Maharaj, who was no longer in prison when ‘Inqindi’ was being drafted, recalls the mood and thinking around 1978:
But I know a number of comrades, who were the leading voices in our internal discussions on the Island, raised the question on whether the time had not arrived for the ANC and the Congress movement to proclaim its objective of socialism. Because we were looking at what was happening in Angola and Mozambique with a sense of excitement … So, whatever was happening was in a very strange way being taken and put into a theoretical box that you created … You were not looking (sic) that the reality was changing your theoretical outlook … So, when I got out of prison [1976] and I got to Mozambique, I was there for just a few days, but I remember my shock when I learned that the barber shops had become nationalised. And I said, my God, is this what I was saying is a great development, right, what is this about? (Maharaj interview, 16 August 2016).
In summary, within the limits of the strict censorship of literature, some reading around questions of the economy took place but these readings and discussion did not lead to any direct consideration of economic or social policy. Some debates over the Freedom Charter’s clauses did occur but there appears to have been consensus about the correctness of the Freedom Charter’s broad-church approach. The question of whether a direct (one-stage) struggle for a socialist goal should be waged only comes up after the arrival on Robben Island of the young post-Soweto generation of prisoners. ‘Inqindi’ represents an attempt to come to grips with their concerns, but in the end it does not resolve the matter one way or the other.
IN EXILE: LUSAKA, THE ECONOMICS UNIT AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC PLANNING
The nature of life in exile
Physically, it’s like being in South Africa again. I feel at home and elated. The climate is mild, unlike the enervating humidity of Dar es Salaam and Luanda … jacarandas are in bloom. Then there are the images: Asian shops with Coca-Cola and Vaseline adverts in so-called ‘second class’ business districts; the crowded townships abuzz with hawkers selling everything from boot polish to bananas and single cigarettes; the suburban houses with ‘Beware of the Dogs’ signs; walls with jagged glass along the tops to deter ‘kabalalas’ (burglars); South African railway wagons with the SAR–SAS logo in English and Afrikaans; school kids in neat European-style uniforms … (Kasrils in Macmillan 2013: 6–7).
Hugh Macmillan also reminds us, however, that ‘any study of the ANC in exile has to begin by stressing the homesickness, loneliness, pain, alienation, sense of loss and the waste of energy and time that were essential features of life for most exiles and for much of the time’ (2013: 1). There can be no doubting this sense of pain and loss.
The ‘semi-detached member of the ANC’, Ez’kia Mphahlele, observed in an interview:
When I was abroad I felt that the ANC in exile was quite something else. The leaders were there all right, but the things that they were doing just didn’t seem to me to be important at all. Trivialities like attending conferences of one kind or another, tearing across the world, you know, and getting international money. Also, tribalism was pretty rampant in the exile movement. Xhosa against Zulu against Sotho. I kept saying to myself: back home there had been so much cohesion among us. I mean nobody ever bothered about these ethnic groupings at all. But in exile, man, the thing just emerged in bold relief (in Macmillan 2013: 3–4).
A second contextual point to note concerns the well-documented narratives of corruption, greed and personal wealth accumulation that pervaded the ANC in Lusaka, at the expense of the movement’s foot soldiers. There are accounts of smuggling donated goods across borders for private gain, of foreign funds being diverted to buy luxurious cars for top ANC officials and more. Terry Bell reminds us: ‘Hani and six of his comrades penned a memorandum complaining of the nepotism, rot and corruption in the ANC after the shambles of the Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns of 1967/8. For Hani’s pains a hearing was held, and he was sentenced to death, a sentence later overturned by then acting ANC president OR Tambo. Hani left the ANC for a time before being persuaded to return’ (Bell 2016: n.p.).
One final point on the Lusaka context was made by Jeremy Cronin, and that relates to the splits and divisions among the ANC membership based there:
I was now in the underground structures in Cape Town, in the UDF [United Democratic Front], and from the underground structure we sent out a request to Lusaka through complicated couriers and all kinds of dangerous things for ourselves and the couriers, what to do about one of the trade unions. I think it was in the clothing sector. We were looking for advice. And eventually we did not get a response … So eventually we just did what we, through our native intelligence, we could see needed to be done. And then about a year later, through again a complicated channel a thing came back telling us to do something which completely misunderstood the reality … Remember, in our time, how people would say, Lusaka says,
…
And when I got to Lusaka I realised, okay, this particular grouping, the so-called cabal, they are not aligning to Lusaka’s Mac Maharaj … This particular grouping, they are not aligning to Lusaka’s Chris Hani. But we got a warning a bit from Jack and Ray Simons when they came home, at their famous 1990 UWC [University of the Western Cape] welcoming home, and they said, you guys are kind of getting it wrong here, you know. It is we guys who must kind of learn from you guys (Cronin interview, 14 March 2016).
In summary, the general conditions of exile life in Lusaka do not appear to have been conducive to serious attention to and debate about matters of economic and social policy. Instead, much attention appears to have been directed at other, sometimes more basic, struggles, tensions and divisions within the movement. Yet, evidence does exist that the ANC began more seriously than ever before to consider the establishment of structures to analyse economic conditions and the nature of South African capitalism, and it is to these matters that we now turn our attention.
The Morogoro Conference of 1969
Arguably the most interesting and important statement of the ANC’s stance on ‘economic policy’ before the 1980s, alongside that of the 1962 statement by Luthuli (see chapter 2), is to be found in the 1969 ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document (ANC 1997). The national consultative conference in Morogoro came at a time when the ANC was at a crossroads over several major issues: addressing the memorandum of grievances prepared by Hani and some of his colleagues following the Wankie campaign; palpable tensions between communists and nationalists within the movement; and the debate over the question of admitting Indians, coloureds and whites as full members of the ANC itself. All this was happening at a time when Tambo, who had assumed the ANC leadership in 1967 after Luthuli had died under mysterious circumstances outside Groutville in Natal, was grappling with a number of major strategic matters. For instance, he was trying to establish the ANC’s political footprint and credibility as the leading component of the liberation movement both internationally and within South Africa, while at the same time securing its financial sustainability and its global diplomatic stature.
These issues and the way they were addressed are mainly outside the scope of this book. The 1969 ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document, however, is important for the vision that it developed for the movement going forward, a vision that touched on matters social and economic. In a clear reference to the programme of nationalising the commanding heights of the economy, it stated:
In our country – more than in any other part of the oppressed world – it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root
