The Spark

Introduction The South African parliamentary outcomes have been concluded with a grand coalition consisting of the ANC, DA, IFP, Patriotic Alliance, and Freedom Front Plus, and many other smaller neoliberal parties. Those smaller centre-right and right-wing parties voted with the grand coalition due to sharing the same class interests. Indeed, Lenin was correct when he said there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen. What has happened is the completion of a three-decade long process of the consolidation right-wing forces within the ANC, and the total annihilation of left within the ANC, and in the broader alliance. Furthermore, the ANC has unmasked itself as an outright bourgeois-capitalist party which subscribes to the neoclassic liberal approach to economics, politics, and the society in general. The outcome confirms that the right-wing forces have openly re-consolidated and continue to get votes from the working class and peasantry in large numbers. Howe...

Introduction In Marxist literature, a People's government has come to mean a government of the majority in terms of class and in terms of aspirations of a government. A people's government centres the core needs of a society, and centres the majority contributors, and ultimately everyone in the process of making, implementing, and analysing the decisions made by the government which not only represent the interests of the majority, but the interests of ensuring we have an equal and equitable society. A generalised summary of all Marxist literature sees a People's government being a government that represents the interests of those that provide labour without a profit returning to them in a form of shares or dividends. It represents those that do not own the means of production. This means that a People's government according to the Marxist methodology of analysis is a government of the toiling masses (all tiers of the working class both in the rural areas and in the u...

  Introduction South Africa was faced with the reality of either shifting to the left or to the right. On the left, the most distinguishable parties are the EFF, and PAC. The entry of Umkhonto WeSizwe Party throws a spanner in the works since MKP doesn’t have a distinguishable ideological base. Thus, leading one to the conclusion that MKP has a similar ideological base as the ANC, broad church, with the dominant tendency being centre-left conservative.  On the right, we have DA, FF+, Action SA, BOSA, PA, IFP and Rise Mzansi, which is much more centre-right than they are full blown right wing. The South African voter is confronted with that blunt reality. The ANC of course stands at the centre of it all, while ideologically it tilts to the right, slowly but surely shifting away from its centre right position. Thus, the South African voter was confronted with choosing between a leftist alternative which is characteristically socialist, or the current status quo, which is ...