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Southern
African movements seek antidotes to neoliberalism
Patrick Bond
October 12, 2002
http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/content/2002-10/12bond.cfm
Last week's two-day national labour
stayaway against the impending privatisation of South African electricity,
telephones, water and transport services was only a mixed success.
But combined with other recent regional dynamics and ruling-party
convulsions, it adds to the sense that activists are now thoroughly
fed up with rampant neoliberalism and the political tyranny that
invariably accompanies it on the world's periphery.
To illustrate, the failed neoliberal
strategy of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe during the 1990s generated
malgovernance, rebellions and an opposition movement from the trade
unions and urban poor. Since losing a February 2000 referendum,
Mugabe responded not only with talk-left/act-right bluster and by
activating a paramilitary posing as land-reformers.
He also conclusively cheated on three
elections, including last weekend's national poll of rural district
municipalities. In more than half the districts, intimidation was
so severe that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) could not
even register their candidates for the 1400 seats. Arrests, beating
and torture of MDC supporters were again in evidence, against a
backdrop of worsening starvation induced both by drought and venal
politics, in which food aid is being used by Mugabe's lieutenants
as a weapon and rape of rural women opposed to his regime is also
steeply on the rise.
As to growing concern over the opposition
party's own internal stagnation and conservative orientation, late
last month the MDC fired neoliberal economic spokesperson Eddie
Cross, a white businessperson, in a favour of the ex-trotskyist
(and still leftist) human rights lawyer Tendai Biti. MDC general
secretary Morgan Tsvangirai also began talking of mass nonviolent
action.
More importantly, so too have progressive
civil society activists in the National Constitutional Assembly
begun to shift their own strategy for popular demonstrations in
Harare, which will arise in coming weeks from a township base instead
of at the traditional protest site next to parliament, vulnerable
as it is to police/army clampdown. Students, workers and other anti-privatisation
activists are again flexing muscles against Mugabe, after six months
of post-election mourning.
As another example of degenerate state
leadership, South African president Thabo Mbeki has rarely sounded
so paranoid-defensive as he did when opening the September 27 ANC
policy conference. Attacking the "left sectarian factions" who allegedly
"occupy the same trench with the anti-socialist forces which they
claim are their sworn enemies", Mbeki warned his followers that
"this ultra-left works to implant itself within our ranks. It strives
to abuse our internal democratic processes to advance its agenda,
against policies agreed by our most senior decision-making structures".
Meant in the first instance as a threat
to left-leaning leaders of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu),
Mbeki failed to persuade them to postpone the October 1-2 strike
until after a promised economic policy summit next year. At the
same time, a vituperative document was leaked by the ANC's Political
Education Unit. Although it is still being rewritten (probably to
appear at http://www.anc.org.za), Mbeki's concerns about ultraleftism
can be derived from these sentences:
"The charge of neo-liberalism constitutes
the most consistent platform presented by the 'left' opposition
in its fight against the ANC and our government... In our country,
it is represented by important factions in the SA Communist Party
and Cosatu, as well as the Anti-Privatisation Forum, the local chapter
of Jubilee 2000, and other groups and individuals. All of these
maintain links with their like-minded counterparts internationally
and work to mobilise these to act in solidarity with them in support
of the anti-neoliberal campaign in our country...
"These specific anti-neoliberal formations
define our efforts to contribute to the victory of the African Renaissance
as an expression of sub-imperialism. They assert that the ANC and
our government are acting as the representative and instrument of
the South African bourgeoisie, which they say seeks to dominate
the African continent. They go further to say that the soul of the
ANC has been captured by a pro-capitalist, and therefore neoliberal
faction".
Not a bad summary of independent-left
conventional wisdom. But here's where the logic then twists:
"The anti-neoliberal coalition hopes
that it will trample over the fallen colossus, the ANC, and march
on to a victorious socialist revolution, however defined. Better
still, it hopes that by engaging in all manner of manoeuvre, including
conspiring about who its leaders should be, it can capture control
of the ANC and use it for its purposes. To achieve these objectives,
the anti-neoliberal coalition is ready to treat the forces of neoliberalism
as its ally. Therefore it joins forces with them, together to open
fire on the ANC and our government".
What's new in the ANC tract are, first,
the preposterous charge that the indy left is working with the neolib
right, and second, the correct perception that international solidarity
is now a meaningful political variable, a point I return to in closing.
The Treatment Action Campaign was the
first major post-apartheid beneficiary of internationalism, as the
world came to learn of Mbeki's genocidal HIV/Aids policies in 2000.
Now, the accusation of SA subimperialism is, indeed, being made
across the region. In Harare a fortnight ago, strategists of southern
African social movements, NGOs, labour, women, landless people and
environmentalists met to discuss alternatives to Mbeki's New Partnership
for Africa's Development (Nepad). Activist unity had been forged
by many of these forces--e.g., the SA Social Movements Indaba; the
Zimbabwe
Coalition on Debt and Development; the Malawi Economic Justice
Network; the Swaziland Campaign against Poverty and Economic Inequality;
and others in the Southern African Peoples Solidarity Network--at
the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development a month
ago.
