Zabalaza:
A Journal of Southern African
Revolutionary Anarchism #8
February 2008
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Asgisa: A Working Class Critique by Lucien van der Walt
The announcement of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative – South Africa (Asgisa) in 2006 has been met with some enthusiasm in left and labour circles. There is, however, very little to be excited about. The SA Communist Party (SACP) praised the Asgisa programme soon after its launch. Blade Nzimande admitted that Asgisa was not a new macro-economic policy, and that it ignored “logistics” relevant to the working class, like decent transport and education. 1 Even so, he was “broadly” upbeat, claiming to see signs of a shift towards “an active developmental state … a comprehensive industrial policy and … integrated local development planning”, a “welcome shift.” All reasonable people, he added, “agree with the relevance” of promoting a competitive national economy. Cosatu was more openly critical, criticising Asgisa at its September 2006 congress. The union federation went on to argue for its usual social democratic and nationalist project: expand the State sector, promote export-led manufacturing growth, and (in line with Keynesian thinking) 2 redistribute income to the poor in order to boost local demand and, so, economic growth. Still, Cosatu reaffirmed its support for the ANC – or, more, specifically, for disgraced ANC leader Jacob Zuma, who many naively believe will implement a pro-labour programme.
WHAT IS ASGISA? The differences between the SACP and Cosatu are not that deep. Both currently embrace the notion of a “developmental state”, which they take to mean an interventionist State machine that can actively shape the capitalist economy – hopefully in the interests of the masses. The “developmental state” is, in this context, really a restatement of Cosatu and the SACP’s long-standing support for a “national democratic” interventionist State that would supposedly help provide the basis for a future transition to socialism. This is in line with the Marxist two-stage theory that the immediate task is a “national democratic revolution” (NDR), meaning a mixed capitalist economy in which the “national question” is resolved before socialism becomes possible. The term “developmental state” was originally coined to refer to ruthless but efficient capitalist dictatorships in East Asia like South Korea, which succeeded – despite a colonial legacy – in becoming significant industrial capitalist powers. Since then the term has mutated, and has become widely used by the State-centred left to describe just about any alternative to neo-liberalism. Even the ANC government (which avoids the term “neo-liberal” like poison, while applying neo-liberalism in practice) now calls itself a “developmental state”. The difference between the SACP and Cosatu on Asgisa is, in other words, that the SACP sees Asgisa as a move from neo-liberalism to the “developmental state”; Cosatu does not. So, is Asgisa a break with the neo-liberal framework laid out ten years ago in Gear? And, second, will Asgisa help meet the needs of the broad working class?
THE GENERAL PROGRAMME Like Gear, Asgisa starts by stating that it aims to create jobs, halve unemployment, and reach sustained economic growth (around 6% annually by 2010). 3 But since job creation and reducing poverty are the supposed goals of just about any economic policy, we can’t evaluate Asgisa on the basis of its intensions. As with Gear, the crucial issue is how will these goals be reached? And it is here that the problems start. As Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (closely identified with Asgisa) has stated, 4 it is not a replacement for Gear. It is a package of specific, short-term initiatives to take the restructuring of the South African economy forward by removing “binding constraints” and identifying “growth points.” The country’s current economic trajectory is praised in Asgisa as showing “steady improvement” in improving living conditions, creating jobs, promoting growth, and improving business confidence (pp. 2-3). A dishonest representation of the data lets Asgisa make manifestly ridiculous claims that the real incomes of the poor have increased sharply since 1994 (!), and that 540,000 net new jobs were created in 2004-2005 alone (!!). The “binding constraints” include a currency that is “overvalued” (making exports uncompetitive), poor infrastructure that hampers efficiency (particularly in transport), skills shortages, a high price of labour due to transport costs, lack of competition and opportunities for new businesses, a “sub-optimal regulatory environment” (in labour law and other areas), and a lack of State capacity (pp. 4-6). There is nothing in this stress on competition, export-led growth, cutting costs for business, and developing an efficient State, that departs in the least from neo-liberalism.
“DECISIVE INTERVENTIONS” Asgisa’s “decisive interventions” (not “a shift in economic policy”) (p. 6) to deal with these issues are generally also within the neo-liberal framework, except when they involve “Black Economic Empowerment” (BEE) measures. BEE does contradict neo-liberalism to the extent that black capitalists are given special treatment; however, BEE and neo-liberalism can also be partly reconciled by using neo-liberal measures like privatisation (the transfer of state operations and assets to the private sector) and outsourcing to BEE companies. Asgisa’s “decisive interventions” include sector strategies (mainly promoting tourism, and attracting outsourced jobs from other countries), a set of fairly unco-ordinated plans to promote skills (with the emphasis on skills for a competitive economy), promoting small businesses (with an emphasis on BEE through privatisation, cheap loans, and a “review” of tax and labour laws), suitable macro-economic policies (mainly continuing Gear’s stress on a weak rand, low inflation, and spending less money more efficiently), and “governance” issues (more efficiency, and continuing to move towards a “social contract” on “economic matters”) (pp. 8-16). Perhaps the most important part of Asgisa is a heavy stress on promoting infrastructure. Admitting that a large backlog in infrastructure developed in the first decade of Gear, Asgisa envisages real and significant increases in investment spending, growing at perhaps 10-15 percent per year, and leading off with R370 billion being spent from October 2005 to March 2008. Around half of this will be done via the corporatised (and partially commercialised) State corporations, Eskom (electricity) and Transnet (transport) (pp. 6-8). This supposedly (but not really) 5 “unprecedented” rise in expenditure will contribute to the 2010 World Cup initiative, promote “public-private partnerships” (PPPs, a type of privatisation) in infrastructure, and also contribute to the various Industrial Development Zones that are designed to promote exports and attract direct investment.
