PART A. THE
LAST 18 YEARS: THE FIRST PHASE OF THE
TRANSITION
Democratising
the state and society
13. There is little contest that the main success of the first
15 years of the new South Africa
was our
peaceful and thoroughgoing political and democratic transformation. Although
this took
place in a global context of democratic transitions, there are elements of our
transition
that are specific (if not unique) to South Africa. These include:
14. Firstly, the nature of our political settlement as
homegrown, based on the realisation by
all parties
to the over 300 year-long conflict that not only have we reached a stalemate,
but that
continuing with the status quo could lead South Africa into an irreversible
downward
spiral. Thus, while the global situation impacted on our negotiations, the
decisions on
the form, content and compromises of the negotiated settlement were
taken by
South Africans. Our approach to the negotiations process thus reflected the
long-held
commitment within both the national liberation forces and the constituency of
the National
Party to our independence and self-determination as an emergent nation.
15. Secondly, because the theory of Colonialism of a Special Type
laid the foundation for a
South Africa
that belongs to all, our negotiations was an inclusive process. It recognised
that our
emergent nation is a product of many streams of history and culture and we
must build on
and celebrate this diversity. It also included a commitment to
reconciliation,
based on acknowledgement of an historical injustice. Although we
continue to
debate the efficacy of the Truth and Reconciliation process and the slow
process of
nation-building, it weaved into the DNA of the new South Africa the African
humanism of ubuntu and thus laid the foundation for a
nation and society based on
solidarity,
accountability, tolerance and caring.
16. Thirdly, few societies in such a short space of time have
experienced the depth and
breadth of policy,
legal and institutional transformation. This process is symbolised by
the millions
of black and white, young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban South
Africans
queuing to vote on 27 April 1994 and is embedded in the adoption of our
Constitution in
1996. This tour de force of our political
transition saw the new democratic
parliament
during its first five years adopting an average of one hundred policies and
laws per
year; the integration of numerous racially-based departments of education,
health,
welfare, etc into single public systems that serve all; the establishment of
new
provinces and
forms of local government; the integration of old foes from the SADF, the
SAP and the
intelligence services with the liberation armies into security forces sworn to
serve and
protect all; the establishment of a Constitutional Court and other Chapter 9
institutions;
and the moulding of a single public service that began to address the social
backlog in
housing, access to electricity, communications, water, education, social
security and
health, and other basic services.
17. The Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, also
provided the parameters of our
evolving
democratic polity: regular elections in a multi-party democracy; protection
against
discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, creed and sexual
orientation;
the commitment to gender equality; freedom of association, movement,
speech and
the media; protection of workers rights, and the rights of children and the
elderly;
equality before the law and rules for the relationship between the state and
the
citizenry.
These freedoms are underpinned by our approached to nation-formation that
is based on
unity in diversity, and the recognition that such unity requires respect for,
and tolerance
of, diversity, for freedom of association, as well as freedom after
association.
18. The Constitution unequivocally proclaimed our nation’s
commitment to dealing with the
legacy of
apartheid, colonialism and patriarchy, towards non-racialism and non-sexism
and promoting
unity in diversity, and to the inseparability of political, social-economic
and
environmental rights. Thus, the Strategy and
Tactics 2007 contended that “the
Constitution
forms a critical part of the nation's collective resource in the promotion of
humane
values.”
Discussion questions
• How do our democratic institutions (local government,
legislatures, the criminal
justice system) help citizens – rich and poor, urban
and rural – to exercise their
democratic rights?
• How should the ANC work with the people to make more
effective use of these
institutions?
Meeting basic
needs
19. Our political transition was never only about freedom from
political bondage. From the
onset,
democratisation was inextricably linked with freedom from socio-economic
bondage,
captured in the motto: a better life for all.
20. The policy debates of the early 1990s – as we were
preparing to govern – focused on
this link,
and in particular the post-apartheid developmental path. This was addressed in
the ANC Constitutional Guidelines (1987), Ready to Govern (1992), and articulated more
clearly in
the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP,
1994) as the key
pillars of a
South African post-apartheid developmental path: democratising the state
and society;
meeting basic needs; developing our human resources; and transforming
the economy.
21. The RDP reflected broader global approaches on the right to
development, defined by
the 1986 UN
Declaration on the Right to Development:
“…development is a comprehensive economic, social,
cultural and political process, which
aims at the constant improvement of the well-being of
the entire population and of all
individuals on the basis of their active, free and
meaningful participation in the
development and in the fair distribution of benefits
of results resulting therefrom.”
