Contradiction and ambiguity
International Viewpoint #260 October 1994
SINCE the electoral victory of the ANC, South Africa has entered a long period of reform of its State apparatus. The assumption of power by the government of national unity, the complex arrangements for the establishment of ministerial cabinets, the parliamentary reorganisation, the setting up of provincial executives; these only constitute the most visible aspect of a profound restructuring, whose object is to accommodate the old State apparatus to the ANC. PETER BLUMER
EVERAL significant debates • have emerged as a consequence of these multiple adjustments and reforms. In addition, South Africa has for several months witnessed a massive strike wave in cars, commerce, transport and public services. These discussions, conflicts and theatrical setpieces attest to the significant contradictions between the social dynamic which impelled the ANC until recently and the realism which it is today forced to apply in command of the State. This contradiction will become increasingly apparent to those sectors which remain attached to the old radical jargon of the
ANC and the South African Communist
Party (SACP). Yet it was already clearly identifiable before the elections when the ANC published its programme of orientation for the five years to come.
This Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) is a document of great importance. Not only because it is supposed to guide the policies of the
ANC (we will see elsewhere that its function is very much more ambiguous!) but because this type of docu-
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SOUTH AFRICA ment also expresses a profound tendency, broadly hegemonic under current conditions, inside a number of radical, anti-imperialist, indeed post-revolutionary, movements, in the world. A comparison with similar elaborations made in other countries would constitute a good aid to understanding the spirit of the times.
What makes the RDP a particularly interesting document is that it can be interpreted in two parallel, totally contradictory senses. It serves as a beacon to those who hope the crisis can be overcome through social consensus. But it also serves as an argument for those who wish to see the immediate satisfaction of their demands. We will see, after having examined the RDP, what the attitude of the new government is in relation to the unvarnished reality of these social contradictions.
### Rebuilding the nation
The RDP is today presented as the ANC's fundamental programme to break with apartheid, poverty and racial inequality. In reality it originated as a demand of COSATU, South Africa's principal trade union federation and a member of the political bloc around the ANC. COSATU wished to obtain a clear engagement from the ANC on social objectives, so that it could justify its full participation in the ANC's electoral list. The latter had shown itself incapable, since the opening of negotiations, of producing an economic and social project of any real coherence. Finally, after a lengthy period of writing and several versions, the definitive document was presented as the basic text of the ANC's future governmental policy.
This programme reflects, then, the compromises which have been made in the course of its elaboration. But it expresses above all a political strategy which is shared, each in its own way, by the three leaderships of the Congress
Alliance; namely the ANC, SACP, and
The term "reconstruction" invokes simultaneously the notion of the destruction wrought by apartheid and the idea of the construction of a "new nation".
The RDP is, then, conceived to satisfy all sectors of society. No member of the current government of national unity, notably those of the National Party, would have any difficulty in finding in the RDP the arguments to denounce and curb any over-audacious social policy. On the other hand, by taking into consi deration only a section of the document and ignoring its general methodology, radicalised sectors can locate demands of the first importance (housing, education, the questions of land or health, the place of women in society, and so forth). This document contains everything — and its opposite.
### Evaluating needs
It could certainly not be said that the RDP failed to fix in detail its precise social and economic objectives. Rare indeed are those programmes which, like this one, take care to propose, with supporting figures, the satisfaction of the most urgent needs of the black population. It fixes quantitative objectives in the fields of housing (see p. 23), electrification and schools; in each area it proposes a policy of positive discrimination in favour of black people in general and also of women. With such a commitment from the government it is not surprising that numerous activists, in the trade unions or the civics, have demanded that the government apply the RDP and the whole RDP... as promised. This detailed form of programme, supported by concrete figures, is indeed, a good example of what can, in a given context, motivate and radicalise a social movement starting from concrete choices.
But the RDP does not stop there. So many details, so many social promises, immediately raise other questions. How can the programme be realised? On what social forces is it based? How can it be financed? Around these key points the whole of the document swings, to reveal a political objective completely contradictory to the social promises it contains.
