Firstly, it is the product of the international crisis. South Africa is a country which exports primary products and the world conjuncture is one of falling prices and falling demand. Secondly, this recession is - and this is what disconnects the South African crisis to an extent from international fluctuations — the result of the contradictions of the socio-economic system of apartheid itself.
The general structural constraints of apartheid are well known: weakness of internal demand, lack of a qualified labour force, insufficient productivity and thus a weak capacity for the export of manufactured goods.
But it is also true that this did not stop the system from continuing without too many problems until the 1960s and the 1970s. At that time, while liberals like Oppenheimer (head of the Anglo-American multinational) were already protesting against the rigour of the system, the country still attracted foreign capital on a massive scale and experienced an important industrial boom. Profits were at their zenith.
South Africa could well have broken with racial segregation after the Second World War, at the time when the mode of imperialist domination in the Third World was beginning to change.
It is the considerable weight and constraints of the mining sector which, together with other sociological and political factors specific to the country, explains the maintenance, until "late" in the day, of a national capitalist economy regulated in this way. That is why apartheid, as a specific mode of accumulation, still had some life in it until the 1960s.
System not anachronistic
There was then nothing anachronistic about the apartheid system from the point of view of capitalist exploitation, in spite of the rigidities and costs of the system. ously weaken the edifice once a certain
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Apartheid's
International Viewpoint #216 • November 11, 1991
SOUTH AFRICA level of accumulation had been reached. The growing development of manufacturing industry, then of services, implied little by little new needs and new openings that the "separate development" of the races and the costs of organizing apartheid could not satisfy.
This turning point is difficult to date accurately. A number of analyses have been put forward. However, what is certain is that the recession which began in 1981 was marked by the exhaustion of the system. Thus, between 1980 and 1985 bankruptcies increased by 500%. The discount rate went from 9.5% to 17% in the course of 1981 alone; it reached 18% in 1982 and 25% in August 1985.
The total of investments fell from 2,346 million Rands in 1981 to 1,408 millions in 1984. The foreign debt reached a peak in 1984 of $24.8 billion, of which $13 billion was short term. Manufacturing production fell in volume, wage costs increased, unemployment grew and the volume of exports diminished.
The recession continued despite the international upturn in the mid-1980s. It even got worse under the impact of the trade union mobilizations, South Africa's loss of credit in the eyes of international investors, and the crisis of the gold industry.
The structural crisis of apartheid thus preceded the social explosions of the 1980s. There had already been, before this, the Natal general strike in 1973 and the youth uprising in the Transvaal in 1976. Several para-state commissions had moreover began to ponder the need for reform.
A series of changes had begun to be applied in the field of labour law at the
24
turn of the 1980s. But the regime dragged its feet. Nothing appeared decided and repression remained the principal means of surmounting the contradictions of the
In the mid-1980s the debate between the regime and the liberals (in reality the expression of the interests of the big financial and industrial bourgeoisie) could be summed up thus; the first claimed that too many reforms would lead to revolution, the second responded that not enough reforms would lead in any case to revolution.
The recession of the 1980s accelerated the process and definitively undermined the positions of the regime. The current situation can only be understood if this combination of the social pressure of the recent struggles and the new needs of capitalist development is grasped.
South Africa has experienced, throughout a whole period of its history, what could be called, by analogy with certain South American countries, a process of industrialization through import substitution. This has taken the form of a very strong state sector (energy, steel, and so on) upstream from the mining and manufacturing industries, and the production of manufactured goods whose markets have been essentially concentrated in the white population.
A dual system
It amounted to a "dual" system which came up against two problems; its growing technological dependence on foreign countries and the limits of the internal market.
To transcend these two constraints South Africa has to become capable of exporting manufactured goods on an infinitely greater scale than today. It should, for example, be capable of exporting high quality stainless steel or catalytic rather than ordinary steel exhaust pipes. To achieve this, it is necessary to achieve significant increases improve competitivity dramatically and to lower the costs of production.
South Africa exports 14% of its manufactured products against 70.5% of its mining products. It imports, on the other harta, 36% of its manufactured products and 27% of its machines and equipment.
It needs then to reduce its dependence on exports of primary products. The price of gold has been depressed for many years now. Gold has lost its function as a store of value and 70% of South African production now goes to jewellers.
Whilst the current price oscillates between $360 and $400 an ounce, the
South African authorities estimate that at
$320 the country's gold industry would collapse for lack of profitability. Profitability is moreover markedly inferior to that of the Australian mines, with veins increasingly deep and the grade increasingly reduced.
Mining industry employers claim that 40% of gold is currently being extracted at a loss. They dismissed 40,000 miners in 1990 and plan 75,000 more redundancies in the future.
