To face the worsening political, social and ecological crisis before us (that most acutely affects the poor and working-class), requires effective and coordinated action from South Africa’s progressive forces. What should be the vehicle for this? As Niall Reddy recently wrote (his was the inaugural post in a series of republications, as part of Africa Is a Country’s partnership with the South African Left publication, Amandla), “Social strains look set to keep accumulating. But assuming that any crisis they produce will automatically redound to the Left’s benefit would be folly. That will only happen if we have the political vision and the organizational capacity to ensure that class becomes the fault line of social polarization. And for that, we need to face up to the challenge of constructing a new party.”
In this week’s AIAC Talk, we’re joined by Niall, Mazibuko Jara and Tasneem Essop to discuss and debate the question of whether South Africa’s left needs a new party. Some are not convinced – as this editorial of South African publication New Frame claims, “Party politics as a whole is an expression of the failures of the past quarter of a century and carries no possibility of a viable way forward, let alone any emancipatory prospects.” Instead, “a Left that could find a way out of the gathering crisis would need to be rooted in genuinely popular organisations, grounded in democratic practices, able to speak to the lived experience of the escalating social and political crisis and directly articulated to actual, existing struggles – from workplaces to communities and campuses.”
Or, should we be persuaded by AIAC Talk co-host Sean Jacobs, who, claiming that South Africa needs democratic socialism, wrote with Benjamin Fogel that, “Like it or not the majority of South Africans believe in democracy. Dismissing their belief as false consciousness and elections—which so many fought and died for—as a mere trick of the bourgeoisie, insults our struggle. Any future left project needs to begin with the premise that 1994 marked a victory for democracy and progressive forces, something that should be built upon rather than rejected or dismissed.”
Niall Reddy, from South Africa, is a doctoral student in sociology at New York University, Tasneem Essop is a researcher at the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and Mazibuko Khanyiso Jara is an activist, trainer and popular educator and a former national spokesperson of the South African Communist Party also serving on the Amandla editorial collective.