Because it implicitly deals with the whole of the socio-economic relations of the country and because it claims to be a project of post-apartheid transition, the
RDP puts forward an analysis of the old system. Indeed, its analysis of the post- apartheid period constitutes the first problem. It amounts to ending the "distor-
International Viewpoint #260 October 1994 tions" that apartheid has introduced into the South African economy. The term of distortion invokes a notion of model: as te the separation of our society into a
'first world' and a
"ABOUT 50 thousand houses were built in South Africa in if apartheid had been a perverse detour
1992. This figure could reasonably be increased to over 300 in contrast to an abstract ideal of a virthousand units each year by the end of the RDP's five-year tuous functioning capitalism.
programme. At minimum, one million low-cost houses should
That is in any case what one is led to be constructed over five years."
understand by phrases like the following: "The apartheid system severely
This promise has already made a lot of ink flow. The premier distorted the South African financial of the Johannesburg-Pretoria region says that he wants 150 thousand houses constructed in five years, which some on the system. A handful of large financial insright have called a "utopian dream", while the Minister for Houtitutions, all linked closely to the domising, Joe Slovo, prefers a figure of 50 thousand nationally in nant conglomerates, centralise most of the first year and 300 thousand by 2001. O the country's financial assets." In other words it is apartheid, and not the inherent tendencies of capitalism, which have favoured the monopolisation of the economic and financial system.
Using the same method, the RDP, invokes the "racial distortions" of society. A euphemism which allows the question of the redistribution of income and wealth to be approached as if it amounted to simply overcoming a temporary imbalance. No reference is thus made to the social relations which will obviously persist beyond the disappearance of the segregation laws.
Apartheid: an unseemly detour?
The notion of distortion is very fashionable in the ANC. The term had already been employed four years ago by Joe Slovo, general secretary of the
SACP, to describe the "distortion" of socialism in Eastern Europe. This formulation allowed its author to avoid the roots of the problem of the social nature and the political determinisms of the
Stalinist regime.
Adapted today to apartheid this terminology allows the by-passing of the structural relation which linked apartheid and capital's need to realise value.
The ANC thus confirms its old analyses:
apartheid was a sort of anachronism in relation to the needs even of a market economy. It is this analysis which allowed the ANC to advocate an alliance with the enlightened sectors of the big financial bourgeoisie against the backward "Boers"
', without doubt the embodiment of the famous "distortion".
This old theory is maintained in the
RDP. It amounts to saying nothing about the fundamental relations of production which structured the history of apartheid and attributing the responsibility of the past to contingent factors.
Thus, the RDP continues the mechanical approach traditionally adopted by the
SACP in its "theory" of "colonialism of a special type": "We must not perpetua-
'third world' -another disguised way of preserving apartheid." This undialectical juxtaposition of "two worlds" leads to the conclusion that one of the two societies in existence should have the right to catch up with" the other. As if it amounted to a simple historic imbalance or a democratic deficit which prevented a part of the population from benefitting from the potentialities of the "first world".
The tasks of the moment would on the contrary necessitate the greatest clarity on the political processes at work for the past twenty years. If the struggles of the masses have played a central role in the modification of the relationship of forces and in the debates inside the ruling class, other very important elements have intervened which impelled, starting from the end of the 1980s, the current transition.
A complex mutation
To recapitulate our analysis... Combined with the powerful social mobilisations of the 1980s there was:
• A recession from 1981, that is even before the social explosion.
• A world economy in full mutation accompanied by growing pressures for new commercial relations freed from all protectionism. This is why, in the course of the 1980s, the intelligent sectors of the regime and of industry understood that these international changes would necessitate a modification, voluntary or forced, of the relations between South Africa and the world market; less protectionism, more exchanges, different monetary mechanisms... Apartheid (specific labour market, strong protectionism, big public sector, weak internal demand) had become contradictory to the needs of capital, unlike in the years from the 1950s to the 1970s.
