This is from Patrick Bond to me, but it is also for the whole of pen-l: --------------------------------------- .. I've not yet managed to get back on to PEN-L 'cause I need a special account to get bulletin-board mail, but it won't be long. My position here is asst prof of social policy, working out of the School of Hygiene and Public Health but focusing on political economy in public policy, US and international, with as many continuities to SA as I can manage. As to your queries, yes you're right that petty bourgeois class formation is taking hold decisively through government, but more in the political arena at national and provincial levels (affecting probably 2 000 ANC/SACP/Cosatu/Sanco cadres) than at local government level and through the administrative bureaucracy at all three levels (both these latter areas are slowly desegregating, but there are in-built protections for existing bureaucrats). Mandela's salary is enormous (roughly same as Clinton's). The ministers are making $12 000 per month, the parliamentarians about $4 000 per month. The average working-class salary is around $300 per month in the highly industrialised areas, less elsewhere. The various attempts by leftists within the ANC Alliance to end the so-called "gravy train" are coming under tough internal attack. An article in the Economist a couple of weeks back gives you some flavour of what's happening. This, by the way, is a less damaging process than the other kind of class formation: formal compradorism with the institutions of international neo-liberalism. This is also in its infancy due to the sufficient degree of home-grown neo-liberalism, but will soon become a BIG problem, if the rest of the continent is any guide... Feel free to share this info with PEN, and I'll be back there soon... Patrick Bond --------------------------------------- forwarded by Trond ----------------------------------------------- | Trond Andresen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | | Department of Engineering Cybernetics | | The Norwegian Institute of Technology | | N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAY | | | | phone (work) +47 73 59 43 58 | | fax (work) +47 73 59 43 99 | | private phone +47 73 53 08 23 | -----------------------------------------------
