Top African National Congress leaders elected at the conference in Manguang. The ruling party of the Republic of South Africa is celebrating its centenary., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
New South Africa is an antithesis of apartheid-colonialism
ANC Viewpoint by Malusi Gigaba
The Goldman Sachs Report, “Two Decades of Freedom - A 20-Year Review of South Africa”, has come at the most apt time. In many ways, this Goldman Sachs Report struck a chord with our own firmly-held view that South Africa has made steady progress since 1994. It has become a better place to live in.
Since the advent of our new and young democracy our country has pursued a new path antithetical to the apartheid-colonial path pursued over 300 years of colonialism and apartheid. South Africa’s liberation in 1994 meant that it ceased to be what Verwoerd had called ‘a piece of Europe on the tip of the African continent’. The general election of 1994 constituted an act of fundamental negation of the settlement of 1910 which had maliciously excluded the black majority and consigned them to homelands and black local authorities.
The new South Africa established in 1994 is premised on the values of the Freedom Charter that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people”; that “our country will never be prosperous and free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities; and that “only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birth-right without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief”.
Working together we have made steady progress since 1994. We have democratised the country and used this period to create the beachhead for the next great leap towards more meaningful social emancipation. It can be stated with no fear of contradiction that working with the people of South Africa, the ANC has politically defeated the apartheid regime, transferred the power to the people to be their own liberators, established a new, non-racial, non-sexist and inclusive democratic Constitution, created of a country-wide democratic system of government.
During the past two decades of our democracy, we have placed human beings at the very heart of our social endeavour as a nation. No society is as conscious of households headed by the elderly and children as we are. We have developed a variety of social programmes in the form of the social wage to support poor communities and households, which reflects our commitment to the principles of human rights enshrined in the Constitution, particularly in the Bill of Rights.
These measures, intended to cushion the poor the worst effects of poverty, have included the ensuring that the children of the poor can obtain basic education for free - 80% of our public schools are no-fee schools, the poor get free basic electricity and water, the poor have received free houses, which turned millions of the property-less South Africans into property owners, thus radically addressing asset poverty.
No government has in recent times done for the poor of its nation more than our government has done, providing free health treatment for pregnant women and children under 7 years, and providing school nutrition to ensure the children of the poor are fed in school and do not have to starve while attending school. Today we have more people that have access to basic assets and can start businesses.
What this means is that the movement should use its political power and the instruments it wields as a result of this to accelerate the advance towards achieving the goal of a better life for all. This is consistent with the ANC’s own characterisation of itself in its Strategy and Tactics, 2007, in Chapter 6, Clause 123, where it characterises itself as “a progressive national liberation movement which:
understands the interconnection between political and socio-economic challenges in our society;
leads the motive forces of the NDR in pursuing their common aspirations and ensuring that their sectoral interests are linked to the strategic objective;
masters the terrain of electoral contest, utilises political power to advance the objectives of the NDR and wields instruments of state in line with these ideals as reflected in the National Constitution;
organises and mobilises the motive forces and builds broader partnerships to drive the process of reconstruction and development, nation-building and reconciliation; and
conducts itself, both in its internal practices and in relation to society at large, in line with the ideals represented by the NDR and acts as a microcosm of the future.”
The ANC characterises itself, not as a mere political party, but as a progressive national liberation movement that “understands the interconnection between political and socio-economic challenges in our society” and that “masters the terrain of electoral contest, utilises political power to advance the objectives of the NDR and wields instruments of state in line with these ideals as reflected in the National Constitution”.
In his article, “A little less democracy, a little more development” (Sunday World, 10/11/2013), Mayihlome Tshwete raises interesting points. Whilst his article’s title could mislead the reader as to the point he was actually making, his argument that the ANC government needs to be more assertive and, above all, to “inconvenience the haves and worry more about the have-nots” deserves attention. I believe, however, that this can still be achieved within the framework of more and not less democracy.
The question is not how much or less democracy you have or need to develop, but it is what do you do with your democracy - to wield the instruments of state and utilise political power to advance the objectives of the NDR. In one his lectures to the Umkhonto WeSizwe (MK) military trainees in Novo Catengue, Angola - Uncle Jack Simons said: “...independence from colonial rule is not enough to bring about a revolutionary change which will transfer power to the great mass of the people.” (Sparg, M., et al Eds. (2001): “COMRADE JACK: The political lectures and diary of Jack Simons, Novo Catengue”, STE Publishers and ANC)
To unpack this lesson, Uncle Jack Simons argued that: “But although we can agree that African independence has meant the transfer of power from one class to another, this does not mean that the new African governments have carried out a social revolution. They lacked the two key prerequisites for such a revolution: a revolutionary party and revolutionary theory (my emphasis)... The tendency in many African countries has been to maintain the old economic as well as political system. There has been continuity and not revolution.”