A HIGHER GEAR? While Asgisa is, as should be expected, far more concrete than Gear in setting out precise objectives and initiatives, there is nothing here that breaks with Gear. Asgisa’s “decisive interventions” are either directly in line with Gear’s approach (such as the stress on outsourcing), or are direct restatements of Gear’s policies (inflation targeting, fiscal discipline, the “social contract”, more flexible labour laws). And - this is especially important to stress - the emphasis on infrastructure development in Asgisa is entirely consistent with Gear’s call for “a substantial acceleration in government investment spending, together with improved maintenance and operation of public assets,” up to, and including, the use of PPPs. 6 This aspect of Gear was almost totally neglected in the past, with the result that infrastructure has crumbled. Even the dullest bureaucrats, it seems, have come to realise that rolling electricity blackouts, courtesy of Eskom, and an overworked and unreliable railway grid, courtesy of Transnet are disastrous to efficient capitalist accumulation.
BEE IN THE NEO-LIBERAL ERA The only real break is, perhaps, the heavy stress on BEE. Gear itself said almost nothing about the apartheid-derived context. Gear emphasised promoting small and medium enterprises (p. 13), but did not link this specifically to BEE. Given that the ANC is a bourgeois nationalist party, Asgisa’s stress on BEE is not surprising. As a capitalist party, at the helm of a capitalist State, the ANC must adapt the new order of neo-liberalism. As an African nationalist party, built in the anti-apartheid struggle, the ANC must also promote the development of the African elite: it has done this in the State machinery quite quickly and effectively, but has made quite limited inroads into the private sector. This somewhat contradictory agenda lies at the heart of ANC policy. Neither side of the contradiction, however, offers the working class anything.
NEO-LIBERAL CLASS WAR If by “developmental state”, we mean a break with neo-liberalism, it is mere wishful thinking to see Asgisa representing a shift towards “an active developmental state.” It is an elaboration of the Gear project. Only a highly abstract analysis, where neo-liberalism is viewed in the most purist terms, could deny Asgisa’s neo-liberal credentials. With Asgisa firmly part of the neo-liberal agenda, it follows that it offers nothing positive to the working class. As we have argued before, neo-liberalism is about restructuring capitalism in a period of long-term decline to restore profitability, and shift the balance of class forces decisively in favour of the ruling class. This involves a whole series of measures against the working class: flexibility, cost recovery, wage freezes, cuts in welfare and public transport, an ideological offensive against unions, and so on. Neo-liberalism succeeds in its objectives to the extent that capitalist economic growth is restored, and to the extent that working class conditions and power are eroded. On both counts, Gear is a “success”. That the South African economy is growing at its fastest since the 1970s at the exact same time as poverty, unemployment and de-unionisation accelerate is not accidental – it is the necessary outcome of neo-liberalism. That Asgisa will continue the pattern is quite clear, once we examine its class character. For example, hundreds of billions will be spent on infrastructure, but the emphasis is on meeting “rapidly growing demand”, and providing “spin-offs” for “business development and empowerment” (p. 7), rather than cheap, reliable and safe public transport; roads will be developed through a so-called “Extended Public Works Programme”, which will centre on short-term jobs and outsourcing to (black) sub-contractors (p. 14).
AND NOW? The fact of the matter is that capitalism, in general, is based upon the systematic domination, exploitation, and exclusion of the working class. The slums are not the consequence of isolation from the “economic mainstream,” but its creation. BEE does not marginalise the working class by accident, but because all capitalists - and the larger ruling class as well – inevitably and necessarily marginalise the working class, of whatever race or nationality. In the era of neo-liberalism, these problems are particularly marked, for neo-liberalism involves a systematic redistribution of wealth and power away from the working class. To assume that neo-liberalism can be halted by “engaging” the ANC – let alone, by electing a political opportunist facing corruption charges like Zuma – is extremely naïve. “Social equity” requires a significant redistribution of wealth and power towards the working class, and this requires, in turn, large-scale struggle. Only partial gains are possible within the current social order; substantial change requires a new order of things. The task of the hour is not to place false hope in the policies of the ruling class, nor yet to choose which member of the ruling class assumes the presidential throne. The task is to start winning people to the vision of a world beyond capitalism, based on participatory planning, distribution by need, internationalism and self-management.
Now
is the Winter of Our Discontent: by
Michael Schmidt –
This year’s giant month-long public sector strike was a remarkable demonstration of a convergence of working-class interests, across organisational, ideological, public/private, and racial lines – the likes of which has probably never been seen in South Africa before. And it took place against a backdrop of an intense policy debate within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) alliance that has seen a go-it-alone faction emerge within the South African Communist Party (SACP) and a more strident independence take hold among the 1,8-million members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). By the time the dust had settled, had we seen the emergence of true popular-class consciousness among workers and the poor?
THE FIRST SHOTS REVEAL CLASS DIVISIONS By the time Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) talks got underway in Pretoria at the end of January, there were early warning signs that the usual mid-year strike season generated by negotiations over wages and bread-and-butter issues would develop into an unprecedented conflict. It wasn’t just that the government was offering an insulting 6% across-the-board wage increase that fell pitifully short of the rise in the cost of living with inflation running at 7% 1. This hardline stance is linked to the government’s neo-liberal orientation, which stresses the need to contain inflation and state spending, inter alia, by capping public sector wages and by locking state workers into longer-term wage freezes. Tensions were initially raised by rumours that chief government negotiator Kenny Govender had not been properly mandated by the Cabinet committee from which he took his instructions – consisting of Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Govender denied the claim, but there had been almost zero progress by the eve of the strike on June 1. And the role and political affiliations of the ministers pulling his strings would be thrown into sharp relief in the weeks ahead. The very first day of the strike, a single incident of violence underlined some of the most basic contradictions in the post-apartheid political compromise: police fired rubber bullets and teargas on strikers picketing the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. Cosatu president Willie Madisha (who was also an SACP Politburo member) and SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, on hearing the news of the shooting at a march of strikers in downtown Johannesburg, roundly condemned it. But so too, naturally, did a leader of the Cosatu-affiliated Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru). This immediately revealed the raw sub-structure of the conflict. Firstly, leading communists like Madisha and Nzimande found themselves pitted against a strike-breaking force headed by Nqakula, who was SACP national chair. This raised the question of whether the SACP’s attempt to sail with one foot in the canoe of the masses and with the other foot in the canoe of the state would not result in the party doing the splits. Secondly, the state itself – which has increasingly come under leftist scrutiny in South Africa as an unelected counter-democratic bureaucracy – was revealed as a conventional capitalist employer that readily engaged in deliberate armed violence against its own employees. Thirdly, the police themselves, accustomed to their role as enforcers of state/capitalist interests found their members on both sides of the barricades, their professional duties in conflict with their needs as human beings. We would welcome the unionisation of the police - most of whom are working class - over recent years, if it had in any noticeable way curbed police violence against the working class. Sadly, this has not been the case - as recent pre-emptive police gunplay against legal pickets in the mining sector has shown. The stage having been set and the battle-lines so clearly drawn, the initially lukewarm response to the strike (starting on a Friday meant most workers simply took a long weekend rather than join marches) quickly developed incredible momentum.
