Cry for the Beloved Country - (pt 5 of 6)

[Hinrich Kuhls <kls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 15:18:44 -0500 (EST)
From: John Saul <johnsaul@xxxxxxxx
Subject: MR article (pt 5 of 6)

[[ PT IV: STARTING FROM SCRATCH? - CONT'D]

But not the only players. Indeed, in terms of such potential as still
exists on the left in South Africa, it may be that the most immediate
question for COSATU is not what to do with reference to the (capital "A")
Alliance (ANC/SACP/COSATU). At least equally important is the question of
how to reach downwards and outwards to actors in others sectors who also
feel the pinch of neo-liberalism: to dust off the language, so potent in
the 1980s, of "progressive/working-class civil society" in order to
rebuild, from below, a movement of resistance to the strategic direction
that post-apartheid South Africa has taken. One should certainly not
romanticize the possibilities of reconstructing such a base and forging, in
effect, a new (small "a") alliance. The popular forces start at a low ebb,
as an important article by Shamim Meer has recently reminded us: "A
striking feature of the post-election period has been the demobilization of
civil society. As the anti- apartheid struggle has waned, the organizations
that sustained it have lost ground and influence in public life. Trade
unions, civic associations, youth and womens organizations - in which the
struggle was grounded - are all weaker." How much is rebuilding an
effective popular movement therefore a matter of starting all over again,
from scratch?

Not quite. As Meer also reminds us, "the poverty and inequality associated
with apartheid - and which fueled the struggle - remain."(49) And it is not
only trade unionists who have begun to reanimate their efforts to question
this outcome. Take the churches, for example. In 1998, Anglican Archbishop
Njongonkulu Ndungane was himself slammed by Mandela for questioning the
gospel according to GEAR. Nonetheless, the churches returned to the charge
at the tri-annual conference of the South African Council of Churches later
in the year. There that redoubtable campaigner against apartheid (and
former secretary general of the SACC), Dr. Beyers Naude, argued that "while
GEAR is a 'party political issue,' when it affects the poor, the church has
no option but to intervene." At the same meeting, Mzwandile Nuns,
representing the worker ministry in KwaZulu-Natal, noted the government
argument that they are "cutting social spending in favor of lower company
taxation which will subsequently create an environment for more companies
to invest." But, he continued, "what we see on the ground is different. The
bulk of poor people remain where they were many years ago." The lesson? As
another delegate to the conference, Professor Takatso Mofokeng, put the
point, the churches "should go back to the trenches, because it seems that
is the language the government understands:" "People should demand what
they are entitled to and use the methodology that works. GEAR didn't come
up for referendum. If people are not happy about it they must stand up
against it."(50)

This kind of sensibility continues to percolate through church circles,
providing some of the clout for the growing strength of a local Jubilee
2000 campaign that focuses on the question of apartheid debt, for example.
While it is true that the formerly prominent South African National Civics
Organization (SANCO) is amongst those organizations hit hardest by
post-apartheid institutional decay, circles of township militants, focused
on issues of schools, health facilities and services, remain; new voices
are beginning to be heard who ask tough questions and may give more
dramatic life to broader township-based initiatives (although it is too
early to say whether the recently-minted National Association of Residents'
and Civics Organizations [NARCO] will prove to be a promising case in point
in this respect). Some fledgling reactivation of grass-roots women's
organizations -- significantly demobilized both by too sanguine assumptions
about the extent of the victory for feminism achieved with liberation and
by the movement of many militants into the state -- has occurred around
struggles over such issues as the state's child benefit grant.
Peasant-linked NGOs like the influential National Land Committee and the
Rural Development Services Network have taken fresh energy from recent
developments around the land issue in neighboring Zimbabwe. Moreover, these
latter two organizations are among those feeding into an assertive umbrella
body, the South Africa National Non-Governmental Organizations Coalition
(SANGOCO), that has taken a number of signal initiatives, including, in the
past few years, a revealing set of nation-wide public "Poverty Hearings"
and the establishment of an "Economics Commission" of its own in order to
seek to design a new framework for economic and social policies.

