Re: [A-List] Repression (was Misapplied Idealism)

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Yes, much still needs to change in Myanmar and in China and everywhere
> else to move closer toward socialist ideals, but it all needs to happen by
> internal struggle, not dictation from Washington, and certainly not from
> Civil Society snake oil nonsense, which is the equivalence of preaching
> the importance of proper dress code for dinner when the kitchen is empty
> and the children are starving.

Ah, but I think your clever metaphor refers to civilised society. Many of us
will continue promoting uncivil society, especially in sites like China
where repression has been so fierce. Henry, by providing such *persistent*
distortions of reality, you seem to be running scared. I guess I would be
too, if 'dangerous' popular revolts against your homeland's corrupt
bureaucratic-capitalist elites - on the vast scale reported below - have to
be denied, repressed or delegitimised. I have an article today in SA's main
quality newspaper that makes some of these same points. At 5800
police-recorded protests (13% of which were illegal) last year in a country
of 44 million people, our official rate is quite a bit ahead of China's
(87,000 for 1.3 billion), but I suspect we're not getting all of the reports
from the Chinese sites of especially class struggle in the factories.

***

Reuters.com

China to 'strike hard' against rising unrest

Thu Jan 26, 2006

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is preparing to "strike hard" against rising
public unrest, a senior police official said according to state media on
Thursday, highlighting the government's fears for stability even as the
economy booms.

An unnamed top official of China's Ministry of Public Security told a
Wednesday meeting that China faced a long period of dangerous social
discontent, Xinhua news agency said.

"For a considerable time to come, our country will be in a period of
pronounced contradictions within the people, high crime rates, and complex
struggle against enemies," the official said.

"Contradictions within the people" is a Maoist term used to describe
domestic social unrest.

China was suffering many "major sudden incidents" -- a term Chinese
officials use to cover riots, protests and accidents -- the official added.

"Unpredictable factors affecting social stability will increase, and trends
in protecting social stability don't allow for optimism," said the official.

He also said that "terrorism is a real threat against our country" and urged
officers to guard against attacks.

China says that its biggest terrorist threat comes from Xinjiang, the far
western region dominated by the largely Muslim Uighur people who share a
language and culture similar to Central Asian countries.

Uighur groups have campaigned for independence from China, and a few have
had links with Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Last week, China's Ministry of Public Security put the total number of "mass
incidents" -- riots, demonstrations and smaller protests -- at a total
87,000 last year, up 6.6 percent from 2004.

The latest unusually grim police diagnosis of China's social strains comes
less than a week after Premier Wen Jiabao was reported as warning that
corrupt land seizures in the countryside were stoking protests and riots.

"Some locales are unlawfully occupying farmers' land and not offering
reasonable economic compensation and arrangements for livelihoods, and this
is sparking mass incidents in the countryside," Wen said in a speech
published on January 20.

Wen said the continued "reckless occupation" of farmland threatened "the
stability of the countryside and whole economy and society." He promised
stricter land controls and improvements to farmers' rights and income.

HARSH RESPONSE

But the police official promised a harsher and more traditional remedy.

Summoning harsh rhetoric that has languished in recent years while the
government promoted "rule of law," the official promised to "strike hard
against all sorts of terrorist activities and resolutely protect state
security and social stability."

During the 1980s and 1990s, regular "strike hard" campaigns were used to
fight crime and threats to order by mobilizing police and courts to catch
and quickly try and sentence many thousands of citizens.

In recent years, legal reformers have criticized such campaigns as contrary
to China's official embrace of rule of law and human rights.

But on Thursday, a meeting of law and order officials announced a new
campaign against the "sabotage activities of cult organizations," Xinhua
said in a separate report.

China calls the Falun Gong, a spiritual sect banned in 1999, a "cult" that
threatens the government.

The meeting also called on officials to "strictly prevent destructive
activities by terrorist forces and domestic and foreign hostile forces and
elements," the report said.

Xinjiang authorities arrested more than 18,000 people there for crime,
including national security offences, the region's official newspaper said
last week.


***

Sunday Independent, 29 January 2006
By Patrick Bond

The local government election campaigning is revealing deeper and more
durable causes of social struggle than mere party-political bickering.



The ANC will win the vast majority of seats, no doubt. An ANC commitment
that half of its new councillors will be women is an astonishing show of
progress - but only if we ignore the actions of these politicians.



Last time around, in 2000, ANC placards promised a free lifeline supply of
basic municipal services. Low-income people were offered patronage plus good
public policy.



They got neither. Since then, South Africa has been rocked by strife over
appalling water, sanitation, electricity and housing supplies in townships
and shack settlements. The recent Mabopane uprising in protest over poor
service delivery, which led to 11 arrests, was only one of many, with the
South African National Civic Organisation, an ANC ally, vowing more rioting
until there is delivery.



Charles Nqakula, the minister of safety and security, recorded 5 800
citizens' protests last year. From sustained protests arise activist
networks, including the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Johannesburg, the
Anti-Eviction Campaign in Cape Town and the Abahlali Base Mjondolo
shack-dwellers movement in Durban.



Activism today seems strongest in places such as the impoverished Foreman
Road settlement in Durban, which has a single water tap and four padlocked,
scrap-wood toilets for more than 1 000 shacks. Nearby Kennedy Road has six
non-working toilets serving 6 000 people.



