Fundamental Failures

South Africans are fed up with their President Thabo Mbeki, according to leading analyst Mamphela Ramphele.This mood of disatisfaction led the African National Congress’ conference last December to reject Mbeki’s re-election as its President, a powerful post he hoped to retain when his term as the country’s President ends in a year’s time. His rejection followed growing protests and sometimes violent demonstrations against government policies.

These events have deeper causes than the well-known cases of Mbeki’s much-criticised policies on HIV/Aids and Zimbabwe. The wider issues are the main challenges that will confront his successor.

Most fundamental is the failure to reduce the unemployment rate of almost forty percent, which is concentrated among the black majority. The African National Congress (ANC) has not, as some claim, ignored mass poverty: indeed, it has greatly expanded welfare grants, which now cover almost a quarter of the 44-million population and account for three percent of gross domestic product.

But these much-needed grants are no substitute for expanding labour-intensive production which is the only longterm solution for continuing mass poverty and extreme inequality. South Africa is among the world’s most unequal states. The close, though no longer complete, correlation of poverty with race, sharpens disappointment at the lack of progress after fourteen years of black majority rule.

POWER CUTS

Increasing capacity problems in the state sector and government-controlled companies that make up a large part of the economy, are a second source of disappointment and anger.This includes the state’s failure to fulfil its basic function of providing security for its citizens.

The country has one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime: hence the growth of vigilantism among the poor and the use of private security by the rich.

The ANC makes much of its expansion of essential services to the African majority; sanitation, water and electricity were previously mainly confined to whites. But this achievement has been spoilt by poor planning, construction and maintenance, and by corruption in the allocation of housing and services.

Meanwhile, recent electricity supply problems at state-owned Eskom led to drastic cutbacks to households. Since January, there have also been forced periodic closures of industries and mines. Eskom admits that for some years it will be unable to supply power for the major new investments required for continued growth. Similar supply problems are anticipated in transport, water and sanitation.

The Human Sciences Research Council judged as ‘dysfunctional and even near collapse’, the departments of local government, health, education and defence: South Africa is unable to field the troops and peacekeepers required to support the ambitious role it, and others, hoped it would play in Africa.

These failures in the management of the country’s sophisticated economy and social infrastructure undermine the Mbeki government’s insistent claims of competence.

Against the background of growing anger among social movements and nongovernmental organisations – particularly the trade union confederation Cosatu – the ANC conference forced out the small coterie around Mbeki. They were accused of centralizing power in the presidency, losing touch with the grassroots, while maximising their power and wealth, and becoming unaccountable.

JUSTICE DENIED

This links to the third source of anger: the erosion of democracy and the rule of law. Mbeki has not mounted a frontal assault on the constitution; nor has he imprisoned or murdered opponents. But critics say he has sidelined parliament and undermined its independence by bullying and ‘redeploying’ critical members. This is made easier by the party list electoral system, which makes members’ inclusion on the parliamentary list – and the retention of their seats – dependent on party bosses, while the absence of constituencies mean parliamentarians lack direct links with the electorate.

An example of the executive undermining parliamentary independence was Mbeki’s blocking of an enquiry into the 1998 arms deal. This committed the country to huge expenditure for the purchase of unsuitable equipment, against the advice of defence chiefs, some of whom resigned in protest.

Subsequent interference with the administration of justice, including the selective use of powers of prosecution and dismissal, has been connected with this dubious deal. The prosecution, for relatively minor alleged corruption, of Mbeki’s rival, Jacob Zuma, who replaced him as ANC president at the conference in December, is part of this.

The arms deal may also be linked to the puzzling refusal to dismiss the police chief, Jackie Selibi, who faces charges of corruption, fraud and racketeering. Instead, Mbeki suspended the Director of Prosecutions, Vusi Pukoli, who persisted in pressing charges against Selibi and other influential politicians and officials.

A crucial test of whether Mbeki, and his successor, will respect judicial independence will be their response to the recent extraordinary complaint by the Constitutional Court about attempts to influence its proceedings by Cape Judge John Hlophe, who is accused of professional misconduct yet, instead of being disciplined, is being touted as possible successor to the current head of the Constitutional Court, the respected Pius Langa.

RACIAL TENSIONS

The fourth long-term problem is the tendency for conflicts to be racialised. Mbeki and his ministers routinely reject criticism and opposition on the grounds that it comes from ‘white racists and their black lackeys’. Complaints about crime were dismissed as a white neurosis, even though blacks suffered most – as indicated by the attention to crime at the ANC conference.