Can such initiatives begin to add up, giving real thrust and substance to
the kind of (small "a") alliance of organizations of the dispossessed
hypothesized above? Fortunately, there are some signs that this is already
beginning to happen. Thus, a recent news item on "New Seeds of Opposition"
by William Gumede in the Financial Mail (19/4/2000) highlights the fact
that "organizations aligned to the ANC-led [A]lliance have regrouped into a
formidable lobby, which, judging by their frustration with government
policy, could develop into SA's real political opposition," this
underscoring the point that "the real opposition in SA is not to be found
in parliament, but in extra- parliamentary politics -- as was the case
before the ANC's unbanning in 1990." COSATU, Jubilee 2000 and SANGOCO are
among those identified as key actors in this initiative, with the spirit
they exemplify captured in the words of SANGOCO executive director, Albie
Dithlake, a key figure in the group: "The debate on economic and social
policy needs to be broadened. We need a reconfiguration of the nature of
politics in SA. A realignment of politics will allow space for fresh input
into the economic debate." As the Financial Mail's report continues,

[INDENT QUOTATION]
The new grouping argues that with the lack of a serious black-led
opposition to the left of the ANC, an alternative group is one of the few
means of pressuring the government....The May 10 national strike against
job losses and rising poverty, led by COSATU, should be seen as the
grouping's first direct action. A steering committee comprising
representatives of COSATU, SANGOCO and civic bodies has been formed to take
the campaign further. It is demanding greater openness and inclusiveness in
economic policy formation. Quiet but authoritative, Dithlake captures the
mood of the new grouping. He quotes Reserve Bank statistics to show that
the income of the poorest 40% has dropped by 21% in recent years.
"Figures like this prove that the social responsibility of the state is
eroding. We (SANGOCO) need a close link to COSATU to present a consolidated
front on macro-economic policy," says Dithlake. "With the State's delivery
infrastructure being put into private hands, or corporatized and expected
to make a profit, it will be increasingly difficult to win the war on
poverty," he says. Unless urgent measures are implemented to improve the
standard of living of the unemployed, the social cohesion of our society
will be threatened."
[END INDENTED QUOTATION]

It is, of course, far too early to evaluate the prospects of any such
attempt by various forces in South African civil society -- including trade
unions but also organizations of women, of the church, of the
environmentally engaged, of those focused on issues of land or education or
community concerns, amongst others -- to link up more self- consciously,
within and across sectors, in a popular alliance from below. But if it
proves possible to do so, they can be expected to take strength from each
other and encouragement to think beyond the parameters of their separate
assertions -- and also to take further steps to crystallize the
institutions of a (heretofore often only implicitly) shared theory and
practice of struggle. Perhaps in this project, one that is still fugitive
and under construction but also increasingly visible and marked with
tangible potential, we can begin to see the seeds of the kind of
"structured movement" that Canadian trade union activist Sam Gindin has
recommended in his own country: "Something transitional that is more than a
coalition and less than a party," as he puts it. Indeed, Gindin argues
forcefully that the much-debated "party question" (the NDP? a new party?)
be postponed for, say, five or six years in Canada, while the left
movement/alliance -- without abandoning its immediate concerns regarding
self-defense and more appropriate policies -- give priority to the
development of its "political capacities" (specified by Gindin in terms of
"our understanding, our ability to win others over, the creation of new
forums and structures for studying, working and fighting together").(51)

For South Africa as well this kind of analysis may suggest a downplaying,
at least for the moment, of divisive and repetitive debates over the merits
or demerits, from a progressive perspective, of working with and through
the ANC itself and/or the Alliance. It bears noting, for example, that the
new grouping evoked above is still described by the Financial Mail as being
located "within [the] ANC family," and it seems almost inevitable that this
should be so, at least for the foreseeable future. As for the longer run,
it is quite simply premature to say where a revived popular movement of the
sort anticipated here might eventually fit into the South African political
equation. There have been those within COSATU (especially within the
National Union of Metalworkers) who speak, from time to time, of the
possibility of forming a new workers-cum-socialist party outside the
Alliance and to the left of the ANC. This seems an unlikely, certainly
precocious, demand for the time being. Yet the fact remains that the
"official" ANC has by now been pulled so far to the right that, whatever
the degree of (sometimes grudging) legitimacy it may retain among the mass
of the population, it would be unwise to consider it automatically to be
some kind of natural, necessary or exclusive home for progressive assertion.
The current party leadership has surely sacrificed that mantle, even if one
believes that the ANC could once have laid claim to it. Thus, if not now
then eventually, the question will have to be asked as to whether and to
what extent the universe of the ANC and the Alliance provides a fruitful
context within which to advance a rejuvenated popular movement and, in
Gindin's sense, "an alternative politics."

Of course, within the Alliance, some continue to argue the case that a
promisingly radical role can be played by the SACP -- even though the
latter's self-definition as an (ostensible) political party that is at once
both mere cheerleader for and occasional left critic of the ANC seems a
near impossible one (and one that must also be a contributing factor to the
party's currently sharply declining membership figures). The fact that many
of the most right-wing figures in the ANC government are senior SACP
leaders provides additional grounds for skepticism. True, the party can
produce some radical-sounding pronouncements of its own, SACP general
secretary Blade Nzimande's recent calls for a deeper commitment to
socialism and for more state action in the economy offering interesting
cases in point.(52) It is also true that in the party -- as in many other
sectors -- a cadre of younger activists, their number still small but
growing, is emerging that are less wedded to time-honored icons and
homilies. Still, it is difficult, on past and present performance, to feel
any great confidence in the SACP's vocation for driving a revolutionary
revival.

