Dr Blade Nzimande, the Minister of Higher Education and Training, who is also the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, has recently made a number of very provocative statements:
- The week before last he reportedly told members of Nehawu - the National Health and Education Workers Union - that "we need to give higher education a revolutionary content, and not a liberal content."
- He also warned against "human rights fundamentalism" and said that it - together with academic freedom - were used by the "elite" classes to undermine the transformation of the higher education sector.
- He said that there were no capitalist ideas that can address the problems that we have - and claimed that ‘capitalist ideas' had caused the current global economic crisis.
- More recently Dr Nzimande threatened ‘war' against those who opposed the ANC's proposed National Health Insurance scheme. He said that "the capitalist classes have already started a huge campaign in the media to try to discredit this system, and we want to say to them as communists today, war unto you."
As the Minister of Higher Education and Training Dr Nzimande should know that the essence of excellent university education is academic freedom to access, research, teach and express knowledge in any sphere of enquiry. Students and academics should also be free to be revolutionary (or reactionary) if they wish but they should never abandon the quintessentially liberal commitment to academic freedom.
Our Constitution is a liberal document. It requires ministers - through their ministerial oath - to uphold academic freedom, along with all the other rights and freedoms in the Bill of Rights. It is, no doubt, the insistence on such rights that Dr Nzimande regards as "human rights fundamentalism". However, fundamental rights and freedoms are paramount in our Constitution - and trump even the critically important goal of transformation.
Dr Nzimande goes on to attack capitalism and to blame it for the current economic crisis. If he is referring to the kind of undiluted greed, stupidity, short-sightedness and irresponsibility that lie at the root of the crisis, he might have a point. However, equally culpable were the US government's wild anti-market interventions that rashly encouraged and guaranteed the toxic subprime mortgages that precipitated the crisis. Nobel Economics Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is very critical of the failures in the market system that contributed to the crisis. However he also expressed his concern that "as they see more clearly the flaws in America's economic and social system, many in the developing world will draw the wrong conclusions" (precisely as Dr Nzimande has now done).
Stiglitz feared that such reactions would lead to the return of "a variety of forms of excessive market intervention" and that "these will fail". He pointed out that, in the final analysis, "there has never been a successful economy that has not relied heavily on markets."
According to Dr Nzimande, there are no capitalist ideas that can help us address our current economic challenges. How about the quintessential capitalist ideas of competition, free markets, cost-effectiveness and hard work? Properly applied, they will generate wealth just as they have done throughout the ages.
What communist ideas would Dr Nzimande like to suggest in their place? Can he adduce some successful models from communism's history since 1917? - the Soviet Union? East Germany? perhaps Kampuchea? On which of the four remaining communist states would he like to model South Africa? On North Korea - that has stuck most resolutely to communist ideology? On China and Vietnam that are now experiencing unprecedented economic growth because of the introduction of market reforms? Or Cuba, where Raul Castro has just admitted that the state can no longer afford current levels of expenditure on social programmes? One thing that all communist regimes have had in common is that they have all shared an aversion to liberal values and "human rights fundamentalism."
Finally, at the beginning of August, Dr Nzimande launched a bitter attack on the "capitalist classes" (including capitalists in the ANC?) who he claimed were intent on discrediting ANC proposals for a new National Health Insurance scheme (details of which have yet to be announced). He threatened that workers would meet capitalists in the streets and warned them to "prepare for a huge battle because we are going to mobilise the workers and the poor of the country to fight against you."
His objective appears to be to inhibit the kind of vigorous national debate that we will need if we are going to take workable initiatives to address the parlous condition of our public health services. The whole tenor of his approach is to pit classes against one another, rather than to encourage the kind of national cooperation that we will need if we wish to address the enormous health challenges facing the country.
Dr Nzimande's statements cannot be ignored - particularly when viewed against the background of the SACP's strategic medium term vision "to secure working class hegemony in the State in its diversity and in all other centres of power." At its 12th National Conference in 2007, the SACP resolved that to achieve this objective it would need to reconfigure its alliance with the ANC to ensure that the Alliance (and not solely the ANC) would henceforth be the strategic political centre. The Alliance would then play the key role in driving strategy, broad policy and campaigns (like the one on the NHI?).
Is this what we are now witnessing with Dr Nzimande's outspoken statements? The question is: where is the Alliance's strategic political centre now? Does it lie with Trevor Manual, Mathews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale; or with President Zuma; or with the increasingly outspoken Blade Nzimande, Julius Malema and Zwelinzima Vavi? Citizens concerned about the preservation of human rights and freedoms - and the remaining foreign and domestic investors - would like to know.
Dave Steward is Executive Director, F W de Klerk Foundation
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