and from the underground structure we sent out a request to Lusaka through complicated couriers and all kinds of dangerous things for ourselves and the couriers, what to do about one of the trade unions. I think it was in the clothing sector. We were looking for advice. And eventually we did not get a response … So eventually we just did what we, through our native intelligence, we could see needed to be done. And then about a year later, through again a complicated channel a thing came back telling us to do something which completely misunderstood the reality … Remember, in our time, how people would say, Lusaka says,
…
And when I got to Lusaka I realised, okay, this particular grouping, the so-called cabal, they are not aligning to Lusaka’s Mac Maharaj … This particular grouping, they are not aligning to Lusaka’s Chris Hani. But we got a warning a bit from Jack and Ray Simons when they came home, at their famous 1990 UWC [University of the Western Cape] welcoming home, and they said, you guys are kind of getting it wrong here, you know. It is we guys who must kind of learn from you guys (Cronin interview, 14 March 2016).
In summary, the general conditions of exile life in Lusaka do not appear to have been conducive to serious attention to and debate about matters of economic and social policy. Instead, much attention appears to have been directed at other, sometimes more basic, struggles, tensions and divisions within the movement. Yet, evidence does exist that the ANC began more seriously than ever before to consider the establishment of structures to analyse economic conditions and the nature of South African capitalism, and it is to these matters that we now turn our attention.
The Morogoro Conference of 1969
Arguably the most interesting and important statement of the ANC’s stance on ‘economic policy’ before the 1980s, alongside that of the 1962 statement by Luthuli (see chapter 2), is to be found in the 1969 ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document (ANC 1997). The national consultative conference in Morogoro came at a time when the ANC was at a crossroads over several major issues: addressing the memorandum of grievances prepared by Hani and some of his colleagues following the Wankie campaign; palpable tensions between communists and nationalists within the movement; and the debate over the question of admitting Indians, coloureds and whites as full members of the ANC itself. All this was happening at a time when Tambo, who had assumed the ANC leadership in 1967 after Luthuli had died under mysterious circumstances outside Groutville in Natal, was grappling with a number of major strategic matters. For instance, he was trying to establish the ANC’s political footprint and credibility as the leading component of the liberation movement both internationally and within South Africa, while at the same time securing its financial sustainability and its global diplomatic stature.
These issues and the way they were addressed are mainly outside the scope of this book. The 1969 ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document, however, is important for the vision that it developed for the movement going forward, a vision that touched on matters social and economic. In a clear reference to the programme of nationalising the commanding heights of the economy, it stated:
In our country – more than in any other part of the oppressed world – it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation.3 Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation (ANC 1997: 17, emphasis added).
While not going all the way to endorse an advance to a communist or socialist future, as does ‘The Road to South African Freedom’, the SACP’s 1962 programme, this is nevertheless very close to that without using those exact words. Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart make the following comment on this point: ‘Strategy and Tactics essentially reiterated the analysis of the SACP’s program of 1962, that the South African system was a “colonialism of a special type”. These words did not appear in the ANC document, but in virtually identical language, Strategy and Tactics declared that the “main content of the present stage of the South African revolution is the national liberation of … the African people”’ (1997: 36).
While recognising various tendencies within the broad church of the ANC, a more progressive (arguably, left social democratic) policy agenda emerges out of Morogoro’s ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document, and not a narrow African nationalist agenda. Even Stephen Ellis, a fierce critic of the ANC and SACP, has argued that the document ‘clearly reflected the influence of the Communist Party’s manifesto published in 1962 … It marked the ascendancy of the SACP’s theoretical and practical vision of struggle within the ANC’ (2015: 77). Ellis may have meant this in a pejorative and cynical sense, but there is every reason to believe that he was right. ‘Strategy and Tactics’ clearly lays down a strong marker about where the ANC stood at that moment in its history as far as economic emancipation was concerned.
The Economics Unit
In 1980, the ANC in Lusaka approached the Regional Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) for assistance in conducting a socio-economic survey of South Africa. In order not to lose control of the project, the ANC decided to mobilise and organise its own in-house capacity to contribute to and shape the outcomes of the ECA-led survey. In that way, the Economics Unit of the ANC, headquartered in Lusaka, came into being in February 1982. It brought together ‘politicised economists’ from different existing departments, since one of its aims was to support other departments, such as the Treasury, Information and Publicity, Research and the International Department, in their work. More generally, its work was to be focused on ‘interpreting economic issues for the movement and preparing briefings and fact papers for the National Executive Committee of the ANC’ (ANC Lusaka Mission Archives, Box 84, Folder 9).
Pallo Jordan, who was head of ANC Research in Lusaka, informs us that the Unit did not do economic policy work in any direct sense. It was set up to analyse selected aspects of the South African economy, including issues around monopoly capital and South African conglomerates. It commissioned or co-ordinated a variety of projects. Norman Levy, then based in Amsterdam, conducted a skills audit of the African labour force in South Africa. Jordan himself wrote a paper on the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nafcoc) as part of a project on the African bourgeoisie. Victor Matlou wrote a paper entitled ‘South African Monopoly Capitalism, Social Deprivation and Social Emancipation’ for a Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) conference. Laurence Harris – a leading member of the Economic Research on South Africa (EROSA) group of progressive academic economists in London and a member of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) (see chapter 4) – prepared a paper for the unit on the mixed economy model, but Jordan does not remember Harris presenting the paper in Lusaka (Jordan interview, 4 August 2017).
About 50 such political economists were brought together in the Economics Unit; they were based in both Zambia and Tanzania. Various fields of responsibility were identified and individuals were assigned to these. Thus, for example, Thabo Mbeki (then recently back from his postgraduate studies at the University of Sussex) was responsible for development strategy; Selebano Matlape was delegated to mining; Conny Dlinges and Tony Seedat to industry; Barney Pitso and Jacob Chiloane to agriculture (policy and practice); and Sizakele Sigxashe and [M] Medupe to the financial and monetary system.
Others involved in the work of the Unit from early on, some since its establishment, included Max Sisulu (later its head), former student leader Jeff Marishane and Patrick Magapatona (its long-standing secretary). Thabo Mbeki, Jaya Josie and Neva Makgetla also served in the Unit at various times in the early 1980s.
The academic qualifications of those economists based in Tanzania are provided, while those of economists based in Lusaka are not given. Of the eight based in Tanzania, six are listed as having a Master of Arts in Economics, one a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and one a Bachelor of Arts in Accountancy. It is not stated where they obtained these qualifications.
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