How likely is it, alternatively, that any new stirrings of organized
mass-based dissent will find effective expression within the ANC and even,
possibly, begin to push that organization in a more leftward direction?
This is not entirely implausible perhaps, and one is occasionally jolted by
a surprising development or two on that front. There was, for example, the
1998 publication of an internal ANC discussion document entitled "The
State, Property Relations and Social Transformation." It is true that the
document (whose precise provenance is not entirely clear, although it
appears on the ANC's official web page [October, 1998]) ridicules any
tendency "within the NLM [the National Liberation Movement]...to propose
solutions that would be way out of line with current realities, such as
punitive taxes." Yet it is just as uneasy about an equally "dangerous
tendency...to be so awed by financial capital that we throw the NLM
prostrate in front of this sector as if in pagan prayer." More
specifically, the document allows the notion of "the developmental state,"
so much maligned by recent critics of the early years of post-independence
experimentation in Africa, to assume centrality in its formulations:

[INDENT QUOTATION]
...in terms of the broad array of economic and social policy, information
and even political integrity, the state has lost much of its national
sovereignty. This applies more so to developing countries. While on the one
hand they are called upon to starve and prettify themselves to compete on
the "catwalk" of attracting the limited amounts of foreign direct
investment (FDIs), they are on the other hand reduced to bulimia by the
vagaries of an extremely impetuous and whimsical market suitor!

Can a developmental state survive, let alone thrive, under such conditions?
The answer is yes! The starting point should be that constructors of this
concept should not live in a fool's paradise. They cannot pretend that they
operate in an environment entirely of their own making....[However] what is
of even greater significance is that many forces, both within and outside
the government, both in the developed and developing world, do appreciate
the disadvantages of the dictates of the multinationals and particularly
the predatory nature of international financial capital. A significant
sector of humanity is honestly searching for answers to these problems; and
the ANC alliance is part of this global movement.
[END INDENTED QUOTATION]

[FLUSH] In consequence, the document suggests, not only should this
developmental state "use the resources that it commands to ensure
redistribution of wealth in the interest of the poor and disadvantaged" but
"it should put in place regulatory and other mechanisms that not only seek
to obviate market failure, but also afford the state the capacity to
intervene in a pro-active way to facilitate growth and redistribution."

The significance of such formulations should not be overstated.
Overall, the message of this discussion document is much more cautious and
"balanced" than some of the above quotations, taken alone, might suggest;
it is circumspect in particular (albeit not altogether mistakenly) about
the limits of institutional capacity and shortfalls of effective leverage
that must qualify the rebirth of a more transformative government strategy
in South Africa. Does it reflect, nonetheless, a South African version of
that souring of the neo-liberal honeymoon that has become more of a
world-wide phenomenon than might have been hoped even a few years ago, a
tack that could begin to put not just the "developmental state" but even
socialism back on the agenda?

In the event, the press told us (Mail and Guardian, 23/10/1998), any such
signs of second thoughts within ANC official circles was "not roundly
welcomed by economic hawks like Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Minister
of Finance Trevor Manuel." Still, by mid-2000, there was the curious case
of Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC's secretary general, who contradicted the
government's own condemnation of COSATU's May 10th national strike by
calling on union members (Mail and Guardian, 12/4/2000) to "intensely hate
capitalism and to struggle against it" and who affirmed that "the ANC is
not a bourgeois organization. The country's leading socialist minds are in
the ANC. Anyone who argues for socialism will find allies in the ANC." But
it is equally true that Motlanthe's reported statements have often been
quite contradictory (he is much given to dismissing out of hand those he
calls "limbo socialists...who write resolution from armchairs") and there
seems an opportunist underside to his emphasis that "the unions should hold
the capitalist system's transnational units accountable for job losses in
the country -- not the ANC or government"!

