South Africa – The unfinished liberation struggle


We do not agree to this marriage of convenience to consolidate white monopoly power over the economy and the means of production. This is a grand coalition between the ANC and white monopoly capital” – Julius Malema – Commander in Chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters -Speech to the South African parliament June 2024.

The general election which took place in South Africa on 29 May 2024 marked another stage in a 30-year process of degeneration of the African National Congress.  From a position of being nearly unassailable in the years following the formal ending of the old apartheid state in 1994, the ANC’s electoral support has dwindled to the point where it is now in what the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julisu Malema, has called a “grand coalition” with several wholly pro-capitalist parties including the Democratic Alliance and the Inkhata Freedom Party.

The losses incurred by the ANC in the election represent a further evolution of the crisis of capitalism in South Africa and the long-term impact upon the life of the proletariat following the compromises made by the ANC in the early 1990s that saw the dismantling of the apartheid system.

The unfinished liberation struggle

South Africa is a country which has produced great wealth for the domestic capitalist class and for the imperialists both in the time of colonialism and under the apartheid system.  There are very significant deposits of iron ore, platinum, manganese, chromium, copper, uranium, silver, beryllium, and titanium which are mined there. There are also extensive gold, coal and diamond mining operations there which are also extremely profitable.  The black South African proletariat was long subjected to brutal hyper-exploitation by the British and Boer capitalists during the colonial and apartheid era. It was the resistance of the proletariat that powered much of the militant struggles against the apartheid regime as it entered into its final crisis period of the 1980s.  The current President, Cyril Ramaphosa, in fact first rose to national prominence as leader of the South African National Union of Mine Workers (NUM) which was waging heroic struggles against the capitalist class, the apartheid government and the Anglo-American mining monopolies that stood behind them.  The wealth of South Africa under the old apartheid system, brutally extracted from the black proletariat, flowed partially to the white capitalist class within the country but also to the monopoly capitalists of London and New York.  South Africa under apartheid was an important part of the US imperialist-led system both as a centre of profits and an outpost of imperial reaction in Africa. It was from here that wars were launched against the MPLA in Angola, that the rule of the racist regime of Ian Smith in what is now Zimbabwe was supported and which sought to suppress the freedom struggle in Mozambique.  This reactionary regime was finally pushed to the point of collapse by a combination of the liberation struggle led by the African National Congress with the black proletariat at its centre as well as a series of defeats inflicted upon it by the liberation forces in Angola and what is now Namibia. Crucial to this was the magnificent role played by the Cuban armed forces who were sent to support the Namibian people’s struggle.

The racist regime, sensing its own collapse, acted to prevent a revolution by making concessions. What it sought to do was to stave off the threat of revolution by ending the apartheid system.  The South African capitalist class and their imperialist backers were fortunate in that, when the apartheid system was pushed to the brink of collapse, the treacherous Gorbachev clique pushed the People’s Democracies of eastern Europe and the great Soviet Union itself to the point where successful counter revolutions were carried through.  Thus the ANC lost its principal external ally as well as the country which had been the inspiration for those struggling against imperialism since 1917.

It is in this context that the concessions made by the ANC leadership in the negotiations that led up to the first bourgeois democratic election in 1994 must be understood. The dropping of the core economic demands of the ANC’s Freedom Charter was part of the price demanded by the South African capitalist class and their US-British imperialist masters for the dismantling of apartheid. What emerged from the negotiations was thus a compromise system: whilst the racist government and legal system had been replaced, the class structure of South Africa remained largely untouched.

The Freedom Charter of 1955 had demanded the following:

• The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people;

• The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;

• All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people;

• All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.

• The land shall be shared among those who work it!

• Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger;

• The state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers

The original Freedom Charter, had it been fully implemented, would have put South Africa on a path, if not to a fully socialist system, then at least to something akin to the People’s Democracies of central and eastern Europe.  With the counter-revolutionary wave sweeping the world, though, these core demands – that would have started to address the tremendous poverty that the proletariat and peasantry live in to this day – could have started to be addressed.  What happened instead is that the Freedom Charter could only partially be implemented after the first post-apartheid elections in 1994.

