Race/class debates

Race/class debates in the Mail and Guardian 
 
COMMENT & ANALYSIS

Misleading from the front

Drew Forrest

10 January 2003 12:20

The late Parks Mankahlana, who had an ear for the neat catchphrase, once
described President Thabo Mbeki as 'a revolutionary nationalist'. The
problem is that revolutionaries do not make good social democrats.

The distinction is an important one, given the African National Congress's
self-characterisation at its conference last month. There, government
communications chief Joel Netshitenzhe defined the ANC as a social
democratic party, presumably in the same mould as Britain's Labour Party,
Germany's SDP and France's Parti Socialiste.

As a purely economic definition, the tag makes sense. The preface to the
ANC's 'strategy and tactics' document, adopted at the conference, locates
the party between the free market fundamentalism of the 'neo-liberal'
right and 'modern ultra-leftism', which it accuses of baying for the
illusory moon of an immediate workers' state.

Quite clearly, the ANC is neither a Thatcherite nor Marxist movement, and
only hard-line ideological fantasists, of the left and right respectively,
could brand it such.

It sees a developmental role for private business, and is promoting a
black business class as an integral part of the 'national democratic
revolution'--the de-racialisation of South Africa. The strategy and
tactics document lays much emphasis on the need for the ANC to win over
the 'middle strata and the bourgeoisie'.

At the same time, the governing party is very far from advocating Margaret
Thatcher's minimal state. Its conservative critics accuse it of moving too
slowly, and conceding too little, on such policies as privatisation and
labour market reform.

For a true neo-liberal perspective, one need look no further than the
views of Marian Tupy, of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at
Washington's Cato Institute, in the Mail & Guardian's letters pages this
week.

The dishonesty comes in the way ANC leaders--and particularly Mbeki,
obviously the dominant brain behind the strategy and tactics document--
distort the economic stance of their opponents.

There is some parody, for example, in the description of the Democratic
Alliance as classically 'neo-liberal'. The DA certainly has some of the
symptoms--aversion to trade unionism being the most obvious. But in other
ways, as in its support for a basic income grant and a voucher system for
school-leavers, it does not conform to type.

More significant is the gross caricature of the Congress of South African
Trade Unions (Cosatu) and communist leaders, repeatedly branded 'ultra-
left' by Mbeki's coterie.

In the strategy and tactics document, these are accused of advocating 'a
working class struggle that should be waged purely and only in ‘direct
'
pursuit of a system without exploitation. This would be achieved in a
simplistic and dramatic abolition of the capitalist market, with the state
seizing the means of production.'

When has Cosatu's Zwelinzima Vavi or South African Communist Party chief
Blade Nzimande ever urged 'the dramatic abolition of the capitalist
market' or state seizure of the means of production? More to the point,
when have they ever pressed the ANC to do so?

A handful of far-left crackpots like Neville Alexander may still be
demanding the revolutionary overthrow of private capital, but it is a
crude smear tactic to put Vavi, Nzimande and his deputy, Jeremy Cronin, in
the same pigeonhole.

When such leaders do talk of socialism, they conspicuously avoid defining
the term. What they almost certainly mean is not Marxian socialism--
thoroughly discredited by the 20th century--but old-style, left-wing
social democracy of the type associated with British politicians like
Michael Foot and Tony Benn.

It is misleading to characterise the differences between Cosatu and the
ANC leadership as a fight between the ultra-left and the 'disciplined'
left, as the president has sought to do. It is closer to being a fight
between Benn and Tony Blair's versions of social democracy, the former
laying far more emphasis on state ownership as a way of achieving social
goals.

The distinction may seem largely academic, as Cosatu still opposes any
private-sector involvement in the delivery of essential state services.
But it is important to see that the ultra-left tag is a 'label libel' that
says less about the real world of South African politics than Mbeki's
shadow world, shaped by his oddly insecure personality.

If the ANC can plausibly claim to be a social democratic party on economic
grounds, in another, more important respect it is very far from being one.
This was clarified by a telling event at the conference--a media briefing
at which Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma described Zanu-
PF as one of Africa's progressive political parties, 'for obvious
reasons'.

Asked by a journalist what the obvious reasons might be, Zuma explained
that Zimbabwe's ruling party had fought colonialism, aimed to uplift its
people and was committed to pursuing 'its own destiny'. Journalists who
focused on violations of the rule of law in Zimbabwe were 'fudging' the
real issue, which was the recovery of the land, she said.

Not a word about the rapes, beatings and killings basic to Zimbabwe's
land 'reforms', nor about the torture of journalists and other attacks on
the media, nor of the government's systematic harassment of its opponents
and defiance of the courts. Not a word about a presidential election
denounced as fraudulent by a Southern African Development Community
parliamentary observer team and a Commonwealth delegation under African
leadership.

Dlamini-Zuma is not alone in the ANC, as shown by the rousing cheer given
by conference delegates to top Zanu-PF official Emerson Mnangagwa.