22. The vision that united South Africans during the early days
of our political transition was
thus not only
about political freedom and reconciliation, but also about the commitment
that these
should be used as a beachhead to build a better life for all, as expressed in
the RDP.
23. Given these imperatives, the challenges that faced South
Africa at the start of the
transition in
1994 were enormous: crafting a new political dispensation and polity;
ensuring
political stability, reconciliation, deracialisation, gender equality and
nationbuilding;
and tackling
the all-pervasive socio-economic legacy of apartheid-colonialism
and
patriarchy. Furthermore, this took place in a global context, which was “also
more
uncertain and
potentially unfavourable for democratic transition than it was, for
example, for
the countries of Southern Europe during the 1970s under Cold War
conditions”
(1).
24. Notwithstanding these challenges, we also made progress
with meeting basic needs. The National Planning Commission (NPC) in its
Diagnostic Overview (2010:6) articulated this
progress
thus: “Since 1994, significant progress has been
made...(access) to primary and
secondary education has been expanded to include
almost all of the age cohort.
A reception year has been introduced. Ten million
people have been
accommodated in formal housing. Primary healthcare has
been expanded. Access
to electricity and water has been significantly
expanded. Enrolment in higher
education has almost doubled and, in terms of its race
and gender
demographics, is more representative of our nation.”
25. A recent SA Institute of Race Relations report (2) noted
that between 1996 and 2010 an
average of 1
019 formal houses were built per day (mainly by government, but also by
the private
sector), compared with an average of 79 shacks per day during the same
period, with
similar improvements in access to sanitation and water and electricity.
26. The achievement of the democratic state in forging unified
systems of public policy and
institutions,
with a pro-poor slant reflected in the social wage and meeting basic needs,
therefore
signaled a decisive break from separate development based on race, and the
deliberate
underdevelopment of the majority.
Discussion questions
• In the region and municipality, what basic needs are
being addressed and how
have these impacted on our communities and people?
• What are the weaknesses and strengths of our systems
to deliver basic services
and what must the ANC do to improve these?
Resilient
fault lines
27. And yet, despite the progress made, and despite our status
as an upper middle income
country by
virtue of our GDP per capita, extreme income inequality (reflected in our Gini
coefficient),
deep poverty, and lack of access to opportunities persist, still reflecting the
old fissures
of race, gender, class and geography. The majority of low-income
households
are still black, female-headed and rural. Fault lines in our society also took
on new forms,
for example the growth of inequality within the black community, deep
poverty in
cities due to inward migration in search of work, and lack of opportunities
based on
class. Women continue to earn and own less than men, even though
differences
in years of education and labour market participation rates have narrowed.
28. Only a decade after our transition to democracy, in the Towards a Ten Year Review in
2003, we
already warned then that key fault lines, if left unattended, will reverse the
achievements
referred to above. Seven years later, the NPC’s Diagnostic Overview
(2010:7)
repeats this very same message:
“Despite these successes, our conclusion is that on a
business-as-usual basis, we
are likely to fall short in meeting our objectives of
a prosperous, united, nonracial
and democratic South Africa with opportunity for
everyone, irrespective of
race or gender.”
29. The 2012 January 8th statement
(p. 31) confirms this conclusion, noting:
“The process of developing a sense of common
nationhood, or a common vision
of the future, has been slow. We continue to have
different and differing
perspectives on the processes unfolding in our
country. Despite the progress we
have made, there remain deep fault lines in our
society that continue to
undermine our vision of a united, non-racial and
non-sexist South Africa. These
fault lines include the persistence of poverty (and
unemployment), old and new
forms of inequality and the persistence of patriarchal
relations that continue to
marginalise women.”
30. In discussing the fault lines, there is increasing
reference to the triangle of poverty,
unemployment and inequality, their historical
and contemporary foundations in
apartheid-colonialism,
capitalism and patriarchy and in the policy choices we made as
constituting
the core of the challenges we face. The 2012 January 8th Statement (p.37)
refers to
these as the key issues around which we must boldly unite and rally the nation,
with “both
the organs of the state and the ANC to pay single-minded and undivided
attention”
towards overcoming poverty, unemployment and inequality.
31. We have spent considerable efforts in describing each of
these three challenges and
analysing the
underlying root causes, their present-day manifestations, their intersection
with race,
gender and class, and the linkages across these three issues. And although
there is
great merit in this, we are approaching the moment where in order to build
genuine
consensus on how to deal with these three, we have to reflect on our
development
trajectory and our socio-economic system as a whole.
32. This growing need for reflection on our developmental
trajectory is based on the
acknowledgement
of the far-reaching achievements of political liberation and
democratisation,
and concern about the lack of commensurate progress in liberation
from
socio-economic bondage. This lack of progress and the persistence of these
fault
lines have
the potential to undermine and soon reverse the progress made.
