The ANC is conferring about how to win back the vote of the black middle class. This obsession with the middle class should put to rest once and for all the class character of the ANC in the mind of the working class. Any revolutionary organisation, would in times of crisis turn to the working class. In typical neo-liberal fashion the ANC muddles the definition of the concept of middle class.
According to the powers that be, in South Africa, middle class means anyone earning more than R5000 per month. Now, we know from the commission into the minimum wage in 2016 that 60% of South Africans earn less than R3500 per month. We also know that 40% plus are members of the lumpen proletariat, the reserve army of the unemployed. Finally 18 million South Africans are living of government grants. Now if these figures are added up, anyone who can address the concerns of these working class and poor people will win any election with more than 60% of the vote. But, the ANC is not turning to them, instead it is turning to the ill-defined middle class.
The actual definition of middle class is someone who owns a small business, or is a professional, a manager, a doctor, a lawyer, a university lecturer etc. Typically a middle class person would own and manage a vehicle repair workshop, a medical practice, a legal practice, a corner shop or a filling station, or a small share portfolio. The income of a middle class person would range from R 30 000 per month upwards. Middle class people aspire to become part of the ruling class and absolutely fear and despise the working class, for fear of being pushed back into that class. The ruling class is composed of those people who own mines, banks, big retail, big wholesale, agribusiness farms and or significant or controlling shareholding in such enterprises (the Ruperts, the Glasenbergs, the Oppenheimers, the Guptas, the Motsepes, the Sexwales etc).
The ANCs obsession with the middle class reminds one of Hitler and German fascism. Hitler was a master at mobilising the German middle classes. His recipe was simple, he scared the middle classes by pointing out that the communists, whom he absolutely hated, would destroy the middle class once they took power. On the other hand he created a conspiracy theory, or fed off existing European conspiracy theories that Jewish capitalists were sponsoring the communists. While pretending to be the champion of the middle classes Hitler was actually the agent of German big capital, of Mercedez, Volkswagen, Porche, BSAF, Faber, Krupp and Siemens, and even of American capital such as Henry Ford, IBM and Coca Cola.
The ANC’s obsession with the middle class once and for all clarifies that it is not a revolutionary organisation and that its radical economic transformation merely means that it is intending to consolidate capitalism and the exploitation of the working class. This suggests that it is in fact a proto-fascist organisation courting the middle class to consolidate its alliance with the capitalist ruling class.
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