• A world political situation which changed starting from 1985, notably with the Gorbachev regime, accompanied by a perspective of negotiated settlements of various regional conflicts. These changes played against the liberation movements and in favour of De Klerk. The latter, in his famous speech of 2 February 1990 declared: "The dynamic developments in international politics have created new opportunities for South Africa as well. Important advances have been made, among other things, in our contact abroad, especially where these were precluded previously by ideological consideration...
The South African ruling class knew, then,, that it had to make a turn, but the social struggles of the 1980s still limited greatly the margins of manoeuvre. It was the decline of the mass movement, from 1987, and the international changes which permitted the regime to seize the opportunity and take the initiative. A review of all these events is absolutely necessary to understand the current reality. This neither detracts from the centrality of the mass struggles of the 1980s nor the intrinsic importance of the current political and institutional changes. But to ignore the other elements would lead to a simplification which would tend to justify the current policy of national union. Those who, in 1980, claimed that the opening of official negotiations represented "the victory of the liberation movement" and the preparation of a "transfer of power" can no longer retrace this history without contradicting themselves. The ANC and the SACP which, in the past, justified the self-limitation of their strategy by recourse to a false economic analysis of apartheid (the supposed "backwardness" of this mode of accumulation in the South African context of the 1950s-1970s) today avoid any reference to the structural factors in explai-
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RDP: housing
Contradiction and ambiguity
International Viewpoint #260 October 1994 ning the political events of the past four years. Everything is attributed to the strength of the liberation movement and the genius of the ANC.
A false realism
The RDP's fidelity to this old method allows its authors to propose an exit from apartheid through an exit from recession, the latter to be achieved through an expansion of internal consumption and the reduction of inequalities. For this, the text of the RDP uses the traditional macro-economic indicators of liberal economics: growth, productivity, competitivity... All except one; that of profit. At no moment, either explicitly or implicitly, is it said that the guarantee of certain anticipated profit is the basic reference of the private investor that there could be no virtuous social contract which satisfies, durably and at one and the same time, the employees and the employers. The private sector which accepts the RDP as a necessary but conjunctural exercise of the ANC has, for its part, cast very much doubt on the possibility of satisfying at the same time the social needs of millions of people and industrial profits. An economist of the Rand Merchant Bank has, like others, indicated that the RDP "does not directly address a major prerequisite for creating jobs, namely vigorous private sector fixed investment, and the saving which underlies such investments".! The Financial Mail of 9 September, after having signaled that the strikes of this year have led to "losses" of 3 billion rand, throws out
Alec Erwin, former leader of the trade union left and today Deputy Finance Minister: "We have just come out of an exploitative society and we have no intention of going back into one."2
He continues: "We are continually advised to ensure low wages in order to compete in the world economy. This is a narrow view which does not understand what is happening in that economy." It is thus Erwin, one of the principal advocates of the RDP, and his colleagues, avoid acknowledging that the main question for the capitalists is that of the cost of labour and the rate of exploitation. They prefer to use the vague term of "competitivity" which modestly conceals the harshness of conflict over the price of the sale of labour power. However, during the big strike wave of the last few months, many trade union leaders have had to reconsider this essential problem. Among them, Enoch Godongwana, the new general secretary
RDP: land
"THE LAND programme has two aspects: redistribution of residential and productive land to those who need it but cannot afford it, and restitution for those who lost land
To redress the suffering caused by the policy of removals, the democratic government must, through the mechanism of a land court, restore land because of apartheid laws...
to South Africans dispossessed... This court must be accessible to the poor and illiterate. It must establish processes that enable it to take speedy decisions."
This legal rule poses a lot of problems given the spontaneity of the movements. Joe Siovo has had to state that the government will not legalise any actions which will undermine the rights and expectations of such communities, and will not legitimate a process of queue-jumping."
(South African Labour Bulletin, June 1994) © investments, and more specifically the guarantee of the great social contract which the RDP seeks, supposes in advance that the owners of capital are guaranteed an increased rate of profit!