These sites caught the attention of a New York Times reporter last month:
"Residents say Obed Mlaba, the mayor, promised during his last election
campaign to erect new homes on the slum site and on vacant land opposite
their hillside. Instead, however, the city proposed to move the slum
residents to rural land far off Durban's outskirts. In an interview that he
cut short, a clearly nettled Mlaba argued that the protest was the work of
agitators bent on embarrassing him before local elections."



Perhaps the highest-profile agitator has been Trevor Ngwane of the Soweto
Electricity Crisis Committee. Once head of the ANC's regional Soweto branch
and a Johannesburg city councillor, Ngwane was fired by the party in 1999
when he wrote a newspaper column against looming water commercialisation.



Not long afterwards, his council colleagues flew to Buenos Aires on a tour
of the world's most famous water-outsourcing project. The company that
financed the trip, Paris-based Suez, was chosen as Johannesburg's water
manager.



At the same time, a corruption scandal was brewing in Lesotho over Africa's
largest dam, from which Johannesburg draws water. A company was accused of
bribing a key official, Masupha Sole. After a long investigation, Sole is
now in jail and several of the companies have been prosecuted, with more in
the process.



Johannesburg's outsourcing exercise is telling, not only for these unseemly
origins but also because Suez was compelled to quit Buenos Aires last
September due to what the Argentine government claimed was underperformance.



South Africa was meant to be different, if you took seriously some uplifting
promises: the 1994 reconstruction and development programme offer of "50 to
60 litres per capita per day of clean water"; the 1996 constitution's "right
to have access to sufficient water"; the 2000 election promise that the
"government will provide all residents with a free basic amount of water,
electricity and other municipal services, so as to help the poor. Those who
use more than the basic amounts will pay for the extra they use."



This is all sound social policy, because providing a universal entitlement
means basic needs will be met regardless of inaccurate "indigence tests".
The promise also means that a higher price is charged per unit after the
free basic supply, via cross-subsidies (namely, redistribution). If the
price is high enough, high-volume users might learn conservation, and thus
prevent the construction of future Lesotho dams.



Durban pioneered the free 6 kilolitres-per-household-per-month scheme during
the late 1990s. Six years ago, Ronnie Kasrils, then the minister of water
(now intelligence), announced that the whole country should amend water
pricing to include a free lifeline: "It would save money because local
authorities would not be saddled with the problem of administering large
numbers of small accounts."



But excess emphasis on the money-saving rationale led municipal officials to
charge much higher water rates once consumers, especially poor people in
large households, were finished with the too-small free supply.



An MBA thesis at the University of KwaZulu-Natal by Reg Bailey, who
administers Durban's municipal tariffs, reviewed the impact of water price
changes from 1997-2003.



In three categories of metered customers divided by wealth, Bailey found
that the average price of water doubled over those years, from R2/kilolitre
to R4, mainly to the detriment of low- income people.



The poorest third slashed their consumption from 22 kilolitres per month to
15 kilolitres per month, a stunning decline of nearly a third. This is
deeply worrying, since water is so crucial to good hygiene, especially
during the Aids pandemic and periodic cholera and diarrhoea outbreaks. These
water restrictions are also particularly onerous for women.



Meanwhile, the middle-income group of Durban households cut back only a
small amount: from 24 kilolitres a month to 22 kilolitres. The wealthiest
third - many with swimming pools and English gardens - dropped from 35
kilolitres a month to 33 kilolitres a month. Johannesburg's record is
similar. Rich residents barely noticed the 24 percent increase in the price
of water during the late 1990s as Lesotho dams gradually affected their
bills. In contrast, those using a small amount suffered a 39 percent
increase in their water bills.



Then, in mid-2001, Johannesburg officials transformed a relatively
slow-rising tariff curve inherited from apartheid into an extremely convex
curve: as consumption rises, the price soars quickly and then levels off, so
hedonistic users have little incentive to conserve after 15 kilolitres a
month.



Thus, for low-income households, after consuming 6 kilolitres a month for
free - too small for large families with several backyard tenants - water
bills jumped sharply. For many, this left the overall cost higher than
before the free basic water promise.



Supported by the Freedom of Expression Institute, a national campaign lobby
against water privatisation is taking Johannesburg to court next month, with
lawyer Wim Trengove arguing that residents' constitutional rights are being
infringed. The campaign opposes prepaid water meters and will also request
that the Suez contract be terminated this year, instead of being extended
for another 25 years. Reaction by the state and ruling party is often
paranoid, with township activists periodically vilified as a third force' "a
conspiracy of ultra-leftists".



Last June, Kasrils was asked by a reporter whether the National Intelligence
Agency was involved, "to see if these protests have been orchestrated"' He
replied: "Well, I'd say that is its mandate. And wouldn't you, as a citizen
and a taxpayer in this country, want to see your intelligence service alert
to any eventualities?"



For Lindiwe Sisulu, the housing minister, activists must be deluded: "If
there are protests, then it is possible we are not communicating properly."



Joel Netshitenzhe, the government's man in charge of communications, wrote
in the Sunday Times just before the April 2004 presidential election that
"10 million people [were] connected to water, which cannot by any stretch of
the imagination be compared with the few households occasionally cut off".



"A few?" Mike Muller, the chief water bureaucrat at the time, acknowledged
two months later that according to a 2003 national survey, "275 000 of all
households attributed interruptions to cut-offs for non-payment"' meaning
roughly 1,5 million people lost their home water access at some point that
year.



In short, a central reason behind the sustained municipal dissent is what
might be called micro-neoliberalism: the application of the market as far
into the terrain of human rights as people will permit. But no matter the
sweet words at election time, permission to commodify water and other
services out of affordable reach is simply not being granted.



Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil
Society

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