Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation (ANC 1997: 17, emphasis added).
While not going all the way to endorse an advance to a communist or socialist future, as does ‘The Road to South African Freedom’, the SACP’s 1962 programme, this is nevertheless very close to that without using those exact words. Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart make the following comment on this point: ‘Strategy and Tactics essentially reiterated the analysis of the SACP’s program of 1962, that the South African system was a “colonialism of a special type”. These words did not appear in the ANC document, but in virtually identical language, Strategy and Tactics declared that the “main content of the present stage of the South African revolution is the national liberation of … the African people”’ (1997: 36).
While recognising various tendencies within the broad church of the ANC, a more progressive (arguably, left social democratic) policy agenda emerges out of Morogoro’s ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document, and not a narrow African nationalist agenda. Even Stephen Ellis, a fierce critic of the ANC and SACP, has argued that the document ‘clearly reflected the influence of the Communist Party’s manifesto published in 1962 … It marked the ascendancy of the SACP’s theoretical and practical vision of struggle within the ANC’ (2015: 77). Ellis may have meant this in a pejorative and cynical sense, but there is every reason to believe that he was right. ‘Strategy and Tactics’ clearly lays down a strong marker about where the ANC stood at that moment in its history as far as economic emancipation was concerned.
The Economics Unit
In 1980, the ANC in Lusaka approached the Regional Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) for assistance in conducting a socio-economic survey of South Africa. In order not to lose control of the project, the ANC decided to mobilise and organise its own in-house capacity to contribute to and shape the outcomes of the ECA-led survey. In that way, the Economics Unit of the ANC, headquartered in Lusaka, came into being in February 1982. It brought together ‘politicised economists’ from different existing departments, since one of its aims was to support other departments, such as the Treasury, Information and Publicity, Research and the International Department, in their work. More generally, its work was to be focused on ‘interpreting economic issues for the movement and preparing briefings and fact papers for the National Executive Committee of the ANC’ (ANC Lusaka Mission Archives, Box 84, Folder 9).
Pallo Jordan, who was head of ANC Research in Lusaka, informs us that the Unit did not do economic policy work in any direct sense. It was set up to analyse selected aspects of the South African economy, including issues around monopoly capital and South African conglomerates. It commissioned or co-ordinated a variety of projects. Norman Levy, then based in Amsterdam, conducted a skills audit of the African labour force in South Africa. Jordan himself wrote a paper on the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nafcoc) as part of a project on the African bourgeoisie. Victor Matlou wrote a paper entitled ‘South African Monopoly Capitalism, Social Deprivation and Social Emancipation’ for a Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) conference. Laurence Harris – a leading member of the Economic Research on South Africa (EROSA) group of progressive academic economists in London and a member of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) (see chapter 4) – prepared a paper for the unit on the mixed economy model, but Jordan does not remember Harris presenting the paper in Lusaka (Jordan interview, 4 August 2017).
About 50 such political economists were brought together in the Economics Unit; they were based in both Zambia and Tanzania. Various fields of responsibility were identified and individuals were assigned to these. Thus, for example, Thabo Mbeki (then recently back from his postgraduate studies at the University of Sussex) was responsible for development strategy; Selebano Matlape was delegated to mining; Conny Dlinges and Tony Seedat to industry; Barney Pitso and Jacob Chiloane to agriculture (policy and practice); and Sizakele Sigxashe and [M] Medupe to the financial and monetary system.
Others involved in the work of the Unit from early on, some since its establishment, included Max Sisulu (later its head), former student leader Jeff Marishane and Patrick Magapatona (its long-standing secretary). Thabo Mbeki, Jaya Josie and Neva Makgetla also served in the Unit at various times in the early 1980s.
The academic qualifications of those economists based in Tanzania are provided, while those of economists based in Lusaka are not given. Of the eight based in Tanzania, six are listed as having a Master of Arts in Economics, one a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and one a Bachelor of Arts in Accountancy. It is not stated where they obtained these qualifications.
Neither the Economics Unit nor the later Department of Economic Planning (DEP, discussed below) was really an economic policy unit; rather, they were more study groups on the economy (Sisulu interview, 25 August 2016). Like-minded comrades were invited from the Soviet Union, Cuba and neighbouring African countries to give seminars on their experiences in economic transformation, and the Lusaka comrades travelled to these countries for seminars on a regular basis.
Although Lusaka organised and raised funds for many comrades to study abroad, much of this was in medicine and engineering and not economics. Bheki Langa, who did his PhD in economics in Moscow, was a rare exception. One thing Sisulu recalls was the eagerness of many younger comrades to join MK and fight rather than study. Thandika Mkandawire supports this contention when he makes the point that many of the post-1976 generation who reached Lusaka ‘were relatively ignorant of the struggle and its objectives and had a militarist inclination’ (2005: 134). And they were eager, too, to pursue a leap into socialism without any consideration of the realities of the South African situation. ‘We had to work very hard to try to convince them otherwise,’ Sisulu argues (Interview, 25 August 2016).
When Josie arrived in Lusaka in 1983, the Economics Unit was not very strong at all. Its members included Sindiso Mfenyana, Joe Nhlanhla and Max Sisulu. According to Josie: ‘Thabo was ostensibly the head as the Unit fell into the Department of Information and Publicity. Pallo Jordan was head of Research and as such was an integral part of the Unit. I was deployed as an economic researcher under Pallo in a place called Makeni [a suburb of Lusaka] – that’s where the whole library was – and so on and we had to do research’ (Josie interview, 30 January 2015).
Josie argues that London-based economists and members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), Laurence Harris and Ben Fine, were influential figures in the Lusaka debates (such as they were) on economic issues.
Josie also recalls that a meeting on the economy took place in 1985 in Lusaka, where the notion of the mixed economy came to the fore. But he remembers the conference for one other reason as well:
The most significant thing that happened at that 1985 meeting which stands out for me quite clearly was that while we were sitting in that plenary, Pallo or Max who was chairing said, Thabo is coming, and he is bringing some South African from Stellenbosch, a guy called Van der Merwe [likely to be Hendrik van der Merwe]. He came there and talked to all, sitting and looking there and discussing issues, very cynical, very kind of patronising – we got this all covered, guys – you know that kind of attitude, and I sat there. It only later dawned on me, in fact these guys were the forerunners of the negotiations that were taking place, because later on Wimpie [de Klerk] and all these guys came over. In fact, he [Van der Merwe] was part of the delegation with Wimpie that came and he was the economic person (Josie interview, 30 January 2015).
For Josie, it was Hani who had the vision to raise more practical economic policy issues linked to the struggles of ordinary South Africans in the townships as opposed to mouthing this or that theoretical line:
Chris was very seldom in Lusaka, but when he did come he played a very key role, because he was more on the frontline, he was inside the country, he was training people, he was in MK, he was the real revolutionary, and I
