[Militant International Review, No 61, Summer 1995, p. 22-25]
Following its overwhelming victory in the elections of 27 April 1994, the ANC leadership has consolidated its dominant position in the Government of National Unity (GNU) – and is currently basking in the prestige of the world’s most popular president, enjoying the long after-glow of victory. MIR editor, Lynn Walsh, recently returned from a visit to South Africa, looks beneath the euphoria.
Among the Black majority there is immense pride that Mandela is president and satisfaction that the scaffolding and customary practices of Apartheid are at last being swept away. There is relief that the transition was achieved without civil war and that the violent conflict of the long pre-election period has largely subsided (apart from areas of Natal). The ultra-right organisations of white reaction, who were smashed by the workers of Bophuthatswana when they intervened to exploit Mangope’s attempted putsch in March 1994, have been marginalised, for the time being at least.
Among the ANC cadres, the layer of activists and intellectuals who have been rapidly drawn into parliament and government jobs, there is an all-pervasive illusion that they have carried out, through negotiation and compromise, “the world’s most remarkable and successful evolution”.1 This political euphoria clearly has a material base – the fabulous salaries and privileges (official cars, residences, expenses, etc.) now enjoyed by these upwardly-mobile strata.
The illusion of a ‘negotiated revolution’ is encouraged, of course, by the South African bourgeoisie, not to mention the adulatory support of international capitalist leaders. For the more far-sighted representatives of capital, the transition represents a strategic success which undoubtedly surpasses all their expectations.
Shaken by wave after wave of revolutionary struggle of the workers and youth during the 1970s and 1980s, the ruling class was compelled to recognise that it could not decisively defeat the movement through continuous, systematic repression and therefore changed its strategy. Under De Klerk, the ruling class began to explore the option of relying on the ANC leadership to avert revolution – of abandoning white minority rule and conceding a substantial share of political control to the nationalist leadership, on condition that they successfully reined in the mass struggle and committed the ANC to the preservation of capitalism. Reforms in the interests of the black majority would be accepted as the necessary price of compromise, but control of the economy and key elements of the state machine would remain firmly in the hands of the white ruling class.
Such a fundamental switch in the capitalists’ strategy was possible only following the profound change in the international balance of forces which resulted from the collapse of the non-capitalist, Stalinist regimes in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe. The collapse removed the strategic threat – or perceived threat – to capitalism in Southern Africa, in particular undermining the Stalinist-type regimes in Angola and Mozambique and severely curtailing the room-for-manoeuvre of other ‘front-line’ states like Zimbabwe and Zambia. As early as 1988, the retreat of the Soviet bureaucracy under Gorbachev opened the way for a negotiated hand-over of political control to Swapo in Namibia – a political compromise between apartheid rulers and African nationalists which paved the way for negotiations in South Africa itself.
The collapse of the Stalinist regimes also brought about a political shift within the leadership of the ANC. While they were proscribed and persecuted by the Apartheid regime, the bourgeois nationalist wing of the ANC leadership (Tambo, Mandela, Mbeki, etc.) remained close to the leadership of the Communist Party wing (Slovo, Kasrils, etc.) of the ANC-SACP alliance. With the collapse of Stalinism and after overtures from the National Party leadership, the ANC leadership rapidly moved towards an open capitalist position. Ironically, the former Stalinists – notably Joe Slovo – obligingly provided the ideological rationalisation for this shift. They had long defended the idea of a ‘democratic’ stage of national liberation, with socialism postponed until the distant future, but they at least paid lip service to the commitment to nationalisation embodied in the ANC’s Freedom Charter.
After 1990, however, Joe Slovo, “armed with impeccable credentials … became a conciliator … Slovo took the lead … in calling for a government of national unity, stressing the importance of reassuring the white-dominated civil service and security forces”.2 Such ‘pragmatism’ – gratefully praised by the capitalist press when Slovo died last January – means unequivocally accepting the continuation of capitalism. “Socialism can come later,” he is reported to have said, “when I have discovered what it is”.3 It is the SACP leaders who have most rigorously promoted the claim that, on the basis of the ANC-dominated GNU and the implementation of the ANC’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), there will be a ‘structural reform’ – a rapid, radical change which will redress the deep apartheid-inequalities and eradicate mass unemployment, poverty and homelessness.
