Remarks on the Organisational Renewal Discussion Document of the SACP
D. Tweedie, 17 May 2015
The Organisational Renewal discussion document has been in circulation and
discussion since December 2014 and more widely since February 2015 in
selected structures of the SACP, but not in other structures. Now it is to
be one of the two documents for discussion at the 3rd Special National
Congress (SNC) of the SACP at the UF Campus in Soweto from the 7th of July,
2015, and before that, at the Gauteng Provincial Congress scheduled for 22nd
May 2015 at The Lakes, Benoni.
Unlike the other document for discussion at the SNC ('Going to the Root'),
the Organisational Renewal document is not available from the SACP web site
in PDF; nor is it published, like 'Going to the Root', in both 'Bua
Komanisi' and 'African Communist'. The Organisational Renewal document is
circulated as a hard-copy document (photocopy) without a date, letterhead,
signature or clear indication of its origin.
The Organisational Renewal document is in three parts. The one described in
the document's short introduction as "substantive" is headed 'Towards an
Organisational Review and Renewal Process'. This is the part mainly dealt
with here. The other principal part of the Organisational Review document
supposedly deals with "process". The third and final part is a mixture of a
few observations and claims about the Chinese and Cuban communist parties,
and a long, eclectic list of potential discussion points.
Among these, the third part expresses the SACP's intention to have "a huge
mass debate by our structures". In this spirit of huge mass debate, we
proceed with the summary below. This will be followed in parts by
commentary, clause by numbered clause, on the "substantive" part of the
document, called "Towards an Organisational Review and Renewal Process".
Summary of the "Organisational Renewal" Document:
A solution in search of a problem
The SACP's Organisational Renewal discussion document fails to motivate a
proper reason for the changes that it in canvasses. It fails to define any
problem, because there is no problem. The SACP's Constitution is an
exemplary constitution. None of its provisions are directly challenged in
the document. Therefore it appears that the un-named drafters of this
document, which is not on the face of it owned by any structure of the
Party, intend to do away with the current SACP constitution in its entirety.
While challenging the constitution, the document proposes a different
statement of the aims of the SACP, including the introduction of the "mass
line doctrine". If these things are done, the SACP will be changed from a
party based on study, to a party based on doctrine.
Nowhere in this "Organisational Renewal" document is there a proper emphasis
on the basic units of the Party, which are its branches. Real organisational
renewal will mean the extension of the branch organisation of the SACP.
Instead of a vanguard role for the local branches of the Party among the
local mass democratic structures (which was the purpose of aligning branches
with the voting district demarcation) this document reverts to what it calls
"community tasking", whereby the Party competes with the very mass
democratic movement that we are supposed to be supporting.
The document as a whole is not informed by a proper understanding of the
relation between the vanguard party, justified alone by scientific study,
and the spontaneous, but sovereign, mass organisations of the people whom we
serve. Instead, a direct relation is imagined between the Party and the
people, in terms of the mystic "mass line", which is neither science nor
spontaneity, but is a confused amalgamation of the two. "Mass line" doctrine
intentionally obscures the relationship of the vanguard and the mass.
There is nothing dialectical in this document. It is not informed by any
theory of development. It fails to understand the NDR as a continuing
development towards freedom, in opposed by the same Imperialist opponent as
before, and requiring the same kind of class alliance as before. The
irrational, unsupported desire for something new, expressed in this
document, springs from ignorance of history and of the continuing relevance
of our history in the present time.
The document fails to understand the question of alliance, as class
alliance. It fails to ground any of its preaching in class politics. To that
extent, this is not a communist document, but it is a
bureaucratic-centralist document. The institutional arrangements it proposes
are not motivated by communist aims, but by a competitive urge based within
the limits of the present liberal or bourgeois democracy.
The document mentions women only twice, and then in general terms of
listing, as in "workers, the youth, women and other sectors." It does not
mention the organisation of women at all; whereas the lack of organisation
of women, as women, is the most glaring deficiency in the NDR, in practice,
today. The Organisational Renewal document fails to notice this.
This Organisational Renewal document proposes a dismantling of the party,
without any plans for putting it together. It fails to understand why the
South African party has historically been constructed in the way that it
has, and why its external relations have been constructed in the way that
they are. Without understanding, it proposes change.
Hence, not only does the document mock Marxist study as "memorising this or
that Communist literature", something unknown among SACP members, but it
fails to make any reference at all to the well-documented history of our
South African Party and why it is the way it is. The memory of the author(s)
does not extend further back than some generalisations about the period of
exile, as if that experience was the sole foundation of the SACP.
This document ignores the history of communist thought within our party as
exemplified by Moses Kotane, J B Marks, Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Jack Simons and Ray
Alexander, Brian Bunting, Rusty Bernstein and Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Mzala
Nxumalo, Chris Hani and Blade Nzimande to name but a few. Yet it is
precisely these thinkers who can guide us, instead of thumb-sucking,
brain-storming and workshopping from nothing, or "from a blank sheet of
paper", as is apparent in this weak, amateurish document.
Next instalment: "Towards an Organisational Review and Renewal Process,"
commentary in number order: Clauses 1 to 10
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