SOUTH AFRICA: The frustrating decade of freedom

[A longer version of this article appears in the US
Monthly Review magazine, at <
http://www.monthlyreview.org>.] From Green Left Weekly,
April 7, 2004
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/578/578p19.htm

On April 27, 1994, the racist apartheid system was
smashed. One person, one-vote democracy and
deracialisation of government was achieved as a result
of the mass struggle conducted largely under the 72-
year long leadership of the African National Congress
(ANC). Ten years later, however, sustained celebration
at the outcome the anti-apartheid struggle is far
greater in the mansions and corporate headquarters of
Johannesburg, thanks to the ANC’s turn to neoliberalism
once Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and his
liberation movement unbanned in 1990.

"The government is utterly seduced by big business, and
cannot see beyond its immediate interests", remarked
the editor of Business Day newspaper in June 2003.

Even Mandela’s successor, President Thabo Mbeki,
acknowledges the problem. Mbeki told an ANC policy
conference in September 2002: "Domestic and foreign
left sectarian factions... accuse our movement of
having abandoned the working people, saying that we
have adopted and are implementing neoliberal policies.
These factions claim to be pursuing a socialist agenda.
They assert that, on the contrary, we are acting as
agents of the domestic and international capitalist
class and such multilateral organisations as the World
Bank and the IMF, against the interests of the working
people."

Repeated denials by Mbeki followed. This month
especially, elite awareness about the real winners of
South African freedom is, necessarily, disguised. A
recent 10-year review, available on the government’s
website and promoted in the ANC’s weekly email
newsletter, argues: "Since the ANC was elected to
government in 1994, South Africa has achieved a level
of macroeconomic stability not seen in the country for
40 years... "After the massive investment outflows of
the 1980s and early 1990s, the country has had positive
levels of foreign direct investment over the last ten
years... Between 1995 and 2002 the number of people
employed grew by around 1.6 million people."

Big business benefits

Most such claims are distortions or outright fibs. For
the ANC to brag of "a level of macroeconomic stability
not seen in the country for 40 years", for example, is
to ignore the easiest measure of such stability -
exchange rate fluctuations. In reality, the three
currency crashes witnessed over a period of a few weeks
in February-March 1996, June-July 1998 and December
2001 ranged from 30% to 50%, and each led to massive
interest rate increases which sapped growth and
rewarded the speculators.

These moments of macroeconomic instability were as
dramatic as any other incidents during the previous two
centuries, including the September 1985 financial panic
that split big business from the apartheid regime and
paved the way for ANC rule. Domestic investment has
been sickly, and were it not for the part-privatisation
of the telephone company, foreign investment would not
even register. Domestic private sector investment was
negative for several years, as capital effectively went
on strike, moving mobile resources offshore as rapidly
as possible.

The only targets in the ANC’s conservative
macroeconomic strategy that were successfully reached
were those most crucial to big business - inflation
(down from 9% to 5.5% instead of the projected 7-8%),
the current account (in surplus, not deficit as
projected), and the fiscal deficit (below 2% of GDP,
instead of the projected 3%).

The reality is that South Africa has witnessed the
replacement of racial apartheid with what is
increasingly referred to as class apartheid - systemic
underdevelopment and segregation of the oppressed
majority through structured economic, political, legal,
and cultural practices. South Africa’s official measure
of unemployment rose from 16% in 1995 to 30% in 2002.
Adding frustrated job-seekers to that figure brings the
percentage of unemployed people to 43%. Meanwhile,
labour productivity increased steadily and the number
of days lost to strike action fell, the latter in part
because of ANC demobilisation of unions and hostility
to national strikes undertaken for political purposes,
such as the national actions against privatisation in
2001 and 2002.

It is here that the core concession made by the ANC
during the transition deal is apparent, namely in the
desire by white businesses to escape the economic
stagnation and declining profits born of a classical
overaccumulation crisis, in the context of a sanctions-
induced laager, and amplified by the 1970s-1980s rise
of black militancy in workplaces and communities.

The deal represented simply this - black nationalists
got the state, while white people and corporations
could remove their capital from the country, but also
remain domiciled and enjoy yet more privileges through
economic liberalisation. The pre-tax profit share
soared during the late 1990s to 1960s-era levels
associated with apartheid’s heyday. Blacks poorer

As a result, according to even the government’s own
statistics, average black South African household
income fell 19% from 1995-2000 (to US$3714 per year),
while white household income rose 15% (to $22,600 per
year).

Notwithstanding deeper poverty, the state raised water
and electricity prices dramatically, to the point that
by 2002 they consumed 30% of the income of those
households earning less than $70 per month. An
estimated 10 million people had their water cut off,
according to two national government surveys, and 10
million were also victims of electricity
disconnections. Gender relations record some
improvements, especially in reproductive rights, albeit
with extremely uneven access. But contemporary South
Africa retains apartheid’s sexist modes of surplus
extraction, thanks to both residual sex discrimination
and the migrant (rural-urban) labour system, which is
subsidised by women stuck in the former bantustan
homelands. These women are not paid for their role in
social reproduction, which in a normal labour market
would be handled by state schooling, health insurance
and pensions.

This structured superexploitation is exacerbated by an
apparent increase in domestic sexual violence
associated with rising male unemployment and the
feminisation of poverty.

With the public healthcare services in decline due to
underfunding and the increasing penetration of private
providers, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis,
cholera, malaria, and AIDS are rife - all far more
prevalent than during apartheid. Diarrhea kills 43,000
children a year, as a result mainly of inadequate
potable water provision. Most South Africans with HIV
have little prospect of receiving antiretroviral
medicines to extend their lives (half a million
urgently require drugs at present), thanks to the
"denialist" policies of Mbeki and his health minister,
which senior health professionals and researchers
regularly label genocide.

Although a roll-out of medicines was finally promised
by the cabinet in September 2003, Mbeki immediately
poured salt in the wounds by denying (in a New York
Times interview) that he knew anyone who had died of
AIDS or was even HIV positive. South African ecology is
today in worse condition, in many crucial respects -
for example, water and soil resources mismanagement,
contributions to global warming, fisheries, industrial
toxics, genetic modification - than during apartheid.

And with fewer than 2% of arable plots redistributed
(as against a five-year target of 30%), Pretoria’s
neoliberal policy has conclusively failed.

Finally, the repressive side of ANC rule was unveiled
to the world during the August 2002 protests against
the UN’s World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Leading activists in the black townships of
Johannesburg and Cape Town have been repeatedly
harassed and detained by police - mainly illegally
(resulting in high-profile acquittals) - for resisting
evictions, electricity and water disconnections, and
the installation of prepaid meters for services. A
March 21 demonstration at the Constitutional Court
building’s grand opening in central Johannesburg was
banned on spurious grounds, and 51 Anti-Privatisation
Forum activists arrested. AIDS Treatment Action
Campaign activists were savagely beaten in early 2003
during a non-violent civil disobedience campaign to
acquire medicines.

In short, the record is one of low-intensity democracy
in which the ANC regularly wins elections because the
labour movement is not yet ready to run pro-worker
candidates. But for how long? The transition from
racial to class apartheid will not go unpunished
forever.

[A longer version of this article appears in the US
Monthly Review magazine, at <
http://www.monthlyreview.org>.] From Green Left Weekly,

April 7, 2004
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/578/578p19.htm