No self-respecting social dem-ocrat could be so morally blind about what
is, in effect, a fascist regime. Social democracy is more than a
compromise between the free market and command economics--it is a
development of European liberalism that enshrines the rule of law,
political pluralism and the full spectrum of personal freedoms.

It is not just the former colonial power, Britain, that rejects President
Robert Mugabe and his works. It is the whole of social democratic Europe,
including the Scandinavian countries so prominent in the anti-apartheid
struggle, and social democratic Australia and New Zealand.

The point, of course, is that Zanu-PF is the collective unconscious of the
ANC's hard-line pan-Africanist wing, of which Mbeki is unofficial leader.

These 'revolutionary nationalists' avidly swallow Mugabe's anti-
imperialist posturing and secretly applaud his persecution of whites. Like
Dlamini-Zuma, they consider the rule of law a mere quibble, a 'fudge',
compared with the re-conquest of African land.

By its nature, revolution is extra-legal--it represents the victory of
force over law. The ANC cannot be both social democratic
and 'revolutionary', a term it habitually uses to describe itself in
policy documents.

If it is sincere in its social democratic pretensions, it needs to shed
the bellicose insurrectionary jargon--'motive
force', 'bridgehead', 'flanking movement' and the like
-- that continues to pepper its literature nearly a decade after the 1994
election.

For the moment, Mbeki's union and communist opponents can more credibly
claim the social democratic mantle. They may entertain slightly quaint
ideas about state ownership, but at least they have the moral clarity to
condemn Mugabe's crimes.

***

Why we MUST talk about race

Suren Pillay

08 January 2003 09:11

In certain circles it has become old-fashioned to talk about race and
class as categories through which to make sense of the behaviour of people
around the world in general, and in South Africa in particular. The
funeral hymns for these concepts, Adam Habib provocatively reminds us, are
surely excessively premature ('Elites and our racial quagmire', December
20). For Habib, 'race' has become 'politicised' by elites who are
invoking
it for the purposes of self-interested class desires. This is a powerfully
persuasive argument. But it is analytically flawed and politically short-
sighted.

Its not that race has become politicised. Race, after all, has always been
a 'political' issue--not only in South Africa. The political, economic
and cultural effects of race as a classification, and their meaning in
social practice, are bound to both history and location. In other words,
the challenge might be to understand the particular ways in which race,
both as a concept and as an experience, changes historically across time
and space.

In South Africa we know that there were at least two broad responses to
the state imposition of racial identity. Both responses from within the
liberation movements sought to resist the imposed identities. One did it
through redefining victims of apartheid as black, as a political
experience, rather than a racial identity--the Fanonian inspired response
of Steve Biko and others. Another response was to seek to go beyond the
recognition of racial identity altogether by promoting 'non-racialism'.
This response we can associate with the later version of the African
National Congress and the United Democratic Front in the 1980s. When
Habib, for example, registers his profound contempt at being racially
defined as 'Indian', he is articulating his legitimate desire to not be
classified through categories that were imposed on subject people by the
apartheid state.

My concern is that we have continued to use an understanding of the
meaning of race and its relationship to class, which was developed in our
colonial and apartheid past, to try and understand our post-colonial
present. This may not be inherently wrong, but it does require some self-
reflection about the way in which we think about race as it relates to the
present. The way I have read, or misread, Habib's piece, he seems to be
saying we should not talk about race. The only people who talk about race
now are either elites who want to advance their positions on the corporate
ladder or those at the bottom holding the ladder up watching as others
climb up a path blocked to them because of their racial past. In other
words, on both ends of the ladder, racial prejudice is a strategically
invoked experience: a case of people saying one thing to get other things.

While there is some substance to it, this argument has an unfortunate
blind spot in my view. Race, and more particularly, racism, is still very
much a lived experience in South Africa. But we seem to not want to give
this experience autonomous recognition as a valid experience. Here the
extra-parliamentary left and the new elites share something. Both want to
obliterate discussions of race in the public sphere. One because it thinks
class is the 'real' issue, and the other because to talk about it might
jeopardise the fragile 'rainbow nation'.

We witnessed this anxiety with the Mbongeni Ngema affair. The new
elites, 'African' and 'Indian', hurriedly called for the removal of the
song from the national public air space. And most on the left went along
with this chorus. Both sides missed a crucial moment to talk about the
lived experience of many people who suffer daily humiliation at the hands
of bosses and madams whom they see as 'Indian', and whose behaviour they
explain through stereotypes about 'Indians', whether we like it or not.
That is an actually lived experience. And that's the way they make sense
of it. And it would be better to bring that discussion out in the open so
that the stereotypes can be shown for what they are, rather than talk
about people's experiences in ways that invalidate them. Cornel West
summed it up aptly with the title of his book, Race Matters. Habib seems
to suggest that talking about race is historically irresponsible. On the
contrary--historical experience seems suggests that it is more dangerous
to not talk about it.

