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The
curse of South Africa
Moeletsi
Mbeki, The New Statesman
January 17, 2008
http://www.newstatesman.com/200801170024
The conference of the
African National Congress that was held last month was billed as
a heavyweight contest between the party's president, Thabo Mbeki,
and its deputy president, Jacob Zuma. The conference turned out
to be much more than that. It was a complete rout, not only of the
president, but also of his cabinet, the sitting national executive
committee, and of Mbeki's economy team.
The December conference
saw the ANC swing from the centre towards the left, if one believes
the rhetoric. Jacob Zuma, the new president of the ANC, mobilised
the support of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)
and the South African Communist Party (SACP) in order to fight for
leadership of the ANC.
The ANC is caught in
a quandary. On the one hand, its members and leaders want to preserve
the economic system inherited from the apartheid era so that they,
too, can benefit from it through, for example, Black Economic Empowerment
(an affirmative-action programme, initially designed by South Africa's
big corporations, that favours the new black elite) and social grants
from the government aimed at alleviating poverty. On the other hand,
they hanker for change that will ameliorate the growing inequalities
and pauperisation among black South Africans. They blame individuals
within the organisation for not bringing about the socio-economic
changes they would like to see, but do not dare to initiate themselves.
Much of the impetus behind
the emerging instability in the ANC, however, is financial rather
than ideological. The only solution would be for a leadership to
emerge, from either within or outside the ANC, that has meaningful
policies for building a more inclusive society in South Africa.
Black Economic Empowerment and social welfare programmes do not
fundamentally lead to such social inclusiveness. If anything, they
entrench the inequalities inherited from the past and exacerbate
new inequalities among the blacks.
The undoing
of President Mbeki and his cabinet was that they failed to understand
that, with Zuma's rise, a new phenomenon of populism had entered
the ANC. They also failed to understand the potential of populism
to appeal to the black working class, the black poor in general,
and a wide array of disgruntled people associated with the ANC who
felt excluded from the inside track.
Their mistake was to
see Zuma as a paranoiac who didn't deserve to be taken seriously.
Mbeki compounded this error by standing against the populist Zuma
but refusing to engage with him in public debate. He thereby appeared
to be afraid of Zuma. This encouraged Zuma and his supporters to
press ahead with their campaign and, paradoxically, Mbeki's silence
persuaded many ANC members that Zuma's claim of persecution was
valid.
Placating
the poor
South
Africa is able to undertake both Black Economic Empowerment and
large social welfare expenditures because of its vast natural resources,
which are now selling at a premium due to the rapid industrialisation
of the large countries of Asia. South Africa's fabulous mineral
wealth has been seen as a blessing since the discovery of diamonds
and gold in the 19th century. What gets overlooked is the curse
that goes with vast natural-resource endowment.
Since the current commodities
boom started in the late 1990s, the ANC government has been ratcheting
up public spending on the welfare of the poor. Why? Out of the goodness
of its heart, reply ANC leaders. Not so, say doubters: rather to
placate the poor so that they do not rebel, but most importantly
to buy their vote.
In his address to the
ANC conference, President Mbeki went to great lengths to explain
the good things the ANC government has done for South Africa's poor.
He noted that the number of South Africans living below the poverty
line fell from 51.4 per cent in 2001 to 43.2 per cent in 2006 and
that the number of people receiving social grants increased from
2.6 million in 1999 to more than 12 million in 2006.
But are South Africa's
poor happy and grateful to the ANC government? In theory they should
be, given the largesse they are receiving. But judging by the support
that Zuma and his communist and trade union allies have been able
to mobilise among the poor against the mainstream ANC which runs
the government, it appears South Africa's poor are very far from
happy. This is where the resource curse comes in.
A country develops when
it is able to harness the energies of its people and put them to
productive use. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. Oil-producing
countries are one. For very little effort, petroleum-producing countries
pump crude oil from the ground and sell it for fabulous prices to
foreigners.
South Africa is similar
to oil-producing countries in that it, too, has natural resources
- gold, platinum, diamonds, coal, iron ore, and so on - that are
valuable to foreigners, who are willing to pay South Africa top
dollar for them. While it takes more people to dig out South Africa's
minerals compared to those employed to pump up crude oil, mining
is still a small employer. Despite employing very few people, mining,
however, makes a huge contribution to the country's wealth, in that
it accounts for more than half of export earnings. The value that
the few people employed in mining produce far exceeds their income.
The government, therefore, has large revenues from mining activity
that it can redistribute to the rest of society that does not work
in the mines. This is what is called a resource curse - governments
of resource-rich countries think their people need not work and
will be happy living off social grants.
That is precisely the
trap into which the ANC government has fallen. At least a quarter
of the South African population receives social grants that would
not be possible if South Africa were not mineral-rich. Without mineral
wealth to redistribute, the government would have to work harder
and be more creative to find solutions to unemployment and poverty.
Resource wealth makes
it possible for the government not to have to put an effort into
redeveloping the economy to create more jobs, and instead it sustains
the unemployed and their dependants with social grants.
But do such grants make
people happy as the ANC government expects? Paradoxically, while
social grants contribute to putting food on the table, at a broader
level they make the recipients more insecure because they do not
know when the government will withdraw or reduce the size of their
grants. Second, the grants accentuate the humiliation that unemployed
people feel from being dependent and unable to look after themselves
and their families. Every time they collect their social grants,
recipients are subjected to all manner of humiliations by the government
officials who administer the system. The rest of society stigmatises
recipients as idle, worthless and parasitic.
What do South Africa's
subsidised and marginalised people do to regain their self-respect?
They support demagogues who claim that they, too, are marginalised,
and therefore want to replace the ruling elites with people-friendly
governments. This, in a nutshell, is what happened at the ANC conference
and in the months leading up to it.
Zuma, with the support
of Cosatu, the SACP and the ANC Youth League, ran a campaign that
told ANC members, most of whom are poor, that he, like them, is
despised and marginalised by the elite who run the party and its
government. Zuma argued there was a conspiracy by the elite to ensure
that he, and poor people like him, are kept away from power and
therefore do not benefit from their struggle against apartheid.
Zuma's message resonated
with many trade unionists, such as the general secretary of Co satu,
Zwelinzima Vavi, who grew up as a farm labourer and worked his way
up to where he is today by fighting against discrimination and humiliation
under apartheid.
Winners
and losers
Did
all the passion and recrimination at the ANC conference produce
winners and losers? Leaving aside the rather tarnished image of
the party, a few bruised egos and what will turn out to be short-lived
elation by others, the conference, viewed in the context of the
country's future, reproduced the stalemate into which the ANC has
been locked since 1994. January 2008 is, therefore, the month in
which the country has gone back to business as usual.
As for Zuma - in reality,
his was a pyrrhic victory in a phoney war. In the coming months
he will be back in court facing corruption charges that could lead
to his being imprisoned for many years to come. The case is scheduled
to start in August.
The giant trade union
federation, Cosatu, which devoted so much of its energy and resources
to Zuma's campaign, has come out of the melee a loser. Its leaders
are at each other's throats and there were no changes made to the
ANC's conservative economic policies, such as the independence of
the Reserve Bank, about which Cosatu has been unhappy for many years.
Cosatu ended up as cannon
fodder at the hands of disgruntled ANC and SACP politicians who
used it as a proxy to fight their battles. Ultimately, under a populist
regime, the masses are the main losers.
* Moeletsi Mbeki
is a deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International
Affairs, an independent think tank based at the University of Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg.
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
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