What are the prospects in SA of a new socialist party?

Political experts are divided in their view about the electoral prospects of the new Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party which unveiled a strong promise to be the home of the working class with a mission to crush capitalism.

According to national convener Irvin Jim, the party would contest the May 2019 elections for which its envisaged election commission would prepare for the party to participate. The party is set to hold a launching congress on March 22 to 24, 2019.

Jim said they decided to form the workers’ party after realising that more than two decades after freedom and democracy, the capitalist system had intensified the suffering of the working class.

“We have learned hard lessons that the only way the working-class majority as a whole can be genuinely free and equal, is for us to destroy and dismantle the brutal capitalist system, and replace it with the humane system of socialism,” he said.

The move by Jim and the rest of the party’s interim leadership have paved the way for an ideological fight in the country and a new rivalry with ANC-aligned SA Communist Party (SACP). The workers’ party comes at a time when socialism was dwindling after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that symbolised the end of the Cold War.

The question that lingers is whether the workers’ party would be able to succeed where the East Bloc failed in defeating the continuously growing capitalist system? Can they revive socialism that even its ardent ideologues conceded had failed?

Political analyst Zamikhaya Maseti said the chances of socialism growing in South Africa and anywhere in the world were nil.

Socialism failed because in the East Bloc it was oppressive and encouraged state capitalism, he said.

“People were fatigued by socialism and many were still haunted by state-led atrocities in the former Soviet Union.

“The Berlin Wall divided families and those people still have bad memories of life under the East German regime.”

Maseti said many people in the former Eastern Bloc countries viewed socialism in the same way that black people regarded apartheid. They associated it with oppression because of government autocracy against the people.

“They think about the horrors of communist regimes, and the communist states remained under-developed even today,” Maseti said. “Socialism is not a credible ideology, it’s not appealing to the masses especially the youth since 1989.”

However, analyst Ralph Mathekga was optimistic about the workers’ party’s prospects in the elections and as party of the future. He said it would be represented in parliament after the 2019 elections.

“The events favour this party because there never has been any serious outfit that genuinely pursues the socialism idea among the leftists.”

According to Mathekga, Azapo and the SACP tried but they failed to pursue socialism.

“The SACP’s efforts were thwarted by the fact that it fell under the ANC wing where it was muzzled.

“Although the EFF emerged with a strong socialist-oriented ideology, it was not consistent with it” and this was exacerbated by what Mathekga called “moral implosion” – a reference to the alleged involvement of EFF leaders in the VBS Mutual Bank scandal.

“Numsa has emerged to fill the space that other parties were unable to take,” he said. “There is no doubt that we will have this party in parliament after the 2019 election. For me, this is a very interesting party, you can’t just dismiss it. The events favour them, they’ve realised that the opportunity exists and they took it at the right time when EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters] is facing a moral dilemma.”

But Maseti said the workers party’s weakness was that it focused more on the worker at the expense of the masses.

“A workers party by its character must appeal to everybody – whether you’re a an academic, a worker, a working-class or a middle-class person.

“The foundation of the party is flawed, it’s not going to fly to me. They tried United Front but it did not work because it had no grassroots support base. If Jim cannot garner support for the United Front, where is he going to get support for a workers’ party?”

Maseti said the party must accept the fact that the EFF would do much better than it would in the polls.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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