The Central Bank has applied a classical monetarist doctrine in relation to the South African currency, the Rand, seeking, it is true, to lower a rate of inflation which was still at 14.7% in 1989. Since 1988 the regime has opted for a policy of adjustment so as to dampen internal demand. This might appear surreal given the poverty in which the majority of blacks live.
But this would to be forget that the system produces, in spite of everything, a significant demand for luxury products, overspending on defence and energy, enormous indebtedness in relation to an overprotected agriculture, and so on Thus, those responsible for the economy have openly sought to limit the growth of GDP to 1% per year for 1990 and 1991.
The contradiction is here; in order to begin to reduce the enormous disparities between "races", that is in order to break with the social policies of apartheid, a minimum growth of 5% per year over a very long period would be required.
This is the nub of the problem for the regime. Ir is necessary to begin a transition from the old mode of accumulation. It is necessary, in order to achieve this, to find both a political consensus with the regime's old adversaries and to apply a policy for getting out of recession which — at least at first — will not aggravate the public deficit, increase the debt or weaken the Rand
The regime must then anesthetize its adversaries in a complex constitutional debate and gain their agreement that the "democratic" transition is dependent on a controlled reform of South African capitalism.
### Numerous reforms
Numerous political reforms have been undertaken or announced. They imply, without any doubt, profound institutional change; but they seek also to preserve the final political authority of the white ruling class. On the economic plane, on the other hand, the government's plans do not, for the moment, go further than giving aid to the black informal sector and small enterprises.
The only way the regime can hope to redistribute some supplementary revenues amongst the dispossessed of the towns and countryside is to undertake a reorientation of public expenditure to the detriment of the white population. This would be in line with the monetarist policy of seeking an exit from the crisis through a no-cost operation.
But from all the evidence this would have to be done with extreme prudence to avoid the regime's cutting itself off, at a delicate moment, from a great part of the
New unity moves
A CONFERENCE was held in Durban from October 25-27, after the two accompanying articles had been written. It led to a unitary declaration of intent, signed by the ANC, the PAC and several other parties from the Bantustans, under the rubric of the Patriotic Front. This declaration recalls the principal objectives of the negotiations currently underway, namely, among others, universal suffrage and the perspective of a Constituent Assembly; it denounces the hypocrisy of the regime. The conference has not however led to a genuine structured front, organizing real mass campaigns with the aim of modifying the relationship of forces. It was simply announced that a new meeting would take place in six months time. Judging that the conference was essentially about pursuing the negotiations, through an all-party conference and an interim government, organizations like Azapo and WOSA did not put their names to the
November 11, 4991 • #216 International Viewpoint white electorate. In other words, the rhythms are going to be very slow and the eventual social effects will be small scale.
A final possibility would be the creation of social conditions which would encourage the return of foreign investment, and political conditions for an inflow of foreign financial aid going to diverse social projects. But here, the principal problem would be that of the world conjuncture.
Faced with this, the AN and the COSATU trade union federation defend a Keynesian policy of redistribution of revenues, increasing the purchasing power of the masses so as, they say, to favour internal demand and break down social segregation. It would amount, moreover, to defining a new system where the state would continue to play an important regulatory role, but this time with a progressive perspective.
Some trade union leaderships have gone as far as to advocate the improvement of the foreign competitivity of South African industry as a means of resolving the crisis, and thus of abolishing apartheid. They propose, furthermore, the involvement of the trade unions on the boards of directors of the big South African companies.
The employers, meanwhile, hold to a project of rationalization through redundancies, wage controls and social peace. For them, it is sufficient to let market forces act so that foreign investment could return on a massive scale and help to progressively modify the economic structure of the country.
In the past, notably at the time when the Freedom Charter was drawn up, the ANC presented apartheid as an outdated colonial form and thus contrary to the needs of capitalism itself. This analysis, which was supposed to convince the democratic and modernizing sectors of the bourgeoisie and imperialism, was erroneous. Apartheid corresponded, on the contrary, to a vital need of capitalist exploitation in South Africa.
Today, on the contrary, the ANC no longer seeks to explain the evolution of the system itself. It takes a triumphalist position, which consists in explaining everything that is happening as the sole effect of the movement of struggle in the 1980s. This kind of self-proclamation has been a permanent trait of Nelson Mandela's movement, and amounts to a form of sectarianism which disarms cadres and militants. Today, all the evidence indicates that the state and the employers have decided to accelerate the pace of change in the South African economic system. This will change the social and political stakes of the negotiations underway.