Whilst firmly affirming the massive changes achieved in our country during the past nineteen years, the ANC’s 2012 Strategy and Tactics acknowledges that there has been slow “progress in overcoming the inherited structure of the economy, such that despite a period of sustained growth, there have not been fundamental changes in the essential structure of the economy.”
One of the central tasks of the (National Democaritc Revolution (NDR) during our Second Phase of Transition must be the achievement of high rates of economic growth and development. There is no Chinese Wall between the first and second phases, as many of the tasks that could be said to belong to the second phase have already been implemented during what can be said to have been in the first phase. These are the tasks critical to the National Democracy Society (NDS), the achievement of which, together with the de-racialisation of property relations and the transformation of the structure of the economy, would mean that we have made major achievements in pursuit of the strategic objectives of the NDR.
Despite all the progress we have made during the first phase of the transition, our country still faces extreme income inequalities, deep poverty and very high levels of unemployment, particularly affecting the youth, and these evil triplets still reflect the old race, class, gender and geographic fissures inherited from apartheid-colonialism. The critical challenge we are faced with is to develop the capacity of the state to help us accelerate the implementation of our programmes, albeit in a manner that mobilises the masses to continue acting as their own liberators through participatory and representative democracy rather than as passive spectators of the processes of progressive change.
Given these challenges we face we must focus on strengthening the state’s capacity to be actively involved in the economy and invest in growth enhancing sectors of the economy, whilst mobilising private capital to also play their part. In order to defeat poverty and inequality, as Joseph Stiglitz argues it in his book, “The Price of Inequality”, the political system must not reinforce the market failures, but must rather correct them; the economic system must not only be efficient and stable, but must be fair and inclusive; and the markets must be regulated and operate under rules and the legal framework.
We have an obligation to heed his warning, that: “...the inequality is the cause and consequence of the failure of the political system, and it contributes to the instability of [the] economic system, which in turn contributes to increased inequality...” Our state must play a more active role in the economy than merely being a creator of an enabling environment for private sector investments has already been rendered propitious not least by the global economic developments which have put paid to neo-liberal notions of less-state or no state intervention in the economy. Our long-held belief that the state must play a significant role alongside a thriving private sector in a mixed-economy has been proven correct, more so in our society where unemployment is extravagantly high and poverty and inequality ominously deep.
This is because we place people at the centre of our social endeavours and we price development as important as we do growth, and shared growth at that. For us, the challenge is not merely to raise the GDP levels, but it is, at the same time, to transform the fundamental structure of the economy and pursue inclusive and shared wealth by bringing black people into the economy as owners, controllers and managers as well.
The state must seriously use the levers it controls to pursue this objective, directly through infrastructure roll-out, state procurement and State-Owned Companies (SOCs). It must seek to influence the suppliers and customers of the state and SOCs also to pursue meaningful transformation.
The economic policy frameworks outlined in the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the New Growth Path seek to improve co-ordination, strengthen the manufacturing industry, pursue industrialisation, revive the rural economy and allocate resources in a way that stimulates growth of new industries, unlocks economic bottlenecks and decentralises industrial activities to create decent job opportunities and improve the living conditions of our peoples.
It is important that the South African private sector must equally increase their investments in job creating and growth-enhancing productive sectors of the economy. The reality is that the countries that have developed, which were once at our level of development and have today become global growth centres and wealthy, have had to rely on their own national resources rather than solely on foreign investors. We need a social compact focused on growing our economy and sharing its benefits.
Let us consider a global comparison of how gross domestic product (GDP) gets distributed between different classes in society conducted by the Cambridge economist Gabriel Palma, which revealed that:
As a rule, globally, the middle classes tend to get 50 percent of GDP. The remaining 50 percent is then divided between the rich and the poor;
South Africa is an outlier. The top 10 percent receives 35 times more income than the bottom 10 percent;
In the US, which is not known for its egalitarian policies, the ratio between the top and bottom is about 20 times;
Globally, the average is about 12; and
Our top 10 percent receives five times the income of the bottom 40 percent, against a global average of under two.
Some would argue that it is okay for the rich to get a large share of the pie, because they are the class that will invest in the economy and ensure sustained growth. However, many developmental states have been characterised by social compacts, which included that the wealthy also made their own contributions and sacrifices in terms of keeping their salaries and pecks within reasonable limits and investing in their personal earnings in the national economies.