This profit which remains founded on a necessarily unequal distribution of the wealth produced an on unpaid productive labour. This silence on the essential factor of capitalist functioning is not a prudent or tactical omission, but a conscious act. It is precisely because the
24 this warning: "Growth
- to say nothing of the
RDP - won't survive a prolongation of that sort of loss. Nor will social stability, nor an
ANC-dominated government." These people at least do not remain silent on class contradictions.
In the context of the current class relations in
South Africa, must seek to guarantee a high level of profit to obtain a good rhythm of private investment. It will be necessary then to confront the problem of labour costs. The RDP does not clarify what it means in seeking to "improve the capacity of the financial sector to mobilise more resources and to direct these activities set out in the RDP..." This could only be done by a considerable contribution from the State to create the conditions of profitability of productive investments and by a sufficient rate of exploitation of the labour force. It is the very opposite of what is claimed by of the metal and car workers union, NUMSA: "The key issue is wage anomalies in the industry. We wanted these eradicated over two years, the employers said four, we moved to three. The employers are worried about cost implications... The employers put counter demands of flexibility, compulsory overtime and a no-strike clause. They wanted wording in agreements tightened. What will we say to our members? What is new for them?"
No more or less fleeting "political will" can overcome the traditional mechanism of the capitalist organisation of labour. If it is, for example, completely correct that the RDP proposes positive action for both Blacks and women, this will nonetheless come up against the needs of the market. The fractioning of regulations, the manipulation of all sorts of prejudices and simple competition between workers allow a reduction of the pressure of wages. The end of apartheid will not then signify the end of segregation according to skin colour, sex, region or age. The laws of the market will be sufficient to maintain, in part, racial discrimination: the cost of housing
1. Weely Mail and Guardian, 08/07/94.
2. South African Labour Bulletin, January 1994.
3. Financial Week, 11/08/94.
International Viewpoint #260 October 1994 in certain areas of town, the price of certain cultivable lands, unequal access to credit, the privatisation of certain forms of education.
The European model
The RDP's philosophy of "growth" is inspired, although this is not stated, by the period of the 1950s and 1960s in Western Europe (what has been called the "thirty glorious years"). During this period, completely singular in the history of capitalism, there was a concomitant growth of labour productivity, profits, wages and mass consumption. The social democrats saw in the rise of workers' incomes the sole motor of growth... It is this approach which now structures the RDP's hope of a great virtuous social contract, capable of channelling all forces towards the reconstruction" of the country. But to take as a theoretical model this particular period of European capitalism is an absurdity: the place of South Africa in the world economy today has nothing in common with the highly industrialised states of post World War Il Europe. These coun tries themselves have now emerged from this form of accumulation, with no hope of returning to it.
Still inspired by the Keynesian model, the RDP proposes a legislative vigilance on the part of the State to avoid the exaggerated effects of the market. It is again Alec Erwin who puts things most clearly: *The RDP is by no means anti-market but realistically accepts that the market is incapable of effecting major structural reform (...) The RDP seeks to develop conditions that allow market forces to be more effective within a larger and restructured economy." But the very nature of this State - as overseer of the general conditions of commodity production — limits all pretensions of radical reforms of the laws of the market. Capitalism obviously needs a state regulation, without which it would be reduced to a chaotic confrontation of private initiatives. The necessity of this central mediation by the State is as old as capitalism: no capitalist society has ever functioned on the basis of the "pure market". South Africa has for a long time been a good example of the central role of the State in assuring the optimum conditions of capitalist accumulation. The problem then, lies elsewhere. What State, and what are the social objectives of its intervention?
The RDP is a document which remains very unsatisfactory even so far as these pretensions are concerned. Its project of an anti-trust policy, very far from what was put forward in the Freedom Charter, does not even reach the formal level of the legislation of the US and Germany (whose effectiveness in those countries is well known!). The problem is not then, summarised in the alternative presented by the RDP: "We are convinced that neither a commandist central planning system nor an unfettered free market system can provide adequate solutions..." It is moreover quite piquant to see former supporters of the Stalinist system utilising such an argument to propose a third road, a virtuous intervention of the State, astonishingly independent of the social forces which it is charged with reproducing.