Strong anti-Nepad statements have emerged
from groups like these over the past year, since Mbeki and Nigeria's
Olusegun Obasanjo formally launched the document in Abuja (see ZNet
Commentaries, 21 June 2002, 4 November 2001). Four points merely
need to be reiterated:
- The process behind authorship/ownership
of Africa's plan was fatally flawed, given its origination in
meetings between Mbeki, G8 leaders and Davos business tycoons
beginning in 1999, augmented by a few African elites in 2001,
leaving consultation with civil society until April 2002, six
months after Nepad was finalised;
- Nepad's commitment to good governance
is considered farcical in the wake of Mbeki/Obasanjo's winking
at high-profile vote-rigging episodes and oppression in several
countries, including not only Zimbabwe and Zambia but also Nigeria
and South Africa;
- As for the development strategy,
Nepad is skewed towards strengthening the role of the World Bank,
IMF and World Trade Organisation, privatising Africa's infrastructure
and rolling out a red carpet to corporate free-trade interests;
and
- Nepad amplifies existing patriarchal
institutions, practices, power relations and even philosophies.
There has emerged a bit of elite shame
about the first and second points, but not the third and fourth.
Indeed, Mbeki successfully steered Nepad through three major conferences
the last three months: the July launch of the African Union in Durban;
the August-September World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg; and the mid-September UN summit in New York. In spite
of protests, the base document, controversial in so many ways (http://www.nepad.org),
was not--and will not be--amended, in spite of harsh critiques from
virtually all of African civil society (http://www.aidc.org.za).
Nepad increasingly serves as a pole
of opposition, carrying African progressives over barriers that
include borders, genders, language groups and sectoral focus areas.
Uneven political development across the African continent means
that different regions will respond at different paces and with
particular interests. But in some areas, we can expect common, or
at least overlapping, values and political rhetorics.
Thus advocacy for women's rights is
emblematic, partly because Nepad is so profoundly patriarchal. As
Zimbabwean feminist Bella Matambanadzo of the Women's
Resource Centre and Network put it, "Nepad is ignorant not only
of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women, but also the Africa Platform for Action moving to
Beijing conference and the Southern African Development Community's
own gender declaration of 1997".
In some of these official statements,
issues of sexual rights, especially in terms of HIV/Aids, have become
part of the discourse. Nevertheless, Matambanadzo observes, "Nepad
is frightened to take the blanket off things we consider private:
culture, sex and sexuality". Nepad also neglects to mention, much
less incorporate, unpaid women's labour and the costs of gender-based
violence. Nepad's gender equity component is merely the usual rhetoric
about microcredit, income generating projects and integration into
markets. In contrast, women's groups are firmly demanding a generous
social wage--the full array of essential services--from their states.
There you get a good sense of both
critique and, implicitly, the alternatives that women and many other
Africans are seeking. At a continent-wide scale, the search for
a post-neoliberal development philosophy began within these sorts
of groups during the late 1990s, in conferences in Accra, Johannesburg,
Lusaka, Nairobi and Dakar that culminated in the January 2002 Bamako
meeting of the African Social Forum. The groups have a general anti-capitalist
pespective, now, but what they are "for" is still diverse, consistent
with the Social Forum formula "One No Many Yeses".
According to Nancy Kachingwe from the
regional network Mwengo,
"The weakness of Bamako was that it stayed at the level of generality,
which in opposition to liberalisation, austerity and globalisation
is fine, but we now need to get detailed alternatives". There remains
a great hunger for an "African People's Consensus" to help hone
organic grassroots/shopfloor demands more systematically. Aside
from ongoing class and social struggles, those demands seem to take
the form of fights on two levels: against specific damaging projects
and on policy.
In southern/central Africa, current
hot (and mainly successful) campaigns include three mega-dams: Epupa
in Namibia, Bujagali in Uganda and Mepunda Uncua in Mozambique.
In Tanzania, an exorbitant British air traffic control system is
being contested while in Swaziland, the authoritarian monarchy's
purchase of a $50 million personal jet received the same reactions.
Zambia's democratic movements are campaigning not only against neoliberalism
but also for a recontestation of the stolen December 2001 election,
while Lesotho activists celebrate last month's bribery conviction
of the first of a dozen companies accused of corrupting local officials
through a World Bank dam contract.
State policy is harder to crack. Activists
working at the intersection of democracy, human rights and socio-economic
grievances are sceptical that Nepad's African Peer Review Mechanism
will bring deviant countries into line. As Brian Kagoro, director
of the watchdog group Crisis
in Zimbabwe, pointed out, "The process is voluntary; corrective
not punitive; and based on quiet diplomacy--as has been so ineffectual
in bringing about a free election here".
The main antidote is a different kind
of peer review: people's solidarity. At a time when so many opportunities
arise to draw attention to malevolent behaviour by states and capital,
coordinated protests have been too few and far between, but that
may be changing. The strike against Mbeki's privatisation programme
was supported by between 10% and 50% of the workforce, depending
on whether you believe the ANC or Cosatu. A militant demonstration
of 40,000 workers and the urban poor turned Johannesburg's streets
red with banners and tee-shirts last Tuesday.
Moreover, international networks will
also be activated in coming weeks, just as Mbeki fears. Protests
against the trial of Trevor Ngwane and the Kensington 87 for their
April demonstration at the Johannesburg mayor's house will be held
in major cities across the world (including Harare) on October 22.
Global pressure is also mounting on Pretoria to free a political
prisoner--the autonomist intellectual-activist Jaime Yovanovich
Prieto, wanted on a frame-up by residual Pinochet supporters in
Chile's military courts--who could soon face extradition from a
local prison (http://southafrica.indymedia.org).
Meanwhile, community and trade union
struggles which make this region such a compelling case of anti-neoliberalism
for the global left will only strengthen, the more Mbeki, Mugabe
and other regional tyrants respond in predictable ways.
Patrick Bond's recent book is Unsustainable
South Africa: Environment, Development and Social Protest --
http://www.unpress.co.za
and http://www.merlinpress.co.uk
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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