The settlement in South Africa, as Habib astutely points out, was caught
from the very moment of its birth in the paradox of redistribution and
reconciliation: between justice and reconciliation. And these two projects
can pull in opposite directions--but that doesn't make them inherently
contradictory. And, yes, there were trade-offs made by the ANC, with the
apartheid establishment and European and American political and economic
interests, in terms of how the economic domain would be governed. And the
social effects of the ruthless economic model being followed are becoming
increasingly apparent. But it would be lazy to see the transition in such
neat terms, with a beginning, middle and end. We still have actual
racialised experiences of prejudice, which confront black political and
economic bourgeois elements in their places of work and in the state
bureaucracy. The national liberation struggle, in other words, has changed
modes of struggle, and sites of battle, but it is not a thing of the past.
On the contrary, it animates the political project of the Mbeki government
with its two nations thesis, and the repackaging of an idea already tried
out on the rest of the continent in other forms--the African renaissance.
To think of the new elites as all being ethnic entrepreneurs selling a
product only useful to themselves is to miss one of Marx's points about
the fetish of the commodity. It not only that it is appropriated for
private consumption, but also that its seduction lies in its social
dimension as both necessity and desirable--this is its 'fetish', the
dimension that takes our eyes off the actual conditions of its production
in the way that a skilled magician plays with our senses. The point is
that the masses are not just dupes or moegoes who go with whatever the
elites say. Using the concept of 'ethnic entrepreneurism', as Habib does,
unfortunately tends to suggest this kind of robotic relationship. Racism
is clearly both an experience inside the structures of power, and an
experience that resonates widely with those who were historically
marginalised.

In essence there are thus two analytical flaws in Habib's argument as I
see it: one is a failure to be prepared to give a racialised experience of
marginalisation serious intellectual attention. This has been a historic
blunder of the Western-Marxist inspired left in South Africa--both
academics and activists. (A blunder that still needs it own truth and
recognition committee.) And the second is a failure to give the
nationalist struggles within the emergent post-apartheid state, that is,
inside the state bureaucracy and the agencies of governing, rigorous
intellectual analysis. The failure to analyse both experiences results in
two familiar frustrations: first, an inability to understand why a new
left-wing movement, which speaks about class-based issues--land, jobs,
privatisation--will have difficulty in the short term in penetrating the
magical spell of the nationalist movement. And the second frustration is
the continued inability to understand the behaviour of the ANC
government's political and economic policy twists and turns other than
calling it a sell-out, albeit in more sophisticated terms.

Why does the ANC see criticism from the left as so harmful? What animates
this 'us' and 'them' world view? What's going on inside the
state bureaucracy? What kinds of battles are happening in different
micro-levels
of government departments, agencies and portfolio committees? What happens
at the global forums government officials and representatives attend? How
do dominant sections of the South Africa government want to position the
country in relation to the rest of the continent and the powers that be
elsewhere? What common sense rationales are developing about governing,
and how are these being distributed through the system, and how do they
become internalised? And how do we learn from the experiences of other
African, and settler-colonial states? These may be research questions
worth pursuing.

My concern in the end with Habib's argument--stimulating and incisive as
it is--is that it further obscures the object of its analysis rather than
illuminating it. If our answers to problems are not working it may not
mean that we should find new answers. It may mean that we are asking the
wrong questions. So instead of giving old answers to old (and new)
problems, we may need to be asking different questions about the post-
colonial moment we live in.

Suren Pillay is a lecturer in the department of political studies at the
University of the Western Cape

***


A failure to grasp reality

Hoosain Kagee

06 January 2003 15:28

The diatribe by both Salim Vally and Adam Habib ('The iron fist and the
velvet glove' and 'Elites and our racial quagmire', December 20) on our
elected government makes for interesting reading for all those who lack a
firm grasp in understanding South Africa's transition from apartheid
colonialism to a national democratic state.

The discourse penned by both begins to lend credibility to the notion that
legitimacy of the current state can be entered into on the basis of a
current set of principles (economic in particular) adopted by the Mbeki
government. This accusation of legitimacy is questioned by both the left
and the right wing, and borders on dangerous territory in a bid to defend
the gains of the national democratic state. The will of the majority has
been tested in both 1994 and 1999 and speaks volumes in comparison to
miniscule support for either the left or right.

Fundamental to the debate raised by both Vally and Habib, aside from the
rather artificial sideshow of conspiracy theories in an attempt
to 'silence the opposition', is the issue of the nature of the current
state, the objective reality and challenges, and the present environmental
landscape of our globalised world.

(The view that our Constitution is constantly being eroded by the state
cannot be a true reflection of the more than 50 landmark judgements handed
down by our able jurists of the Constitutional Court.)

In understanding the nature of the state it is important to briefly sketch
the social nature of the African National Congress as a liberation
movement. The movement has always been described as a broad church, one
that caters for the needs of all strata of South African society. It is
within this understanding of its social being that the ANC has been able
to attract the levels of popular support from both capital and labour. The
argument that this practice will lead to eventual contradictions within
this broad front is indeed a reality (and this continues to occur, for
example, privatisation for labour and the Community Reinvestment Bill for
capital), however the success of the alliance is how well its leadership
is able to micro manage the conflicts of interest that emerge among the
broad strata.

