Race, class and transformation in South Africa

There has been a dialectical and organic link between the class question and the race question in South Africa from the period since the inception of capitalism to the present post-settler colonial era of the country. Capitalism since its inception in South Africa has constituted the primary or irreconcilable contradiction with the masses of its exploited people. This work deals with the dialectical and organic link between the class question and the race question in the country and the fundamental need not to depart from the importance of the racial factor in South African politics for revolutionary socio-economic change. It ends with an analysis of the nature of the relationship between black capital and white capital in the present South Africa from the structural socio-economic transformation perspective.

Throughout the whole socio-historical phase of capitalist development from mercantilist imperialism, through free trade imperialism and financial imperialism, to the present period of multilateral imperialism,[1] South Africa served as ‘a mirror of the emergence of the modern world’.[2] It executed this task by embodying ‘more intensively than most the consequence of the benefits’ of capitalism ‘to a white minority linked to Europe’ and ‘the misfortunes, to the majority linked to the rest of Africa and Asia, with the minority trying to create a South Africa after its image, which it also saw as representative of what it called Western civilisation.[3] South Africa ‘was also to embody the resistance against the negative consequences’ of capitalist ‘modernity’, and in ‘its history we see the clashes and interactions of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion and the social forces that bedevil the world today.’[4]

These ‘clashes and interactions of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion and social forces’ bedeviling South Africa today constitute challenges faced by the South African revolutionary and progressive forces in providing the intellectual foundations for a vision of an economic independent South Africa. Central to the execution of this task is to ensure that this vision is not only accepted by the masses of the South African people, but also, most importantly, be fought for. The mobilisation of the popular social forces for the achievement of their economic liberation is central in this task. This mobilisation must be rooted in the principles that none but ourselves can and should liberate and develop ourselves and our country.

Agents for social change are constituted by a network not only of socio-economic relations, but also by race, gender, generation, residence, and other affiliations which insofar as they are structurally defined by relations of control, domination and exploitation are the arena of political, economic and ideological struggle. A broad, popular, firm and vigilant alliance of popular forces should be forged. In addition, agents for social change should be integrated into the project in which theory and analysis are moved to practice through mobilisation and concrete action in order to establish community as the basis of social existence. This task should be executed by connecting their particular marginalisation and suffering to the relations of production and reproduction of their socio-political and economic status in the society embodied in the capitalist mode of production and by struggling to materialise their possibilities for collective efforts towards structural socio-economic transformation.

The position of Cyril Lionel Robert James in his analysis of the dialectical and organic link between the class question and the race question of politics and imperialism is important in the provision of the analysis of the dialectical and organic link between the class question and the race question in South Africa. James maintains and defends the thesis of the primacy of the class question over the race question in the relations between social class forces in terms of their demands, needs and interests within capitalist countries. According to him, the race question, as the secondary issue in relation to the class question, must be dialectically and organically incorporated into the class question in these relations. The importance of the race question must be neither overestimated nor underestimated. The dynamic relationship between the class question and the race question must be viewed and examined dialectically.

Providing analysis of the dialectical and organic relationship between the race question and the class question and demonstrating how social class division structurally buttresses racism, James never departs from the importance of the racial factor in his view of politics and imperialism. The point is that the reality that the race question is the subsidiary or secondary issue in relation to the class question in this process does not mean that the importance of the race question should be neglected or minimised. James, the leading authority on the dialectical and organic link between the class question and the race question, articulates this reality as follows:

‘The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental [is"> an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.’[5]

This is the strategic lesson for us as South African revolutionary and progressive forces. We should dialectically weave the relationship between the race question and the class question and never depart from the importance of the racial factor in South African politics for revolutionary socio-economic change.

Relating to the articulated combination of the class struggle and the national struggle in South Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong’o concludes that:

‘Thus, South Africa as the site of concentration of both domination and resistance was to mirror the worldwide struggles between capital and labour, and between the colonising and the colonised. For Africa, let’s face it, South African history, from Vasco da Gama’s landing at the Cape in 1498 to its liberation in 1994, frames all modern social struggles, certainly black struggles. If the struggle, often fought out with swords, between racialised capital and racialised labour was about wealth and power, it was also a battle over image, often fought out with words.’[6]

This ‘image of the world’ is ‘a physical, economic, political, moral and intellectual universe of our being.’[7]

The issue of the struggle between ‘racialised capital and racialised labour’ is important in the analysis of the nature of the relationship between black capital and white capital in the present South Africa from the structural socio-economic transformation perspective. It is important also in the analysis of the relationship between black labour and white labour in the country. This is given the importance of the dialectical and organic link between the class question and the race question from the period since the inception of capitalism to the present post-settler colonial era in the country.

One of the issues confronted in the struggle for structural socio-economic transformation in South Africa is the nature of the relationship between black capital and white capital. Given the dominance of the South African economy by some whites, it is generally maintained and accepted that black capital is subordinate to white capital. However, in the language of politics of revolutionary socio-economic change, the issue is not that black capital is subordinate to white capital in the South African political economy, but that black capital and white capital are mutually dependent. Rather than being a victim in its relations with white capital, black capital, together with white capital, is an active social agent in the advancement of a neo-liberal capitalist system which confronts both black labour and white labour as subordinate social classes in the South African political economy. In essence, both black capital and white capital constitute the South African capital which is the class ruling the South African labour constituted by both black labour and white labour.

The position that black capital is subordinate to white capital avoids and hides the structural comradeship relationship between black capital and white capital in the South African political economy. The advancement of black capital is in the interests of white capital and foreign capital, particularly that of advanced capitalist countries as well as the strategic interests of global capitalism in the country and beyond. This reality and the fact that internal contradictions within national capital are secondary, not primary, are supportive of the reality that the key, fundamental struggle in South Africa is between labour and capital.

The South African revolutionary and progressive forces should dialectically weave the relationship between the race question and the class question and never depart from the importance of the racial factor in South African politics.

Despite the dialectical and organic link between the class question and the race question in South Africa, there are some South Africans, particularly the beneficiaries of apartheid, who wage organised struggle to stifle the debate on the race question. They pretend not to be aware that the history of settler colonial and racist rule was characterised by racist control, domination and exploitation of black people and affirmative action for white people. They pretend not to be aware that the fact that racism was the official policy in the settler colonial and racist era means that there was a white economic empowerment policy. Given this history, how can the race question not be one of the key issues of concern for those who are for a better life for all South Africans? At issue is not just their denial of the importance of the racial factor in South African politics, but, most importantly, their opposition to the structural transformation of South African society.

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NOTES:

[1] For a comprehensive analysis of the socio-historical phase of the development of capitalism from mercantilist, through free trade imperialism and financial imperialism, to the present period of multilateral or corporate imperialism, see, Dani Wadada Nabudere, ‘The Political Economy of Imperialism: From Theoretical and Polemical Treatment from Mercantilist to Multilateral Imperialism’, London: Zed Press, 1977.
[2] Ngugi wa Thiongo, ‘Recovering our memory: South Africa in the Black Imagination,’ in Steve Biko Foundation, the Steve Biko Memorial Lectures, 2000-2008, Johannesburg: Steve Biko Foundation and Pan Macmillan South Africa, 2009, p. 55.
[3] Ibid., p. 56.
[4] Ibid.
[5] C.L.R. James, ‘The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution’, New York: Vintage Books, 1963, p 283.
[6] Ngugi wa Thiongo, ‘Recovering our memory: South Africa in the Black Imagination,’ p. 56.
[7] Ibid.