Countdown to Socialism: The National Democratic Revolution in South Africa Since 1994

by Anthea Jeffery

With growth stalling, joblessness at crisis levels, and governance unravelling, most South Africans cannot fathom why the ANC does not embark on meaningful reform. The answer lies in what is seldom the ruling party's unwavering determination to take the country by incremental steps from capitalism to socialism.
This transformation is being implemented via a Moscow-inspired 'national democratic revolution' (NDR) dating back many decades. Despite the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the ANC/SACP alliance still sees the NDR as offering the 'most direct route' to socialism in South Africa – and hence as its bedrock strategy.
The NDR has been implemented in many different spheres since 1994. By way of example, NDR interventions have already made millions of people unemployable and the mining sector largely 'uninvestable'. They now aim at land expropriation without compensation (EWC) and the effective nationalisation of private healthcare and pensions.
The NDR is the key to understanding ANC rule over some 30 years – yet most South Africans have been kept in the dark on it. This book aims to fill that gap. Written in clear and simple language, it provides an indispensable primer on the NDR and its role in the countdown to socialism in South Africa.

549 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 19, 2023

Reviews

[Ari Damoulakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am one of the millions of unemployed South Africans, despite having 2 degrees and working hard enough to be chosen to do the IHRE programme, for which only about a hundred students were selected. You read this book, you wonder if what you were taught about this super rainbow nation and the bright future was all just sort of a fantasy, especially if the NDR is followed. Sa is getting worse. Malema does sing ‘Kill the settler Boer.’ The last place I wish I am living in is this country, and yes, I do feel like a frog that is slowly being boiled.
If a party like the Eff does very well, I do think we could possibly have an existence that will be comparable to that of our Jewish friends in Pre-War nazi Germany.
I just wish I was lucky enough like nearly all of my friends who have managed to get out and leave this shit-show of a place, with all the problems, especially the crime, very unsafe streets, and terrible safety nets, services and welfare state or employment opportunities for disabled people.
I am just hoping that somehow, in some way, I can find my own exit strategy to leave from here.
I feel very little love for this country.
One can hardly love something if you find it rather impossible to feel any pride in it, and consequently not much respect for it at all.
If I somehow manage to make my way to another country, there will then be enough time to show my new country my gratitude, patriotism and love, while I walk the safe streets, enjoy better quality services, and can forget about living in the current South African hell.

[Nicholas Woode-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading to understand the reality of ANC rule and how there is no future for South Africa under the current government.

[Alex Rogers · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was part of a project to read as much as I could about the current SA while I was travelling through it - dropped in to the fabulous Gould's in Cape Town and loaded up on current / recent analysis, criticism, current affairs, history & political books as well as a novel or two.

Had a good argument with my partner over this book in the store, though, as she felt it was a polemic by someone implacably opposed to socialism of any form, rather than a balanced or independent viewpoint. I personally like to read widely across the political spectrum, and was interested to read a critique of how socialism was being implemented in SA, even if it was from a viewpoint hostile to socialism generally.

Of course, my partner was right - its one thing to write from a liberal or conservative viewpoint - but its totally another to spout propaganda and misinformation as facts, or to be so blind to reality that it has the same effect. Jeffery is clearly on a mission against everything left, and started the book with a critique of socialism that was so far divorced from reality that she lost any shred of credibility in my mind. The stopper came early - she launched off with a devastating account of how state-sponsored socialism (actually communism, as implemented and corrupted by Russia and China) had killed and immiserated 10s or 100s of millions globally (ok, true enough) but then went on to champion the cause of capitalism and how it has lifted billions out of poverty globally! I'm sorry - if you can simultaneously overlook the fact that China's centrally controlled system has perhaps been the most successful mechanism for alleviating poverty in the last 50 years (sheer numbers of people lifted out of the worst kind of poverty) while ignoring that unconstrained capitalism and rapacious globalisation is currently making the planet uninhabitable and inequality soaring to unheard of levels - you've moved beyond polemic into propaganda.

So ya - junk this one, its simply not credible, and I suspect a quick look at Jeffery's backers and funders would lead to some interesting places.

[Dillan Lawless · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish every South African would read this book.