THE PARTY’S PALE-PINK CHAMPAGNE SOCIALISM The SACP had for some time been undergoing a series of changes that had shifted it away from its traditional Stalinism. Those changes can probably be dated to late leader Joe Slovo’s think-piece Has Socialism Failed? (1989), written in the era of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and coinciding with Francis Fukuyama’s since-discredited “end of history” thesis that claimed liberal capitalism had triumphed as the final mode of politics. Slovo’s document, while reaffirming the validity of socialism in the absence of the USSR motherland, inexorably placed the party on the path to becoming a conventional parliamentary social-democratic entity indistinguishable from similar ex-Stalinist parties abroad, despite its resistance to change its name. Fifteen years later, the party paper Umsebenzi showed pretty girls sporting party-branded T-shirts and other gear up for sale. And as this year’s SACP funding scandal 2 revealed, the party has no restriction whatsoever on businesses, regardless of their motives, donating funds to the party coffers. More importantly, the party is deeply divided, and does not - except on paper - have any shared line . Some rank-and-file members are old-school Stalinists while the personal politics of its leaders veers between mild social democracy to raging neo-liberalism. Clearly the 1990s saw the party floundering in the political wilderness after the collapse of the USSR. In the final analysis, the party deferred its own commitment to pursuing socialism because firstly it mistakenly assumed that the USSR had been “socialist” in the first place (thus its vision of socialism was forever tainted with the idea that it could be enforced from above by state-capitalist means). Secondly, its historical marriage to the ANC’s bourgeois-nationalist project has undermined the party’s inability to think outside the very limited toolbox of nationalist politics. It had become in very practical ways a capital-friendly party that did not challenge the structure of capitalism/state, but merely proposed reforms that would see a partial rechanelling of profit towards developmental ends. But this stance was increasingly challenged by the SACP’s refounded Young Communist League (YCL), which rapidly challenged older party conventions. By May last year, when the SACP released its State Power Discussion Document, the party had finally started to grapple with the question of whether it had been a good idea at all abandoning class struggle in favour of a few seats for its leaders at the bourgeois feast. The SACP correctly notes that the South African state is Y-shaped: one arm services the largely-white corporate oligarchy; while the other under-services the largely-black labour pool. Yet it still sees “capturing” that state as the true role of a revolutionary party. Although the party critiques the form of the state, it does not critique its content as an unelected, bureaucratic instrument of elite rule over the popular classes. Unlike the party we recognise that the state cannot be transformed into a democratic instrument designed to uplift the poor majority. In the party’s draft programme The South African Road to Socialism, released ahead of its July party congress, it honestly noted the errors of Stalinism: “dogmatism, intolerance of plurality, and above all, the curtailment of a vibrant worker democracy with the bureaucratisation of the party and state. Millions of communists were among the victims of Stalin’s purges”. But this dodged the question of honestly facing the class character of the USSR by claiming it was really “socialist” despite “errors”. The draft later stated that “there is no single road to socialism” and hailed the “role of popular mobilisation rather than relying solely on inter-state-driven reconstruction efforts,” and of the importance of “organs of popular power” among the peasantry and poor in driving a progressive agenda on the African continent. But the progressive nature of the party’s continental aims are vague at best and appear to be directed at chanelling popular power into the narrow purposes of African “developmental states”. This does little more than strengthen class rule. “One thing is certain,” the party wrote, “the intensified class struggle that is apparent across the length and breadth of our society will be the decisive factor determining the outcome”. But how much further has the party advanced towards a pluralistic worker-democratic vision? For one thing, the party has no class line: the popular classes exist merely to bulwark the “developmental state”. Its vision is blinkered by its slavish adherence to the “need” for a strong state to “help weld together a multi-class national democratic movement buttressed by mobilised popular and working class power”. The party manifestly fails to explain why the ruling class - against all logic, against even the most basic Marxist theory at that - can be “welded” into a multi-class project that benefits the working class. In line with this crippled version of working class power, it comes as no surprise that the party warns against “a syndicalist or populist rejection of representative democracy, or even of a respect for a progressive law-based constitutionality rooted in social solidarity”. What the SACP means by “organs of democratic self-government” is equally contradictory: “community policing forums, school governing bodies, and ward committees”. No autonomous popular-class organisations in sight. Everything wedded to the capitalist state. Trotskyist labour analyst Terry Bell, one of the rare pro-labour voices in the mainstream press, said while Public Service Minister Fraser-Moleketi was becoming compared in her iron-gauntleted handling of the strike to that other Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, during her strike-breaking drive against the National Union of Mineworkers in Britain in 1984, the real Thatcherite was Finance Minister Manuel. Still, it is worth noting that Fraser-Moleketi is yet another former communist who has sneaked away from the party in recent years. Never really involved in the struggle for a democratic South Africa, she joined the ANC while visiting Zimbabwe in 1980. Her Stalinist training – boot camp in Angola, followed by an officer’s course in the USSR and unspecified “specialist” training in Cuba – once again demonstrates the very short distance, as the vulture flies, between Stalinism and Thatcherism/Reaganism. So it came as no surprise that this pale-pink “champagne socialist” party found itself a house divided against itself during the public sector strike.