The transition from an apartheid state to a democratic one is based on the
will of the majority and cannot be confined to the boundaries of our
country. Global changes in the early 1990s have had a profound impact on
nations of the South. The hegemony of the West and in particular the
United States became a fundamental factor in determining the nature of
transitional governments from despotisms to democracies. It is not to say
that liberation movements sold their principles, but rather crafted new
tactics and strategies in meeting their foundational principles of
improving the quality of life of their people. Yes, indeed, many
liberation movements have lost their way and forgotten about the noble
ideals of freedom and liberty. But to slander the ANC government within
this framework is reactionary and opportunist.

The current nature of South African society can best be described as a
society in transit from one based on a racist ideology that manifested
itself in all segments of social life, in particular in the political and
economic spheres, where Africans bore the brunt of the system of
apartheid.

The society to which we should be moving is in the throes of being
structured, and human development is a central plank of this transition.

Hence the series of legislation/policy positions that creates the enabling
environment for this people-centred development path, for example,
employment equity, the rationalisation of higher education institutions,
the Communal Land Rights Bill, the national water resource strategy, the
motor industry development strategy, the second national fixed-line
telephone operator, minimum wages (for domestic and farm workers), the
Petroleum Resources Development Act, the privatisation/commercialisation
of state assets, and so on.

The past eight years of functional democracy give credence to the many
challenges that will enable the government to deliver in the various
fields of human development. The nature of 360 years of brutal oppression
cannot and will not be erased within one or two decades of freedom. The
government has correctly made the first decade of democracy the one that
begins to put the framework into place and simultaneously delivers to the
most vulnerable in society. This approach in no way makes the government
anti-poor and pro-capital.

However it does make the government a serious contender for stability and
sustainable growth.

The fiscal approach of the government has come in for severe criticism
from the right and left in our country. The former has condemned the
government for not accelerating the pace of granting the market carte
blanche in all areas of economic life. This route has been championed by a
decade of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, where corporate citizens yielded
profits unparalleled in the 20th century.

On the left opponents argue that the government's continuous serenading of
both national and international capital has left deep scars on the poor
and that the quality of life of ordinary South Africans continues to
deteriorate, making the poor more vulnerable. The reality is that you
cannot argue with statistics. Indeed there are instances where poverty
continues to be the order of the day. But by the same token there have
indeed been projects where communities have broken the cycle of poverty
and where the government's policies are beginning to turn back the tide
for the poor.

The argument must be based on the balance of probabilities. Will a
regulated market with state support yield long-term success for the poor
or will the commanding heights of economic state intervention yield
success for the poor? Experience the world over shows that where
governments allow the market to develop within the realms of good
corporate citizenship, success is deeper and long term. The 'commandist'
approach has left its scars on human development in a host of Southern
nations. We cannot revert back to that era of human 'development'.

The reality of many of the leftist arguments against the government's
economic strategy is that they fail to understand the objective reality of
our current landscape and how best we are able to deliver a better quality
of life to the most vulnerable in the long term. The practice of non-
engagement by the left towards multilateral organisations such as the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade
Organisation does not alter the balance of forces towards the poor. There
is no arguing with their condemnation of these organisations as
unrepresentative and that their policies are not geared towards the poor,
but unless we engage with them and use the instruments at our disposal
these organisations will continue ignoring the plight of the poor. In the
light of this the election of Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel as
chairperson of the joint boards of the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund must been seen as a victory for Southern nations.

Throughout the entire rebuke that the left has scorned upon government, it
has failed to perform any form of introspection into itself and the road
it has travelled and will continue to travel. For many on the left, ideas
have remained static or in the words of President Thabo Mbeki 'frozen'. In
many instances the rhetoric of the left is very much a reflection of the
new right. It's an either-or situation, or in the words of President
George W Bush 'you're either with us or against us'. This rather dogmatic
principle has seen the demise of many left-wing organisations the world
over. The call for a gathering of the left is nothing new. The question is
whether it is able to rise to tasks of the 21st century and possess the
correct ideas necessary to effect real change. Failure to perform the
latter will result in the left remaining insular in its outlook.

The hackneyed views of Vally and Habib with regard to the government's
policy are to be anticipated, as the space and support for their kind of
ideas are on the decline. People are concerned about issues raised by
left, but what they do want to see simultaneously is a plan to turn things
around. In none of the debate around issues and the nature of our
objective reality does the left come to terms with its brand of statehood.
Recently the ANC termed its understanding of the current state as social
democratic. The left defines its own understanding as anti-capitalistic, a
position that flies contrary to the ideas of democracy and development in
a real world.

Hoosain Kagee is the national director of the Parliamentary Support
Programme. This article is written in his personal capacity

***

The iron fist and the velvet glove

Salim Vally

31 December 2002 13:28

For many foreign environmental justice activists at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD), the aura surrounding the post-apartheid
state was sullied by both the connivance of South Africa's ruling class
with big business and the extent of police brutality aimed at those
expressing dissent.

