Mandela's first 1,000 days
* South Africa The birth of parliamentary democracy in South Africa in April 1994 created a completely new socio-political situation. It rendered obsolete every conditioned political response belonging to the apartheid era. Within this strange new milieu, every mainstream political party, liberation organisation and socialist grouping floundered in search of new bearings and a relevant new role. The triumphalism of global capitalism and the temporal crisis of the international socialist project did not make this an easy adjustment. Today nothing is quite as it was before. Both social form and content feel different now that shifts in the power-balance have put a black government in control. The unexpected appears normal: unions have gone into business; capitalists call on government to fulfil its redistributive functions; the leader of a simmering civil war, Zulu leader Buthelezi, is appointed to act as president while Nelson Mandela attends a conference abroad. New social strata (parvenu capital, a rising black bourgeoisie, the blending of a new state bureaucracy with the old) are emerging and making their presence felt. Yet the physical presence of the apartheid-past casts its shadow everywhere. The land hunger and rural poverty, the migrant labour system and the squatter camps, the sprawling overcrowded urban townships and mass unemployment, the poverty, squalor, hunger and misery that comes with ghettos, poor housing and inadequate social services is still everywhere. Carl Brecker 20 International Viewpoint
Not that government hasn't brought water and power to very many homes. It has. And not that hospitals are not open to the sick and pregnant, not that schooling and clinics are not more readily available. They are. Even if all these are still inadequate and overcrowded, everyone knows that "it can't be put right overnight."
The problem is that given the scale of the social problems, no real progress can be made unless government can control and direct the country's investable surplus. Such control is necessary to promote infrastructure development (using public works programs); create mass employment (industrial and otherwise); while simultaneously undertaking massive, radical agrarian reform; as well as immediately providing a basic social welfare net, while rapidly expanding social
This modest programme would absorb upwards of 70% of all new wealth created And it would require control over the commanding heights of the economy, so that South Africa's not-inconsiderable wealth could be put to planned use by government in the service of the majortv.
The deepening crisis of expectations that has gripped the black majority comes from their growing realisation (particularly among the organised working class and civic activists) that the ANC-led Government of National Unity will not undertake a radical redistribution of wealth away from the small white bourgeoisie who continue to own the mines, farms, factories and financial empires. Grateful as the dispossessed are for government's provision of subsidies to assist with land resettlement and house purchase, these facilities reach far too few people. And the new program are simply too meagre to make a real difference. Managing capitalism
A government constrained by a constitution that preserves the sanctity of private property and personal wealth, and which is trapped in the logic of budget deficit reduction, must come to rely on foreign capital and private sector involvement to execute its social program. Little wonder that the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), which constituted the Alliance's electoral platform, has effectively been abandoned in favour of the neo-liberal GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) program. Though RDP rhetoric lives on as opium for the masses.
The ANC-led government continues to be drawn rightward by the logic of its position as parliamentary executive responsible for the good health of the capitalist economy.
There is plenty of encouragement from advisors from the IMF/World Bank, South Africa Reserve Bank, and business consultants in every Ministry. These voices speak strongly to the petty bourgeois and nationalist elements within the Government of National Unity.
Increasing impatience
Increasingly, however the ANC-inalliance (with the COSATU trade union federation and the South African Communist
Party, SACP) faces unprecedented criticism from its own left-wing.
This attack gathered verbal strength as the class implications of the ANC's socioeconomic policies came into sharper focus.
The trade unions, simply by expressing the material class interests of their members in clearer voice, have begun to expose the illusion hidden behind slogans like "rainbow nation" and "common national interests".
Today, half-way through the life of South Africa's first-ever democratically elected government, the social forces lurking behind the main political parties have begun to stir. The political domain is alive with manoeuvrings as 'wannabee' parliamentary contenders accommodate to shifts in allegiance, and the emergence of new class formations. The new political map
The 1994 elections were essentially a vote in favour of the liberation movement (ANC) and against the apartheid regime (with regional variations in Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal). The broad electoral blocs formed during that campaign have not survived the realities of sectional class interests which today finds expression around every piece of new policy legislation. This inevitable political realignment, as old parties search for new electoral allies, is crucial to determining the outcome of the up-coming
Many of the political groupings which entered the 1994 elections have long since fallen away, showing their lack of a stable constituency. Those that survived - the Nationalist Party, the Democratic Party, the Pan-Africanist Congress, and the Inkhata Freedom Party - face a life-and-death struggle against the ANC in the upcoming 1999 elections. These elections, the first under the new constitution, will be much more issue-based than the 1994 elections. And the voting population will be more critically-minded.
The 1999 election will mark more than the end of the Mandela Era and the Government of National Unity. It may also be the last election in which the ANC can rely on the organisational capacities of the trade unions and the Communist Party.
