F.W. de Klerk’s speech of 2 February 1990, in which he announced the unbanning of the African National Congress and the other main anti-apartheid organizations, ushered in what has proved to be a complex, difficult and dangerous phase in South African history. Participants in and sympathizers with the liberation struggle have been constantly caught between the hopes raised by subsequent developments for a rapid attainment of a post-apartheid South Africa and the horror of the slaughter which has continued more or less unabated in the townships and squatter camps around Johannesburg since the Inkatha tribalist movement launched its state-supported campaign of terror against the anc in July 1990. John Saul’s article ‘South Africa: Between “Barbarism” and “Structural Reform”’ offers what is in many respects a convincing analysis of the contradictory character of the current situation.footnote1
Saul, however, extends his argument from appraisal to advocacy. As the title of his article implies, the alternative to the counter-revolutionary violence of Inkatha and the state is, he believes, a strategy of ‘structural reform’ designed gradually to move South Africa onto a socialist path. In setting out this strategy, Saul draws heavily on discussion currently under way among South African socialists. The leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (cosatu), the most effective component of the Revolutionary Alliance which unites them with the anc and the South African Communist Party (sacp), has been pursuing, parallel to the talks between President de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, a series of negotiations with representatives of big business whose aim is a ‘social contract’ between labour and capital. As elaborated by its academic advisers in the Economic Trends Research Group, cosatu’s aim seems to be the adoption of a new ‘accumulation strategy’ for South African capitalism, in which investment would be concentrated on upgrading manufacturing capacity and social infrastructure, thereby making possible improvements
Saul’s defence of this strategy comes down, as we shall see, to the claim that it is a detour on, rather than an abandonment of, the road to socialism. But this defence involves a running polemic against a third position, one that is neither ‘barbarism’ nor ‘structural reform’ but socialist revolution. My writings are selected for what, in Saul’s eyes, can only be the rather dubious honour of representing this position. Some distortion is involved in his presentation of my views. Thus Saul denounces a ‘maximalist left scenario for the immediate deliverance of a workers’ party and a workers’ state’ (p. 44). In fact, I have sought to warn against overoptimistic expectations of immediate revolution, for example writing in 1985, at the height of the township risings: ‘The regime’s military strength means that in all likelihood it will ride out the present crisis.’footnote3 Again, Saul treats me as the prime example of those ‘ultra-leftists’ who have been ‘wondering aloud whether even meaningful reform is possible in the present conjuncture’ (p. 4). Actually, in the article he cites as evidence of this stance, I insist that ‘South Africa is already being reformed. It would be the blindest dogmatism to assert that this process cannot go any further.’footnote4