The post-1994 South African state

Jeremy Cronin

"We must help Marx to think in the 21st century" - said by a worker delegate at the SATAWU National Congress, 2006

The question of state power is not the only, but it is certainly a central question of any revolution. If this is the case, then a critical task for any progressive politics in South Africa must be to develop an effective analysis of our post-1994 state and, related to this, an effective programmatic approach to that state. Unfortunately, these tasks are sometimes compromised by crude reductionism.

At the one end of the spectrum is an argument that asserts that, since our society is dominated by capitalism (which it certainly is), our state must be "a bourgeois state". The bourgeoisie is the ruling class, government is the "executive council of the bourgeoisie", and we are living under a state which is ultimately nothing more than the expression of the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". What is more, the ANC is essentially a "petty-bourgeois" nationalist organisation and its real strategic objective "has always been" to advance the interests of emerging black capitalist strata. The ANC leadership will inevitably (in fact, it always already has) "betrayed the working class".

Once you have reduced our reality to this set of formulae, then it is "obvious" that a progressive politics must be essentially oppositionist. The "enemy" is the new South African state, and our strategic objective must be the destruction of this state and its replacement by another. The very real (but always difficult and contested) possibilities of using democratic state power to roll back capital and to build working class power, capacity and hegemony in our society are simply relinquished. Instead, political practice (when it happens) is focused on a series of grievance based mobilisations and localised skirmishes with the state. Politics becomes pedagogic, its purpose is to educate the working class out of its "false consciousness", perhaps by provoking the police into measures that will demonstrate to communities that the government they have just voted for is little more than "the watch-dog of the bourgeoisie", "no different from the apartheid regime".

At the other extreme is the complacent view that our new ANC-led democratic state is genetically progressive. The ANC has a longstanding struggle track-record, it is "inherently progressive" and enjoys nearly 70% support from an electorate that is overwhelmingly working class and poor. Therefore, this complacent argument concludes, we have a "working class-biased" state, which, while it might not be socialist, is the first step in an inevitable advance to socialism.

This second, complacent position gives rise to an equally sterile politics. The "revolution is on track" (i.e. this is an evolutionary process that requires little activism), we are in state-power now, a luta discontinua! The South African revolution is handed over to state managers and technocrats, and the role of the masses is to vote appropriately at election time and perhaps attend an occasional imbizo when it arrives at a theatre near to you.

While standing at opposite extremes, both these positions share a number of assumptions. They both tend to attribute timeless essences to political formations like the ANC (it is either inherently reactionary or inherently revolutionary). Likewise, they attribute a monolithic essence to the post-1994 state, reading off its essence from either the dominant relations of production in our society (capitalist), or from the dominant class character of an electoral support base (working class). While they come to opposite conclusions, neither position can provide the basis for an effective socialist analysis and programme of action in the present.

If we are indeed to develop an effective analysis of the South African state and of a key political formation, like the ANC, then a much more complex, less formulaic analysis is required. I make no claim to be providing any such comprehensive analysis here, the following are notes designed to flag some key issues.

First, two general points: one, the state and its apparatuses always have a relative autonomy. And two, there is nothing inherently bourgeois about electoral, multi-party, representative democracy.

The relative autonomy of the state does not mean that it floats freely above the class contradictions of a society - on the contrary, this relative autonomy is itself precisely the dynamic consequence of these class contradictions. This means, amongst other things, that it is necessary to distinguish between the "ruling class" and the "governing strata". The capitalist class is, undoubtedly, "the ruling class" in South Africa, and it has been for more than a century. Specifically, key sectors of capital associated with the minerals-energy-finance monopolies are the dominant stratum within this ruling class.

Through the 20th century this leading stratum of monopoly capital played a key role in shaping a special colonial or white-minority state in South Africa, but this role was also mediated through a variety of governing strata. The white minority state form proved to be considerably successful in promoting a sustained capitalist accumulation path dominated by the mineral-energy-finance monopolies. But, if the bourgeoisie was (and remains) the "ruling class" in the broadest sense of the word, the white minority state required, for its reproduction and consolidation, a broader, multi-class "ruling bloc". And this ruling bloc and the wider class realities of our society meant that monopoly capital in South Africa could not always act unilaterally…although it often tried.