Likewise, warnings about capacity and delivery problems, including at Eskom, were dismissed as coming from resentful whites who not only believed, but hoped, a black government would fail. Accusations of racism permeate the bitter debate about how to reform South Africa’s racialised socio-economic structure. Many activists who support state intervention to correct this nevertheless dislike the ANC’s implementation of black economic empowerment, which has led to the rapid emergence of a small group of very rich blacks and a scramble among the aspiring middle class to board the ‘gravy train’.

There is disagreement about the extent to which empowerment contributes to increasing capacity problems. Some argue the problem is not a skill shortage but misgovernment, including the appointment to key positions of Mbeki lackeys, and the exclusion, not only of qualified whites, but of many able blacks. They may underestimate the requirement not only for formal skills but for experience and institutional learning, which can be lost if transformation is too rapid.

They certainly do not take account of the continued failure to raise standards in black schools. The huge increase in expenditure – now twenty percent of the budget – has failed to do this as is evident from the findings of a 2003 study by Professor Servaas van Den Berg of Stellenbosch University that the proportion in state schools obtaining A-aggregates was 1 in 1,000 among black students, compared with one in ten among whites. This means the country is not producing the skills needed for both black advancement and to maintain and grow its economy in an increasingly competitive world.

The close interaction between race and class gives an explosive charge to South Africa’s problems, though the sharpest manifestation has not been along the expected white/black faultline but in growing xenophobia against foreign black migrants. This culminated in the May attacks that left dozens dead and hundreds injured.

Observers have long warned about this threat too, but it was dismissed by Mbeki who told parliament, in May last year, that ‘we have to live with’ the influx of illegal migrants. He also insisted that there was ‘no crisis’ in Zimbabwe, from which desperate migrants were fleeing.

Accordingly, government rejected offers of advice and aid from UN agencies experienced in dealing with huge influxes of refugees and migrants. This left impoverished local communities to live with the estimated one to three million illegal migrants who, especially in the case of Zimbabweans, were often better-educated and in fierce competition with local blacks for scarce jobs and services.

LOTS OF LABOUR

The inadequacies of the economic strategy that underlies many of these problems is invariably attributed to the ANC’s acceptance of ‘neoliberal’ policies. But, as its empowerment policy and its wide-ranging social grants show, this is a misleading description of ANC policy.

Even those who disagree with the treasury’s cautious inflation and interest rate policies recognise that its macro-economic management has been skilful. However, it does not prevent redistribution and anti-poverty measures, especially through the classic route of job creation. The surplus of labour and shortage of capital surely indicates the need for a labour-intensive growth path. But both the left, and Africanists in the ANC, are committed to a capital intensive, high-wage, strategy and are dismissive of the creation of what they term ‘inferior, low-wage’ jobs.

Hence their failure to promote the small to medium-sized production, including in agriculture, and sizable public works programmes, that formed an integral part of the early growth strategies of successful Asian economies.

Among those pressing for this perverse economic strategy is Cosatu. It has played a key role in defending democracy and the rule of law. But its shortsighted economic strategy focuses narrowly on protecting its members wage levels, even at the cost of blocking the mass job creation that will best serve their long-term interests.

Whatever Cosatu’s shortcomings, it is hardly appropriate for much richer black and white elites to urge the trade unions to tighten their belts, while inequality is high and tax rates, particularly on inheritance and capital gains, remain low by international standards. Mbeki’s role raises the old question of how much difference individuals make in history. South Africa – and the more extreme case of Zimbabwe – suggests their influence is often significant. Hence, the importance of who succeeds Mbeki.

The omens are mixed: Zuma the likeliest successor may be better in some respects, but there is justifiable anxiety about his attitude towards the independence of the judiciary and media, linked to the indefinitely postponed corruption allegations against him and his associates.

There are other able candidates, but their prospects are limited by the political party system, including pervasive corruption in its funding. This problem is not special to South Africa as is clear from the notorious Political Action Committees in the United States, and funding scandals in Italy, Germany, and Britain.

The suggestion that emerging democracies are uniquely prone to misgovernance and corruption is intensely resented by countries like South Africa and this, in turn, contributes to Mbeki’s seemingly perverse domestic and foreign policies.

In the final decades of apartheid, major elites – in business, the professions, trade unions – displayed the enlightened, strategic thinking that made possible the negotiation of a relatively non-violent transition to majority rule. Currently, there is little sign of such vision and leadership among either its black