The best response would be for the libcration movement, in its totality, to seize the current openings to relaunch the struggles, restore the confidence of the mass movement and push the social demands further than the regime wishes. It is not possible today to claim that the regime is negotiating with its back to the wall and consequently consider simple institutional reform as an end in itself.
If the question of power is obviously not on the order of the day, the necessary retreat must be carried out in such a way as to preserve the framework of unitary mobilizations and to maintain programmatically the subversive hope of the 1980s. Unhappily this has not been the policy followed. The setbacks, suffered but sometimes accepted, are now having a cumulative effect on the state of the popular movement.
The ANC has not succeeded in formulating a coherent economic programme, which could be a basis for remobilization. In the mining sector, the COSATU trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers, is negotiating, without thinking too much about it, a "social" slimming down of the workforce.
The loss of independence of the trade unions in relation to the AN and the increasingly secret character of the negotiations serve to reinforce the malaise among the rank-and-file. More serious still is the fact that some continue to claim that the current discussions with the government still hold out the perspective of state power for the oppressed.
And the signature of the peace agreement (see attached article) comforts the regime in its hope of coopting and enclosing the ANC in a sort of co-management of the transition, even before the least economic and social reform has been undertaken. *
SOUTH AFRICA
A
fraudulent
peace
ON September 14, 1991, following a conference bringing together most of the political and social forces of the country, a
"peace" agreement was launched with the goal of putting an end to the violence tearing apart the townships of the Transvaal and Natal. The event was above all hailed as a pact between the ANC, the government, and the
Zulu-based Inkatha party. Some days later the violence restarted; on October 7 at
Tokoza 18 people were assassinated by
"unidentified" killers. Since that date, 200 people have died in violent circumstances.
### PETER BLUMER
T IS no longer possible to keep count of the mutual recriminations between Nelson Mandela and President de Klerk. Each blows hot and cold. Each seeks to satisfy the impatience, or to calm the fears of, his supporters.
It adds up to the politics of pressures, threats and petty blackmail. But the essential is elsewhere. The true negotiations are taking place in secret inside numerous structures set up at the political, social and
ANC loses margin of manoeuvre
The AN has lost any margin of manoeuvre. The constraints of a relationship of forces which is increasingly unfavourable to it are transformed into new doctrines.
The demand for a Constituent Assembly is downplayed in favour of the project for an interim government. The fight for an electoral law that meets the demand for "one person, one vote" is softened, and space left open for the government's pro- 25 ject of a two chamber parliamentary sys-
International Viewpoint #216 • November 11, 1991
SOUTH AFRICA / HAITI tem which would preserve the (racial) right of minorities.
The central slogans of the old Freedom Charter on the nationalization of the big industries has given way to a total confusion in the ranks of the ANC and to a vast spectrum of contradictory positions. The past enthusiasm for the armed wing of the movement (MK) has given place to disillusion; the people of the townships are receiving very little aid to organize their self-defence against the bands of killers.
The balance sheet is now tragic. At the meetings of the ANC or the COSATU trade unions, the tone remains aggressive. There, the taking of power is still spoken of and some continue to claim that de Klerk is negotiating with his back to the wall. There is a bitter impression that the more Mandela exhorts his partisans and hardens his tone towards the regime, the more he then compromises with the latter.
This is the background to the peace agreement of September 14. Its principal function for the regime would have been to formalize the entry of Inkatha into the process of negotiations on an equal footing to the ANC.
### Reactionary heritage
The constitutional reform process will henceforth adapt itself to the recognition of an institutionalized "Zulu" ethnicity. Thus the reactionary heritage of apartheid (which is not limited to differentiating between whites and non-whites but extends this to the blacks themselves) has imposed itself on negotiations which are supposed to be about ending a system based on racial and ethnic identifications. The press is now stressing the weak impact of Mandela amongst the "Indians" of Natal and the "coloureds" of the Cape.
The peace agreement represents moreover a new "institutional" compromise on the part of the AN at a time when there has still been no constitutional reform, blacks still do not have the right to vote, the bantustans still exist, and so on.
The mechanisms of "peace" represent in effect a form of cooption into structures dominated by the government and the army. The local committees to be set up will be dependent on the police and the local or tribal authorities. They will be charged with regulating demonstrations and meetings and cooperating with the police to identify those responsible for
The signatory organizations must furnish police with the names and addresses of local militants and leaders.
Finally, informers will be protected and the "guilty" denounced. Undoubtedly, in the present circumstances, the signing of such an accord by the AN represents a loss of independence for the liberation
This new form of control and surveillance in which the AN is to participate is 26 "joint management committes" that the strangely reminiscent of the old system of
"securocrats" of the Botha era set up to control the townships and identify the leaders. Already at the time it amounted to linking the army and the police with all kinds of local notabilities.