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On this basis, the ANC-SACP leaders steered the mass movement into purely electoral channels, curbing the spontaneous combativity of the workers and youth, demobilising the ANC’s rank-and-file organisations, and using their influence over the Cosatu leaders to restrain industrial struggles. Before the elections, for instance, the South African Defence Force (SADF) was sent into Natal, with Mandela’s blessing, not so much to curb Inkatha, which was unleashing ferocious violence against ANC supporters, but to curb the growing mass revolutionary resistance to Inkatha forces.
When the workers and youth in Bophuthatswana rose to defeat Mangope’s coup and the attempt of right-wing white groups to secure a counter-revolutionary base in Bop, Mandela merely denounced the ‘excesses’ of the spontaneous resistance. When it came to the elections, the ANC leaders – perhaps uniquely in history – rigged the results to avoid a two-thirds majority (which would have given them a free hand to frame a new constitution) and engineered a higher vote for Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, to act as a self-imposed check on the ANC’s freedom of action within the GNU. Both these moves aimed to reassure the National Party leaders that the ANC would not break the pre-election constitutional deal and claim an ‘excessive’ share of government.
The capitalists can scarcely believe their luck. Welcoming the budget in March, the chair of Liberty Life insurance company admitted: “Their performance is beyond our wildest dreams”.
Since its electoral victory, the ANC’s agenda has been to establish a decisive presence in existing state structures (while conciliating military and police chiefs and amply compensating retiring senior officials), rather than any transformation of the state apparatus. While the ANC cadres have been absorbed into government, the ANC branches, youth leagues, etc., have emptied out. Change, it is made clear, will be directed from above, through official channels – and Mandela has denounced any groups taking direct action: black students demanding changes in old apartheid university bureaucracies; low-paid policemen demanding overtime pay; squatters seizing land for houses; and striking workers, whose action the president blamed on ‘anarchists’. He has also demanded that township residents end their rent and service charge boycotts, despite the fact that there have been few, if any, improvements.
One symptom of the demobilisation – and of a growing disappointment with the lack of change – is the extremely low level of registration for the local elections due to be held in September: around 25% nationally, and much lower in areas like Northern Transvaal.
Collaboration with the parties within the GNU means, above all, co-operation with the tiny group of financial, manufacturing and industrial corporations which dominate the South African economy (seven companies control about 60% of the share capital issued on the Johannesburg stock exchange).4 Unavoidably, this means accepting the narrow limits imposed by a relatively weak, highly distorted economy, the legacy of the apartheid social structure and very one-sided integration in the world capitalist economy.
The capitalists can scarcely believe their luck. “We are relieved,” commented Clem Sunter, MD of Anglo American mining corruption: “None of the concerns that some of us felt have been fulfilled … Nowadays the word nationalisation does not even enter the conversation. Whenever we have spoken to the government we have had a pragmatic response”.5 Welcoming the budget in March, the chair of Liberty Life insurance company admitted: “Their performance is beyond our wildest dreams”.6
Cosatu, however, issued a statement severely criticising the budget, the main aim of which was to reduce the current budget deficit from 6.4% of GDP to 5.5%. Income tax was increased on middle and higher salary earners (which will hardly boost their support for the ANC), while the tax levy on big business remained unchanged, with new concessions to foreign investors. The remaining element in this equation is inevitably a severe restriction of spending. Given the attempted regional redistribution, moreover, there will be severe cuts in services and jobs in Gauteng (‘Place of Gold’ – i.e. Greater Johannesburg) and Western Cape. This underlines the limitations of the RDP, which heavily depends on the reallocation of departmental budgets to RDP projects aimed at raising living standards in the townships and rural areas.
But the counterpart of big business satisfaction is a deep, increasingly bitter disappointment among wide layers of the population, especially the poorly paid workers, the unemployed and the homeless of the townships, shanty towns, and villages. RDP project proposals are piling up in government offices, but apart from free medical benefits for pregnant women and infants and the school feeding scheme, there has been no significant change.