THE BATTLE IS ENGAGED: SOLIDARITY AND UNITY The strike generated intense interest among trade union organisations abroad, and the ZACF did its small bit in publicising the strike and drumming up messages of solidarity from the international anarchist and syndicalist movement. The ZACF itself noted that earlier in the year, the Independent (that is, state) Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers recommended that President Thabo Mbeki get a 57,3% pay increase, taking his total package from R1,1-million to R1,8-million annually. Strikers carried placards saying “57,3% good enough for Mbeki – good enough for me”. The fact that Mbeki rejected the commission’s recommendations during the strike in an apparent attempt to pour oil on the troubled waters does not disguise the country’s huge income disparities: while members of Parliament argued they should get salaries of R650,000 annually, a hospital clerk told us she fed five mouths with a take-home salary of R12,000 annually. Support for the strikers’ initial 12% wage demand came from the anarcho-syndicalist National Confederation of Labour in France (CNT-F) which condemned “the South African government’s attempt to intimidate strikers into ending the strike by issuing dismissal notices to striking workers, and by using apartheid-era police brutality against picketers”. Other organisations that sent messages of support via the ZACF included the Federation of Anarchists of Greece (OAE), the International Solidarity Commission of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Workers’ Solidarity Alliance (WSA) in the United States. The International Workers’ Association (IWA) said it would send a solidarity message directly to the unions, although its affiliate, the Solidarity Federation of Great Britain (SolFed – IWA), sent a solidarity message via us. The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group in Australia (MACG) issued a detailed statement, noting: “The fact that, even now, [June 19], the public sector strike is not resolved is a demonstration of the fundamental conflict of interests between labour and capital. Regardless of the outcome of this strike, while society is divided into a working class and an employing class, there can be no just and lasting settlement to employment disputes.” The MACG endorsed “the right of picketing workers to use reasonable force in self-defence” – but as is usual, the red herring of violence was raised in the mainstream press and among the striking unions themselves, becoming a point of fracture in the initially united front. That front embraced 17 unions representing Cosatu, the Federated Unions of SA (Fedusa), and the black consciousness National Congress of Trade Unions (Nactu) – together accounting for about 1,4-million strikers – and about 400,000 independent unionists. It was a remarkable coming together of the three main union federations, usually divided by their disparate ideologies into respective ANC, liberal and black consciousness blocs, plus the independents, one of the strongest expressions ever of multi-racial, yet single-class power in the country’s history. The strike did demonstrate a significant amount of cross-racial labour action, and probably quite unprecedented in scale, so on one level it was an advance in class consciousness. But the ideological grip of the ruling class - via the ANC and via nationalist mythology - remained pretty strong. These are uneven advances. Before long, off-duty soldiers and naval sailors – their members drafted in as scab-labour to work in the hospitals and other services – were joining pickets and marches. Bell told me that “irrational” wage disparities in essential services such as nursing, police and defence were fuelling the fire. A one-day sympathy strike was called on June 13 and was well-supported. Public sympathy, despite widespread anger at the lack of service-delivery, was high.
THE CRACKS IN THE DAM By June 16, when labour had dropped its demand to 10% and the government moved to 7,25%, the united front was holding firm, and the average union member appeared to be very well-versed in the issues at play around housing allowances, medical aid and so forth, despite Fraser-Moleketi claiming union leadership was keeping them in the dark. Several cracks had appeared around the police use of force against strikers, the intimidation of non-strikers, and what the independents saw as the politicisation of the strike by Cosatu ahead of the ANC’s crucial June policy conference and December congress. Popcru’s head of collective bargaining, Alex Mahapa, told me that police members were hotly debating whether officers’ orders to fire on strikers were legal orders (strangely, while soldiers have a unique code of conduct allowing them to disobey illegal orders, there is no police corollary). The strike was largely well-disciplined yet sporadic incidents of violence received extensive mainstream media play. Although it is a fundamental principle of labour never to cross a picket line, the very diversity of the striking unions created difficult conditions. For example, JR Pieterse of the conservative teachers’ SA Onderwysersunie said though all teachers’ unions were united by their experience of similar poor levels of pay and working standards, it had only decided to embark on a one-day strike while other unions voted for an indefinite strike, raising tensions between the one-day strikers and the rest and leading to intimidation. Gavin Moultrie, president of the independent Health & Other Services Personnel Trade Union of SA (Hospersa) said by June 16, the independents had become disenchanted with what they saw the abuse by Cosatu affiliates of the strike’s economic aims to push party-political agendas relating to the various factions in the ANC presidential race. Still, this would not cause the Independent Labour Caucus to break ranks, he said. Court actions started flying as labour and government tried to see who would be the first to blink: the Labour Court ordered the 120,000-strong Popcru to restrain its on-duty police members from joining the strike as threatened. But even the conservative 64,000-member SA Police Union (Sapu) warned many of its members were threatening a wildcat strike. By June 24, however, with government having dug in at 7,5%, and with the ANC’s policy conference looming, the first unions broke ranks: Fedusa affiliate Hospersa announced it would sign the deal, with president Moultrie saying he hoped to convince Popcru, Sapu, the independent Public Servants’ Association (PSA), and Cosatu affiliate the National Education Health & Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) to join Hospersa. This would give it them the bargaining council majority necessary for government to enforce the agreement. Moultrie said he felt by refusing to settle for 10%, the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) was “holding the other unions hostage”. He saw this intransigence as part of a campaign to promote Sadtu president Madisha for the ANC’s National Executive Committee in December. In part, the Fedusa capitulation was revenge for a 1997 about-face by Cosatu unions who had also capitulated at the last hour, enabling the government to unilaterally enforce its will. But in reality, all unions admitted they were at the mercy of their memberships regarding whether to move or not. Even at that late hour, it was a victory for the shop-floor – especially given that few unions had any strike funds at all, so strikers were really feeling the pinch.