For instance, in 1922 the Smuts government, effectively acting on behalf of the Chamber of Mines, used naked state power (the army and air force) to crush the Rand Revolt. The Revolt was precipitated by white mineworkers resisting the Chamber`s cost-cutting attempt to dilute their racist privileges by employing black miners in skilled jobs (but without the same wage). The revolt was smashed and some of its leaders were executed. However, neither Smuts nor the Chamber of Mines could evade a massive back-lash from the wider ruling bloc. In 1924 the all-white electorate punished Smuts for his brutal, pro-big capital handling of the Rand Revolt. A National Party/Labour Pact government was voted in. It promoted a range of white labour protectionist measures. This did not mean that the bourgeoisie had stopped being the ruling class in South Africa, the Pact government certainly did not bring capitalism to an end. But all of this indicates how class contradictions and struggles impact dynamically on the state, are mediated through it, and how different state apparatuses and institutions (the police and army, at one point, a racist parliament at another) might, in struggle, be allocated a dominance in a particular conjuncture. Different classes and fractions of classes, in struggle (even when they are in an alliance - in this case a white ruling bloc alliance), seek to use the state to advance their interests, to weaken other class forces, and to consolidate and perhaps hegemonise a multi-class ruling bloc.

But let`s fast-forward to more recent times…After having actively shaped, defended, and benefited from a state of white minority rule for the better part of a century, by the late-1980s monopoly capital in SA began to experience this state form as a constraint, even a threat, to the reproduction of capitalist profitability. International sanctions, a stagnant economy, a burgeoning debt problem, the growing burden of a militarised budget used for regional destabilisation and domestic pacification - all the consequences of a rolling wave of sustained semi-insurrectionary popular struggles here at home - finally prompted big capital in SA to seek a new political settlement. The risk of a non-racial franchise seemed to be outweighed by the risks of the deepening crisis. The challenge, from the perspective of big capital, was to ensure that there would be an elite pacted transition to a low-intensity democracy in which a formalistic multi-party dispensation rotated electoral victories between a centre-left and a centre-right party (like they do in "civilised" countries), and in which electoral party politics was kept well away from substantive economic transformation.

Liberal ideologues in the camp of the big bourgeoisie were hyper-active in the late 1980s and early 90s, producing a barrage of media interventions, think-tank seminars, scenario planning, and the like. Judge Jan Steyn penned an influential book, "Managing Change" (its implicit sub-title was: "Without Changing the Management"). Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert churned out treatises on democracy`s "rules of the game" - the prime "rule of the game" was that the new democracy should not be "overburdened by the problems of socio-economic inequality". Washington-based "transitions to democracy" theorists, who were flown in hurriedly, advised that the "moderates" on both sides should find each other and actively marginalise the "extreme right" and the "extreme left".

Which brings me to the second very general thesis flagged above: although we sometimes hear people describing one-person one-vote democratic dispensations as "bourgeois democracy", there is nothing inherently "bourgeois" about representative electoral democracy. It is true that, in some cases, bourgeois rule has succeeded in stabilising itself for considerable periods within the framework of parliamentary democracies. But it would be quite wrong to imagine that the bourgeoisie has been placed on earth with the world-historic vocation of rolling out universal franchise to humankind. Everywhere democratic advances are propelled by popular struggles, and everywhere those advances are constantly threatened, curtailed and, at best, frequently dumbed down by the inherently undemocratic nature of capitalism. As South Africans we should know this better than most. Monopoly capital in SA was a very, very late convert to a one-person one-vote dispensation.

The strategic agenda of our belated converts was, however, to be partially successful. This "1988 class project" has certainly left its imprint on the post-1994 South African state and wider society. But it is a strategic agenda that has only been partially successful, and the nature of our transition and the character of the state emerging from it are still being contested in struggle - the negotiations, so to speak, like the struggle, continue.

There are several reasons for this. The negotiated transition itself was never completely narrowed into an elite pact. Popular struggle played a decisive role, for instance in the massive mobilisation after the assassination of Chris Hani. It was a wave of mobilisation that changed the balance of forces at the negotiating table, unblocked the stalled negotiations, and prevented the regime`s attempt to bypass a democratically elected constituent assembly with a pre-negotiated (i.e. pacted) constitution. Although there were various attempts, from different quarters, to put the genie of popular struggle back into the bottle, this was never completely successful, both during and post the negotiations process.