Normalisation and verticalism
The RDP desires, on the other hand, that "civil society" involves itself in and reinforces the application of the reforms. This terminology is new for the ANC, the SACP and COSATU. For obvious reasons related to racial oppression the ANC has never used an expression as fluid as this which obscures the national question. As for the SACP, it made great play of the centrality of the working class inside the oppressed Black population. So what exactly does this new concept mean?
The RDP deepens the ambiguities by describing this "civil society" now as something limited to the popular rank and file organisations, now enlarged to include all forms of grouping, employers' associations included. Elsewhere in the text "civil society" would also concern the diverse forums of negotiations which were set up starting from 1990 and which bring together, among others, the representatives of the old regime, the employers, the trade unions and the ANC. The RDP proposes that these forums (for what little time they continue to exist) "continue to build consensus around industrial and trade policy. In particular, they must address the needs of industrial sectors forced to adjust and the question of how to share the costs of adjustment; identify new economic sites of competitive advantage; develop aspects of industrial and trade policy, and deal with problems of extending infrastructure meeting basic needs."
This has nothing to do with an appeal to self-organisation, independent ad democratic, so as to favour popular vigilance in a delicate and tactical phase of the transition. Neither determined counter-power nor independent rank-and-file movement; what is proposed amounts, on the contrary, to imposing a sterilising dialogue with the bosses on the mass organisations which emerged from the struggles of the 1980s. "Civil society" is called to participate in the application of the RDP without any particular social and political independence. The objective is that of a strong verticalism by which the mass organisations and the NGOs will be reliably "supportive" of the ANC's policy in government. A number of events have already illustrated this perspective. One of the most significant is undoubtedly the reaction of the leaders in the face of land occupation movements. When an acceleration of these actions developed in the region of Pretoria and Johannesburg, Joe Slovo, principal leader of the SACP and minister of housing, said that, in some cases, these occupations were orchestrated by outsiders who do not have the best interests of (the squatters) at heart, but who are instigating such actions for their own personal and political gain (...) We have waiting lists and negotiations in progress on an overall housing strategy which will include a mortgage indemnity scheme to encourage lending by the banks, a national housing bank, and a revamped subsidy system (...) In the meantime we must try to eliminate wild squatting through political intervention by the ANC's social structures, by the civic, and other organs of civil society."4
4. Weekly Mail and Guardian, 10/06/94.
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Contradiction and ambiguity
International Viewpoint #260 October 1994
Another problem has emerged in relation to the NGOs which are to be involved in projects linked to the RDP. These organisations are very numerous in South Africa and some could be tempted to wish to capture at any price a part of the "market" in "reconstruction". But the intervention of the ANC has, in this respect, been very marked by authoritarianism and by the hope of political normalisation. All of which is contradictory with the supposed value placed on "civil society"!
### Bosses and workers
Finally, there is the question of the "democratisation" of workplaces. There again, the road proposed by the RDP is a million miles from the known reality of the capital-labour relationship. Rather than starting from the various experiences gone through in the country in the past few years, like the quality cireles and workers shareholdings (ESOPs), the ANC above all the COSATU leadership persist in proposing a utopian "co-responsibility" or "co-management" between bosses and workers in the workplaces. "Legislation", says the RDP, "must facilitate workers participation and decision-making in the world of work. Such legislation must include an obligation on employers to negotiate substantial changes concerning production matters or workplace organisation within a nationally negotiated framework (...) Affirmative action measures must be used to end discrimination on the grounds of race and gender, and to address the disparity of power between workers and management..."