Among the more enlightened foreign activists any residual sentimental
attachment to the party in office in South Africa was rudely erased by
evidence of increasing poverty, inequality, environmental degradation and
repression. The trumpeting of enshrined civil, political and socio-
economic rights in the 'most progressive Constitution in the world'
sounded decidedly off-key.

For the ruling class the WSSD (dubbed by many as the World Summit of Shady
Deals) was in practice less about the benevolent goals of environmental
justice and sustainable development than about showcasing South Africa for
the benefit of the world's captains of industry, finance and their
political surro-gates, safely ensconced in the five-star hotels of
Sandton. Sort of window-shopping for international capitalists.

The abiding interest of the South African ruling class during the WSSD was
to reassure and pamper the bringers of direct foreign investment (despite
the futility of this policy since 1994). Reassurance that the party would
not be spoilt came from the president, Cabinet ministers and high-ranking
policemen. Senior apartheid-era security policemen were put in charge.
Dire threats were issued against protesters, a cordon sanitaire thrown
around Sandton and an undeclared state of emergency imposed.

The mainstream media played its role well. Scaremongering was ratcheted
up. Some gullible and nervous Sandton residents who evacuated their homes
for the duration of the conference should be forgiven if they thought that
a grand alliance of Zimbabwe war veterans, al-Qaeda terrorists and black-
clad Molotov-wielding misfits were about to invade the sedate and opulent
streets of their neighbourhood.

Senior security officials unveiled high-tech surveillance equipment and,
behind the scenes, National Intelligence Agency operatives cajoled and
intimidated those planning protests. Major marches organised by social
movements were initially prohibited and then allowed at the last minute.
It was obvious to the powers-that-be that protesters from South Africa's
dusty townships, sprawling informal settlements and impoverished rural
areas were determined to exercise their hard-won democratic rights whether
they received 'consent' or not.

Clearly, the government was keen to conceal from the international guests
the extent of discontent among increasing numbers of poor people. The
repression leading up to, during and after the WSSD is chronicled
elsewhere--especially in the graphic accounts given by representatives of
the Anti-Privatisation Forum and the Landless People's Movement. For South
Africa's activists, unlike bewildered foreign delegates, this came as no
surprise. Despite the political changes, repression has continued
unabatedly.

In his recent book An Ordinary Country, Neville Alexander observes that
what we used to call the apartheid-capitalist system has simply given way
to the post-apartheid-capitalist system. The jargon of those who make the
decisions has changed (everyone has become 'non-racial' and anti-racist),
a few thousand black middle-class people have boarded the gravy train and
are being wooed into the ranks of the established (white) elite, but the
nature of the state has remained fundamentally unchanged.

Over the past eight years the African National Congress has shown itself
to be adept at managing and dissipating discontent and serving the
interests of the local and international capitalist class. This is a point
well understood by the New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk,
arguably the most class-conscious member of Parliament. In forming an
alliance 'of the centre' with the ANC, Van Schalkwyk has castigated the
Democratic Party for not understanding who the real opposition will be in
time to come. For the NNP leader it is clearly 'those to the left of the
ANC alliance'.

The South African state is striving to gain a place for the ruling class
in the global pecking order by leading regional and sub-regional cartels
(African Union and the Southern African Development Community), employing
the justifying rhetoric of 'African renaissance' and 'black
empowerment'
(the latter conveniently displacing the tranquilising discourse of
the 'rainbow nation'), promoting the neo-liberal framework of the New
Partnership for Africa's Development, the building of its military might
and the shoring-up of its repressive apparatus.

No doubt, there are many state bureaucrats who genuinely feel they can
make a difference to poverty, unemployment, inadequate education, health
services and the welfare system. Culpability for this state of affairs,
they insist, lies with the 'legacy of apartheid' and not the political and
economic choices made by the 'new' state. They argue that they are able to
negotiate the best possible terms in an unequal global economic system.
But 'the trouble does not lie in the wishes and intentions of power
holders', Ralph Miliband argues: it lies rather 'in the fact that the
reformers are the prisoners, and usually the willing prisoners, of an
economic and social framework which necessarily turns their proclamations,
however sincerely meant, into verbiage'.

For the moment it is true that the post-apartheid state has remained
compatible with a range of civil and political liberties. Still, these
rights and constitutional guarantees are tenuous and are sometimes
subjected to severe limitations and constraints. Most importantly, civil
and political rights are severely circumscribed by the socio-economic and
political framework within which they exist. Secondly, they are often
infringed in practice (try to obtain 'consent' for a march without any
hassle!). Finally, in times of crisis, constitutional guarantees in
liberal democratic states have not prevented oppression of particular
groups.

The irony is that increasingly it is the left that is fighting to prevent
the very democratic rights that were promoted prior to 1994 from being
whittled away. Human rights under capitalism can be transient, often they
are undermined when they are inconvenient or when the ideological state
apparatus is no longer adequate to guarantee subservience to class rule.