The 1996 Constitution bears the marks of this struggle, and critical clauses reflect the relatively open-ended character of the transition. The so-called "property clause" (Clause 25) in the Bill of Rights has often been interpreted as a clause that prevents expropriation or nationalisation. However, as colleagues from the University of Western Cape`s Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) have correctly noted, it is open to an entirely different reading and could as well be called the "expropriation clause". Far from prohibiting expropriation of private property, it explicitly allows expropriation "for a public purpose or in the public interest", and it lists the various requirements for expropriation. Although compensation is required, that compensation does not have to be market-related if other factors are taken into account, including how the property was originally acquired, "the extent of direct state investment and subsidy in the [original] acquisition", and the use to which it had since been put.

The fact that we remember this clause as a "property clause" is part of a wider problem. Other class forces have succeeded, at least partially and hopefully only temporarily, in hegemonising our interpretation of the transition. Certainly, the "1988 class project" of big capital managed to achieve a strategic dominance within the new democratic state from around 1996. This, of course, reflected in part the global and domestic balance of power (the ruling ideas of an epoch tend to be the ideas of the ruling class). But this successful (if always challenged) hegemony was also secured thanks to the impact of new realities upon, and subjective errors within, what emerged as a dominant leadership axis in the ANC and state. This dominant axis was constituted basically of a new stratum of technocratic state managers and (sometimes overlapping with them) an emerging black capitalist stratum. A political centre within the state and ANC was forged around this axis, and it drove what we have called, in the SACP, the "1996 class project". Its principal strategic assumption was that what was needed (all that was "possible") was for the new state to create the macro-economic conditions for a return to capitalist growth and profitability. Sustained growth of 6% it was assumed would provide (largely through taxation) the means for the state to carry forward a redistributive programme of social and economic "delivery" to overcome the "legacy" of apartheid. The state that was forged by this agenda privileged certain key sites of state power (the presidency, the Treasury, the Reserve Bank, and, to a lesser extent departments like Trade and Industry and Minerals and Energy). These were centres of power whose mandate was to create the conditions for a market-led accelerated growth path. Other state departments, characteristically overburdened and under-resourced, were charged with more redistributive tasks, like housing, education, public health care, safety and security, social development, public transport, and land reform. Provincial and especially municipal spheres have been largely neglected, while the key political centres of power have tended to by-pass institutions like Parliament and Nedlac in favour of a series of presidential councils - the business council, the investment council, the black business council, etc. The dominant axis within this "1996 class project" in the state and ANC also sought to neutralise the ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance and to transform the ANC into a "modernised" electoral party.

This project is now in crisis. Objectively, restored capitalist profitability has simply more aggressively reproduced the crises of underdevelopment (with unemployment rising to around 40%, hundreds of thousands of workers casualised, one million farm workers and their families removed off farms, widening social inequality, a largely untransformed spatial reality, a stalled land reform programme, and reinvigorated predatory behaviour by South African big capital in our wider Southern African region). The well-intentioned and sometimes fairly extensive state-led redistributionist "delivery" programmes have, therefore, frequently found themselves overwhelmed by this reproduced and burgeoning underdevelopment.

Subjectively, the privileged axis, between state managers and technocrats on the one side and an emerging stratum of black business on the other, has failed (as it could only fail) to produce a stable political centre capable of driving a transformational agenda. The emerging black business stratum in question is largely compradorial, dependent upon established ("white") capital, while being parasitic on the state for tenders, privatisation proceeds, etc. Squabbling over the National Lottery tender or Telkom shares, it is a stratum that is incapable of unifying itself, let alone providing a coherent national vision. The privileged axis between the political elite and this capitalist stratum has also resulted in an unending saga of corruption and other scandals. Some of these contradictions and tensions have resulted in worrying signs of factionalism within key state apparatuses. More positively, there are now also many indications of a deepening tension between the more serious state managers and technocrats on the one hand, and the more unscrupulous of the emergent bourgeois stratum on the other. Clearly, the so-called "presidential succession" problem within the ANC is a symptom of this objectively and subjectively grounded crisis of the "1996 class project".

So what are the elements of a progressive left agenda in regard to the present South African state?

Among the key issues are:

• The reconstitution of a different political centre that puts a progressive politics in the foreground and not technocratic managerialism, still less personal enrichment. This different political centre needs to be rooted in the ANC and a re-configured alliance. This is a key demand of the ANC`s 2005 National General Council, the ANC`s 2007 National Policy Conference, and also of COSATU`s 2006 national congress, and the SACP 2007 national congress.