THE AFTERMATH: SHOPFLOOR WINS AND LEFTIST LOSSES By July 1, the strike was over. Business Day reported the score-card as “Government 2, Unions 1,” though naturally focused on the extra R5,5-billion – actually well affordable – that had been added to the public sector wage bill. By comparison to Thatcher’s crushing showdown with the British National Union of Mineworkers, which broke the back of British labour, however, government had failed to break the power of the unions and had been confronted with an unprecedented level of working-class unity, initially backed by wide public sympathy. Although the closing days of the strike revealed bitter divisions between Cosatu and its traditional unionist rivals and public sympathy waned 3, the unions held the line for unusually long and robbed the government of an easy victory. Hopefully the pragmatic lesson learned of the power of union solidarity will not be lost. And hopefully the syndicalist lesson of shopfloor democracy won’t be easily forgotten or eroded either. The other good things that emerged from the strike were the transformation of Cosatu’s weekly labour review into Cosatu Today, hailed as the first working-class daily “newspaper” since apartheid ended, and the launch of the new progressive journal Amandla! which promises to be non-sectarian. The MACG correctly urged “all workers in South Africa to reflect deeply on the role of the South African so-called Communist Party. Communism has not failed. Rather, the SACP has failed communism. Under apartheid, the SACP taught that the workers’ struggle had two stages. The first stage was the struggle for the establishment of democracy, for the abolition of apartheid and entrenched racial oppression. “The second stage, to follow at some point after the establishment of democracy, was the struggle for socialism. To the extent that this was true, they deceived the workers (and many of their own members) by omitting to tell them that, in the second stage of the struggle, the SACP would be on the side of the capitalists! “The wretched history since 1994 of this once-proud organisation can only be understood as the penalty for its fundamental political errors. The liberation of the working class itself cannot be delegated to a political party.” And, it seems that the SACP seems doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. This was evident at the SACP’s 12th congress, held in July. While a Markinor survey in mid-June during the strike had shown 28% of South Africans and 25% of ANC supporters believed a new workers’ party should be formed to contest ANC dominance, and while some party members have started to seriously question the Alliance with the ANC, the SACP avoided making any real shifts. At its congress, party leaders neatly deferred the decision on whether to contest the 2009 elections as a self-standing party with its own platform. However, as examples too numerous to spell out show – including the Workers’ Party (PT) government in Brazil – electoralist options seldom represent true advances for the popular classes.
OPPORTUNISM IGNORES GRASSROOTS STRUGGLE Why? The SACP’s long tradition of loyalty to the ANC is a major factor. In a cutting analysis, Dale McKinley of the Anti-Privatisation Forum 4 argued that for the past 15 years, the party had “fiddled” with the issue of being junior partners in an alliance with the ANC that they will clearly never control. Their second option, was never realised: “to go back to the basics of organising and mobilising the poor and working class (which must include real, practical alliances with community organisations and social movements) based on a radical programme of demands for the redistribution of wealth …” This programme should “re-build a genuine left political and organisational power-base to contest power relations within SA society (something which is not simply reducible to elections and running as an electoral force separate from the ANC)”. Rather than tackle the crisis in the party’s ranks, and in its direction, the congress was dominated by the leadership squabbles in the ANC between supporters of President Mbeki and his disgraced rival, Jacob Zuma.5 McKinley noted how the presidential leadership battle between factions such as those supporting Mbeki or contender Jacob Zuma had come to not only dominate, but in fact supplant real politics within the SACP. “It is a sad state of affairs – a situation in which the largest and most long-standing ‘left’ party in South Africa [the SACP] is effectively held hostage to the outcomes of personal/intra-organisational and patronage battles within another party [the ANC] and, in which its own programme and politics is also effectively moulded by the same battles”. Sure, Minister Nqakula was ousted as party national chair – but not because of his politics but because he (supposedly) represented the Mbeki faction. It was telling, McKinley said, that Zuma was “neither a communist nor even socialist,” but rather an opportunist, so for Cosatu and the SACP to claim there has been a shift to the left both in the party and in the ANC is patently false. Instead, the reality is the SACP and Cosatu are confirmed in their roles as mere handmaidens, forced to kowtow to the usual old ANC dictates of strengthening the Alliance (exclusively in its favour) and thus endorsing the deferment of any true revolutionising of the country’s classist economy. Here, too, we see the results of the strike in terms of consciousness are limited. The energy and anger of the strike was carefully dissipated into thin air by certain union and SACP leaders. The result is that despite memberships of 14,000 and 1,8-million respectively, 6 the SACP and Cosatu had been “virtually nowhere” amidst the “hundreds of community protests around basic services, crackdowns by the state on these activists/communities and efforts to influence local government delivery mechanisms and politics to be more inclusive/participatory…” He explains why the SACP and Cosatu approach to the radical social movements have been so two-faced, making sweet overtures the one moment, then decrying them the next, instead of seeing them as natural allies: they wish to “organisationally control the social movements so that they are not ‘anti-ANC’ and also so that these social forces do not pose any ongoing or future threat to the ‘left’ dominance of the SACP/Cosatu and the self-annointed ‘left’ forces in the ANC/the state”. We anarchist-communists work within these social movements because they – and not state corporatist structures like community policing forums - as the SACP would have it – are true “organs of popular power”, for all their faults and inconsistencies. In doing so, we work alongside all true grassroots communists, however they describe their traditions, who genuinely support the organisational and ideological autonomy of the popular classes (workers, peasants and poor). We also encourage constructive debate and engagement with SACP members concerned at their party’s surrender of a class line in favour of the opportunistic politics of personality, and with rank-and-file Cosatu members concerned at the strangulation of the power of their class by the ANC yoke. Only a consolidation of ethical, highly politicised, forces of the productive base of society and their reserves the poor can hope to successfully challenge the exploitative status quo. That is the lesson of this year’s strike: only politically-mobilised class unity and shopfloor democracy can change the structure of the national economy in a way that puts the opportunists and the parasitic elites they serve to flight.
