Privatising the privatisation debate
Do the workers have a country?
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* South Africa Labour Party (August 1905), the Cape Labour party complains that "the interests of the savage Zulus, the comfort of the Chinese... the convenience of the Indian coolies seem to come nearer the heart of the
Management consultants Coopers and Lybrand are helping the English Labour Party than the continued oppression... of their white brethren of the same Mauritan government avoid public debate on privatisation. flesh and blood!"
The general strike on the Rand in 1922 was mainly fought - sometimes in armed struggle against the state - against the employment of Blacks as skilled workers in the mines. Their slogan was "Workers of the World Unite to Keep South Africa White. Though the early socialists and, after 1920, the Communists, were critical of the openly racist and xenophobic Labour Party, they accepted the traditional view of the Marxist movement that the socialist revolution would be headed by the organised industrial workers - who were, for the most part, white.
They tried to overcome this with all sorts of euphemisms, like "Black and White Workers Unite," or, as W.H. Andrews, a founding father of the Communist Party, put it, "Equal Pay for Equal Work."
It was not till the Comintern foisted the Native Republic thesis on the South African Communist Party in 1928 that the party began an in-depth study of the issues involved. Until then, it had regarded the movement for national liberation and democratic rights as subordinate to the struggle for socialism.
And it was not until April 1935, when Leon Trotsky intervened with his Remarks on the Draft Theses of the Workers Party of South Africa, that South African left oppositionists and Trotskyists began to
Rajni Lallah
The whole debate on privatisation and development strategy was itself privatised when Coopers and Lybrand organised a seminar on privatisation where several top Ministers, private sector organisations, heads of the public sector and the trade union movement were invited to find a consensus on how to privatise. The Finance Minister was to make the opening speech, but the whole event was to be chaired by Peter Benson, head of the Coopers and Lybrand Privatisation Unit.
Through the All Workers Conference all trade union confederations boycotted the seminar, and demonstrators at the hotel distributed an open letter explaining why the All Workers Conference was not participating. Government had promised national debate on privatisation, it read, and not it is "privatising the debate." "No consensus for privatisation exists in Mauritius. The All Workers Conference strongly opposes the process. Therefore we cannot participate in a seminar which aims at finding a consensus on how to privatise."
This intervention disrupted the consulsaid that "government should stop looking for democratic consensus on privatisation, and get on with it."
After all this unexpected publicity, the 4th All Workers Conference [footnote] against privatisation on 10 March (Independence Day) was a great success. Organisers presented the government with a letter demanding that the government freeze the whole privatisation process until there has been real debate on what is wrong with the public sector, and what can be done to make it work better and more democratically; that the government sign an historic pact with the All Workers Conference and the trade unions promising that it will not dismantle universal, public and free services within the Welfare State; and that it stop trying to force privatisation through the sale or distribution of shares in privatised sectors.
The government has not yet replied. But someone at Coopers and Lybrand is burning the midnight oil to produce a slick, dishonest response. * tants' high profile media campaign. In • Taxation recognise the importance of the national
This book will long remain a standard text book for all interested in the history of
South Africa and the role played in that history by the socialist, labour, and national movements. We can only look forward to
Volume Two. *
1. Writings of Leon Trotsky 1934-35, Pathfinder Press, the end, the All Workers Conference probably got more media coverage than the Coopers and Lybrand seminar.
Two days later, the national public television station organised a prime-time debate with two representatives of the All Workers Conference, a ultra-liberal economist, and two representatives of Coopers and Lybrand. The pro-priva-
A second All Workers Conference White Paper was published in April, discussing taxation (the movement's first White Paper discussed privatisation). The new document is very timely, as the debate is shifting from privatisation towards how to finance the public sector, as the government launches a
"pre-budget consultation"
tisation speakers kept scoring owngoals, the "independent" economist even saying that, if selling the country to "nation", then it was better to do so. With no representative of government invited, the debate itself was effectively privatised, with labour representatives opposing paid consultants
This TV debate transformed the All Workers Conference campaign on the necessity to oppose privatisation into a truly national debate. The "independent" commercial press was livid. Most editorials the next morning effectively process that will culminate in May June with a new budget.
An All Workers Commission on the Sugar Industry met in mid April for the first time. Sugar Industry workers are the most experienced and still the most influential section of the working class in Mauritius. They were in the forefront of the big general strike in 1979. Now they are threatened with factory closures, as part of the centralisation of the sugar industry, and attacks on work conditions.
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATiON
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34 International Viewpoint by José triarte "Bikila"
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Mauritius New York. multinationals would make money for the • Sugar International Viewpoint 1996