• The active transformation and reconfiguration of the state as a democratic, developmental state. This involves many things, among them, the integration of "mainstream" (so-called "first economy") departments and marginalised "delivery" departments around a strategic focus on the active transformation of the present (unsustainable) capitalist accumulation path. For instance, Agriculture and Land Affairs (currently one minister with two departments!) should be focused on a single and integrated land, agrarian, and agro-industrial policy with a priority placed not on export competitiveness but on sustainable national and household food security.

• Which is to say, the developmental state should be focused on a clear and comprehensive, state-led industrial policy in which job creation and meeting social needs should be the priorities.

• A critical strategic task of the developmental state we are seeking to consolidate must be the increasing "de-commodification" of social needs. Small but important gains have been made with free basic water and electricity, but this struggle to roll back the capitalist market needs to be greatly expanded. Major areas, in this regard, include the struggle for free education, and the abandonment of the market-based "willing-seller, willing-buyer" approach to land reform.

• State capacity and coherence around developmental and transformational strategies need to be greatly enhanced. This means, amongst other things, playing a great deal of attention to the key public sector cadre of our developmental state - teachers, health-care workers, policemen and -women, social workers, librarians. The morale, the work conditions, the progressive professionalism of these sectors all need to be fostered and consolidated - a task that the leading cadre of the 1996 class project with their pro-privatisation and narrowly managerialist ideology have been singularly incapable of providing.

• Parliament should be strengthened by, among other things, passing legislation (as required by the Constitution) that enables it to amend money bills (including budgets). Without this power, the elected representatives have little leverage on key policies, and major decisions (arms procurement, Gautrain, Coega, municipal re-demarcation) are driven by the executive without adequate public transparency.

• Local government needs, in particular, to be greatly strengthened and key areas related to its natural competencies (eg. housing, public transport planning and implementation) need to be devolved to ensure greater possibilities for localised democracy. The legislative requirement for dynamic ward committees and for participatory processes, including in planning and budgeting, need to be greatly invigorated.

• This invigoration will not happen without effective community- and sectorally-based popular organisation and mobilisation. It also requires much greater working class and popular engagement with various organs of participatory governance - among them community policing forums, and school governing bodies.

• The left needs to be in the forefront of struggles against corruption in general (and not least in the state). The left also needs to defend the integrity and professionalism of state institutions, particularly those in sensitive safety, security and intelligence areas. Corruption and the undermining of constitutional integrity are inevitably entry-points for anti-working class agendas.

This is not an empty wish-list. In the face of the objective and subjective crises of the hitherto dominant "1996 class project", there is now considerable momentum in many places to drive forward these and other strategic programmes. The left needs to engage the state with a transformative agenda, both from within and from outside. We need to avoid sectarianism in this. For instance, the idea of a "1996 class project" should not be vulgarised into a personal attack on individuals who are now assumed to be forever irredeemably beyond the pale. As a fairly loose descriptive term, the idea of a "1996 class project" captures a real enough phenomenon, but the point is not to deal with the phenomenon through a factional "counter-coup", but to reconfigure centres of power, winning over to a left agenda the maximum number of state managers and senior politicians. Of course, this winning over will not happen merely as a result of comradely debate. It requires struggle, and it requires many forms of struggle, including social movement mobilisation.

In this latter respect, I believe that the Treatment Action Campaign, no doubt with its own challenges and shortcomings, provides an inspiring example of how to position a social movement in our current reality. The TAC has always been prepared to oppose incorrect government policies, but it has never positioned itself as simply oppositionist. It has always sought to transform state policy in regard to AIDS treatment in particular. Its campaigns have not been focused on "proving" that the present state is "inherently reactionary", but rather on impacting on state power so that public power and resources are more effectively deployed to achieve qualitative transformation. The TAC, like most other successful social movements, is of course a single-issue movement. The left needs to learn from formations like the TAC, but a left project needs also to continuously make the links between different sites of mobilisation ensuring that partial reforms won on a particular front contribute to an overall and comprehensive transformational momentum.

And, finally, this requires nothing less than struggling to build working class hegemony in all key sites of power - in communities, in the battle of ideas and values, in the work-place and in the economy at large, on the international terrain, and, perhaps above all, in the state itself.