[PEN-L:30257] Michael Yates new book

[michael perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have written a new book, titled, "Naming the System:  Inequality
and Work in the Global Economy," to be published by Monthly Review early

next year.  In the last chapter, I have a section on contemporary social

movements.  One of the sub-sections is on South Africa and is based upon

Ashwin Desai's fine book, "We Are the Poors."  This book is published by

Monthly Review.  I urge all pen-lers to get this book.  It is really
compelling and would make a fine supplemental text for a number of
courses.

Comments are welcome.  I can send some chapter of my new book to anyone
seriously interested in making a critique of them. There is a brief
description on the Monthly Review website at www.monthlyreview.org

Michael Yates


 The ?Poors? of South Africa

 The valiant struggle of the Black and ?colored? people of South Africa
to
end the system of racial oppression known as apartheid galvanized
progressives around the world.  Through a combination of armed struggle,

nonviolent confrontation, strikes, boycotts, and international
solidarity,
apartheid was defeated in 1994 and one of its most prominent victims,
Nelson
Mandela, was elected president of the nation.  Mandela?s party, the
African
National Congress (ANC), allied with the South African Communist Party
(SACP) and the largest labor union confederation (COSATU?the
Confederation
of South African Trade Unions), promised a new day for the poor and
dispossessed majority of this rich African nation.

 That free elections were held and that Mandela was elected president
was a
remarkable achievement.  Widespread violence and destruction were
avoided,
and from this point forward, South Africa?s black majority were now a
political majority as well.  Given the seeming impregnability of
apartheid,
its collapse and the ANC victory were astounding.  As John Saul put it:

 South Africa has been able to realize and to stabilize the shift to a
constitutionally premised and safely institutionalized democratic
order?making peace without suffering the crippling backlash from the
right
wing, both black and white, that many had predicted and without
suffering
the collapse into chaos or dictatorship that some had seen to be
threatened
by the establishment of majority rule.  Moreover, this political
stability
was sustained through the five years of Mandela?s presidency,
reconfirmed by
the very mundaneness of the 1999 election, and has been carried
unscathed
into the Thabo Mbeki presidency.  A cause for celebration, surely, on a
continent where apparently lesser contradictions have proven far
difficult
to resolve.

 The ANC had used a revolutionary and socialist rhetoric in its struggle

against white rule.  As late as 1989, Mandela spoke of ?the need for
some
sort of socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced
countries of the world and to overcome their legacy of poverty.?  The
new
government promised:

 The engine of growth in the economy of a developing, nonracial and
nonsexist South Africa should be the growing satisfaction of the basic
needs
of the impoverished and deprived majority of our people.  We thus call
for a
program of Growth through Redistribution in which redistribution acts as
a
spur to growth and in which the fruits of growth are redistributed to
satisfy basic needs.

Furthermore, ?. . . In our growth path, accumulation depends on the
prior
redistribution of resources.  Major changes will have to take place in
existing power relations as a necessary condition for this new growth
path.?

 This economic program resonated strongly with the dispossessed masses
of
the country.  Millions of people in South Africa were unemployed, living
on
extraordinarily low incomes, subject to a host of illnesses and
diseases,
going hungry, and living in segregated and substandard housing.  The
majority of people were denied all basic human rights and were routinely
the
victims of police and military violence.

 The ANC has been slow to fulfill the promises it made to the people.
Indeed, as is the case for most poor countries, political independence
was
not accompanied by economic independence.  Most of the nation?s nonhuman

means of production remained in the hands of their previous owners.
Some
property has been shared with a new class of rich black South Africans,
many
of them stalwarts of the ANC.  Soon after being elected, Mandela
embraced
neoliberalism and his government began to enact neoliberal policies:
cuts in
government spending, concessions to foreign investment, a high interest
rate
monetary policy, and the privatization of essential public services.
Ashwin
Desai, author of the moving book, We Are the Poors, put the matter
bluntly:

 Before long, democracy was more or less stifled within the ANC and its
Communist and trade union allies.  People that couldn?t be bought were
marginalized.  It soon got to the point where you could get expelled
from
the South African Communist Party for advocated Communism.  Once the
conservative nationalists had cemented their hegemony within the party,
self-serving deals were done with local white elites and international
capital.  By 1996 Thabo Mbeki?then deputy president of South Africa,
later
successor to Nelson Mandela as leader of the ANC and president of South
Africa?was calling himself a Thatcherite and the ANC had voluntarily
imposed
its own structural adjustment program on South Africa.  Taxes on the
rich
were cut, exchange controls dropped, and tariffs protecting unionized
South
African workers from imports from sweat shops were abandoned.  Around a
hundred thousand jobs were lost each year and a million alone in 2001.
Water, electricity, housing and health care were taken from those who
couldn
?t pay.