The 2010
World Cup, the Neo-liberal Agenda and the by Lucien van der Walt
The 2010 World Cup is part and parcel of the neo-liberal restructuring of SA capitalism. It is also, however, a major opportunity for social struggles. South Africa’s success in winning the 2010 bid for the Soccer World Cup (the biggest international sports event after the Olympics) has been widely hyped as the solution to the country’s huge social problems. In the speeches of the politicians, and the editorials of the bourgeois press, the 2010 World Cup is being presented as the great test of the country’s ability to “succeed”. News of the successful bid was greeted by celebrations in the streets – celebrations that drew in large sections of the working class. Soccer’s history as a working class sport, worldwide, accounts for some of the enthusiasm, and the fact that the Cup is going to be held in Africa also has some appeal to the nationalist sentiments that are, sadly, widespread.
HOPE AND HYPE Even those who have little interest in the game have grasped feverishly at the hope of benefiting from the billions the State machine is starting to spend on upgrading or building stadiums in the host cities and the money being earmarked for upgrading public transport. Some jobs will certainly be created, and, more recently, the State has announced that money will be injected into the run-down State health system, and that the main tourist hot-spots will be upgraded. Current estimates are R16 billion, but we should expect the figure to rise dramatically. We believe the State will probably be able to get the country “ready” for the World Cup. But does it matter?
THE TOUGH QUESTIONS While improvements in transport and health, and some job creation, can only be welcomed, the question must be posed: why is the South African State so keen to host the 2010 World Cup? Why spend billions on this once-off event, when there are so many other serious problems? The fact is that there are many powerful interests who stand to benefit. Our increasingly multi-racial ruling class – the politicians, top officials, and big business – see the 2010 Cup as a major opportunity. The ruling class believes that the 2010 project will attract investment by businesses, both local and foreign, into South Africa. Global games increasingly play a central role in marketing countries as destinations for investment. Other semi-industrial countries have used these events in exactly this way: thus, we have seen major events in Malaysia 1998, and there will be more to come in China 2008, India 2010, Ukraine/ Poland 2012... A successful event will tackle the country’s reputation for crime, low-skilled labour, and general inefficiency. In addition, the Cup will provide a focus for the State’s commitment (made in both the neo-liberal GEAR and ASGISA programmes) to improve infrastructure.
NEO-LIBERALISM (AGAIN) The focus on marketing the country, and on infrastructure, is in line with the State’s commitment to a neo-liberal restructuring of the capitalist economy. Since the late 1970s, first the apartheid government, and, in the 1990s, the post-apartheid regime, has been set on liberalising the economy. While many left commentators, like Ravi Naidoo, have helped expose GEAR’s impact on the working class (in terms of job creation and service delivery, particularly), it is also important to understand that neo-liberal restructuring has massive benefits for the South African ruling class. Not only has the economy grown at over 4 % over the last few years (its best sustained performance since the early 1970s), but unions have been hammered, labour flexibility has increased dramatically, cost recovery policies have cut municipal costs, and taxes on high income earners have been slashed.
CLASS POLICIES It is quite wrong, then, to suggest that GEAR has “failed”, as if the policy can be judged in class-neutral terms: GEAR has “succeeded” for the ruling class precisely because it has “failed” the working class. In a class society, the “success” of a policy can only be judged relative to particular class interests and agendas. Now, one consequence of economic liberalisation has been the removal of various controls over capital investments (like prescribed assets policies) and movements (with a continually rising ceiling on capital outflows). The State is focussed more on attracting, rather than controlling, direct investments, which is where deregulation, marketing and infrastructure come into play as major instruments for growth; the State is, equally, increasingly vulnerable to the perceptions of private and parastatal investors, with local capital itself “globalising” into foreign markets. In line with neo-liberal theory (expressed in its crudest, optimistic form in GEAR), implementing neo-liberal policies means more local and foreign investment, which means more economic growth, and then more jobs, which redistribute opportunities to the working class. For GEAR, the main areas of investment would be manufacturing (with a focus on exports), and services. Essentially, the theory goes, if the rich get richer, the poor supposedly also have a chance to get richer. Hiding behind this cosy rhetoric of cross-class compromise and all-round friendliness, however, is the brute reality of capitalism generally (class inequality) and neo-liberalism particularly (restoring profitability through class war from above).
WINNERS, LOSERS The class realities of the situation are easily seen in the 2010 initiatives. The State spending is mainly aimed at promoting opportunities for profit: lucrative contracts in infrastructure, a focus on upgrading health and transport in wealthier areas, while hiding the poor, a focus on stadiums rather than houses, schools and township upgrading. This is intended to attract investors, drop the cost of doing business, and making sure that major economic decisions remain out of the hands of the working class. Money spent on 2010 is money taken from other areas. In 2005, the government allocated R48 billion to health, covering the whole government health system, including 400 hospitals. Of this, about R1,5 billion goes to upgrading hospitals every year: in other words, government will spend around 6 billion on repairing hospitals by 2010, which is less than half of the money government plans to spend on soccer stadiums. Yet hospitals are obviously more important than soccer stadiums. If the full 2010 budget went to hospitals, four times more repairs could be done. This tells you something about the priorities of the ruling class, and how low down on the list public health is compared to the neo-liberal project. Where is the R16 billion going to be raised? First, from central government allocations (raised from tax on companies, salaries, VAT, and “sin taxes” on goods like cigarettes) and, second, from local governments (which means from various local rates and service charges, including charges for property, electricity etc.). The flip-side of the coin will, of course, be increasing service charges and tougher cut-off policies for municipal services. Social movements: beware!