Differences
on tactical approaches of the NDR
33. There is a range of views as to why our developmental
trajectory to date has been
unable to
decisively deal with unemployment, poverty and inequality. This section will
focus on some
of these views and the ANC responses to those.
34. From within the Alliance, it has been argued that up to the
early 1990s the NDR concept
captured
far-reaching social transformation, which went beyond the formal election of
a democratic
government, the abolition of racist legislation, and the creation of
opportunities
for black people to enter existing economic power structures. This
radical
conception of the NDR was counterposed to neo-colonial solutions, which led
to aborted
national revolutions in other countries.
35. Instead what has happened, the argument goes, is that under
the guise of an
interpretation
of the balance of forces (such as changed international conditions post-
1989), the
view that a negotiated transition only allowed for certain changes, and the
argument that
a close relationship to existing capital was required to finance the
transition,
the ANC has instead opted for a limited NDR, which accommodates (and
even
promotes) existing economic power relations.
36. These differences thus manifested themselves in rocky
relations in the Alliance, with
disagreements
on strategic and tactical matters of socio-economic transformation –
the GEAR
policy, restructuring of state assets, rightsizing of the public sector, the
role
of public
sector unions, our approach to HIV/AIDS and ongoing battles on macroeconomic
policy –
culminating in questioning the ANC’s position as the political centre of the
NDR.
37. The ANC’s response to these critiques has been as follows.
Firstly, we suggest that the
differences
in the Alliance are about tactical approaches, rather than differences about
the strategic
objectives of the NDR. These tactical differences in the Alliance are
because of an
actual or perceived gap between our theory of transition and the
‘devilish’
detail of policy formulation and implementation; the interpretation of a
tactical
detour as constituting a strategic shift and about differing assessment of
either
the balance
of forces or of the timeframes in which various tasks of the NDR should
be completed
(3).
38.
Furthermore, those perceptions about the balance of forces also did not take in
consideration
that we faced a serious crisis at the start of the transition:
“The year 1996 was indeed a difficult year for the
fledgling democratic government – the
currency was repeatedly mauled, rising debt service
costs threatened to crowd out
expenditure on public services, the economy appeared
contained in a rut by a balance-ofpayments constraint, and politically the
National Party abandoned the Government of
National Unity…These circumstances demanded decisive
action…That GEAR called for a
period of fiscal consolidation is not in dispute…From
1996 to 2000, spending on public
services fell by 4.5% in real terms.”
39. Thus we explained that GEAR was a tactical detour
necessitated by objective conditions
(high public
debt and deficit, bloated public service, low growth, etc) and subjective
conditions
(distrust by private capital of the new dispensation). We explained that, in
fact, after
2000, because of fiscal space eked out by our stabilisation policies, we
implemented
more expansionary fiscal policies, and experienced a period of sustained
economic and
employment growth. We therefore changed gear and shifted focus from
liberalisation
policies to addressing micro economic matters to facilitate inclusive
growth.
40. A further explanation, contained in the 2002 Preface to the Strategy and Tactics noted
that although
the Strategy and Tactics 1997 correctly argued that national liberation
should be
accompanied by programmes to improve the quality of life of especially the
poor, it did
not “adequately elaborate on how these processes relate to economic
power
relations prevalent in our society”. The 2002 Preface therefore reintroduced
the
notion that a
critical element of national emancipation should be the elimination of
apartheid
property relations requiring:
“… the de-racialisation of ownership and control of
wealth, including land; equity and
affirmative action in the provision of skills and
access to positions of management;
consolidation and pooling of the power of state
capital and institutional and social capital
in the hands of the motive forces; encouragement of
the cooperative sector; as well as
systematic and intelligent ways of working in
partnership with private capital in a
relationship that will be defined by both unity and
struggle, cooperative engagement and
contestation on fundamental issues.
“It requires the elimination of the legacy of
apartheid super-exploitation and inequality,
and the redistribution of wealth and income to benefit
society as a whole, especially the
poor.
“This is a continuing struggle which, as a matter of
historical necessity, will loom ever
larger as we proceed along the path of fundamental
change. Because property relations
are at the core of all social systems, the tensions
that decisive application to this
objective will generate will require dexterity in tact
and firmness to principle.”
