More than a fuss about personalities

On the 15th of July 2026, the ANCYL, together with SASCO, held a press briefing, wherein they pronounced their support for Cde Andile Lungisa to be the mayoral candidate for the ANC in the upcoming local government elections. On the 28th of August, activists of the ANCYL woke up in their numbers and headed to the Dr Stuurman International Airport to welcome Cde Lungisa, in what was a demonstration of the ANCYL’s affirmation of its decision communicated on the 15th of July.

In this perspective, we contend that the ANCYL must offer young people of the Bay more than what is seemingly a fuss about personalities. That is, the endorsement of Cde Lungisa as a Mayoral Candidate must be put in a proper ideological and political context. Without locating the endorsement of Cde Lungisa in the concrete reality of the city and the challenges facing the working-class, particularly the youth, the discourse becomes nothing but a silly Olympics of political personalities, and less about the betterment of the material situation of the working-class.

Here, we are guided by a simple yet very important Marxian principle, articulated by GS Chris Hani and President Amilcar Cabral. GS Hani stated that Socialism is not about sophisticated philosophical postulations; instead, it is about clean water for all, jobs and houses for the poor, education, and liberating the working-class from the tyranny of the capitalist markets. President Cabral made a similar observation and contended that we must always remember that the working-class is not fighting for ideas in anyone’s head; they are fighting for material benefit, to live in comfort and guarantee a future for their children.

What we are not saying

To dismiss the question of leadership is to defy history: from the onset, what we are not saying. From the onset, we deem it paramount to clarify clearly what it is we are saying, and what it is we are not saying. Here, we are not depositing a view that leadership is insignificant in a struggle. To do that would be tantamount to defying history.

The history of the struggle, which Marx and Engels contend has always been between the working-class and the ruling class, has always made room for the question of leadership. That is, in various epochs of class struggle, there have always been courageous, brave, and progressive men and women who took responsibility in the interest of the collective betterment of their class. The Haitian Revolution had General Toussaint Louverture, who acted with the black slaves of Haiti but provided decisive and instrumental leadership. The Russian Revolution had Vladimir Lenin, who acted with the working class but provided decisive ideological, political, and military leadership. The Cuban Revolution had Fidel Castro, who acted with the working-class but provided decisive ideological, political, and military leadership. The African Anti-Colonial Revolution had Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Keneth Kaunda, Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, and Winnie Mandela, who acted with the African native working-class but provided decisive political, ideological, and military leadership.

Thus, we understand the importance of leadership in class struggle as taught by history. Those who will be interacting with this perspective must at least not attempt to accuse us of being anti-leadership.

The dialectical nature of the program, the working-class, and the political leader

The great Marxist revolutionary Doctor, Ernesto Che Guevara, observed that “liberators do not exist, the people liberate themselves”. This intervention by Che must not be misread as suggesting that the revolution can do without leadership, as history reflects otherwise. What Che is speaking to is the dialectical nature of the program, the working-class, and the political leader. Of course, Che was not engaged in any theoretical invention; he was simply reiterating a known Marxist principle. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels capture this Marxian principle cogently and state that “Communists do not exist for themselves, they do not have any interest outside the broader interests of the working-class as a whole”. This is the dialectical nature of the program, the working-class, and the political leader. The political leader does not and cannot exist for himself or herself; they do not have a political program of their own outside the working-class.

For the revolution to move towards a progressive path, it must have a clearly defined ideological and political program, rooted in the realities of the working-class, their democratic participation, and their collective aspirations. This is the context in which the figure of the political leader must be located, engaged with, and measured.

Thus far, the ANCYL has not mastered the theatre of dialectics. Cde Lungisa is presented in isolation, without any clear ideological and political program rooted in the concrete realities of the working-class in Gqeberha. He is presented as the liberator who will singlehandedly liberate the working-class from their collective misery and material poverty. As to how such will be achieved, our comrades in the Progressive Youth Alliance have not furnished us with anything concrete and believable. The dialectical golden key, which will illuminate us in relation to how the figure of the ‘People’s Mayor’, the working-class, and the ideological and political program of the class will interact, is missing in action, if we are to use contemporary language.