GAU-TRAINS Talk about improving public transport must surely be welcomed. Around half of the millions who use the trains are from the lower ranks of the working class, earning under R1600 a month and unable to afford the taxis. However, the commuter railway system has not only been frozen for the last thirty years, but was actively run down in the 1990s; the trains cover only some areas, are in an appalling state, and around 20,000 jobs have been cut. Spoornet and Metrorail, part of the giant State company Transnet, have focussed on cutting costs to such an extent that even powerful capitalist sectors, like the big farmers, have been seriously frustrated by the lack of capacity and unreliability of the railway grid. The focus on 2010, and ASGISA’s revival of GEAR’s promise to improve infrastructure, suggest a serious change in direction. Outright sell-offs seem to be off the agenda: the neo-liberal extremism that suggested that the railway grid be fully privatised has been replaced by a more pragmatic neo-liberalist view that recognises that major infrastructure is (as economist Milton Friedman puts it) a State responsibility - and absolutely vital to a successful export drive in agriculture and manufacturing. The same applies to ESKOM, the other giant parastatal, which has gained an unpleasant reputation for unreliability over the last few years (to which it has responded, predictably, not by improving services but by raising costs and running TV adverts telling people not to run major appliances- like TVs!). The State is not planning to change its mind about continuing the commercialisation of Spoornet and ESKOM, and still has plans to partly privatise both entities. The optimistic view - championed by COSATU figures like Karl von Holdt and Randall Howard - that union “engagement” with the State had led to abandoning the neo-liberal project in transportation - has no real basis. Nor is there any reason to start announcing the death of local neo-liberalism. But even the dullest bureaucrat supports taxi recapitalisation,, and upgrading and even extending the railways, as with the new Gautrain project, which runs parallel to the 2010 initiatives. The Gautrain shows clearly the class character of the new course. A multi-billion rand high speed line between suburbs in Pretoria and Johannesburg, the self-proclaimed “middle-class express” will charge up to R60 a ticket, and is primarily designed to alleviate highway congestion by encouraging middle- and ruling class car owners to take the luxury train instead. It is not about helping out the working class. The 2010 initiatives will create some jobs. The big construction contracts, in particular, will need large numbers of workers, and there is nothing this country needs more than jobs. But how long will the jobs last? Building a soccer stadium is not a lifetime job; at most, it is work for a few years. What will happen after 2010? We don’t know what will happen in future, but the terrible record of South African capitalism in creating jobs provides reasons to be concerned.
GRAVY TRAINS Of course, there are many other benefits from the 2010 project for the ruling class. The politicians and the sports administrators will get a chance to make money, through various business partnerships and corrupt deals. As the arms deal scandal and the Gautrain have already shown, no major State project these days works without kickbacks, crooked tenders and contracts for pals. Furthermore, worldwide, soccer is becoming increasingly controlled by major capitalists, and run on capitalist lines. The big English teams, like Manchester United and Arsenal, came from the big industrial towns, and started as workers’ clubs: today millions are made from their “official” merchandise, while the police diligently arrest sellers and makers of so-called “pirate” merchandise. There is a fortune to be made from owning soccer stadiums, selling tickets, TV rights and merchandise. In South Africa, this raises millions for people like Irvin Khoza (owner of Orlando Pirates), Kaizer Motaung and Primedia (owners of Kaizer Chiefs), and Patrice Motsepe (owner of Mamelodi Sundowns). Finally, an event like the World Cup has the great benefit (for the ruling class) of promoting backward ideas like nationalism. The teams are organised by countries, and this provides a way for the ruling class to promote divisions between the working class around the world: a German worker is encouraged to support the German team, and think about being German, rather than about being a worker, and so on.
SOCIAL STRUGGLES The 2010 World Cup project is a ruling class project, but also provides an opportunity to mobilise social struggles, particularly as the State will be uncomfortable with bad publicity under the global spotlight. There are opportunities to mobilise not just for small things (like affordable tickets), but for more jobs, better transport, unionised well-paid jobs in the 2010 initiatives, and for resisting the commercialisation and privatisation of soccer. There is a serious danger that the process will be associated with major evictions of squatters and hawkers, as well as rising taxes and service charges. If the government wants to spend R16 billion, let them raise the money by taxing the ruling class. Life doesn’t end in 2010: what we need are sustainable jobs, pro-poor development and strong working class movements. This must be independent of the 2010 programme – reports that COSATU’s investment arm may become involved in stadium building should raise alarm bells. 2010 is a chance to highlight popular issues, but this can only succeed if we avoid the poison of nationalism, with its Proudly SA, lets-hold-hands-with-the-bosses propaganda. We need a different type of society, and this needs struggles, equality, internationalism, and working class struggle. Human dignity and rights are not possible under the current social order.
This is an edited version of a talk given at the 5 May 2007 Red and Black Forum, held at Khanya College, Johannesburg.
Students and Staff Protest University Privatisation by Lucien van der Walt
Announcements of steep fee increases and the planned privatisation of student accommodation sparked major protests at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in October. The fee hikes are the latest consequence of the university’s neo-liberal “Wits 2001 plan”, which has cut spending, outsourced workers and promoted the commercialisation of research and teaching.
REVOLT ON CAMPUS Following a series of late night mobilisations in the university residences, hundreds of Wits students - mainly African and working class - marched on the morning of Wednesday 3 October to make clear their opposition to the management’s decisions. Frustrated with official university forums that prevent student voices from making a real impact on policy, students disrupted lectures and an ever-growing crowd surged around campus. By midday, tensions were mounting, and Wits management launched a media offensive against the students - and called on lecturers to report protestors. Lecture disruptions are forbidden under the university’s Code of Conduct, but have long been a standard part of the student protest repertoire: class and race divisions amongst students mean that the African working class minority is not easily able to shut down campus activities by other means. The protests continued the following day, and progressive academics, grouped in the Concerned Staff Committee, as well as a number of outsourced Wits workers, publicly joined the students’ protests. That afternoon, riot police clashed with students, several of whom were arrested. Members of the Concerned Staff Committee were also called into a meeting with top management. The campaign continued over the next few days. Despite a hostile media, which routinely presented the protestors as vandals and troublemakers, the message was loud and clear: no to fees hikes, not to privatisation, open the bourgeois university! The academics’ support was warmly received by the crowds, now around 500 strong, and helped underline that the problems faced by the students were part of a larger set of problems in higher education as a whole. What is happening at Wits is part of the post-apartheid ANC government’s neo-liberal agenda, which is backed by the local ruling class and is reinforced by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the World Trade Organisation treaty that promotes the commercialisation of social services; the ANC government is a GATS signatory. In the higher education sector, this has involved a combination of funding cuts to public universities like Wits, and pressure to turn the universities into profit-driven “market universities”. Wits, for example, saw its State funding fall by a third in the late 1990s; in the mid-1980s, around 80% of university money came from the State; today the figure is around 39%. The result is fees hikes, declining financial aid for poor students, and a drive to cut costs and promote commercial activities.
