New South African Review 4. Devan Pillay

New South African Review 4

New South African Review 4 - Devan Pillay

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the continuance of democracy, so the diverse nature of South Africa appears to strain against the long-term political dominance of the ANC.

      Yet the Indian developmental trajectory presents its own huge challenges. The rise of the socially conservative Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the late 1970s was to see the triumph of market-oriented policies, which were also rapidly adopted by Congress. The outcome was period of remarkable economic growth, with Congress statist policies largely reversed, and with India now featuring as an ‘emerging market’ based upon the development of a new industrial economy. This has been accompanied by the growth of a middle class, which many observers view as laying a foundation for further development and entrepreneurial energy (although others claim that it is fragile and precarious). However, as in South Africa under the ANC, India’s capitalist growth continues to foster gross social inequality, and does little to address deeply-entrenched levels of poverty and pervasive underemployment and unemployment. This is highlighted, notably, by the successes in combating such social ills by the very different strategies pursued at state level in Kerala, where competing political parties pursue some form of developmentalstatism by whatever the political party that comes to power (for a South Africa/Kerala contrast see Williams 2008).

      Although such broad-brush comparisons are dangerous, they may be suggestive. Ultimately, the ANC will make its own future and will, one hopes, learn from the experiences of other ruling parties in the global South in order to avoid the worst of their mistakes and to emulate the best of their policies. However, for all that the ANC puts forward as its desired goal that of the pursuit of a ‘democratic developmental state’, disturbing trends point to the dangers of its increasingly resorting to authoritarian and populist measures. After twenty years of democracy, things in South Africa may well get worse before they get better.

      The ANC’s new deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a key drafter of the country’s Constitution (and former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers) embodies in many ways the tensions inherent in South Africa’s body politic. While Zuma continues to blemish the image of the ANC with his gaffes and at times incomprehensible public utterances (causing his spokeperson in January to plead with the media to stop asking him to decipher his president’s remarks), Ramaphosa by contrast is urbane, erudite and highly knowledgeable about ANC policy. After the launch of the ANC elections manifesto in January, it was Rampahosa and not Zuma who was thrust into the media spotlight, to conduct lengthy interviews with television stations, explaining the intricacies of ANC policy. He effortlessly addressed many piercing questions, admitting to ‘shortcomings’ and the need to continuously improve, coming across as convincing, affable and believable. He harks back to the Mandela era of hope and reconciliation

      Of course, you would have to forget that it is the same Ramaphosa that represents much that is wrong about black empowerment – he became an instant billionaire after he left politics in 1994, and is the darling of big business. In other words, he represents the conversion of black working class empowerment to black elite enrichment, a chief characteristic of twenty years of democracy. Along with Trevor Manuel, he is the main champion of the orthodox economic trajectory now embedded in the National Development Plan, skillfully brushing aside objections from Cosatu (‘their issues are being dealt with by a special tripartite commission,’ he told the television channel ANN7’s Hajra Omarjee on 12 January – omitting to mention that this commission had not yet met six months after it was formed). It is, however, his role in the massacre of Marikana mineworkers in August 2012, as a board member of Lonmin, that rankles critics most. Lawyer Dali Mpofu, now a member of the EFF, accused him of being part of a ‘toxic collusion’ between the state and business, in that he urged ‘concomitant action’ by government against the striking mineworkers, who he described as ‘criminals’. On the next day, thirty-two mine-workers were mowed down by police (see Pillay 2013).

      That, in essence, is the ruling party of South Africa, which has presided over the country’s still fragile democracy over the past twenty years. As a key component, alongside business, of a fractuous but coherent power elite, it simultaneously embodies the hopes and fears of South Africans. However, the state of the ANC and government is only one aspect of an assessment of where we are as a country. To quote Max Du Preez (2013):

      My lefty friends in New York moaned and bitched about George W Bush when he was president and called him names … But they didn’t say America was rotten and start making plans to emigrate – we might have a weak and ineffectual government and a rather embarrasing president right now, but our country and our people are as vibrant and strong as we were when we negotiated that unlikely settlement in 1994 … There is a lot more to South Africa and South Africans than Jacob Zuma and his present crop of ANC leaders. In fact, there is a lot more to the ANC than Zuma and Co.

      NOTES

      1 Workdays lost to strikes during the period 1989-1994 ranged from a low of 3.09 million to 4.2 million. Between 1995 and 2006, they ranged between 650 000 and 3.1 million (SAIRR 2010-2011: 417).

      2 Gross labour market figures need careful dissection, but some indication is given by the reduction of non-agricultural private sector employment from 3.9 million in 1990 to 3.08 million in 2001(SAIRR 2002/2003: 149).

      3 The term ‘relative poverty’ refers to ‘people in poverty … defined as those living in households with incomes less than the poverty income’, which varies according to household size (SAIRR 2012: 322-3).

      4 ‘The South Africa chapter of Human Rights Watch’s 2012 World Report states that the country ‘continues to grapple with corruption, growing social and economic inequalities, and the weakening of state institutions by partisan appointments and one-party dominance.’ The 2011 Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance shows that although South Africa ranks fifth overall among African governments, its scores have consistently declined over the past five years, with a significant reduction in scores for rule of law, accountability, and participation. Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press report downgraded South Africa from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ status in 2010 (Beck 2012).

      REFERENCES

      Mohamed S (2010) The state of the economy. In Daniel J, P Naidoo, D Pillay and R Southall (eds) New South African Review 1: Development or Decline? Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

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