in any case reduce Soviet tolerance for any setbacks overseas, while, in the long run, the unsuccessful war in Afghanistan would greatly compound domestic economic problems. Both concerns would serve increasingly to call into question the wisdom of continued involvement in Third World national liberation movements in general, including also those in Southern Africa.

The first official high level indication of this general reassess-ment of Soviet relations with the Third World was made by Leonid Brezhnev’s immediate successor as General Secretary, Iurii Andropov, in 1983 emphasised that Third World “socialist-oriented” regimes had to view Soviet aid as only secondary and rely primarily on their own economic efforts.⁴⁵ An obvious corollary of this new policy was also to accept the fact that, as a result, many Third World states, including the more politically radical ones, would have to maintain their ties with the international capitalist world order, and accept the necessity of foreign capitalist investment.⁴⁶ Within this context, the increasing tendency of the ANC (and UDF) to identify predominantly with the township middle classes, during the early 1980s, was obviously in step with the new outlook of the Soviet Union itself and thus could only be condoned by the Soviet Bloc.

A former Soviet African specialist, A. Makarov,⁴⁷ looking back to this period of the early 1980s, emphasised what he saw as a shift from an “ideological” Soviet world view of confrontation between socialism and capitalism to a more pragmatic, international “non-ideological” position — in particular concerning Africa.⁴⁸ He revealingly pointed to this transformation as having occurred “on the border line between the 1970s and 1980s”.⁴⁹ In fact, what he described illustrates only too well the shift in policy, by both the ANC and the Soviet Union, from Afrocentrism to Eurocentrism.

September, 1999