WITS 2001 Back in 1999, Wits adopted the Wits 2001 programme as its manifesto for neo-liberal restructuring. The immediate consequence was the dismissal of over 600 workers - a quarter of Wits’ total staff- and the outsourcing of their jobs in catering, cleaning, grounds and maintenance in 2000. The struggle to prevent this outsourcing - covered in Zabalaza, and widely in the anarchist press elsewhere - was a key moment in the rise of new social movements like the Anti-Privatisation Forum, which have come out directly against the ANC’s programme. The outsourcing was accompanied by a series of mergers and rationalisation of academic functions, and then the establishment of a special unit, Wits Enterprise, tasked with commercialising university activities. As profit and power are so closely intertwined, it is also not surprising that the restructuring was accompanied by a rapid centralisation of management power as well. The conflicts this year - centred around a proposed 25% increase in upfront fees, a 500% increase in admin fees for students coming from outside southern Africa, an average increase of student fees by 8%, and the planned privatisation of two student residences - must, then, be seen as part of a longer struggle around the nature of higher education - and the future of Wits. The defeat in 2000 quietened the campus. The silence was broken in 2004 by student riots, a strike by outsourced workers in 2006, and now, more struggles. Anarchists have been involved in these university struggles for many years, as militants, as organisers, as speakers, as writers.
THINK GLOBALLY As we write, it seems the struggle is ending in premature negotiations that will perhaps win some important concessions for students. However, a sustained struggle can only take place if links are made between the different campuses, between the students and the staff (including academics, but also support and administration workers), and if the weak and divided trade unionism in the sector is overcome. This requires a unifying programme including demands for access to higher education for the working class, the reversal of outsourcing, the end to privatisation and commercialisation, and a challenge to State policy. As struggles without clear ideas are often struggles aborted too soon, it is important to recognise that the struggle in higher education is part of the struggle against the ANC’s neoliberal policies, and the ruling class which lies behind them. Many of the student protestors were, in fact, members of ANC-linked youth groups, and the role of the ANC was consequently obscured. But we are confident that the links are being drawn between neoliberal policies at Wits, at the universities more generally, the massive layoffs in the country, the community struggles against cut-offs and evictions, and so, too the ANC, the State and capitalism. The struggle continues: protests against fee hikes, partly inspired by the Wits protests, have begun at the University of Johannesburg. And these are, in turn, part of the global resistance struggles in universities and elsewhere, struggles that are against the GATS, neoliberalism, and capitalism.
This article was originally written for Le Combat Syndicaliste and will also be run in an upcoming issue of that paper.
A Short History and Introduction to the
There is much debate over the exact date of the organisations formation. According to Rudolph Rocker (once treasurer of the Anarchist Red Cross London) the Anarchist Red Cross was established between 1900 and 1905. However, Harry Weinstein (one of the two founders of the organisation in Russia) insists it was founded after his arrest in 1906, when he and a group of Anarchists supplied clothing to prisoners in exile in Siberia. During the Russian civil war (1918-1920) the organisation changed its name to Anarchist Black Cross (Black being the colour of Anarchism) as not to be confused with the Red Cross relief program. In 1967 the ABC Britain was re-formed by Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer. The decade saw the formation of ABC groups all around the world especially in Europe and North America. In 1995 chapters in the US merged into a federation - the Anarchist Black Cross Federation. In 2001 the ABC Network, an international network of anarchist anti-prison groups, started. This network includes the Emergency Response Network, a network designed to spread news of new political prisoners and repression actions from around the world, in order to get a quick response and aid from global activists. In August 2002 a group of Johannesburg based Anarchists started the ABC (SA) as a response to the escalating number of class struggle activists who had been illegally arrested (some 72 from the Landless People’s Movement, 98 from the Soldiers Forum etc…) which, unfortunately phased out in 2004. As a result of an increase in activist arrests and repression actions, brought about by the dramatic increase of protests and other demonstrations in the country, we are pleased to announce that the Anarchist Black Cross Southern Africa has been re-formed.
OUR AIMS The ABC SA aims to be a valuable resource for imprisoned class struggle activists. This means aiding them financially, materially as well as mentally, by providing them with reading materials, legal funds (when possible), necessities etc… Our actions will transcend only prisoner support in the form of community organising. This means engaging with communities that have been affected by the injustice system; this can be in the form of relatives or community leaders being imprisoned, “urban cleansing”, unfair discrimination by the authorities (we all know that poor communities are often unfairly targeted by the police) and eviction campaigns. Our ultimate goal is the freedom of all class struggle prisoners and the freedom of humanity itself. contact – sawcacsolidarity (A) riseup (dot) net Remember “they are in there for us so we are out here for them!”
Vigilante Farmers Want Refugee Camps on the Borderland
Under the guise of so-called humanitarianism farmers in the Limpopo province, on the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe, are calling on the South African government to establish refugee transit camps where the thousands of Zimbabwean refugees that have been flooding illegally into South Africa to escape the miserable situation in their country of origin can be “fed and inoculated and processed properly without fear”. The harsh reality, however, is that defectors will more than likely be processed back to Zimbabwe, which is something to be very afraid of. These farmers have been using “vehicles designed for game hunting to track down illegal immigrants”, making citizens arrests and then handing them over to the police for deportation. Police Chief Commission |