 It has taken the poor majority some time to understand that its former
standard bearer had more or less joined hands with its apartheid enemy.
But
recently, the poor have begun to revolt, especially against the
government?s
policy of evictions from public housing of those who cannot pay their
rent
and the cutoff or denial of essential services such as water,
electricity,
and health care, for the same reason.  The consequences of the
government?s
?austerity? have been deadly.  Again, Desai states the matter starkly:

 By 2002 over 6 million South Africans were HIV positive and without any

access to the lifesaving medication that, even a not completely rabid
neoliberal budget, could safely satisfy.  People were aghast at a
comment
made by the president?s spokesperson that medicines that prevented
mother-to-child transmission of the virus were undesirable because of
the
healthy orphans it left the state to deal with.  The majority of the
population are living on less than R 140 (about $15) per month.  One in
four
black children do not have enough to eat every day.  Only 3 percent of
arable land had been redistributed and much of that had been given to
black
commercial farmers and not to landless peasants.  Over a million people
had
been disconnected from water because they couldn?t pay; 40,000 children
were
dying from diarrhea caused by dirty water each year.  Cholera returned
with
a vengeance, infecting over 100,000 people in Kwa-Zulu Natal alone.
People
starved in rural areas, throngs of street-kids descended on every town
to
beg and prostitute themselves, petty-crime soared, and the jails reached
170
percent capacity.

  At the end of the 1990s, the ?poors? of South Africa began to revolt.
This revolt was largely spontaneous and it was to a considerable extent
nonracial.  One of the most important local revolts took place in the
township of Chatsworth in Durban, the biggest city on South Africa?s
east
coast.  The residents of this largely Indian area began to confront the
government concerning evictions.  Mass meetings, marches,
demonstrations,
legal maneuvering, people?s music, and the occupation of houses all put
public officials on the defensive.  A defining moment came when an
African
official berated the crowd and declaimed that Indians were privileged
and
had no right to complain.  An elderly woman protestor said, ?We are not
Indians, we are the poors.?   A new class struggle was beginning in
South
Africa.

 It is difficult in a short space to give readers the flavor of the
?poors?
movement.  Out of their desperate need for water, electricity, schools,
housing, and health care, ordinary people mobilized, spontaneously at
first
and with deeper organization afterward, to literally take what they felt

they had a human right to.  People marched on the offices and homes of
public officials, often dodging police bullets and clubs, to loudly
demand
that the government serve their needs as it had once promised and for
which
they had suffered so much and fought so bravely.  Ordinary people, aptly

named ?struggle electricians? and ?struggle plumbers,? began to
reconnect
electricity and water supplies for those who could not, because of
government austerity policies, pay their bills.  They also began to
disconnect the power and water of public officials! Militant organized
groups blocked evictions of those who could not pay their rents.
Ordinary
people began to break down the insidious barriers of race which the
apartheid state had so ruthlessly and cynically established.  Ordinary
people took on large corporations when the official unions would not.
Ordinary people occupied the land that was rightfully theirs but which
the
government had declared could only be had for market value.  Traditional

religious events were put to new use, as when a festival of lights was
named
the festival of no lights to protest electricity cut offs.  Youth put
hip-hop music at the service of the struggle, and when people had no
food,
they could use the community cooking pot.

 The ?poors? movement is still in its infancy.  Many victories have been

achieved, but only a small fraction of the population has bee mobilized.