Can we take more seriously the even sharper comments one hears (albeit as
often as not in private conversation) from some party militants that "the
ANC is itself a site of class struggle" -- and that, given the party's
continued popular legitimacy, it is actually a privileged site of such
struggle, one not to be cavalierly abandoned by the left? Can we also take
heart from rumoured rumblings that the stars of the Mbekis, the Manuels and
the Erwins may have begun to wane somewhat within the ANC or from accounts
(for example) of the emergence of a deepening left/right division cutting
across the ANC in vitally important Gauteng province (Mail and Guardian,
19/5/2000)? We have suggested above that it would be wise for the left to
approach the ANC, as presently organized and led, with great suspicion. And
yet one does sense that within the ANC there are indeed militants who have
begun to grasp that the leadership's macro-economic strategy does not and
cannot work.(53) And they may also suspect that, in the absence of material
advance and with the ruling out of court of a class-based politics, the
situation is unlikely to stand still: it can quite easily get a very great
deal worse, deepening already existing conditions of social distemper and
producing further morbid symptoms of both the freefall into "the abyss of
social exclusion" so feared by Castells and the threat to "the
social cohesion of our society" invoked by Dithlake.

There is, as a direct reflection of socio-economic polarization and
communal decay, the precipitous rise in the crime rate (much of it crime of
an extremely violent nature). There is the cruel decline of health
standards, most marked, albeit not exhausted, by the escalating HIV/AIDs
pandemic.

There is also, Marais suggests, the danger of much more dramatic
expressions of loss of "social cohesion," one of these inherent in the
ANC's own propensity -- recall our earlier discussion of the co-optation of
Gatsha Buthelezi -- to shore up its hegemony by pandering to local chiefs,
in KwaZulu and beyond, whose power is rooted "in a blur of ethnicized
tradition, coercion and clientelism." As Marais then argues, "the constant
disbursal of tangible benefits is one way of easing [the resultant
tension]. Drawing the subjects and their leaders into the fold is another
-- hence, for example, the ANC's courting of the IFP, and the salary hikes
for chiefs and kings decreed by the ANC government shortly before the
recent election." The problem: "If this largesse cannot be sustained, the
tension between the modern and the traditional will increase, allowing
politicized ethnicity to regain its muscle."(54) Add to this the fact that
the venal Winnie Mandela can still find fertile ground for her racist
populism in the gangrenous inequalities that lie untreated in an
untransformed South Africa -- even as, at the other extreme, some whites
seek in the more "privatized" racism of their guarded suburbs and schools
defense against the leveling so necessary in such a society -- and one gets
a further sense of just how potentially dangerous are the tensions that
seethe beneath the surface in that country.

Such facts further underscore the need to generate an "alternative
politics." But is the ANC itself (like some latter-day PRI) not more likely
to fall back on ever more authoritarian methods as its preferred means of
seeking to contain (rather than resolve) the contradictions that now scar
the South African social formation? Time alone will tell what the Mbeki
years can bring. Still, one senses that for all his cocky self-confidence
Mbeki is not always quite certain himself as to just how best to ride the
whirlwind he has helped create. Despite his apparently unqualified
commitment to his chosen role of architect of South Africa's appeasement of
capitalism as presumptive engine of South African economic transformation,
one can still find him bobbing and weaving rather uncomfortably -- as he
did in the run-up to last year's election when he permitted himself some
pretty radical-sounding formulations of his own. One such instance
(Southscan, 12/6/1998) saw his revealing attack not only on wealthy whites
(afflicted, he said, by "social amnesia") but also on a "black elite" that
abuses "freedom in the name of entitlement." This latter group, he charged,
"seek to hijack the sacrifices which millions of ordinary people made to
liberate our country for noble purposes, in order to satisfy a seemingly
insatiable and morally unbound greed and personal thirst for wealth and
comfort, regardless of the cost to our society." And he concluded by
warning of "the danger of a mounting rage to which we must respond seriously."

An intriguing statement with which to conclude this essay, then, but
perhaps as much for what it says about present-day South African society as
for what it tells us about Thabo Mbeki himself. Does the slightly desperate
tone of such pronouncements suggest, for example, an uneasy sense on the
part of the leadership of just how impossible it will be to overcome the
grim legacy of racial inequality on a capitalist basis? And perhaps, too, a
certain subliminal suspicion that even when local elites do everything
possible to conform to global market dictate, the dependent capitalism they
seek to facilitate simply cannot be expected to lift off the ground as once
it (sometimes) did. Moreover, even if Mbeki and his team can continue, by
and large, to dodge these realities, there are others who have begun to
recognize that it is precisely in the failure of the promise of neo-liberal
deliverance that lie both the tragedy of South Africa itself (as evoked at
the outset of this essay) and the broader global resonance of the South
African case. We have also posed a further question: if the current
leadership of the ANC cannot be expected to act upon any such understanding
-- cannot be expected to respond to the looming South African crisis by
focusing "mounting rage" and potential political volatility into positive
and transformative popular energy -- who (if anyone) can? Whatever the
answer to this question, the stakes are certainly high: for the phrase
"socialism or barbarism" rarely has had more meaning than in contemporary
South Africa.