Comment & Analysis

Mining profits are booming. June saw the biggest trade surplus on record. The banks are paying dividends to shareholders again and StatsSA reports that the economy is 11% larger than thought. But unemployment has reached yet another record high. Incomes are falling and poverty is increasing. As the ruling class desperately looks for signs of a post-Covid recovery the inequalities and contradictions of SA’s capitalist economy remain as deep as ever. The few ‘green shoots’ the bosses point to are utterly dependent on the current conjuncture in the world economy and in fact underline the sickness of SA capitalism.

Since the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma, SA has witnessed the most widespread unrest in decades. Tens of thousands of the poor, the destitute and the hungry have raided supermarkets and shopping malls for food, clothes and other consumer goods. The looting and rioting have seen instances of police outnumbered by the crowds, being pelted with stones and put to flight.

The ConCourt judgement is a warning to the different factions of the ruling class not to over-reach themselves as Zuma and the RET faction did. The judicial-wing of the capitalist state has substituted itself as the ruling class’s “executive committee”, given the paralysis of its executive- and legislative-wings as a result of the factional divisions in the ANC, to bring some stability to SA capitalism on the terms of the capitalist class

City Press Editor Mondli Makhanya’s article “Beware the Entryists of the ANC” reflects the growing alarm within society over the threats posed by the ANC’s RET faction. … Makhanya seizes upon an entirely superficial analysis, drawing a parallel between the reactionary political activities of the RET faction and the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC (MWT), forerunner of the MWP. By binding them together in the equivalent of a “doctrine of common purpose” to take over the ANC through the crime of “entryism” – he sows confusion.