HAS THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION BEEN BETRAYED? THE CENTRE-LEFT DEFENDS ITS GAINS June-July 2004
DEBATES FROM TWO SOURCES: Mail and Guardian, and e-debate (http://www.kabissa.org/lists/debate)
PARTICIPANTS:
Ferial Haffajee (Editor, Mail and Guardian): FH
Ebrahim Hassen (Senior Researcher, National Labour and Economic Development Institute): EH
Ben Turok (African National Congress Member of Parliament): BT
Mike Muller (Director-General, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry): MM
Stephen Gelb (Director, the Edge Institute and Visiting Professor, University of the Witwatersrand): SG
Patrick Bond: PB
***
FERIAL HAFFAJEE Mail and Guardian 11 June 2004
Fact, fiction and the new left:
In trying to make South Africa a node on the map of anti-globalisation resistance, the new social movements may be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole
FH: As somebody who believes in the importance of social movements and the radical intellectuals who support them,
PB: A classical start. Some of my best friends are . The problem, as noted below in Haffajee's articles, is that her earlier work did indeed demonstrate these beliefs and sympathies.
FH: I must admit to be tiring quite quickly of their habit of magnifying their import, impact and size - on the basis of predictable arguments and sketchy research.
PB: The most logical rejoinder is that practically any promotion of the new social movements represents magnification, given the miserable job South Africa's mainstream press - including the M&G -- does in covering the movements and investigating the issues they rally around. Ironically, as documented below, Haffajee's own record of covering the movements and issues was, until earlier this year, commendable - but was basically an exception that proves the rule, because most of her best articles were for foreign periodicals and wire services such as InterPress Service, New Internationalist or the GreenLeft Weekly. Repetition and simplification are, in this context, vital to the movements' discourses, particularly given the vast broadcasting capacity the state and big business enjoy. Charged with exaggerating their impact, it is fair for these movements to claim that access to free water/electricity (where these might exist in partial form) and to anti-retroviral medicines, for example, have come only through social movement activism, advocacy and often militant protest and civil disobedience. (Haffajee's coauthored 2003 article, below, is at least one reflection of that impact.) As for the "predictable" character of the independent left's arguments against neoliberalism and class apartheid, so too was campaigning analysis against racial apartheid increasingly consistent over time. As to "sketchy" research, it is Haffajee who lacks rigour -- but the reader may judge this for her/himself based on what follows.
FH: The accounts of social movements in general and of South African politics in particular, from Naomi Klein and Arundhati Roy, from Patrick Bond and Dale McKinley among others, exhibit a sameness that falls short of the rigour that the times demand. Their various writings have come to sound like a set piece. This is how it goes. Ten years on, the revolution's been sold down the river. The African National Congress is a neo-liberal shadow of its former self - it has implemented a Thatcherite economic policy and left its comrades out to dry as it has supplicated before a wealthy coterie of elites. Usually, the research then cuts to a quote from Finance Minister Trevor Manuel or Nelson Mandela declaring that "Gear is non-negotiable". No reference is made to Manuel's subsequent statements that the Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy was a "necessary but not a sufficient" condition for growth and poverty eradication or to the more expansive economic path the country is now on.
PB: Was Gear "necessary"? Before making such a concession to neoliberalism, Haffajee should consider the UNDP SA Human Development Report's recent critique of Gear's underlying premises: "The economic and social policy approach of the new government was formulated under strong pressure from the corporate sector and its global partners, and was based on several contentious premises: a) South Africa has a high economic growth potential; b) integration into the benign global economy will enhance economic growth; c) a high economic growth will unlock the labour-absorption capacity of the economy; d) the benefits of a high economic growth rate will 'trickle down' to the poor; e) the restructuring of the economy should be entrusted to market-led economic growth. With the benefit of hindsight, we have good reason to reject all five of these premises. All five are either false, or do not apply under South African circumstances. All five have their roots in the naive optimism of the managerial elite of the corporate sector and its global partners about the benefits of the free market. All five are propagated by the corporate sector and its global partners in order to protect their vested interests, enhance their position of power and privilege, and promote their sectional and short-term financial interests. All five premises incorrectly regard economic growth, neo-liberalism, and globalisation as the panacea for South Africa's social crisis. Those responsible for these premises and the government's approach were highly unrealistic." As a result, for Haffajee to claim that Gear was "necessary" is incorrect, and represents apologetics last seen from the M&G during the reign of pro-Gear editor Howard Barrell.
full: http://www.marxmail.org/SouthAfrica.htm
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