Still, it is wrong to believe that 'bourgeois freedoms' are of no
consequence. Rather, they should be extended, enriched and expanded by the
transformation of the context--economic, social and political--that
condemns them to inadequacy and erosion.

Promises made by the ANC in 1994 for a 'better life for all' and renewed
in 1999 have not been kept. The chronic privation of millions and the
continuing rise in unemployment signals the abject inability of the state
to match performance with promise. Various social reforms and 'poverty
alleviation' measures (such as 'free' electricity and water for some,
cramped and tiny houses which progressively crumble, vitamin-enriched
food) are too trivial or ineffective.

In the face of mass pauperisation, the spending of R60-billion on
armaments and R600-million on a presidential jet exposes the reforms as
hypocritical. A political system that increasingly shows itself to be a
lame version of a truly democratic order through revelations of
corruption, opportunism and the ease with which rich individuals and
business buy political favour does not endear itself to the populace. In
these conditions the post-apartheid state leans more heavily toward
coercion and police power.

In addition to the apartheid-era laws such as the Regulation of Gatherings
Act, a smorgasbord of Bills, which give the security and intelligence
agencies additional powers, are in the offing. These include the
Interception and Monitoring Bill, Intelligence Services Bill, the
Electronic Communications Security (Pty) Ltd Bill, the National Strategic
Intelligence Amendment Bill and the Anti-Terrorism Bill. Under the
propitious conditions created by United States President George W
Bush's 'war on terror' and our own small bands of violent right-wingers,

laws will be passed and measures instituted giving the repressive state
organs many arbitrary and sweeping powers.

Accelerating and comfortable in this slide to authoritarianism is the
historical lack of genuine internal democracy and a particular political
culture within the Congress Alliance. The now discontinued journal
Searchlight South Africa has narrated some aspects of the internal regime
in the ANC camps from 1968 in Tanzania to the mid-Eighties in Angola. It
is a tale of ruthless punishment of dissenters, paranoia, brutal
crassness, ethnic favouritism, sexual harassment and Gulag-like existence
for those who dared criticise those in authority.

For those of us in non-Congress left organisations in the Eighties a
direct line of connection existed between the ANC reign of terror in its
prisons and the killings (often through the horrendous 'necklace' method)
of some activists in the period from 1984 to 1990. This was also the
period where many left unionists were purged from Cosatu affiliates.

Many of those accused for the excesses in the camps in exile, implicated
in the harassment of left individuals in South Africa and responsible for
the purging of left unionists, took up positions of authority in the post-
1994 state apparatus. The recent rabid threats against 'ultra-leftists'
and the craven mea culpa of Jeremy Cronin and other ritual recanters
indicate that the arrogance of totalitarian power is alive and well in the
alliance.

The attempts at covering up corruption in the arms deal, and the bizarre
incident in mid-2001 when leading ANC members Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril
Ramaphosa and Mathews Phosa were accused of 'plotting' to harm the
president, says much about the level of democracy within the ANC.

Besides repression against political activists, the South African police
have embraced the aggressive policing methods of the Bratton strategy
(named after a New York police commissioner) based on the 'broken windows'
theory of conservative criminologists. The theory assumes that if you take
care of minor offences such as public drinking, littering and loitering, a
sense of orderly regulation is created thus preventing more serious crime.

Those who suffer the most as a result of the police's zeal are the
homeless, the unemployed and foreigners. Often, the practice of 'zero-
tolerance' gives pseudo-scientific legitimacy to petty, xenophobic and
racist police behaviour.

More starkly the deaths of hundreds of prisoners every year in our
overcrowded prisons; the violence of the tens of thousands of electricity
cut-offs every month in townships around the country; the death of 43 000
children of diarrhoea each year mainly as a result of inadequate water and
sanitation; the refusal to provide the lifeline of anti-retroviral drugs
to millions and the brutality against 'illegal foreigners' in the
privately owned (largely by prominent ANC women) Lindela prison should be
seen as part of the repression against the poor and the vulnerable.

In the many nascent left social movements being formed around the country
and the inspirational and creative practices of organisations such as the
Anti-Privatisation Forum, Anti-Eviction Campaign groups, the Concerned
Citizens' Forum, Landless People's Movement, some civic, environmental,
student and youth movements, a growing group of rank-and-file unionists
and solidarity groups such as the Palestinian Solidarity Committee and
others, a new left ethic is taking root.

While still tentative, it is founded on coordinating activities and
supporting each other in the face of state repression. These organisations
of the urban and rural poor contain many who have memory of past
struggles, an understanding of the international situation and strong
links with left movements elsewhere. Socialists and other anti-capitalists
in these organisations are rapidly shaking off the blight of a
debilitating sectarianism that characterised the left previously.

Already groups like the Indymedia Centre, Khanya College, the Freedom of
Expression Institute, a few community radio stations and various edu-
cational centres have forged links with the new social movements. It is
important though not to gloss over our weaknesses, contradictions and
vulnerabilities. The lack of a dedicated focus on gender issues and the
HIV/Aids pandemic, the difficulties of winning over many more organised
workers and the stranglehold over these workers by the union bureaucracy,
relations with refugee communities, issues of xenophobia and the very
important but mundane issues of financial resources and national
coordination remain unresolved.