For example;
In South Korea, the rich are still investing over 100 percent of what they earn into the economy – they are taking out personal debt to invest beyond their incomes;
In India, China and other fast-growing Asian economies, the wealthy are investing between 70 percent and 80 percent of their incomes; and
In South Africa, the wealthy are investing less than 35 percent of what they earn back into the economy.
The question is: What do wealthy people in South Africa spend their wealth on! The private sector in South Africa has been alleged to be sitting on investable cash of 18 percent of GDP they are not investing, estimated at over 500 billion rand.
To address these challenges, what is required is a revolutionary movement that is singularly focused on the historic tasks placed before it. Since its founding, the ANC has recognised that the oppression of black people consisted in more than political oppression and denial of civic rights, but had more to do with their economic exploitation and plunder of South Africa’s economic resources.
Based on decades of struggle and scientific analysis, the ANC concluded that ours was a national democratic revolution the strategic objective of which was the national liberation of Africans in particular and black people in general in order to create a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united and prosperous society. Equally crucial was the recognition by the progressive national liberation movement that at the heart of the NDR were three inter-related “antagonistic contradictions: class, race, and patriarchal relations of power.
These antagonisms found expression in national oppression based on race; super-exploitation directed against Black workers on the basis of race; and triple oppression of the mass of women based on their race, their class and their gender.” (Strategy and Tactics, 2007) In essence, the NDR seeks to abolish this combination of class, race and gender sources of social conflict. Since 1955, the ANC had sought through the Freedom Charter to define the type of society that would be spawned by the victory of the national democratic revolution.
The character of our movement as a multi-class movement of revolutionary democrats, encompassing into itself militant nationalists, social-democrats and communists, all united into the movement by their common abhorrence for racial supremacy and yearning for national liberation, must therefore be maintained, at least into the foreseeable future. This broad-based character has been informed by the primary tasks our revolution and hence our movement must solve and has contributed significantly in our movement’s notion of its historical mission.
It is because of this character, political culture and traditions of struggle that notwithstanding the ruthless repression under apartheid, our movement had survived, and at the time of political independence in 1994, had accumulated vast experience in the culture and traditions of militant and progressive national movements. That the ANC has lived this long is neither a result of survivalist instincts nor was it achieved by miracle or chance. For 101 years, the ANC has been the voice of the voiceless; the hope of the marginalised and the champion of total freedom, democracy and inclusion.
In this way, the ANC has throughout the entire period of its existence earned the support and loyalty of our people. The ANC’s leadership of our people was never decreed from high places; it was earned and sustained through exemplary leadership, humility, courage on the battle-front and principled and candid leadership. We need to return to this belief rather than the misguided one that the ANC was pre-ordained to lead and govern this country. This leads, in turn, to the misguided conduct premised on the false notion that whatever we do, regardless of our misconduct at times, nothing will touch the ANC.
On the contrary, ANC members must be exemplary in their conduct and continue to inspire the confidence of our people, not in ourselves as individuals, but in our movement and our revolution. Our deeds, as well as our words, must be carefully crafted in order to build the nation, forge social cohesion and advance the strategic objectives of the NDR. Indeed, this does not presuppose that ANC members are saints or that the ANC itself is organisation of saints.
Our detractors must not compare us with the Almighty, but rather with our competitors. This notwithstanding, a conviction that we must earn our leadership would translate itself into respect for the masses we lead and the people who have stood resolutely and continue still today to stand behind our movement throughout time. Respect for the masses!; that should be our revolutionary and ever-lasting creed!
The daunting challenges we face demand from us the courage, conviction and clarity of thought and sense of purpose and mission that have all characterised the ANC throughout the ages. Together, we have come so far; and yet the journey ahead, much as it is full of contradictions and struggle, is rich in courage and heroism.
Without a doubt, we have a bright future ahead. We have to re-affirm the centrality of our movement and its prestige. The ANC cannot be characterised by period elections; its historic mission predates the advent of universal suffrage on the basis of one-person-one-vote achieved in 1994. For the ANC, as a progressive national liberation movement, democratic elections per se constitute a mandate, not merely to occupy some seats in Parliament for the sake of being an opposition, but to govern the country in order to change the fortunes of our people. That is why we fight elections in order to govern, not for its own sake, but in order to serve our people and advance our revolution.
Malusi Gigaba is an ANC NEC member and Minister of Public Enterprises
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The contents and views expressed in the ANC Today do not necessarily reflect the policies and positions of the African National Congress
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