National Democratic Revolution, Part 10a
ANC Strategy and Tactics, Polokwane
This is the
last item of the CU series on the National Democratic Revolution. It
will be followed by a ten-part series constructed around Lenin’s “The State and
Revolution”.
Static or revolutionary?
This, the second in this final part, where the main document
is the SACP 2009 discussion document, is the current version of the ANC
Strategy and Tactics - amended several times since the original was adopted in
Morogoro in 1969 - as passed by the 52ndANC National Conference at
Polokwane.
The ANC 52nd National Conference was otherwise
considered a victory for the popular forces within the ANC. But from paragraph
90, this document launched a revision of the previously much clearer
understanding of class and colour in South Africa.
Now, in the latest S&T, all are ranked in a single
notional table, as “motive forces”. “Blacks in general and Africans in
particular” become commensurate with “The Working Class”.
In the draft, monopoly capital, too, was going to be
included as a “motive force”, thereby removing even the most oppressive factor
from anti-popular side of the equation, but this was changed in commission at
Polokwane. Monopoly capital is not officially part of the alliance.
This version of the S&T document remains above all
marred by its static and non-revolutionary conception of “National Democratic
Society” as a “Holy Grail” and final steady-state condition of what Thabo Mbeki
used to call a “normal” society. The NDR has to be more than a set of
tick-boxes.
The idea of closure on the NDR without its becoming
something more, is close to Francis Fukuyama’s provocative 1992 “post-Cold-War”
essay “The End of History and the Last Man”. History has not ended; and the
“Last Man” is only a nightmare of the proto-fascist philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900).
We have not yet arrived at a closure of the NDR. The
struggle continues.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Strategy and Tactics,
Polokwane, 2007, ANC, Part 1 and Part 2.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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