‘Perhaps we are too hasty, perhaps the government needs time,’ reflect some workers. ANC ministers constantly reiterate that they cannot reverse 47 years of NP rule in a year or so. Lack of time, however, does not answer the fundamental objection to the ANC’s approach: notwithstanding the negotiated political settlement which has ended the apartheid superstructure (in itself a step forward), there is no room within the framework of capitalism for a ‘structural reform’ that will achieve a massive shift of wealth and income to the black majority, even over a period of years. The ‘negotiated revolution’, in fact, is no revolution at all – it is not even genuine majority rule, merely a substantial sharing of political power with the black nationalist/capitalist leadership, with important levers of state power retained in the hands of the white ruling class and with the economy still firmly under the control of the same big business elements who upheld the Apartheid regime until it outlived its usefulness for them.
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Within a dynamic, expanding SA capitalism – and given international trends favouring the SA economy – there might be room for significant reforms over a period of years. Any claim, however, that the recent growth-spurt (from about 2.3% growth of GDP in 1994 to an expected 3-4% this year) marks the beginning of a sustained upswing is pure fantasy. This quite limited growth – accompanied by inflation of over 10% and with no fall in unemployment – is the result of the ending of international investment sanctions and a post-election consumer spending-spree.
The last year has seen the first net inflow of investment capital since 1984 – but the consequential demand for imported capital goods, which cannot be supplied from within SA, also produced the first visible trade deficit since 1984. However, despite the ANC’s ‘investor-friendly’ economic policies, “there has been little sign of any big new investment by foreigners … Mandela can be forgiven a little bewilderment and frustration with the apparent fickleness of international investors”.7
There are several factors behind this: (a) There are currently much more profitable fields of investment in the ‘emerging markets’ of Asia; (b) International investors are not yet sufficiently convinced that there will be a prolonged period of social peace, political stability and economic growth; (c) Although SA is the most developed economy in Africa, much of its industry is outdated and inefficient; and (d) While wages are relatively low, they are not as low as in China, Thailand, Malaysia, etc., and SA workers have a history of militant trade union organisation and combative struggle.
The first conditions of increased investment now being demanded by big business are ‘labour discipline’ reduced staffing levels and wage restraint.
A recent survey, conducted by the Monitor Company for Nedlac (National Economic Development and Labour Council) and financed by the Japanese government, commented: “We must not be fooled by the existence of new factories and offices and shopping malls into thinking that the underlying industries are globally competitive. Underneath the attractive painted body panels the engine is rusted and out of date”.
While South African labour costs in the car industry, for instance, are on a par with Mexico’s ($5.6 p/hr compared with $6 p/hr), lower productivity means that it requires 63.5 hours to produce a car in South Africa compared with only 24.3 in Mexico. As a result, the labour cost per car is $355 in SA compared with $145 in Mexico. Low productivity in the car, textiles and other sectors reflects long-term under-investment during the period of UN sanctions and disinvestment by multi-nationals, when many producers survived only because they were protected from international competition by import controls and government subsidies.
The Monitor report concludes that South African capitalism requires an economic ‘transformation’. To catch up with Taiwan, for instance, in terms of per capita income, South Africa would require growth of 7% to 8% – sustained for 20 years. This would require an unprecedented level of investment, which big business will undertake only if they are convinced of sustained profitability, under conditions of intense international competition. There are no signs of this happening. Instead, foreign and South African investors are eager to pick the juicy cherries – highly profitable, expanding state industries, like Eskom (electricity), Telkom and South African Airlines, for which the government are now discussing privatisation plans (though carefully eschewing the word privatisation). Privatisation, however, though in line with the policies demanded by international capitalism, would relinquish the very elements of state intervention which laid the basis for the rapid industrialisation of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea in the 1970s.
The first conditions of increased investment now being demanded by big business are ‘labour discipline’, reduced staffing levels and wage restraint. In the view of capitalist economists, a section of the 4.7m jobless workers (around 30% of the labour force according to official figures) will get jobs only if they are ready to “price themselves into the labour market” – that is, accept much lower pay levels. “The ANC has to seek to persuade its political ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), to restrain those of its members who are expecting to reap some, if only modest, reward for the political struggle of the past three decades”.
Faced with a wave of strikes following the elections (e.g. car industry, truckers, Pick ‘n’ Pay supermarkets, etc.), Mandela condemned strikers and “warned that the government would not tolerate criminal activity during strikes and criticised ‘anarchists’ in the labour movement”.8 Cosatu president, John Gomomo, angrily rejected this attack, saying the unions would not accept a witch-hunt against militants.