Given the ferocity of police harassment, timely legal defence of various
sorts is sadly lacking. Activists need to know their rights and if need be
institute civil and criminal action against offending parties. A
constitutional challenge to laws that hamper freedom of assembly and
expression is necessary. We need to also challenge vindictive actions such
as those that keep our comrades in jail for weeks on end ostensibly to
verify their addresses.

Also, functionaries routinely portray members and particularly leaders of
social movements as 'maladjusted' and marginal people with a natural
proclivity for maverick or criminal behaviour. Thus, civil rights abuses
of the targeted individuals are justified and solidarity work hampered.

The only bulwark against a shift to authoritarianism is the countervailing
power of left-wing social movements, a task made more imperative because
of the taming of the trade union bureaucracy and the cooption of social-
democratic leaders into the administration of the state. Large numbers of
the population disillusioned by unfulfilled promises are increasingly
vulnerable to the blandishments offered by all sorts of charlatans.

These popular saviours often garnish their demagogic rhetoric of social
redemption with appeals to racial, ethnic, religious or other 'profitable
prejudice'. Alexander's warning of the 'ethnic' danger must be
heeded,
particularly its potential to divide the poor and channel discontent
towards recidivist or conservative organisations.

Only when left movements become a vast popular movement can they prevent a
slide into authoritarianism. In the meantime, a compelling response to
state repression requires increasing the numbers and the influence of our
social movements so that repression and intimidation will not reduce our
size and capacity, but enlarge both.

Salim Vally is acting director of Wits University's Education Policy Unit.
This is an edited version of his presentation at the Freedom of Expression
Institute's recent Right to Dissent conference

***

Elites and our racial quagmire

Adam Habib

24 December 2002 11:58

Race has been politicised and kept firmly on the national agenda.
About six months ago I was invited to the University of Pretoria to
participate in a debate with Xolela Mangcu, the drector of the Steve Biko
Foundation, on why race (and ethnic) relations seemed to be more
contentious as the transition progressed. My argument then, as it is in
this commentary, focused on the role of elites and the effects of our
macroeconomic policy.

During question time, a member of the audience expressed reservations
about my criticism of aspects of our democratic transition and attributed
my views to the fact that I was 'Indian'. I protested both at my
classification as 'Indian' and the attribution of my views to the
pigmentation of my skin. I informed him that I was fourth-generation South
African, had never been to India, and did not even speak an Indian
language. And I stated that even if my ancestry lay in India some five
generations ago, who was to say that this lineage did not extend further
to Mongolia or England a few generations earlier, or even to the Spanish
peninsula and the African continent a couple of centuries before that.

I was, I claimed, a child of humanity, a product of its great and its
deplorable moments, a creation as much of its technological feats and its
love stories as of its horrendous wars and its exploitative atrocities. My
response was well received, but I ended the meeting uneasy. I got the
distinct feeling that for a significant proportion of the audience, across
all racial groups, my words had no effect. I was 'Indian' and that is what
defined me.

If this had been an isolated case, I would not be worried. But it is not.
A colleague of mine, Jonathan Jansen, recently appeared on radio as a
guest on a talk show programme. Responses to his remarks were largely
influenced by the fact that the audience thought he was a white Afrikaner.
Only when they were informed that he was a black person did the audience
respond more positively to him.

And then there is the celebrated case of Jeremy Cronin and the racist
diatribe he was subjected to by follow national executive committee member
Dumisane Makhaye with the implicit sanction of the African National
Congress leadership. If somebody with the political credentials of Cronin
can be subjected to racial charges, who can be exempt?

Add these cases to Mbongeni Ngema's song, the killing of farmers, the
murder of farm workers, the taunting and torture of black prisoners by
white policemen, and the daily columns in national newspapers by one or
two black columnists tarring critics and investigative journalists with
the brush of racism, and one has to ask: what is going on? How is it that
an anti-racist struggle with a non-racial goal can culminate in these
kinds of developments? Why are race and ethnicity more politicised in 2002
than in 1994? Why do race relations tend to be more tense eight years
after than at the dawn of the transition?

I believe that there are two reasons for this state of affairs. First,
racial and ethnic identities are more politicised now because it suits the
interests of political and economic elites. Race has been politicised and
kept firmly on the national agenda to enable elites to project their class
interest as the national interest.

Let me cite a few examples to support this assertion. In corporate and
business circles, a black skin is a very valuable commodity. In a lot of
ways it is seen as a form of capital and it makes sense to see it as such
if you are a black businessman. Because of our history, you do not have
the financial resources to compete on an even footing with white
businessmen in a market environment. So you use your historically
disadvantaged status as a bargaining chip. It becomes a resource to enable
you to compete effectively in a market environment.

Similarly, our political elites (those in government and our public
service) use race to compete effectively in the political arena. When
senior civil servants are subjected to criticism about delivery and even
corruption, race becomes a useful tool to defend themselves.

