Blade, Julius, Irvin's goals just dreams

THERE is nothing wrong with dreaming.

The problem is when dreamers follow their dreams to the detriment of society.

There are three prominent South Africans whose dreams, if realised, could tear this country apart: Blade Nzimande, Julius Malema and Irvin Jim.

They are by no means the only ones. They are an interesting sample. Each has loyal disciples, typically the types who wouldn't dare question their leaders.

All three have traits of dictatorship. Only their views should prevail. Anything to the contrary is counter-revolutionary or neoliberal, betrayal of the Struggle or some other political phrases deemed as insults.

Despite the existence of common traits among them, it would be unthinkable to expect them to realise, let alone agree, that they have something in common.

Nzimande would be offended to be compared with Malema and Jim - the politicians he considers to be the enemy of the Jacob Zuma revolution whose ultimate purpose is beyond the scope of this piece.

Save to say, it is nothing less than apocalyptic.

Malema would be riled by any suggestion that his red colours bear the same meaning as Nzimande's.

With his increasingly litigious behaviour, Jim would, at the slightest provocation, take to task anyone who dared compare him with Nzimande.

But I take the risk.

All three men have more in common than they have differences. Let's be honest here: is there someone who thinks any one of them would accept being voted out of their respective organisations?

Under Nzimande's leadership, the SACP amended its constitution to allow him to serve full-time in cabinet while remaining the general-secretary of the nongovernmental organisation with the aim of turning our republic into a socialist state.

Nzimande has popularised the slogan: "Socialism is the future, build it now!" The socialist dream, according to him, lives on.

Jim, general-secretary of metalworkers' union Numsa, could not take it when most, if not all, of his views were rejected within Cosatu.

He decided to lead the formation of his own NGO, the United Front, instead of taking part in a mediation process to bring him and his fellow dissidents back into Cosatu.

For some time now he has been mouthing some rhetoric about socialist this and that.

At the EFF's first inaugural conference, so-called National People's Assembly, Malema squashed any rebellion and stamped his authority, the kind of heavy-handedness he would not withstand when exercised by Zuma and his allies in the ANC. The EFF has resolved to fight for socialism.

Here is the question for the three unlikely allies: Why do they think socialism will work in South Africa when it has failed dismally whenever it was given a chance in other parts of the world?

The truth is, the socialist dream is a lazy alternative to the crises faced by many countries including our own: unemployment, inequality and poverty.

No doubt, some of the crises have their roots in the manner in which the current capitalist system and its subsidiary, the free market economy, work.

But by resorting to something that has proved far more disastrous, Nzimande, Jim and Malema and their disciples are misleading South Africans.

Versions of socialism failed dismally in Eastern Europe, Tanzania and Cuba. The latter is undergoing free market reforms. The state capitalism-cum-dictatorship of the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is often mistaken for socialism.

China long ago abandoned the idea of socialism, opting for state capitalism, driven by robust meritocracy, to lift millions from poverty.

The latest evidence points to the gradual retreat of the state in the Chinese economy. The former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is known for boasting about reading books by Adam Smith, the father of the free market.

It is difficult to explain the fallacy of the socialist dream in full in a short article like this.

But let's take a common feature of the three versions of socialism espoused by Nzimande, Jim and Malema. All three want the state to be so dominant that it would, in their view, help solve most of the crises. For every problem they have three solutions: the state, the state and the state.

They are as fundamentalist about the state as a solver of society's crises as their rival capitalists in the DA and elsewhere are about market fundamentalism as a solution to everything.

Nzimande and his disciples are too happy to talk about capital having captured the state. But they are unable to provide what, in their language, they would call a "class analysis" of Jacob Zuma. Wasn't he long ago captured by international capital in a process he described as a "Western paradigm"?

Jim is trying to overthrow a system in which the investment arm of Numsa is heavily invested and earning handsome dividends.

Malema hopes to have a powerful state, but he is not saying how that state could be strong enough to provide services to the people if it struggles to collect taxes from people like him.

If there is one thing that is so powerful about socialism, it is its ability to make politicians dream about it. Fortunately, it is what it is - a dream.

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