By Phasoane Mphahlele
Johannesburg - There have never been efforts to expound the readiness of South African young people in identifying their struggles, therefore their mission, particularly in the institutions of higher learning.
On the immediate, we must visit important aspects of party reconfiguration and apply them in the context of ours, the EFFSC.
No one can clearly reconfigure if the reconfigured was never configured. The prefix presupposes the latter existence. In essence, there can be no revolutionary without legitimate, concretely configured and very organised political theories and philosophies.
The concept of party reconfiguration therefore implies a reflection, study and research validation of the outcomes of the process itself, reconfiguration, of what is being reconfigured, in this case, our party the EFFSC.
To fruitfully concise this, the concept itself must be prudently scientific and realistic as alluded to in the experience of Russian Revolutions. Party reconfiguration ultimately mean the scientific study and analysis of development regulatory elements, history, behavioural traits, leadership relations and general party experiences in the quest to balance forces.
An example is given, our party adopted “Organising Students Power for Economic Freedom” in Turfloop, University of Limpopo 2015, June 16. To correctly expound this, one would need to follow-up the background, history and experiences taken toward organising students power. The question of how? Allow me to draw you to Lenin on “What Is To Be Done”.
There is a stage at which we missed it, and we did so terribly that the oddity compromised the originality, oomph and couraging spirit of the Command. Since the inception of Command institutions of learning were in bombgunning states with political and administrative wonders. To properly locate this argument we must understand this irony.
Every revolutionary party is guided by principles, ours remain that of dialectics. We therefore missed it on the following;
Any party guided by revolutionary dialectics, dialectical materialism, would follow all steps as clearly and undoubtedly explained by the philosophy of social sciences in dialect repositories. What this means is that, we never adopted any lucrative PROGRAMME which would guide our party. Taking that a new party located itself as a party of the people, a party of the people inevitably goes through these steps and processes.
Party Reconfiguration is not an erasure of even practicalities that the party has to undergo as it drives its daily activities. It is important to understand that through the daily party activities, including those activities of the party leadership, history is drawn, behavioural traits recorded, leadership relations studied, all which cultivates into organisational culture, making the methods and forms of party organisation.
After adopting this slogan in 2015, the practical task was recruitment and establishment of new party branches. In essence we were too ambiguous to cross “BRANCHING” in the quest to sound inclined. We quickly arrived in 2017 which emerged the courageous spirit of branch organisation, in which the ideals were to deliver a #OneProvinceOneMillionVotes.
Comparatively, there was no difference between 2015 and 2019 except attaining countable SRC victories and a national footprint. Other than the above, we arrived in 2019 and we are almost in 2022 already. In between, no revolutionary can be located. Maybe we must clarify what is a REVOLUTIONARY in our context. A Revolutionary is a member of the EFFSC in good standing who fathoms and acts the principles and vision of the party, more so within that thin party line.
And so summarily, between the period 2015 and 2021 there is no tangible and qualitative historical events with effectivity. We championed arrests of a few, academic and financial exclusions which in turn gave us political celebrities. Today, everything that represent 2015/16 is what turned a faceless pseudo-demonstrations for quality and free education.
And any party of such a nature would primarily invest in political education as a factorial reconstruction. Any party that fails on this task is doomed to carry an inner-party life that is suspicious to the masses, discussions and debates that are petty, thus creates a foundation for petty-bourgeois and put the party at crossroads with intellectual deficits.
Discussions, debates, and party differences are inevitable in a party that invests in political education. The contradictions are what makes possible the existential pragmatism to the party-life. And in this, the philosophy of Party Reconfiguration is realized, which makes available the history, experiences, methods of party work and organization summing up knowledge creationism, organizational optimization and visionary leadership, which will become vanguards of the masses.
In conclusion, our party cannot sustain a long life nor endure any difficult short life if it does not reprioritise political education, and adopt a thorough programme of action thereon. Our party therefore must toward the upcoming congregation, elect to DISCUSS COMMISSIONS as a first agenda item, as opposed to election of party Commissars first. This effort in our analysis shall try to restore the imagine and dignity that members had once believeth, that of being equipped political soldiers.
* Mphahlele is a Pan African Socialist Revolutionary activist and a Member of the EFF
The Star