Our politicians also resort to race all the time. Despite all their
protestations, our politicians, both in government and in the opposition,
use race as the defining criterion in their electoral campaigns. There is
no doubt that the Democratic Alliance deliberately went into the last few
elections to canvass for a racial vote, and the ANC's campaigns,
particularly in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, were similarly
influenced by racial considerations.

So in a lot of ways, politicising race in different ways is in the short-
term political and economic interests of elites, and they have been
instrumental in reasserting it back on to the national agenda.

The second element contributing to the politicisation of race is our
macroeconomic policy. The fundamental compromise of our transition was not
in the political sphere, but in the economic. Confronted by the
overwhelming power of corporate capital largely as a result of global
developments (collapse of the Soviet Union, mobility of capital as a
result of the technological revolution), the political elites in our
society struck a deal to abide not only by a market economy, but also by
neoclassical economic policy prescriptions.

The quid pro quo was the acceptance of black economic empowerment. In a
lot of ways this was a deal to deracialise the apex of the class
structure, while leaving the other levels largely untransformed. The
effect of this has been to polarise the environment. A shrinking economic
pie means access to a job is a life-and-death matter. The neo-liberal
model of accumulation has effectively pitted the poor of all racial groups
against each other.

This is the only way to understand the 'Indian' and 'coloured'
vote.
Conventional academic and journalistic analyses suggest both the 'Indian'
and 'coloured' communities as homogenous groups voted against the ANC.
This is simply not true. Careful analyses of the results in the last few
elections would indicate that there is a clear class divide in the
electoral vote of these communities.

Richer sectors of these communities voted for the ANC, while the poorer
sections voted for the DA, New National Party or other parties to the
right of the ANC. Again, this is perfectly understandable. These poorer
sections of the minority racial groups are the most vulnerable to
affirmative action. In an environment where skills are scarce, the
unskilled are the most vulnerable.

Let me clarify lest I be misunderstood. The problem is not affirmative
action. It is its application in a neo-liberal economic environment, for
this effectively forces us to make choices between different sections of
the poor. It robs the poor to benefit the poor. Should we then be
surprised at the politicisation of race and its re-emergence?

Let me use another example to illustrate this point. The most serious
weakness of the Mandela presidency was its attempt at reconciliation
simultaneous with a neo-liberal economic experiment. The two projects
pulled in diametrically opposite directions. The one tried to bring
different sections of our society together. The other polarised our
society by accelerating economic inequalities and marginalising large
sections of the population. Is it much wonder, then, that large sections
of the black population feel that there was too much appeasement of
minority concerns and too little recognition of the plight of the victims
of apartheid? Again the net effect was to politicise race and reassert it
on the national agenda.

Now, where do we go from here? Three factors need to be considered.
Firstly, I do not believe that the reassertion of racial identities is a
positive feature, as some intellectuals have come to argue. Indeed, I
believe that it is dangerous.

Moreover, I think it will come to haunt this elite because it legitimises
all kinds of ethnic entrepreneurs who will begin to play the ethnic card
when they don't get their own way. This will be a slippery slide to a
factitious and politically divided society.

Secondly, I am convinced that we have to review our macroeconomic policy.
Our historic responsibility is not simply to achieve growth. It is both to
achieve growth and address poverty and inequality. To focus on growth but
not poverty and inequality is not only morally unacceptable, it will also
destroy our society.

Thirdly, I am aware that policy options and outcomes are not simply the
product of technocrats. They are the product of a particular configuration
of social forces in our society. In a lot of ways the growth, employment
and redistribution strategy is a manifestation of the imbalance of power
in our society. One of the factors informing this imbalance is that the
electoral vote can be taken for granted. The ANC knows that the electorate
has nowhere else to go, and there is, as a result, no incentive for them
to make concessions to this electorate.

This is why it is so necessary to support initiatives aimed at
establishing an opposition party to the left of the ANC, and new social
movements. Not necessarily because you support their goals or ideological
orientation, but more because their presence addresses this imbalance of
power in our society. And only when this imbalance is addressed will
alternative policy options become feasible.

To put it more abstractly, unless the political will and institutional
space emerges for a reconfiguration of social forces in our society, we
are unlikely to realise a sustainable project that will address poverty,
development and racial polarisation.

South Africans will do well not to take their democracy for granted.
Democracies all over the world have foundered on the rocks of racial
discord and polarisation. And in a number of cases, particularly on this
continent, this discord and polarisation arose primarily because elites
were allowed to project their material and class interest as the national
(read racial) interest.

The result some 30 to 40 years later is that the vast majority of the
population is still immersed in poverty, the real beneficiaries were a
thin band of elites who monopolised the fruits of liberation, and these
societies remain prone to incidents of ethnic cleansing and racial strife.
It is a lesson well worth learning for our own future.

Adam Habib is director of the Centre for Civil Society, professor in the
School of Development Studies, University of Natal, and a part-time
research director in the Human Sciences Research Council