41. Our response, also in the 2002 Preface, further focused on
the ideological struggle and
the need for
the ANC to position itself in relation ‘to modern expressions of class and
sectoral
interests’, in particular the principal ideological currents in this era of
globalisation:
neo-liberalism and modern ultra-leftism. This came immediately after
the attack on
the South African ultra-left tendency – outside and inside the Alliance –
in the NWC Briefing notes of 2001. The 2002 Preface
distanced the ANC from both
neo-liberalism
and modern ultra-leftism, and proclaimed:
“The ANC, as the leader of the national democratic
struggle, is a disciplined force of
the left, organised to conduct consistent struggle in
pursuit of the interests of the poor.”
(Emphasis added)
42. And yet,
or perhaps therefore
“…contemporary South Africa is often held up as a
model of effective capitalism:
corporate profits are high; the banks are overflowing
with money; returns to individual
capitalists, in the form of salaries, bonuses and
share options, are exceptional; there is a
massive growth of a … black middle class. On the other
side of the class divide, the work
force has grown demonstrably over the last decade and
there is a huge reserve army of
labour to feed industry and commerce.” (4)
Discussion questions
• Is this criticism from within the Alliance about our
approach to the NDR
correct? What about our responses?
• What does this mean for our development path going forward?
The challenge
of our development path
Apart from
the above, there are other critiques of our development trajectory:
43. The deracialisation and extension of basic services to all
has seen the near tripling of the
numbers of
people using public services, in the context of huge social infrastructure
backlogs from
the past. The RDP therefore envisaged a massive ‘new deal’ type of
approach
towards meeting the social (and to a lesser extent economic) infrastructure
backlogs.
However, our stabilisation programme meant that despite the massive
achievements,
in the context of fiscal pressures, continued high unemployment and
poverty,
rapid urbanisation and the unbundling of households, South Africa has in
effect missed
“a generation of capital investment in roads, rail, ports, electricity, water
sanitation,
public transport and housing” NDP (2011:13).
44. In education, for example, the NPC noted that the quality
of physical assets and
infrastructure
at schools remains ‘highly unequal’ – with 5 000 schools without
electricity
and 1 500 without on-site toilets. With about R41 billion required to meet
the current
demand for education infrastructure (and presumably maintenance as
well) in
KwaZulu Natal and with the current annual budget of the province standing at
R2 billion a
year, it will take KwaZulu Natal at least the next two decades (and a
second cohort
of post-apartheid learners) to catch up. In the Eastern Cape over 90%
of schools do
not have functional libraries.
45. In addition to meeting backlogs, we have also committed in
a number of policy areas to
universal
access to certain services. Universal access however does not always mean
that only the
state provides, but can also mean, for example in the case of access to
communications
technology, that the state plays a regulating and directing role. In
other
circumstances, it may mean building social consensus with the private sector,
as
in the case
of access to finance in the so-called housing gap market. In yet other
instances,
the state plays a consciously redistributive role, as in the case of access to
basic health
care through the National Health Insurance.
46. We are also experiencing a difficulty in finding the
correct balance and sequencing
between
‘developmentalism’ and ‘welfarism’. On the one hand, we rejected the
universal
basic income grant in 2002 as unaffordable and likely to deter foreign
investors,
and yet in 2011 nearly 15 million South Africans received means-related
grants, a
figure that will increase in 2012/2013 as the age of the Child Care Grant is
extended to
18 years. So we now bemoan this as creating welfare dependency,
despite the
growing evidence of the impact of these grants on poverty reduction
targets.
There has also been some suggestion that instead of this welfarist approach,
we should
have a more developmentalist approach – i.e. spending less on social
transfers and
more on job creation and education.
47. Yet another argument has been that the problem is not
money, but state capacity to
spend, with
reference to unspent budgets and poor performance of the system
despite
expenditure comparable with or higher than other developing countries. The
difficulty
with this argument is that it highlights one side of the problem. For example,
real public
expenditure on education declined for eight years between 1996 and 2004,
and started
increasing from 2004/2005. By 2007/2008, it was 20% higher in real
terms than in
1996/97. This came against the backdrop of massive expansion in both
primary and
secondary education, ‘faster than the US or Europe, and much faster and
further than
any Sub-Saharan African country’. What this meant is that at a critical
time when the
education system took in more and more students (and this is also true
for
universities) funding in real terms declined. Similarly, our expenditure on
health is
running at
11% of the budget, in line with other countries – but we have five to ten
times the
disease burden of other countries.
48. The discussion about our development trajectory for the
next three to five decades has
to respond to
these issues, in order to have an honest assessment of how we came to
this point.
Otherwise, to paraphrase Einstein, we may be solving problems over the
next decades
by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
49. As we engage in this assessment, we have to also consider
the impact of the 52nd
National
Conference on these issues, in particular how the Strategy and Tactics
adopted at
Polokwane responded to the question of our developmental path and the
nature of the
society we seek to construct.
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