The Sunday Mail
The most unexpected phenomenon was the ease with which the ANC accepted the most unpalatable of compromises and retreats. Almost everything that had formerly been propagated as sacred proved expendable.
Itai Choto
Since 1994, the democratic government in South Africa has worked at improving the lives of the black majority, yet close to half the population still lives in poverty, jobs are scarce and the country is more unequal than ever.
For millions the colour of one’s skin still decides their destiny.
South Africa does appear as two worlds in one geographical field: the First World of Sandton and Cape Town and the Third World of Alexander and Soweto.
Although classified as a middle-income country, South Africa’s harshly skewed allocation of income, resources and opportunities means that close to 30 million people live in poverty — most of them black Africans.
There has been no social revolution in the Rainbow Nation.
The second-largest African economy and the “S” in Brics appears to be in a state of “economic apartheid”.
April 27, 1994 opened a new chapter in South Africa’s political history. It marked the moment when the leaders of the anti-apartheid movements entered the corridors of political power.
As happened so often in newly-liberated countries, the euphoria of the political transition led many to expect that the need for adversarial social struggle with the State was over.
The ANC had assumed the task of constructing and administering a largely hegemonic project that would be based on a radical break from the exclusionary paradigms enforced under apartheid.
The settlement and transition hinged on recognition that friend and foe had to make concessions and compromises in order to avert disaster for their respective agendas. The principle of inclusion and common destiny was embraced as the central ideological tenet of the new South Africa.
In Gramscian terms, hegemony had to be built along dramatically new and inclusive lines.
The real issue, however, was the terms on which inclusion and assimilation transpired, in particular, which social classes would be more privileged beneficiaries of the “transformation”.
The collapse of the former Soviet Union and its satellites, the pre-eminence of neo-liberal prescriptions and the ANC’s long-standing neglect of viable economic policy development left it exposed to the incursions of orthodoxy.
Such dimensions, perhaps inevitably, meant a tilt towards appeasement of capital.
In fact, the ANC had negotiated a settlement without a sound programme and/or framework for overhauling the structured foundations of a society distinctly characterised by injustice, inequality and marginalisation.
The most unexpected phenomenon was the ease with which the ANC accepted the most unpalatable of compromises and retreats. Almost everything that had formerly been propagated as sacred proved expendable.
Most notable was nationalisation of mines and monopolies.
During the political negotiations of the early 1990s, the ANC (with critical assistance from its SACP) made compromises that allowed the inherited socio-economic system of apartheid capitalism to remain effectively divorced from the democratic framework.
Thus, while agreements were instituted that allowed for the institutional affirmation of basic political, civic and socio-economic rights — through one-person one-vote and formalisation of a democratic constitution (inclusive of a Bill of Rights) — there were no concomitant agreements that allowed for apartheid-capitalism’s socio-economic relations to be fundamentally addressed.
In fact, the ANC made the choice to abandon the more radical economic demands that were part and parcel of the struggle for meaningful redistribution of wealth and resources to incorporate the dispossessed and marginalised majority.
The first phase of South Africa’s “transition” thus witnessed the ANC’s political and ideological acceptance of the broad framework of a globally dominant, neo-liberal political and economic orthodoxy.
In turn, this led to institutionalised (and false) separation between political and socio-economic change, such that democracy has come to be seen as synonymous with capitalism.
This was a momentous shift from the rhetoric of an organisation with a strong working-class constituency, with sturdy links to a powerful trade union federation (Cosatu) and a resilient communist party (the SACP).
While the political transition was a significant development, a parallel socio-economic transformation has not yet taken place; many of the deep-seated inequalities and poverty that developed under colonialism, segregation and apartheid are perpetuated in the “new” South Africa”.
The ANC’s political decision to turn back on stated commitments was institutionally codified with the formal unveiling of the overtly neo-liberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) macro-economic programme in 1996.
Indeed it was the adoption of Gear that became a watershed moment in the ANC’s history, making it a capitalist party par excellence and blurred any differences between its economic policy and that of the Democratic and National parties.
The programme committed the party to: slashing government spending, embracing austerity, keeping inflation low via high interest rates, providing tax holidays and other incentives for capital, phasing out exchange controls, creating a more “flexible” labour market, encouraging “wage restraint”, and speeding up privatisation of state assets.
In effect, it was the local version of the Washington Consensus.
When a few critical voices pointed out that Gear was conceptualised and adopted without any participation from the ANC’s own democratic base, the party leadership was quick to declare the policy non-negotiable.
The programme’s results have had devastating effects on the lives of those South African’s most in need of socio-economic redress.
Gear became synonymous with massive job losses among the most vulnerable, increasing income and class inequality; lack of access to, and affordability of basic socio-economic services such as water, electricity, housing and education; lack of land redistribution; and declining levels of social services as a result of privatisation of state assets.
Given the relative strength of the economy, and the quality of infrastructure, resources and human capital, South Africa has not experienced economic debilitation to the same degree as other African countries that have appeased capital.
However, this masks the reality that South Africa remains a highly unequal society.
Few social facts in South Africa today are as socially portentous and as politically fateful as the persistence within its democracy of deeply entrenched poverty; or as paradoxical, for one of the signal features of post-apartheid politics and policy has been the nearly universal agreement that poverty is an important problem.
Yet this pro-poor consensus has not produced a pro-poor reality.
Millions of South Africans are still marginalised and vulnerable, economically dis-empowered, and with scant chances of upward mobility.
Against a backdrop of modest economic growth, infrastructure development and service delivery benefiting poor households have improved, but at rates too slow to match mushrooming needs.
Overall the country’s unequal social structure continues to be reproduced with inequalities still exhibiting strong racial and spatial patterns.
Deliberate efforts will have to be made to deal with the social problems of the new South Africa.
The problem is not that of changing the captain of the ship, but changing the vehicle’s engine and reorganising the crew to pave way for a more equal nation.
The ever growing nest of poverty and unemployment has shaped the terrain for future political struggles.
The economic pressures for even those who have jobs are enormously high and could precipitate militant class struggles as recent sporadic incidents of violence and Afro-phobia around the country have indicated.
Itai Choto is the spokesperson for Zanu-PF UK and writes in his personal capacity.
