Launching the largely neo-liberal ANC election manifesto in a Pietermaritzburg stadium named after self-proclaimed Stalinist Harry Gwala, Thabo Mbeki told the cheering crowds that ‘our people know that if I don’t have a job now, I will have the skills to have a job’.

Jobs? The formal sector has been haemorrhaging jobs on a huge scale for years and most of the supposed gains in employment have taken place in the informal sector so beloved of the World Bank and others who aim to shift the responsibility for poverty more firmly onto the poor. Duma Gqubule, writing in the Financial Mail, observes that ‘According to the March 2003 LFS (Labour Force Survey), 14% of informal sector workers earned nothing and should be reclassified as unemployed; 54% earned less than R500/month; 75% earned less than R1000’¦At worst the informal sector is near slavery or disguised unemployment. At best its underemployment.’ When a magazine that crusades for the free market and GEAR speaks the language of the ‘ultra-left’ it’s clear that it takes a lot of work to deny that we are living through a deep social crisis.

The fact is that where there has been a shift to higher skills and wages it has led to the shedding of even greater numbers of jobs. For example in the farming sector Andries du Toit and Joachim Ewert point out that in the Western Cape 60 per cent of farms reduced the size of their permanent workforce between 1999 and 2002 and almost half the farms indicated further plans to reduce permanent labour in the future.

‘For the most part, jobs were not being replaced by machines, but by casual labour, with strong shifts towards the use of labour contractors and casual workers, and a distinct trend towards the use of heavily exploited women workers’¦In the long run, the move towards outsourcing, externalisation and casualisation is sure to undermine the skill base of Western Cape horticulture’¦.’

When jobs are created they are in the lowest rung of the ladder and cannot satisfy basic necessities for life and household reproduction. This is constantly exacerbated as the government relentlessly pursues the commodification of all aspects of life.

But government mythology works hard. It claims that workers who lose their jobs re-enter the economy at a higher level. Lungile Ngubane is part of a group of 60 retrenched workers from the footwear industry in northern Kwa-ZuluNatal who have re-entered the workforce by working for an entrepreneur who pays them R1 for every shoe made. She was quoted in The Sunday Independent explaining that ‘What you get paid depends on how many shoes you can make a day, but I would say on average I make R50 a week’. Most of the jobs created in the informal sector are on the lowest rung of the ladder and cannot satisfy basic necessities for life and household reproduction. Mbeki speaks of the skills to get a job but most of the new jobs created in the formal sector, or in any future public works programme, won’t require any skills or pay enough to development new skills or sustain current skills.

In 2000 Trevor Manuel pronounced: ‘I want someone to tell me how the government is going to create jobs. It’s a terrible admission, but governments around the world are impotent when it comes to creating jobs’. He said nothing about government’s evident capacity to destroy jobs.

At the rally Mbeki said nothing about the stark empirical fact that in 1996 the ANC became the first African government to ever voluntarily seek the help of the World Bank to design and impose a structural adjustment programme on its people. Markets were opened, taxes to the rich were cut, state assets were privatised, services were commodified and social spending was reduced. The results came quickly. The economy began to grow and the rich got richer.

Nicoli Natrass points out that capital by restructuring and down-sizing their workforces have increased profitability. ‘Overall, the net profit rate for the private economy (that is, all economic sectors excluding community, social and personal services) was two-thirds higher in 2001 than in 1990.’ The profits that did trickle down went to a smaller and smaller group of workers while most of it was ‘spirited’ out of the country.

As the government’s own statistics reveal the poor got significantly poorer and unemployment, already high, reached catastrophic levels. There was a rapid erosion of the local manufacturing economy, particularly the textile and clothing industry. Tariff barriers were dismantled at a faster rate than international norms required and cheap goods produced under regimes of terror in East Asian sweatshops flooded the country.

Most of the damage was done in the late 1990’s. But according to the general secretary of the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, Ebrahim Patel, more than a thousand jobs were still being lost every month in the clothing, textile and leather industries in the first six months of 2003. These losses followed the loss of 17 000 jobs during 2001 and 2002. A quarter of the currently unemployed lost their last job because of retrenchment or business closure.

Although the black elite became rapidly richer and the white poor became rapidly poorer the fact is that in general whites got richer and blacks got poorer. The government’s own statistics agency concludes that in real terms, average black `African’ household income declined 19% from 1995-2000, while white household income was up 15%. Across the racial divides, the poorest half of all South Africans earn just 9.7% of national income, down 11.4% from 1995.

Furthermore while employment has declined rapidly the quality of jobs has also declined. Skills to get a job? The truth of the matter is that the kind of jobs ‘created’ requires little or no skill. In any case what kind of skill is required in a public works programme? There is also the sobering fact that the World Competitiveness Report of 2002 that analysed 49 countries placed South Africa 47th in skilled labour availability and 46th in finance skills.

Herein lies the empirical evidence of Mbeki’s double-speak. On the one hand he rails against the two nations in South Africa, the one white and rich and the other black and poor and promises to do something about it. But he pursues economic policies that heighten inequality. He rails against treating the market as god but genuflects to the Washington Consensus.

If Mbeki’s speeches were a third year sociology essay on the problem of globalisation and its challenges for the countries of the South, one would have to give it a failing grade and the comments would be, ‘Satisfactory effort, Mr. Mbeki. You fail however, because your writing demonstrates all the form of having grappled with the problem but none of the content. Your arguments are a mish-mash of mutually contradictory theoretical paradigms and even these paradigms are superficially represented. You must remember that there is indeed a difference between eclecticism and confusion. Try to make up your mind what beliefs, interests or desires you actually want to advance or attack on the political and economic terrain before you put pen to paper. I do not mind whether they are in support of the neo-liberal consensus, are Keynesian in character or advocate some kind of de-linkage or revolution. However, there must be a logical link between your politics and your economics. Your inconsistency does not seem suited to a career in academia. You may wish, however, to turn your attention to party-politics where your over-reliance on the style of delivery and your obvious intellectual aptitude for the sound-bite will stand you in good stead.’

In the build-up to Mbeki’s visit to KZN a series of functions were held. At the ICC there was a R2 500 a table ‘fund-raising’ function. All those who benefited from the tax breaks, the privatisation drive and the dropping of exchange controls were there bidding for a signed photograph of Mandela. When Mbeki and his train of advisers arrived in the province a meeting of businesspeople of Indian descent was arranged. When the state auctions off what were once referred to as national assets they will be able to jump the queue for places at the feeding trough. Legalistic definitions of corruption don’t disguise the ugliness of this.

And in the Harry Gwala stadium you saw them in the front seats. They have much to gain from the policies that compound the poverty of the majority. They are not the vanguard of a process of popular empowerment. They are parasites. New parasites lining up to form lucrative alliances with the old. The late Joe Modise was a Director of Conlog Holdings, the company that manufactures the prepaid water meters that are currently being installed at gun-point in Phiri, Soweto. And the Directors of Dynamic Cables, the company that supplies the cabling for prepaid electricity meters, include Keith Mokoape, former Deputy Head of ANC intelligence; Diliza Mji, former ANC treasurer general in KwaZulu-Natal; Ian Deetlefs and Ron Haywood who both held senior management positions in the apartheid state’s arms industry and Richard Seabrooke, who was involved in smuggling to UNITA in violation of UN sanctions. So it goes.

When water and electricity are finally privatised local elites stand to become very rich, as the ANC demands that multinationals partner with aspirant black capitalists. This mood is best exemplified by the brutally ‘honest’, Andile Ngcaba, the former Director-General of the department of Communications and former MK soldier who when asked about his future plans replied: ‘I am going to become a capitalist and I am going to pursue wealth for me and my family’.

