The ANC-NNP Alliance: What Do Anarchists Say?
As political crooks get into bed, COSATU leaders turn a blind eye

The recent announcement of an NNP-ANC alliance in the western Cape has shocked those naïve souls who fool themselves into believing that the ANC is somehow a party of the working class. The alliance opens up the ANC can of worms as never before. The anti-working class nature of the ANC is clearer than ever.

LUST

Those who thought that there was no way that the ANC would ally with the party that implemented apartheid between 1948–1994 have had a rude awakening. If the ANC ever had any democratic principles, it is clear that these have been sacrificed on the altar of lust for power.

COCONUTS???

Getting into bed with the NNP is described as “acceptable” to the ANC so long as it gains more power. Barely three weeks before the alliance was concluded, the ANC’s aspirant premier for the western Cape, Ebrahim Rassool, ran a racist advert in the Cape press describing Coloureds who voted for the NNP (then in the DA) as “coconuts.” Today Rassool wants those “coconuts” to keep voting NNP so his party can gain control over the western Cape. As anarchists, we find this sort of race-baiting – and political gymnastics – unacceptable in every way.

COSATU

COSATU’s leaders have tried to dodge the issue of what the ANC’s toenadering with the NNP means.

In its recent bulletin, COSATU has dressed this unholy marriage up in radical clothes, calling it a “tactical bloc.” According to the leadership, anything is okay if it will give the ANC more power. This is politically confused on many levels.

First, COSATU thinks that an ANC-controlled western Cape will benefit the working class, despite the blindingly obvious fact that the ANC-run metros are just as vicious as the DA-run Cape Unicity in evicting working class people from their homes, arresting squatters and cutting off water and electricity.

Secondly, it represents an unspoken about-face. When news of the alliance first emerged, the leadership got on its high horse to denounce the NNP’s Marthinus van Schalkwyk as “opportunist.” This was because Kortbroek stated that there are almost no political differences whatsoever between the two parties.

THE GEAR COALITION

Yet van Schalkwyk is merely pointing out the obvious: the NNP and the ANC both accept the neo-liberal GEAR policy, and so, for that matter, do the IFP, the DA, and the PAC. In practice, these parties are ALREADY in an unofficial coalition because they ALL agree on the need to privatise, run down the schools and hospitals, and evict, cut-off and assault and arrest working and poor people.

ULTRA LEFT?

The unholy alliance of the ANC and the NNP exposes all of the dirty laundry of the ANC. We know what the NNP is about. Now it is time to wake up about the ANC as well.

The ANC is a party for the rich, a party of privatisation, a party of corruption, a party that turns off the lights and seals up the taps, a party that promotes racial divisions amongst the poor (whilst uniting black and white bosses at the top), the ANC is the enemy of the working class.

No amount of empty talk about the meaningless and discredited notion of a “national democratic revolution” by COSATU’s leaders will change this. If it is “ultra-left” to oppose the ANC, then we are proudly ultra-left. If its “workerist” to fight ANC policies and to call for the working class to isolate the ANC, we are workerists and proud. We are proudly revolutionary, proudly anarchist.

The real “counter-revolutionaries” are the ANC themselves and the counter-revolution is run from Shell House and the Union Buildings.