Part E: THOUGHTS ON
THE CONTENT AND FORM OF A SECOND
TRANSITION
The need for a second transition over
the next fifty years
161. South
Africa is approaching the end of its second decade of freedom. During this near
20
years, we have fundamentally transformed
the political landscape of this country, and
laid the foundations for
progressively meeting basic needs. However, there is also
widespread consensus – expressed in a
variety of ways – that our society faces
fundamental challenges that inhibit
it from achieving its goal of an inclusive, non-racial
and non-sexist country, and growing
consensus that this centres around the triangle of
poverty, inequality and unemployment.
162. Furthermore,
there seems to be agreement on the symptoms as diagnosed by the NPC:
too few people work; the standard of
education of most black learners is of poor quality;
infrastructure is poorly located,
under-maintained and insufficient to foster higher
growth; spatial patterns exclude the
poor from the fruits of development; the economy
is overly and unsustainably
resource-intensive; a widespread disease burden is
compounded by a failing health
system; public services are uneven and often of poor
quality; corruption is widespread;
and South Africa remains a divided society.
163. There is
much less consensus about the causes of this situation (explored in Part B) or
on what to do about this situation.
Approaches range from a plea for the state to ensure
less regulation (and taxes), to a
belief that if only we can implement our policies better,
we will address these challenges.
164. However,
based on our understanding of the achievements of the last eighteen years,
the balance of forces and the
challenges we face, we believe that the time has come to
build a new national consensus for
the next 50 years. This consensus should lay the
basis for a second transition of
social and economic transformation, building on the
foundation of our political
transformation.
165. Why a
second transition and not simply a continuation of what went before? In the
first
instance, our first transition was
characterised by a framework and a national consensus
that may have been appropriate for a
political transition, but has proven inadequate and
even inappropriate for a social and
economic transformation phase.
166. Secondly,
the balance of forces at the time of our transition in the words of Gelb (13)
“ruled out some options and weighted
choices towards others”, thus the “negotiated
nature of the transition meant that
capital reform would necessarily be an incremental,
market-focused process, engaging with
the current owners of capital”. This meant an
implicit bargain, involving the ANC
committing to macroeconomic stability and
international openness, and white
business agreeing to participate in capital reform to
modify the racial structure of asset
ownership and to invest in national priorities. Thus
the 2000 NGC document already then
asked the question “should we be satisfied with
merely maintaining and tinkering with
the so-called ‘modern sophisticated economy and
infrastructure that the white man
bequeathed us’ or should we search for bold and
creative solutions?” There is
agreement that although we have liberalised and integrated
into the global economy and we have
macro economic stability, the structure of the
apartheid colonial economy has
remained the same, and that in this form, it is incapable
of fostering
either higher or inclusive growth.
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