The ANC seeks to win consent for its policies by the twin ideological strategies of the particular discourses of nationalism with their demand for obedience to the leaders and the party and the universal discourses of neo-liberalism with their demand for obedience to the market. Sometimes they are combined in novel ways like the government’s Masakhane campaign that claimed, in the language of Ubuntu and in the context of entrenched and worsening unemployment and poverty, that the good person is the person who pays for services.

And then there was the government’s WASH campaign. In South Africa, as in other countries, mass exclusions from access to clean water, resulted in the return of cholera. The 2000 cholera outbreak killed some 200 people and infected over 80 000. The South Africa government, like the Indian government, dutifully followed the World Bank’s ‘initiative’ and launched a campaign to persuade poor people to wash their hands more often. So people who had been forced, often at gun-point, to seek water in rivers and gutters and ditches, were sternly told by Nelson Mandela, in a television campaign, that they are getting sick because they are not washing their hands.

At the rally thousands of mostly young people gulped down the food parcels and ripped off torn t-shirts to put on the new ANC shirts. What could they look forward too once the t-shirt had faded and the hunger returned? At best a ‘dumbed’ down matric and a temporary job in the public works programme at starvation wages. Economist Miriam Altman points to the fact that unemployment among the young is growing faster than any other group. 73% of the unemployed under 30 have never worked before. We called the youth the ‘lost generation’ in the last years of apartheid. Now we call them apathetic voters.

When the youth rose to applaud another promise of a better life we were reminded of the words of a mother of one of the ‘disappeared’ in Argentina. ‘Fear, hopelessness, confusion turned these people into puppets’¦Expert illusion makers were making truth a lie and a lie the truth. People’¦smiled as they hurt’.

These days political rallies are used to market more than consent and millennial faith in The Party and The Leader. People entering the Harry Gwala stadium people were given cans of an aerosol insect poison called Doom. The cans of Doom were encased in ANC colours. Some wags speculated that when Mbeki fell ill half way through his speech he was choking on the part about the provision of anti-retrovirals. But maybe it was the stench of doom.

Then there was the State of the Nation address in parliament. The next day the newspaper billboards on our streets yelled ‘Mbeki Lashes Doomsayers’. An economic policy that results in mass unemployment is celebrated, as an achievement while getting upset about millions of wasted lives is a crime.

In the last 5 years Mbeki made a conscious and strenuous effort to put his own stamp on the presidency. He revelled in the now clichéd label of the man who was committed to delivery – the cold exponent of technical detail rather than the warm fuzziness of Mandela.

But the state of the nation address didn’t reveal any new plans for ‘delivery’. In fact most of the speech drew on Mandela’s speech at the opening of the first democratic parliament. The looming election meant that he had to account for the failed promises on delivery epitomised in the targets set out in GEAR became a shooting gallery for critics. Mbeki’s solution was to try and disguise his failure by showing that he was ruling in the spirit of Mandela, that he had Mandela’s approval. It was a cheap trick and a clear sign of failure.

Mandela’s speech was made at a time when there was still a possibility that democracy would be about more than deracialising apartheid. Mbeki’s attempt to cloak himself in the optimism of 1994 is in denial of the fact that his rule has undone that optimism. Indeed, denialism is a central characteristic of his politics.

But it was the rest of the speech that was revealing, not for what he said but for what he did not say. It is common knowledge that the two biggest challenges facing South Africa are AIDS and unemployment. In now typical fashion both were only mentioned once. And the context was ominous: ‘Many of our people are unemployed’¦The burden of disease impacting on our people, including AIDS, continues to be a matter of serious concern, as do issues that relate to the fact that many of our people, including the youth, lack the education and skills that our country and society need.’ Once again Mbeki was careful to place the AIDS pandemic on par with other issues. And of course he offered no analysis of the fact that, despite its projections, GEAR has failed to create jobs.

As Mbeki sweated in the midday Midlands sun and basked in the uncritical applause of parliament, one could not help thinking about AIDS, Zimbabwe, GEAR, NEPAD, Cyril and the coup plotters and a cabinet where everyone has nickname – Noddy. What a mess he has made of things. I thought about Mandela’s words at the crowning of Mbeki as president of the ANC in 1997: ‘He may use his powerful position to settle scores with his detractors, to marginalise or get rid of them and surround himself with yes-men and women.’