Here again, the inspiration comes from the European model, indeed more specifically from the German model. But the confusion is maintained between an enlargement of trade union rights in the workplace and the responsibility of workers' organisations in management decisions. Indeed, even in Europe, the right to access to the general accounting of workplaces or the right to an "opinion" on restructuring plans have never allowed workers' organisations to determine (or even co-determine!) industrial decisions. How can one do better in a country like South Africa where the 26 racial question in labour relations is not ready to be resolved? But the trajectory of the RDP is all the more equivocal and dangerous when a section of the employers hope to pacify the social field by measures of co-option and bureaucratisation of the workers' movement. Several attempts have thus been made to promote trade union participation in the capital of enterprises (union shareholders) and to propose no-strike bonuses for workers.
Who pays the bill?
There remains the social needs, immediate and concrete, which the ANC proposes to satisfy. But who will pay for the RDP? A special fund should theoretically cover the needs of the RDP for the next five years, to which a modest contribution from the governyears. For the current fiscal year the government's contribution will amount to 2.5 billion rand, or 3 percent of consumption spending
The justifications for this arrangement are many. The main one is that no burden imply imposing on the profits of the big companies and upsetting the rich through radical changes in taxation. The government of national unity is credible in the eyes of the National Party and the right only if the ANC refrains from attacking the main social equilibria. In the course of the last three fiscal years the State budget deficit has been successively 4.3, 8.3, and 6.9 percent of GDP. It is expected to be around 6.6 percent for the fiscal year 1994-95. The direct financing of the RDP by the government budget, combined with a necessary control of the public deficit, would then imply a vast redistribution of income in favour of the State and the workers to detriment of capital. The financing of the RDP rests instead, then, on an appeal to national and international sponsors: governments and foreign institutions, international investors. Conveniently, some ANC members stress their aversion to a society too much controlled by the State. The exterior financing of the RDP is, according to them, linked to a rejection of any "command economy"
Л6B0 perspective. Reality is more prosaic, however. The economic policy which is being implemented is a liberal and monetarist one. The central bank has invoked the risks of inflationary pressure and Alec Erwin, as deputy finance minister, has said that privatisations must be seriously taken into consideration as a means of reducing the public debt. If one takes into account only the main financial and monetary indicators, avoiding any consideration on the relations between classes, these conclusions are obviously inescapable!
Moreover, the debate over the military budget has also illustrated the internal tensions within the ANC over the budget. We have already seen the new defence minister and ANC leader, Joe Modise, declaring his support for the maintenance of military spending at its current level. The "white paper" to be published by the government in order to "apply" the RDP only confirms this tendency. Monetarism is dominant throughout this document and privatisations appear to be seen as a central instrument for balancing the budget. During the last COSATU congress there was considerable pressure brought to bear on the unions to support these policies.
The voice of the rank-and-file
The wave of strikes over the last few months has been a perfect illustration of the social contradictions of the current transition. Already between January and June 1994, that is before the elections and just after them, there had been 1.4 million strike days, double the total of the preceding year. The Sunday Times of 24 July commented: "This week the trickle of workplace stoppages threatened to grow into an unprecedented flood of strike actions with COSATU fighting to re-assert its authority. Without the res-
5. This notion of co-management dates back to the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s in the former trade union left, essentially around the NUMSA leadership and in the ANC. See Geoff Schreiner, South Africa Labour Bulletin, July/August 1992. Also the proposal, im 1992, for "co-determination" from the miners' union, the NUM. Or again, the debate on the installation of a negotiated "Total and Quality" plan at PG Bison, SALB, January 1992.
6. Business Day, 14/09/94.
International Viewpoint #260 October 1994 pected founding general secretary, Jay Naidoo, and around sixty other key leaders who have left to serve in the government, frustrated workers have begun to take matters into their hands. And so far they have opted for strikes, strikes and more strikes."
