ABSTRACT
The African National Congress (ANC) has now become the standard-bearer of liberal democracy in South Africa. Since coming to power in 1994 with the help of its partners in the ‘Tripartite Alliance’, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the ANC has followed the liberal democratic formula of institutionalizing the combination of individual rights and capitalist market economics. Now integrated with the global offensive mounted by internationalized corporate and finance capital, liberal democracy has acquired the mantle of a necessary and natural political product of an equally necessary and natural economic order. However, the ANC’s embrace of what is a very minimalist conception of democracy has given rise to ideological opposition and class confrontation within its ranks and those of its alliance partners. There has been much ebb and flow of debate since 1994 but the ANC leadership headed by President Thabo Mbeki alongside many of the SACP and COSATU colleagues have proven capable of containing and suppressing dissent. Critics who have openly expressed their opposition have been disciplined, and are marginalized from the respective centres of decision-making and power. What has made these developments all the more dangerous for organizational democracy and political principle has been the leadership’s insistence that democratic debate and opposition within the ANC and the Alliance is as healthy as ever. The apparent unity of the ANC and the Alliance has been fashioned through a combination of outright political intimidation, ideological mysticism and the co-option of ANC dissidents and COSATU and SACP leaders into government. In the process, critical questioning of the substance behind the political rhetoric and policy formulation is being suppressed and the right to challenge the new political and economic orthodoxies is being denied.