But our discomfort and boredom are about more than the puerile nature of Mbeki’s analysis. Something else is happening too. Ten short years after ANC swept to power on the back of the great tide of mobilisation there is a deep seated ‘disrespect’ for that very institution, parliament, that, we had placed so much hope on. Very few of us have any real confidence in political parties.

The majority party the ANC has absolutely no respect for organisations that are not in an alliance with it and refuse to kow-tow to its dictates. Their response to doctors’ march on parliament is just one more example of a party that arrogates to itself the monopoly of all truth. Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang’s return to her lemon juice and olive fantasies and Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s scurrilous defence of the crushing of remaining press freedom in Zimbabwe are further indications that we are dealing with a political elite gripped by megalomania.

The ANC has no stomach for opposition. In the Western Cape it is in alliance with the Nats, at the national level and in KZN it is in alliance with the IFP and the Minority Front. At the same time COSATU and the SACP form part of a separate alliance. So the DA is in cahoots with the IFP, the IFP is bed with the ANC and the ANC is in a simultaneous alliance with the NNP and the SACP. No wonder the ANC is referred to as the African National Consensus. Our benediction is ‘One Nation’, ‘One Leader’, and ‘One Soul’ in ‘One GEAR’.

The official opposition the Democratic Alliance (DA) has been rendered impotent because the ANC has taken over all its economic policies. When Tony Leon does support a basic income grant or the roll-out of anti-retrovirals it is hard to take him seriously. Like his economic programme, Leon’s demeanour is mean and selfish. Couple of years ago Leon gave a free show at the Durban City Hall. Jerking his hands around in frantic, little cramped spasms- he is the thalidomide victim of South African politics, the half-formed offspring of bad medicine: neoliberalism. And like his well-choreographed show, even his ad-libbing is planned. His hair and handshake is as slick as a car salesman’s.

Nothing reveals the demise of liberalism better that when Leon tried to capture his ‘philosophy’ for lack of a better word, in rap-music style. The basic concepts – the individual, the free market, privatisation and competition were sung out by Leon in the garbled, disembodied, nihilistic style. No Bullworth, he.

As the DA becomes bigger it is becoming less effective. Like Ollie le Roux turned scrum half, the extra bulk is an encumbrance. Short of amputation there is no way to shed all that desiccated liver. There is a real chance the DA will implode. The conditions for this implosion appear imminent when one considers the nature of the party. Besides out- and-out racism, the one thing that allowed the DA to exist was its claim to stand against the onslaught that the communist-dominated ANC was going to unleash on the suburbs of Houghton and the boardrooms of Anglo-American. However, the ANC has made a quick conversion to crony capitalism. It has not unleashed communism on Houghton, it has gone to live there. It has not nationalised the mines, its leading cadres now own shares in them. On the fundamental economic questions, The DA and ANC agree are in the same GEAR.

The only real role for the DA is to retard the implementation of affirmative action, preserving the advantages for whites for as long as possible. But is there really enough manure in this small piece of electoral veld to sustain the impressive number of dung beetles we have in the DA?

Why do we have to wonder why people are cynical about the vote. When those we vote for can simply cross the floor? When those we vote for never report-back to their constituencies or bother to listen to the people they purport to represent. How can we not question the whole machine of politics that churns out these pathetic little politicians who pretend to be the carriers of human interests? Like the big, flat teeth at the back of our mouths, they appear to be here to crush our desires and our issues into a form that can feed the machine. The molar politics of political parties and proportional representation are dressed up as representative democracy. For the past ten years we have been paralysed by molar politics, our enthusiasm crushed into cynicism and apathy.