Yet even at this stage, it is possible to identify several important
aspects
of the ?poors? movement in South Africa.   First, as is true of many
social
movements in poor countries, the revolt of the ?poors? is not led by
what we
might call traditional members of the working class.  While COSATU has
engaged in various protests against government policies, the labor
unions
have not been central to the new mass movements.  Instead, the
unemployed,
the underemployed, and disaffected youth have formed the core
constituency.
Second, the ?poors? have been largely led by women.  Poor women in poor
countries are at the bottom of the social hierarchy.  Often brutalized
by
men, who themselves have suffered extreme hardship, poor women are left
to
hold families together, finding whatever work they can to keep food on
their
tables and roofs over their heads.  Absolute desperation, combined with
bitter anger, has compelled women not only to participate in radical
activities but to lead them.  This is of the greatest importance,
because it
puts the issue of gender oppression at the forefront of the larger class

struggle.  Social progress cannot be made if those most oppressed are
shunted aside in favor of a male definition of class struggle.

 Finally, the ?poors? have focused their fight on local concerns, but
these
issues of evictions and utility shut offs are intimately tied to global
capitalism and the neoliberal assault on working class living
standards.  In
our daily lives, it is usually impossible to directly confront much less

defeat the World Bank or the World Trade Organization.  But it is
possible
to win concrete local victories, such as the return of an evicted family
to
its house or a moratorium on utility disconnections.  It is possible to
confront local officials and force them to back down, and it is possible
to
change the contours of local power. These local struggles allow people
to
empower themselves and, with support from sympathetic intellectuals and
activists operating on a more global level, to raise their consciousness
of
what ultimately causes their misery and to link up with fellow sufferers

around the world.  Global movements must originate at the local level,
the
level at which people actually experience life.

 If local actions are critical, at the same time, it is necessary to
link
these up to larger struggles.  The many local South African movements
began
to do this in 2001 in conjunction with the United Nations World
Conference
on Racism, held in Durban, South Africa.  Groups began to meet and make
plans for mass demonstrations and cultural events at the Conference and
for
making common cause with a wide variety of protest organizations.
Groups
involved in protesting evictions, in fighting against privatization,
various
socialist formations, activist student and faculty groups, independent
union
activists, certain progressive NGOs, and the Landless People?s Movement
(which had recently engaged in an unsuccessful land occupation) all
decided
to make common cause at the Conference, both to show solidarity with
similar
groups around the world and to show the world the true nature of the
South
African government.  In describing a powerful speech made at one of the
preparatory meetings by poet, international activist, and former
prisoner
with Mandela on Robbins Island, Dennis Brutus (who walked out into the
audience to explain ?global apartheid,? a phrase which might resonate
more
powerfully than the word ?imperialism?), journalist Tracey Fared tells
us:

 By the time we left the meeting, there was a buzz amongst all of us
like I
have never felt before.  People were talking to each other.  Suddenly so

many things made sense.  Why our water was getting cut off and our
people
thrown onto the street.  Why our children had to pay school fees or
else.
Why the local clinics had been closed down.  Why Engen [an automobile
company] had retrenched workers to increase its share price.  Why
foreign
companies are happy to give Yevgeni?s [4 by 4 cars] to local elites.
Why
our president doesn?t support the intifidah.  Why the youth of the North
are
also out on the streets and why our Minister of Finance hates them so .
. .

 One did not have to jet all over the world like Dennis to fight global
apartheid effectively.  One simply has to start building organizations,
building power in the communities where one lives?confronting,
militantly,
the most terrible aspects of your oppression.  And after that?one must
link
up with others around you, all over the world.

 The South African struggles are also important for the questions they
raise.  Like much of the globalization movement, the organizations
around
which these struggles have developed are highly decentralized, make
decisions by consensus, and ebb and flow with specific crises and
meetings
of global elites.  How can such organizations be held together over long

periods of time?  Will it be necessary for them to forge a common
ideology
and a common strategy for putting this ideology into practice?  It is
one
thing to force a local government to back down over issues of life and
death
such as housing and water.  It is another to stop the national
government
from pursuing the policies which lead to the shut offs in the first
place,
much less to replace the government with people?s power.  To do these
things, will a political party be needed?  If so, how will such a party
avoid the problems associated with such parties in the past, problems
which
have given the whole idea of party formation such a bad odor?

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx