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IOL News
9 hours ago
- Politics
- IOL News
Jeffery's Red Scare: The NDR, Manufactured Panic, and the Defence of Racial Capital
Anthea Jeffery warns of a covert socialist agenda in South Africa, framing the National Democratic Revolution as a Marxist threat. This article critically examines her claims, revealing the ideological warfare at play and the implications for democracy and capitalism. Image: IOL Anthea Jeffery has spent much of her career warning that South Africa is on a covert march to socialism. Her vehicle of choice is the so-called National Democratic Revolution — a theoretical construct she treats as hard evidence of an unfolding Marxist programme hidden inside government policy. The ANC's reform proposals, however diluted, are presented as proof of a long-haul conspiracy to unravel capitalism, property rights, and democracy. This isn't analysis. It's ideological warfare crafted for a constituency anxious about redistribution. The National Democratic Revolution in its original conception was a phase-based process towards liberation: political rights first, economic reorganisation later. But what Jeffery refuses to acknowledge is that the ANC never implemented its second phase. The so-called revolution halted at the moment of elite pacting. The language remained. The politics shifted. The ANC's alignment with the SACP and COSATU allowed it to maintain liberation credentials, while its actual policies became increasingly orthodox. By the mid-1990s, the alliance had internalised market logic. Redistribution gave way to stabilisation. GEAR formalised this. Privatisation followed. State entities were corporatised. Public services were costed and commodified. Jeffery omits this history. Or she wilfully misrepresents it. She uses the NDR as a container for all post-apartheid policy that inconveniences capital. Land reform, healthcare expansion, employment equity — these are treated as dangerous incursions into free enterprise. She isolates phrases from ANC conferences or SACP newsletters and holds them up as definitive proof of a creeping totalitarian project, while ignoring the decades-long collapse of anything resembling a radical economic agenda. Her institutional base — the Institute of Race Relations — supports this position through a stream of publications designed to conflate moderate state intervention with revolutionary intent. It claims to stand for classical liberalism. In practice, it operates as a cultural and economic firewall for the beneficiaries of apartheid's economic structure. Its function is not to analyse power, but to secure it. Jeffery's periodic references to 1976 are calculated. She acknowledges the significance of the uprising, but removes it from the insurgent currents that animated it. The student protests were not simply a spontaneous reaction to Afrikaans in schools. They were a political rupture. They revived Black Consciousness, anti-capitalist critique, and a pan-African worldview. Many students were detained, tortured, or killed. Others went into exile and carried their radicalism with them. Some joined the ANC. Others looked elsewhere — to the PAC, to newer formations, or to community organising beyond party structures. The UDF, which emerged in the 1980s, institutionalised much of this activism. But its formation marked a shift away from the militancy of 1976. It embraced the Freedom Charter and sought to build broad-based alliances under its framework. It functioned as a civic force rather than a revolutionary front. COSATU, too, while initially militant in worker organising, had by the mid-1980s begun engaging foreign donors and adopting development project language. USAID funding flowed into union education and policy platforms. The edges of resistance were being managed. The revolutionary demands were being absorbed into programmes. The SACP followed a similar trajectory. From its exile-era anti-capitalist declarations to its post-1994 parliamentary positions, the shift was clear. It offered ideological cover to the ANC's pragmatic manoeuvring, describing every compromise as a tactical delay. But the delays became permanent. The economic structure of apartheid remained intact, with new faces at the table. Jeffery does not mention these shifts, because her narrative relies on exaggeration. She needs the ANC to be a radical actor so she can frame even the mildest policy adjustment as evidence of Marxist capture. Her entire thesis depends on mischaracterisation. Redistribution becomes dispossession. Affirmative action becomes racial engineering. Healthcare equity becomes state control. She constructs an ANC that no longer exists and warns against an agenda that has already been abandoned. Her real objective is to delegitimise any challenge to racialised wealth. She is not defending democratic values. She is defending historical advantage. This is evident in the way she treats land. Expropriation without compensation, a policy with strict constitutional limits and very narrow application, is presented as the first step toward Zimbabwe-style collapse. This ignores decades of failed restitution, government inertia, and the market-driven nature of land policy since 1994. The threat, for Jeffery, lies not in the reality of land injustice, but in the idea that it might one day be resolved. AfriForum echoes this approach. Its spokespeople describe land reform as an attack on white farmers and frame any social policy as a threat to white survival. Their version is more racialised, more openly defensive, but the logic is aligned. Both formations reject historical responsibility. Both see equity as a threat. Both amplify fear to protect capital. Other institutions mirror these concerns in more bureaucratic language. Security think tanks publish briefings about instability. Business forums call for restraint. Liberal columnists urge balance. The message is consistent: do nothing that might disrupt the ownership patterns of the last century. Jeffery's argument about the NDR gives this position an intellectual cover. By citing speeches, strategy documents, and ideological jargon, she creates the appearance of serious critique. But it is a formula. She substitutes policy analysis with ideological projection. She avoids the fact that economic transformation has not taken place. She avoids the structural continuity between apartheid and post-apartheid capital. She avoids the reality that Black suffering in South Africa today is largely the result of state capitulation to business interests — interests that she and her institutional network continue to defend. There is no NDR in motion. There is a collapsed developmental state, a political class aligned with private capital, and a society in which poverty and violence have become structural conditions. The state has outsourced its duty to govern. The mines still poison water. The banks foreclose on homes built on land stolen a century ago. And the IRR tells us to be afraid of communism. The youth of 1976 would not recognise this landscape. They would not recognise the bureaucratised opposition that now speaks in their name. Their courage did not come with conditions. Their rejection of the apartheid order was rooted in the knowledge that legal inclusion without material justice is a performance. Their politics, forged in struggle and sharpened by violence, called for redistribution, for accountability, for dignity grounded in structural change. Jeffery does not engage this legacy. She instrumentalises it. She cites it when useful, silences it when it exposes her distortions. Her entire body of work is premised on protecting a system that never addressed the foundational crimes of this country. To suggest that the ANC, in its current form, represents a threat to private capital is absurd. It has managed capital's interests with discipline. It has sacrificed its own popular base to maintain investor credibility. Its ministers tour the world reassuring markets. Its budgets mirror austerity regimes elsewhere. It has enacted neoliberalism while speaking of revolution. The NDR functions now only as a symbolic reference. It is evoked at party conferences, in commemorative speeches, in SACP resolutions that never materialise. On the ground, it has no programme. What exists is a vacuum — filled by private sector partnerships, donor-driven governance, and a mass population structurally locked out. Jeffery chooses to see danger in the symbolism. She ignores the vacuum. She warns of an ideology whose time has passed, while legitimising the system that replaced it. Her contribution is not neutral. It fortifies the walls around wealth. It tells those who suffer to be patient — or to be silent. History did not vindicate the ANC. Nor did it vindicate the defenders of capital. It left the struggle incomplete. The question remains open — who will finish it, and how? Jeffery offers no answer. She only repeats the warnings of old men who saw equality as chaos. * Gillian Schutte is a well-known social justice and race-justice activist and public intellectual. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
IOL News
5 days ago
- Health
- IOL News
Gauteng MEC calls on municipal workers to fight corruption and improve service delivery
Gauteng MEC for Health and Wellness, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, has urged civil servants belonging to the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) to help defend the gains of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). Image: Itumeleng English / Independent Media Gauteng MEC for Health and Wellness, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, has urged civil servants belonging to the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) to help defend the gains of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). He said the NDR was gained through hard work between the ANC and its alliance partners, which was won under difficult circumstances to bring an end to apartheid over three decades ago. She also urged workers to remain firm against corruption and maladministration, which has rocked most of the country's municipalities in recent times. Just this week, Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke highlighted this alarming reality of irregular expenditure within the City of Johannesburg (CoJ), which revealed that the municipality was leading the nation in this regard, with contracts exceeding R1 billion awarded to contractors with connections to officials. Nkomo-Ralehoko was speaking during her address to the Gauteng delegates who will be electing new leaders to represent the union in the province. The congress, which kicked off on Wednesday and wraps up on Friday under the theme: 'Towards 40 years of defending and advancing the interests of municipal workers' at the Birchwood Hotel, will announce its new provincial structures amid a series of challenges facing revenue collection and maladministration. "Our enemy is not the workers but corruption and maladministration, theft, and unethical leadership. We are not going to function as the government if you are not assisting us. That is the personal responsibility we must take so that we can deliver services to our people. The collapse of service delivery in municipalities must be a thing of the past, comrades," she stated. On the issues, municipal workers have with the City of Joburg Mayor, Dada Morero, Nkomo-Ralehoko, promised to help mediate some of the challenges between the two parties. The issues stem from SAMWU having accused Morero of protecting corruption-accused Helen Botes, the acting chief operating officer of the city, who served as the CEO of Johannesburg Property Company for over 15 years and was not charged for any of the allegations lodged against her. "I am going to meet Dada Morero and try to initiate a meeting between us and him. It can't be that the ANC doesn't intervene in Johannesburg. It used to be the same in Ekurhuleni, and we addressed the issues there, and we will do the same here," she said. As workers who remain at the interface and forefront of service delivery in communities, cities, and local government level, the MEC urged municipal workers to continue to be the pillars of society. "You, as municipal workers, are at the forefront of service delivery. You are the pillars that have kept the fires burning during apartheid. The same unity and commitment you have shown during that time should continue even today. We cannot then have members who do not understand the alliance and the relationship between the ANC and Cosatu," she added. [email protected]
IOL News
10-07-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
SACP Linda Jabane District partners with ANC for pivotal 2026 elections
SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila insists his party will contest elections next year Image: Itumeleng English / Independent Newspapers The South African Communist Party (SACP) Linda Jabane District in Johannesburg, Gauteng, has decided to approach the 2026 local government elections differently from their national counterparts. The party held its 11th district congress in Johannesburg on 4 July where they elected new leadership. While the SACP nationally has resolved to contest the elections independently, the Linda Jabane District has decided to work alongside the ANC. According to re-elected District Secretary Afrika Masoa, the party's constitution and the centrality of the party's world outlook guides the district's decision. Masoa said that the district's resolution is in line with the National Congress resolution on State and Popular Power, which demands that all structures, including the national office, engage with alliance partners, progressive forces, and the broad working-class on the implementation of the resolution. "The posture taken by the district in engaging all its alliance partners, progressive forces, and working-class is defending and reconfiguring the alliance and advancing the National Democratic Revolution, which is what the National State and Popular Power resolution demands," said Masoa. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ The SACP Linda Jabane District has already begun engaging with the ANC in the district on the resolution. Masoa said the party views ANC as a key ally and a vehicle for advancing its socialist struggle. "The Party is going to have a one-on-one with the ANC in the district on this resolution as within other alliances it's only the ANC contesting the election as also mandated by the resolution itself," said Masoa. The SACP's national decision to contest the 2026 local government elections independently has caused tension in the alliance with the ANC. However, the Linda Jabane District's decision to work alongside the ANC may help to ease some of these tensions. ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula has been leading efforts to convince the SACP not to contest the elections independently. Mbalula said both sides needed to "find each other" and work together. "We are ready to engage with our alliance partners, and we are going to find each other," said Mbalula. "We have to convince the SACP that we are an alliance and we should find each other". The ANC greater Johannesburg region coordinator, Sasabona Manganye, congratulated the district for electing its leadership, welcoming their stance on working with the ANC during the upcoming elections. 'We welcome the District Congress commitment to the implementation of their National Congresses resolutions on State and Popular Power in a manner that renews and reconfigures the Alliance and further deepen, advance and defend the National Democratic Revolution. 'This is a demonstration of the SACP's Linda Jabane District seriousness in ensuring that the proletariats are united and are able to reclaim the lost ground in our reconfigured ANC-led alliance approach in the next local government elections,' Manganye said. SACP national spokesperson Mbulelo Ndlazana said the party had not changed its mind from contesting the next year's elections independently from the ANC.
