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 raised: 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthea Jeffery holds law degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cambridge and has a PhD in law from London University. She is the Head of Policy Research at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) and has authored 11 books, including BEE: Helping or Hurting? and People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa. She has also written extensively on property rights, land reform, the mining sector, the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) system, and a growth-focused and non-racial alternative to BEE.

'Countdown to Socialism: The National Democratic Revolution in South Africa since 1994' is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers