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South Africa’s democracy: Deepening class contradictions
By Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
In the last issue of Umsebenzi Online (7 July 2004) we argued that capitalism
has failed our democracy. In the two weeks since there have been some very
significant developments underscoring this perspective.
In the first place, the Employment Equity Report, released
by the Minister of Labour last week, shows the extent to which private capital
is actually resisting transformation of the racial and gender demographics
of middle and top management in South Africa’s companies. It shows the inherent and
systemic racial character of South African capitalism. Racial and gender exclusion
are not just a past legacy, they continue to be reproduced as an ongoing reality
under capitalism. It is an illustration that South African capitalism has,
for more than a century, relied on white male middle and top management as
its most trusted “lieutenants” for its accumulation needs.
South African capitalism is liable to reproduce the relative marginalisation
of black and women professionals. But events of the past weeks also illustrate
that, left to their own devices, the narrow class and personal aspirations
of black (and women) professionals are equally incapable of providing an effective
transformational leadership.
The substantially privatised Telkom, for instance, presents
itself as a leader in black economic empowerment (BEE), citing the demographic
and gender profile of its top management cadre. It has just declared a huge
profit of R4,5bn and paid its black CEO an obscene R11,4m in salary and bonuses.
In the same week as these figures were released, Telkom announced its intention
to retrench thousands more workers over the next three years. This follows
the cutting of the number of fixed line employees by 24,453 since 1997. While
delivering “share-holder” value,
with a spectacular 175% increase in Telkom shares since listing last year,
Telkom tariffs have skyrocketed. A local call in 2002 was five times what it
was in 1996. Last year local and national call prices increased by a further
12,5%.
Even the much-trumpeted “broad” black economic empowerment component
of the share-offering privatisation process of last year has come to very little.
The Khulisa shares, offered at a discount to the historically disadvantaged,
account for less than 1% of the company’s shareholding.
In short, submitting Telkom increasingly to the profit-maximising
laws of the capitalist market, has made a few individuals, including some
blacks, very rich, while increasing the cost of “doing business” in
South Africa for all, including for capitalists. But it is working people
and their families who are most disempowered, depriving thousands of their
only means of livelihood. What is happening at Telkom is an elite empowerment
where the working class, and particularly black households, are impoverished.
Again, in exactly the same week that Standard Bank announces a huge black
economic empowerment deal, the banks were busy evicting black bond-holders
in Protea Glen in Soweto. This happens against the backdrop of unrest in Diepsloot,
again a symptom of, amongst other things, the dismal failure of capitalist
banks to finance low-cost housing. We note that as the capitalist banks do
this, it is the state, through the Minister of Housing, cde Lindiwe Sisulu
that has had to come to the rescue of some of those being evicted. For the
capitalist banks, profits are the bottom line not the social needs of Protea
Glen residents.
Nor are some black professionals in the financial sector providing much of
an inspiring example. As a direct result of our financial sector campaign,
a significant sum has now been earmarked for low-cost housing, for access to
banking services for workers and the poor, and for infrastructural development
in poor areas. But some of these financial sector black professionals are now
advancing the shameless argument that half of this sum should be allocated
to them, so that they can buy shares in the financial sector!
Also in the past fortnight, the Food and Allied Workers’ Union
has launched the first ever Section 77 notice, with a planned strike against
a black economic empowerment deal at KWV. These are the first signs of deepening
class contradictions between various classes within the black community as
a result of competing models of black economic empowerment. The national contradiction
cannot be addressed without simultaneously tackling the class contradiction
in South Africa.
An emerging cadre of black professionals and managers in the private and
public sectors can, potentially, play a progressive role. In fact, they must
be assisted to play such a role. But it is only the hegemony of a consistent
working class perspective, organisation and mobilisation that will ensure that
they do indeed play such a role. If they are allowed to pursue their own narrow
class and strata aspirations, they will simply ensure the continued dominance
of a capitalist accumulation path that oppresses the great majority of blacks,
women and, of course, workers and the poor.
South Africa is currently faced with a number of labour
disputes and possible strikes in major sectors of our economy – the
metal and motor industries, the mining industry, the public sector, media
and communications, etc. In part, these are the usual, cyclical, two to three-year
rounds of wage negotiations, as existing agreements begin to expire. But
this year they occur in a particular context. In many sectors, organised
workers cannot but help notice that the capitalist accumulation path has
brought immense rewards to capitalists, while the earnings of workers (those
still in employment) have declined.
This year’s round of wage negotiations will naturally reflect this
understanding. The intensity of these disputes will, in part, be about different
class interpretations of our decade of democracy, and of the ANC’s 70%
electoral mandate. Some in the media and in big business have tried to interpret
the ANC’s April election victory, as a mandate to continue with “business
as usual” in economic policy. This is certainly not the view of the millions
of workers and poor who actually voted for the ANC. Nor are they the views
of the ANC leadership, as illustrated by the Letter from the President (“The
poor of this world rich in faith”) in last Friday’s ANC Today.
For the SACP, the lessons of the last decade, like the lessons of the past
two weeks, are clear: if we are to properly understand the character of our
economy and the challenges of its transformation, the only route is a consistent
working class analysis and perspective. And it is only from this perspective
that progressive forces in general and the working class in particular, will
be able to evolve a developmental path to transform our economy to serve the
overwhelming majority of our people.
The struggle to overcome the crisis of underdevelopment
entails purposeful, strategic anti-systemic measures, measures that counter
the profit-maximising anti-social trajectory of capitalism. There is a growing
consensus that this requires strong state intervention. It also requires
active popular mobilisation, with the working class at the head, to assert
worker power at the point of production, and popular consumer power and cooperative
activism in our townships and rural areas. These strategic, anti-systemic
measures are absolutely essential to counter the continuous reproduction
of mass poverty by capitalism in our society. To counter the political economy
of capital, we must foster the political economy of workers and the poor.
We must build an economy and a society increasingly based on meeting social
needs, not private profits. This is precisely what we are referring to in
our strategic slogan – “Socialism is the
future, Build it now!
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