Continuation of the Alliance depends on whether GEAR can deliver and whether the ANC-in-government can respond positively to the proposals of COSATU and the civic organisations (grouped in SANCO).
Whether GEAR can deliver the jobs and social benefits promised by 1999 is very unlikely (RDP promised 100,000 new houses, there are 10,000; GEAR promised 126,000 new jobs in 1996, there is produced "jobless growth' and a net job loss). Leaving the ANC?
Whether government will respond to Union pressure, or the SACP's lobbying, and agree to seriously revise GEAR, still remains to be seen. Failure to do so will mean lacklustre electoral support for the ANC from the
Alliance partners, though their electoral pact will probably survive.
Nevertheless, if, when delivery fails, the
ANC is unable to give credence to CO-
SATU's alternative programme, the alreadyapparent slow disintegration of the Alliance will begin to accelerate. Union leadership fears that, even if it creates a fresh possibility for the emergence of a mass workers' party, such a break-away could produce a rightward lurch at government level. Such fears, which include the spectre of a right-wing backlash. have convinced leading labour militants to remain within the Alliance and give the ANC "one last chance."
Such a shift could well accelerate the level of class conflict within what has already been an unstable interregnum.. No one can predict the outcome, but clearly much will depend on the capacity of the Left to provide the necessary leadership. And it is no secret that the small revolutionary left formations have not demonstrated that they have the capacity to fill the leadership vacuum. Delusions and illusions
The COSATU/SACP left must first rid themselves of lingering delusions in the good faith of the ANC leadership and sections of the bourgeoisie. These delusions derive in good part from the ideological notion of a first-stage National Democratic Revolution. which must be completed before building
Thabo Mbeki, deputy President and Mandela's heir-apparent, recognises the left's dilema, though he draws quite different consequences. He writes, in his "State and Social Transformation", (intended to convince the Alliance partners that no realistic alternative exists to GEAR), that "the oscillation within the democratic movement between the objective of establishing a democratic state, and the wish to establish a state whose defining feature would be the total defeat and suppression of both the national and class forces responsible for apartheid", is the source of "much of the confusion that occasionally afflicts the democratic move-
Mbeki urges COSATU and the SACP to recognise that "the strategic "choice' to fight for the graduated creation of a democratic state to replace the apartheid state" has been made (decisions that they were party to). That "choice' has a number of practical consequences which 'derive from the objective imperatives of the process of globalisation. First among these is the acceptance of private capital as a partner. "This means that the working class together with the democratic state and capital complete the proverbial golden triangle necessary for the development and transformation of society". Union resistance
COSATU has strongly rejected the "golden triangle," even though it remains involved in consensus politics, still convinced that their Alliance means that government will side with COSATU against capital.
Yet on every major class issue the ANC
South Africa * rides roughshod over Alliance hopes: on privatispolicy development, and replacing the RDP with GEAR. history of COSATU created a politically surprise then that pressure from below, kept alive by appalling socio-economic conditions, keeps pushing the union leadership leftward. This produces an eclectic blend of struggle rhetoric and collaborationist politics.
The ideological hand of the SACP is clearly visible at leadership level (see page 26). At first the Party warmly welcomed GEAR, although unionists immediately rejected it as a self-imposed structural adjustment programme and, as such, a sell-out that goes against the RDP and fundamental transformation. They called for negotiations.
GEAR, endorsed by the ANC national executive, was promptly declared "non-nego-
. The COSATU Executive strongly objected. Then the SACP, under pressure from its own left, voiced criticism of GEAR. Mandela promptly slapped their wrists and ANC top brass descended on SACP headquarters to read the riot act. The unions dug their heels in, threatening the first serious rupture in the Alliance.
The Alliance leadership promptly manoeuvred to paper over the cracks. COSATU presented its alternative proposals to government for consideration and the SACP made sympathetic noises (and contributed to the draft proposals). The ANC refused to back down and insisted on immediate implementation of GEAR. As a sweetener it agreed to on-going talks with Alliance partners. Suddenly COSATU and the SACP spoke of hoping to modify the details of GEAR during implementation! Grumbling compliance
According to the financial press, "the left are not pitching themselves against GEAR in a massive way. Instead they will try to modify and relate to GEAR in specific ways - like tackling the implications of spending cuts and endeavouring to have priorities set".
According to Sam Shilowa, COSATU General Secretary, and an incluential SACP member, "The challenge for COSATU was how to influence events, not simply resort to
It seems increasingly, whoever, that COSATU agreed to engage with both government and the Alliance despite fairly clear government's statements that GEAR was not (and still is not) up for negotiation.
COSATU President J. Gomomo recently asked the rhetorical question: "will we be able to say to our members 10 years down the line that we have not sold them out?" The question deserves an answer. *
May 1997 #288 21