Isn’t it strange how before the elections our vote supposedly has such immense value again? One of the reasons politicians can even bear to govern us in these brutal, structural terms is because the revolution has not happened in their hearts. None of them has had their psyche altered by liberation. Mbeki, Leon, Buthelezi, Ginwala are all cut from the same sari. They do not live in a state of passion. We see then on TV, the living dead, lifting their hands with as much independence as docile sheep. At least there are some surprises (and passion and risk) on the game shows where people make their own decision about when to press the buzzer.

Hark the words of William Gilbert from the vantage point of the 19th century:

When in the House the MPs divide If they brain and cerebellum, too They’ve got to leave the brain outside And vote just as the leaders tell ’em too.

Exactly a week after Mbeki’s State of the Nation address some 10 000 job seekers responded to an advertisement for 300 people to work in the new uShaka Theme Park in Durban. The theme park, subsidized with public resources is, like the garish new casino, also subsidized with public resources, has heralded as a solution to poverty and unemployment in the compliant local press. The 300 jobs on offer were positions as cleaners, security guards and so on. The gates were set to open at 7.00am. People started queuing from 3.00am. The gate was pushed over as people struggled to get to the front of the queue. In the ensuing stampede 70 people were injured. Vusumuzi Dumisa has travelled all the way from Eshowe: ‘I arrived yesterday and stayed with relatives so that I could wake up early’¦I’m unemployed but I have a matric certificate and a computer certificate yet I could not get my CV through. Now, I’ve just got to go home. I’m very disappointed’. (Daily News, February 12 2003). One of the applicants Themba Dlamini said they were chased away ‘like dogs’.

In return, according to news reports many of the young job seekers raised the chant ‘No jobs, no vote’. In response to the tragedy, the head of the local Chamber of Commerce said that the emphasis should be on self-generating employment-like women who wash dishes at townships weddings and funerals! The Department of Labour called the incident ‘unacceptable’ and promised to investigate. What they should investigate is an economic policy that promised a million jobs and lost a million.

Capital and the state have clearly run out of ideas. They have to come from elsewhere.

It is because of TAC that the AIDS was placed so high on the national agenda. It is because of Jubilee South Africa that the issue of reparations continues to be a struggle. It is because of organisations like the APF that evictions and electricity and water disconnections are resisted. It is environmental organisations that have raised the ante on the destruction of the Wild Coast and the oil companies that give us cancer and asthma. It is the LPM that has challenged the lie of land redistribution. In all of this do you notice how political parties have been largely absent? It is here the nation has come alive and fought to broaden our democracy.

An ANC regional conference in 1992 adopted a slogan- ‘Elections-The Last step to freedom’. This statement in many senses coupled with the ANC’s approach to economic policies points to Daniel Bell’s ‘end of ideology’ and Francis Fukayama’s ‘end of history’. They have become the real doomsayers and afro-pessimists. Their desire to reduce politics to empty spin and the ritual of voting is a desire to end any chance of real progress.

Is not the present conjuncture for us the ‘art of not being governed in a certain way and at a certain price’ ‘an art of voluntary insubordination, of thoughtful disobedience’?

Is not the present conjuncture a time to imagine once again? There are histories and traditions to be drawn upon in our recent past. Was the UDF not pointing in a promising direction?

‘Not only are we opposed to the present parliament because we are excluded, but because parliamentary type of representation in itself represents a limited and narrow idea of democracy. The rudimentary organs of people’s power that have begun to emerge in South Africa’¦represent in many ways the beginnings of the kind of democracy we are striving for.’

Is it not time to take to the streets and demand a reform to the present system of governance? What is the role of the National Council of Provinces? Provincial governments? What about a constituency based system? What about real ‘local’ government? What about issuing challenges to authoritarian managerialism in the universities and the factories and the news rooms and the NGOs.

If the government is going to spend millions on skills training with create any jobs shouldn’t we take ten streets in every township, make lists of the skills on offer and institute a system of exchange. Doing the plumbing in return for school uniforms being sewed? Child care for fixing a leaking roof?

It is up to us to build a better life.

Ashwin Desai is the author of We are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Parts of this article draw on work co-written with Richard Pithouse.

 

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