Whilst the ANC under Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma won sizeable majorities in the elections, the discontent of the masses was increasing. Ownership of the vital mining industries remains dominated by the old (largely white) ruling class and the Anglo-American monopoly capitalists. An examination of the dominant role still played by the mining firms can give us a clear indication of what has not changed in the last 30 years.  South Africa is still one of the leading producers of gold in the world, and the mines remain in the hands of many of the same companies which were dominant in the apartheid period.  In terms of the gold mining industry this means companies like Gold Fields, originally founded by the notorious imperialist Cecil Rhodes. In platinum mining the dominant companies are Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd, originally a subsidiary of Union Corporation Limited which in turn was one of the original gold mining monopolies in British-ruled South Africa.  The other corporation controlling much of South African platinum mining is Sibanye Stillwater, itself a spin off from the Gold Fields corporation. Sibanye Stillwater bought out the holdings of Lonmin in 2019, the latter company being the direct descendant of the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company (Lonrho). In terms of diamond mining the dominant position still belongs to the De Beers Group, which was also founded by Cecil Rhodes.  These details are important in terms of understanding the nature of the compromise that ended the apartheid system. Imperialism gave up the overtly racialist system but the ruling class in South Africa had its interests largely untouched. A small black bourgeoisie did emerge to share some of the spoils, but the South African masses were not cut into this deal.   

The land still remains largely in the possession of white farmers with the land reforms promised by the ANC never being implemented. As the EFF’s most recent manifesto pointed out:

30 years since the attainment of political freedom, 80% of the population continues to occupy less than 10% of South Africa’s land. Landlessness is still the lived reality of the majority of our people” (Economic Freedom Fighters’ 2024 Manifesto).

Economic developments since 1994 have only highlighted the problems of the compromises of that period and have led to increasing discontent amongst the proletariat.  The South African economy had been steadily growing in terms of GDP, peaking at 5.6% growth in 2006 before crashing in 2007 as part of the global recession which began at that time.  Since then the economy has not recovered to its pre-crash growth rates and was badly affected by the disruptions unleashed by Covid.  Even in the period of growth, though, the benefits were barely seen by the South African working class.  According to a 2022 report commissioned by the World Bank, South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. It is estimated that 55.5% of the population live below the poverty line, and this situation has worsened over the last decade. Meanwhile unemployment stands at 32.9% and youth unemployment at a staggering 45.5%.   

This is the direct result of the class structure of South Africa remaining largely untouched since the end of apartheid.  Running alongside this, the South African government also remains indebted to the imperialist financial institutions such as the IMF and has a total external debt of $164 billion or 40.6% of GDP.   In recent years there has also been a severe energy crisis in the country as a result of a failure to develop energy infrastructure over the last few decades.

Against a background of already growing frustration, a major split took place from the ANC in 2013 when Julius Malema formed the Economic Freedom Fighters who have since risen to be a major force in South Africa. More recently former President Jacob Zuma has formed a new party named ‘umkhonto we sizwe’ (MK) following his removal from office and subsequent criminal trial. The new party is named after the armed wing of the ANC, of which Zuma was a leading member spending time in the notorious Robben Island prison as a result of this.  Although Zuma has been damaged by many allegations of corruption, he still carries a certain amount of prestige as a result of his undoubted heroism during the anti-apartheid struggle, and this can be seen from the fact that, in the recent election, his party came third and became the official opposition.    

Multipolarity and Class Struggle

The imperialists are quick to highlight what they regard as the positive results of the ending of apartheid. This is because they managed successfully to delay the coming of socialism to South Africa thanks to the counter-revolutions of the early 1990s. The ANC have seen their support drain away thanks to the pro-capitalist policies of successive governments and the dominant role of the monopolies still being in place in the economy. However, on the international front the ANC-led governments have forged close relations with both the People’s Republic of China and Russia through the BRICS organisation, and the South African military has also taken part in joint exercises with Russian and Chinese forces.  Under pressure from the EFF, the ANC government also took legal steps against the Israeli regime at the International Court of Justice.  So, whilst the government domestically has seen its support become compromised, the ANC has continued to carry out something of a progressive role internationally. The weakening of the US imperialist-led order, which has been laid bare by the Russian special military operation in Ukraine and Operation Al Aqsa Flood in occupied Palestine, presents the South African masses with opportunities to break free from the lingering grip of imperialism.  The problem remains though that the class war upon South African workers and peasants, waged by the monopolies that dominate the South African economy, remains a brutal one which is leading to ever greater impoverishment of the masses.   

The struggle against the apartheid system was partially a national liberation struggle to free the South African masses from the brutish domination of the mining monopolies and big landowners who used a savage racialist system to enforce their rule.  The heroic sacrifices made by the South African masses forced the white ruling class and their imperialist backers to make some democratic concessions. Without the implementation of at least the demands originally contained within the Freedom Charter though, without the nationalisation of the mining monopolies and the expropriation of the big landowners, the masses will continue to be impoverished by a capitalist system which is plainly incapable of truly developing the country.  When looking at conditions of the masses in South Africa the following words from Marx and Engels come to mind.

It [the bourgeoisie] is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society” (The Communist Manifesto).

The South African masses moving away from the ANC reflects the popular discontent that exists, so inevitably the completion of the freedom struggle will develop as imperialism weakens and the masses realise that the circumstances no longer exist that might have made the compromise of 30 years ago necessary, and that the domination of the country by the monopolists can no longer be tolerated.