The pressure which will now be exerted on the ANC, in a period where it wishes to convince by its realism and good will, will push it to scaling down mass mobilizations and demonstrations, all capable obviously of leading to violence. Any progressive mobilization would thus be criminalized in the same way as the exactions of the Inkatha militants.
Divisions could sharpen
The division between the ANC and the rest of the political movements of the left also risks becoming sharper. The PAC (Pan African Congress), Azapo (Azanian People's Organization) and WOSA (Workers Organization of South Africa) refused to sign the final document from the peace conference. In response, Mandela called on the General Assembly of the United Nations to support only the signatory movements. Is his target here the PAC? In any case, we are a long way here from the project of the "Patriotic Front", formally accepted by the ANC, and supposed to regroup in unity all the liberation forces.
Not content with having led Nelson Mandela's movement into this impasse, de Klerk continues to accuse him of wishing to"take power by force".
The solution that has been chosen, allegedly to put an end to the violence, puts the aggressors and the aggressed on a footing of equality. Inkatha and its chief, Buthelezi, had hardly signed the document before parading in their thousands in Johannesburg, armed with their traditional tribal weapons. De Klerk, for his part, still affects to know nothing of the commando units of assassins who regularly fire on crowds although it is no secret that the state and army apparatus are behind
The social and moral degradation in many townships is very great after so many years of struggle without victory. Many activists hoped to be able to stabilize a system of self-defence. But two essential factors are lacking for such a project; political leaderships which themselves favour this choice and a radical democratic united political battle, which does not surrender on the principal social
The capacity for mobilization has weakened but remains high, as shown by the trade union demonstration in Johannesburg against the introduction of a Value Added Tax which will impoverish the poor still further. But the confusions and divisions which reign inside the ANC have been internalized by a large part of the mass movement. A loss of confidence in the capacities of resistance are feeding the political decay in the townships. *
S INCE 1986 it has been hard to
build mass organizations with a lasting existence. Several popular organizations disagreed with Aristide's candidacy in the first place, believing that he did not have the strength to avoid a catastrophe and fearing that it would all end in a "new Chile". It is also the case that the policies followed by Aristide and his government were not equal to the hopes aroused by his candidacy. He had claimed that "transparency" would be a feature of his rule, and this promise was certainly not kept.
At the start of September an incident took place that left a bitter taste in the mouths of many; the departure for the USA of the former provisional president Ertha Pascal-Trouillot. At the time she was legally forbidden to leave the country in the aftermath of the failed coup in January. The justice minister let it be known that the order forbidding her to leave had been lifted more than a month before the public was informed. Under pressure from abroad, Trouillot had been set free several weeks before.
In fact, it seems that all the charges against her had been dropped, but even so nobody could forget that after her presidency the state coffers were found to be empty. Such incidents did not encourage grass-roots mobilization and organization. The botched trial of Lafontant also led to frustration. The trial could have been an opportunity to reveal the background to the coup attempt and obtain information on its international ramifications and the role played by the army — Lafontant's forces were able to seize the National Palace without a shot being fired.
However, the judge silenced Lafontant as soon as he began to blurt out interesting information under pressure. An appeal trial was scheduled, but the word in Portau-Prince was that it would not take place; that the USA would get rid of Lafontant beforehand. And, curiously, he did indeed die in mysterious conditions at the very beginning of the coup of September 27.
On Friday, September 29, Aristide returned from the United States, where his speech to the United Nations General Assembly had made a strong impression. Oddly, he did not go straight to the National Palace, but made a detour via the shanty town of Cité Soleil. Then he addressed thousands of his supporters gathered in front of the National Palace. Some had kept guard in front of the prison, fearing that Lafontant would escape in Aristide's absence. That evening Aristide made a passionate speech, threatening the bourgeoisie. Since then it has been said that this speech was the spark for the coup. However, the truth is almost certainly the opposite. Aristide knew of a plot to assassinate him between the airport and the National Palace, and this is why he changed his itinerary.
The following day, furthermore, Aristide had a conversation with General
US-backed coup spins out of control
HAITI ly undiplomatic language to berate the United States and deplore his isolation in the struggle for democracy in Haiti. The United States has tried to hide its role by condemning the coup, in a routine fashion, and by discreetly pointing a finger at certain rich Haitians of Syrian-Lebanese origin, the traditional allies of the Duvalierists.
FROM THE MOMENT he was elected Haitis president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical priest committed to improving the lot of Haiti's poor, found himself in an almost
Impossible situation. The mobilizations on December 6,
1990 (during the elections) and January 7, 1991 (during