In the recent past workers demands were dampened by recession. Today, when the economic cycle seems to be going in the opposite direction and they wish to catch upon what they have lost, they are faced by the criteria of competitivity for export, the GATT constraints, and the reduction of import duties. The pressure on wage-earners has deepened and retrenchments are frequent. The workers had, moreover, hoped for significant changes in their status after the electoral victory of the ANC
Yet racism has been maintained in the workplaces as have wage disparities which also reflect racial divisions. The strike in the Pick'n' Pay chain of shops has illustrated this, to the extent that the strikers were, as in the past, violently attacked by the police. Indeed, at the COSATU congress held at the beginweek, the mood at union headquarters is far from upbeat."9
The strength of the political and trade union leaderships and the ideological hegemony of the ANC weigh against the possibility of a rapid clarification. The risk is that a movement based around demands could exhaust itself before the appearance of an alternative leadership. A great deal of attention must be paid to what is going on in the trade union movement and the SACP. But the potential remains modest, taking into account the accelerated bureaucratisation of these organisations and the international situation.
Dozens of national trade union leaders have been nominated to the national and regional governments. This contributes, for the moment, to a semiintegration of the trade union movement in the machinery of the State. Several recent episodes illustrate the tendencies at work. Among the most spectacular was that of the projected consortium of the trade union federations, COSATU and NACTU, with the Black employers' organisations (NAFCOC
Thus corruption is escalating, while numerous ANC leaders are integrated in the leadership pools of some big enterprises. The first lines of fracture which appear could, then, not necessarily correspond to a division between adherents of the current policy and the more radical sectors. The probability is greater that we will see a conflict between two partially antagonistic forms of bureaucratisation, that of the State and that of the trade union movement, still very dependent on its mass base. Between the two the space for building an independent force will be narrow. *
ACCORDING to a recent
study (Weekly Mail and
Guardian, 17 June 1994),
the expenditure of a black
person in South Africa
represents on average only ning of September, Nelson Mandela did not hesitate to criticise the workers,
11% of that of a white. The demanding that they should not focus on whites, who represent no narrow sectoral interests and should take into consideration the 5 million unemployed.7 More frankly, the Cape Times population, account for commented, under the headline "Well
54% of household expendisaid": "The RDP cannot be built on ecoture. Moreover the recent nomic chaos, and it will take the best efforts, patience and understanding of strikes allowed some both labour and management to ensure newspapers to comment productive harmony."8 on the inequality of wages in the workplaces. At
Rebuilding trade union and FABCOC) to examine the possibility of the investment in the casinos of the South African enterprise Sun International. For COSATU it was a means of gaining access to the kind of financial resources previously available to it through foreign donations. Such was the argument of John Coppelyn, leader of the textile trade union, former leader of the trade union left in the early 1980s, now an ANC deputy and also "COSATU investment adviser!" As to Sun International, independence
Many militants have seen the RDP the wage of a worker. The as a means of better legitimising their ratio is 96:1 at ABSA and demands. Rather than denouncing the
126:1 at Murray & Roberts.
"traitors" in power, is it not better to organise the various social movements for the implementation of the promises contained in the RDP, thus clarifying the political debate? This road should certainly be explored. But it is necessary to avoid any illusions on the end of the honeymoon and the reconstruction of a mass political alternative to the left of the ANC and the SACP. The outcome of the recent strikes illustrates this. Neither the Pick'n Pay workers nor the carworkers achieved victory. Work has recommenced in the car industry while the employers' press gloats: "For despite putting a brave face on their decision to accept the employers' final offer of 10.5 percent wage rise and return to work this the aim would be to secure lucrative contracts with regional and local governments in which COSATU will have a strong influence. But what of the unionised workers of Sun
International? Another case is that of a vague project for an international conference centre at Durban for which a lobby has been set up bringing together the local
ANC leaders, the minister of public works, leaders of COSATU and also
Inkatha supporters. Jeff Rabele, the minister of public works, had the nerve to say that this project (evaluated at 200 million rand) confirmed to the RDP. A company was created, involving both the former treasurer of the ANC for
Southern Natal, Mzi Khumalo, and an
Inkatha leader. 10
7. Business Day, 08/09/94.
8. Cape Times, 09/09/94.
9. Financial Mail, 09/09/94.
10. Weekly Mail and Guardian, 19/08/94.
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more than 13% of the