Key unions, such as the NUM, SACTWU (textiles and clothing), NUMSA (metal workers) and the chemical workers are currently pushing for claims of 15% to 30%, well above the rate of inflation, to improve living standards and begin to remove apartheid inequalities. While the government in principle supports affirmative action to remove pay inequalities, however, in this year’s budget it allowed for only a 3.5% public-sector wage increase – which given the current inflation rate would mean a cut in real wages of 6% to 7%.
Municipal workers are in no mood to accept this. SAMWU is demanding substantial increases in minimum wage levels, and its general-secretary, Roger Ronnie, said recently that “large authorities (like Gauteng and Cape Town) could face negotiations on a 20% increase… with emphasis on narrowing the wage gap”.9
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In their recent Collective Bargaining Survey, consultants Gavin Brown and Associates warn that the 1995 collective bargaining season has only just begun and “will probably be characterised by the same conditions which led to largely spontaneous and undisciplined strikes between April and July last year”. They warn that, given the level of discontent among the rank and file, “union leadership will be hard-pressed to exercise influence”, and “union members will be increasingly less receptive to union guidance or instruction”.10
The ANC-led government is clearly heading for a major conflict with the trade unions and industrial workers generally. While the draft Labour Relations Act embodies a number of crucial trade union rights, it also contains measures which, if implemented, can only serve the interests of big business. The right to strike is guaranteed, but so is the bosses’ right to lock workers out! Moreover, strike action would be outlawed in essential public services or if they threaten the economic infrastructure – and in any case are subject to the exhaustion of arbitration procedures enforceable by a new labour court. Nedlac and workplace forums, representing the government, bosses, and unions, would be given legal powers – and clearly the attempt to introduce an incomes policy is high on the government’s agenda. Is this the ‘New South Africa’ for which several generations of workers and youth fought and made such heroic sacrifices?
Beneath the after-glow of the ANC’s electoral victory a cauldron of discontent is accumulating. Even while congratulating the government on its economic rectitude, capitalist commentators are beginning to warn of ‘social instability’ unless the government delivers improvements for the majority. As yet the mood of disappointment, discontent and growing anger at the lack of change is inchoate – there is nobody to crystallise the mood, give it political expression and channel it into class action. Winnie Mandela’s criticisms get a strong echo from the poor but, closely tied to the traditional chiefs organised in Contralesa, she offers no alternative. Within the SACP, as its recent Congress showed, there is a strong trend of criticism of the ANC government’s direction, but even those who oppose the right-wing policies of CP ministers do not question the political basis of the ANC-SACP Alliance. In the townships, the youth are tending to turn away from politics, some to education, some – unfortunately – to crime.
In the coming months there will be increasing clashes between sections taking direct action to improve their situation and the government. The main opposition, however, will undoubtedly come from within the trade unions, where organised workers come under the direct pressure of the bosses or the state. Already there is a widespread questioning of the terms of the ANC-Cosatu alliance, a rejection of ministers’ assumption that they decide policy and Cosatu carries it out. Rank and file leaders are beginning to put forward demands and policies to improve living standards and speed up the eradication of inequalities. More fundamentally, a section of militants are questioning whether the ANC, despite its historic role, can serve as the vehicle of working-class struggle – and particularly whether it will ever pursue socialist aims. This discussion, on the need for a workers’ party based on Cosatu and a socialist programme, will come to the fore in coming months.
Through popularising a clear analysis of the ANC leaders’ capitalist course, advancing fighting policies on the immediate issues facing workers and youth, and elaborating a clear perspective and socialist programme, our comrades in the Marxist Workers’ Tendency – which publishes Congress Militant – have a crucial role to play.
1 Financial Times supplement: ‘Investing in SA’, 2 May 1995.
2 Financial Times, 2 May 1995.
3 Financial Times, 7 January 1995.
4 Martin Murray, Revolution Deferred, Verso, 1994, p. 32.
5 Weekly Journal, (UK) 4 May 1995.
6 Financial Times, 2 May 1995.
7 Financial Times, 2 May 1995.
8 Business Day, 27 March 1995.
9 Business Day, 4 April 1995.
10 Mercury, 7 April 1995.
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