The political economy of the Bay and the contradictions of Local Government: the context from which a People’s Mayor must rise

The nature and structure of the political economy of the Bay is a mirror image of the nature and structure of the political economy of South Africa. That is, in terms of ownership and control of the productive forces and the commanding heights of the economy (finance, mining, agriculture, manufacturing, services), the economy remains in the hands of a settler minority. The rest of the population, largely the African working-class, enter the economy as cheap and easily disposable labour, who earn only enough to return to work the next morning. As Prof Malikane (2026) notes, it is a class-divided society which is racialized, due to the history of colonialism and apartheid, wherein the working-class is predominantly black and the ruling class predominantly white. The Bay’s political economy remains a racialized one, with the African working-class confined in poor townships in Zwide, Motherwell, Kwazakhele, and many other poor and underdeveloped townships. The white ruling class and middle class reside in affluent areas in Humewood, Walmer, and Summerstrand, among others, areas where the working-class only enter as cheap labour and as students.

More than thirty years since the dawn of what is loosely referred to as democracy, Port Elizabeth (euphemistically referred to as Gqeberha without transforming it) remains a colonial city for the white haves and the black have-nots. The whites own and control the wealth in the city, live in affluence and luxury, whilst the rest of the population drowns in poverty.

Of course, this nature and structure of the Bay’s political economy give birth to a plethora of social ills, which affect mainly the African working-class. It is the African working-class that is unemployed, and thus finds comfort in drugs and alcohol abuse, prostitution, violent crime, and other lumpen activities.

This socioeconomic crisis is coupled with a failed local state that is meant not merely to provide service delivery but to be developmental, developmental in that it must contribute to poverty alleviation, economic and social transformation, and the collective betterment of the material lives of the working-class in communities. Research done by Scholars like Dr Gumani Tshimomola (EFF’s Senior Researcher) and Cde Bheki Stofile (SALGA President) finds that the local state is structurally faulty due to an anti-poor financial model, which requires municipalities to function as any other capitalist firm, which must sell services and generate income to function. This ignores the fact that the majority of the citizens in these local states are poor, thus unable to pay for services, meaning municipalities cannot generate revenue, thus cannot provide service delivery and development.

Dr Gumani contends that the local state, instead of being developmental, is perpetuating poverty. The local state also remains locked in the apartheid imaginary of racialized and segregated spatial planning, the so-called urban townships and rural homelands. The local state, according to Cde Stofile, is further constrained by a neoliberal macroeconomic praxis in the state since the dawn of democracy (although more radical since the introduction of GEAR), which has starved the local state of resources and privatized its key responsibilities. Of course, this structural paralysis is, according to the Auditor General, intertwined with issues of lack of capacity to govern, corruption and criminality, among others, which further cripple the local state.

This is the concrete situation with which the ‘People’s Mayor’ must emerge, with a key program in relation to how he or she will contribute to bettering this situation characterized by unemployment, poverty, crime, and inequality. Thus far, the program of the ANCYL in its campaign for Cde Lungisa has not given us even a simple analysis of this socioeconomic and sociopolitical situation, let alone a believable program on Lenin’s historic question of What is to be Done?

Towards developmental local governance, working-class representation and democratic participation, ownership and control of the local economy

In the final analysis, we are simply prompting our comrades in the ANCYL to give us more than Cde Lungisa’s charm and charisma, but a clear program on how his Mayorship will confront the following issues, among others:

1. A segregated city, of what Fanon calls The Two Zones of Being, with blacks residing in Zones of non-being marked by poverty, landlessness, violence, and underdevelopment, and whites in Zones of being, marked by comfort, luxury, and development. In essence, how will the People’s Mayor contribute to the fight against the continued apartheid spatial segregation of what is supposed to be a postcolonial city?

2. A privately owned economy: how will the People’s Mayor contribute in confronting the nature and structure of the Bay’s economy, which is privately owned and controlled, and keeps the majority in poverty?

3. Developmental Local State: how will the People’s Mayor contribute to the realization of developmental local states as envisioned in the original White Paper on Local Government? Put differently, how will the People’s Mayor ensure that the local state is not only delivering services but also creating jobs, developing infrastructure, alleviating poverty, and reducing income inequality?

4. Democratic participation of the working-class: how will the People’s Mayor ensure that the working-class is directly involved in the developmental and governance affairs of their communities?

5. Social and collective ownership and control of the local economy: how will the People’s Mayor ensure that there is growing ownership and control of the local economy by the working-class?

Conclusion

The reality of the matter, in the current conjuncture, the working-class cannot be subjected to the whims of political personalities. The poverty and unemployment of the working-class, particularly the working-class youth, cannot be resolved through charm and charisma. Thus, the ANCYL must answer to the youth: in the concrete sense, What Is To Be Done?

Programme, not personality
the working-class cannot be subjected to the whims of political personalities.

Related reading

This is an opinion contribution. The views expressed are the author’s own.