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Umsebenzi Online, Volume 20, No. 3, 16 February 2021
*Voice of the South African Working Class*
*In this issue*
·State of the Nation calls for implementation of a second, more radical
phase of our democratic transition to overcome the systemic crises
worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic—unemployment, poverty, inequality, and
growing incapacity to support life
*Red Alert*****
*State of the Nation calls for implementation of a second, more radical
phase of our democratic transition to overcome the systemic crises
worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic—unemployment, poverty, inequality, and
household incapacity to support life ***
On Tuesday, 9 February 2021 the South African Communist Party (SACP)
released a statement summarising its expectations from the State of the
Nation Address that President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered on Thursday, 11
February 2021. Several helpful questions arose after the State of the
Nation Address, including from parts of the commercial media. However,
despite asking for detailed answers to more questions, they would only
cover one or two truncated answers in isolation from the rest. This Red
Alert focuses on the censored answers and sheds light on the other
related positions adopted and articulated by the SACP including in open
public statements.
*Scope of priorities *
Did President Ramaphosa cover all the priority areas that the SACP
expected?
Some priorities that the SACP wished to hear are covered, albeit partly,
while others are not covered at all.
For example, the SACP called for the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress
Grant to be extended and for the extension to serve as the foundation to
move towards a minimum income guarantee covering the unemployed in the
wider context of building a comprehensive social security system. The
grant was extended but the extension was limited to three months. The
extension will cushion the recipients of the grant against falling
deeper into destitution. It is a welcome step, but the three months
duration requires further engagement.
The SACP also called for measures to build national production and
tackle the crisis-high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality, and
the related crisis of social reproduction—the widespread problem of
growing incapacity affecting working-class and poor households to
support themselves. The Party attached great importance to the following
priorities:
·Expansion of the agriculture combined with manufacturing through
agro-processing development.
·Radical land redistribution to ensure equitable access to land and
related natural resources, and to support sustainable livelihoods
through fostering productive land use.
·Rural development and an end to unequal development between rural and
urban areas.
·Social and economic infrastructure development at scale.
·Transformation of the mining industry to support minerals beneficiation
and local manufacturing of finished products towards ending the
persisting colonial legacy of dependency on raw materials exports and
imports of finished products.
·A comprehensive, high impact industrial strategy, including adequate
support for research and development, to guide the above and other
national production development initiatives.
·Building domestic capabilities to seize the opportunities associated
with the digital economy, thus making it one of South Africa’s priority
sectors.
·Transformation of the financial sector, and, related to it, radical
restructuring of the Covid-19 state guaranteed loan scheme.
·Tight regulation of our capital account, cross-border capital
transactions, and clamping down on illicit capital flows.
·Immediate implementation of the National Health Insurance principles in
the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
·Increased support for public employment programmes, as part of our
unemployment reduction strategies, and the transformation of the public
employment programmes in line with the decent work agenda.
·Advancing ownership transformation towards the goals of the Freedom
Charter.
While the President did not cover all the measures that the SACP wished
to hear, he nevertheless correctly emphasised the importance of building
domestic productive capacity.
In addition to whether the measures contained in the State of the Nation
Address are sufficient to build national production, the key question is
whether they are backed by adequate fiscal and monetary policy support.
As things stand, that question can only be answered through the
forthcoming budget. President Ramaphosa made a progressive statement
previously. Our national response to the Covid-19 pandemic should be
commensurate with the extent of its damage, he said. In addition, the
SACP said national policy should not aim to return us back to the crisis
prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, the stimulus package that
South Africa needed had to help us progressively yet decisively overcome
the combined damage of the two interrelated capitalist crises. This is
the yardstick against which we should judge both the forthcoming budget
and related medium-term expenditure frameworks. However, that does not
presuppose ignoring our fiscal challenges. In the ultimate analysis
productive public investment and investment in social development
supported by a favourable review of our fiscal and monetary policies and
measures to clamp down on corruption will play a key role towards
overcoming the crisis we find ourselves in.
Related to the above, an underlying problem remains unaddressed.
Under the macroeconomic framework that South Africa has been following
up until now, the country has starkly failed to overcome its high levels
of unemployment, poverty, inequality, and the related crisis of social
reproduction. This is the context in which the employment drivers
enshrined in the New Growth Path (NGP) adopted in response to the 2008
global economic crisis did not see the light of the day, particularly in
terms of a supportive macroeconomic framework.
The NGP was anchored in an employment creating growth school of thought,
although this was only nascent in our national economic policy. The
National Development Plan (NDP) adopted shortly after the NGP reinstated
the trickledown economics ideology imposed under the economic policy of
Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) adopted in 1996. The GEAR
class project led to the government arguably uncritically following the
neoliberal shock therapy. The results included deepening
deindustrialisation, especially in severely affected productive sectors.
This underlined the importance of adequate protection that an
underdeveloped country should consider nurturing its productive base,
with a focus on strategic sectors until they can thrive in the
globalised atmosphere dominated by multinational behemoths.
In 2012 the philosophy introduced under the NGP seemed to be reasserted,
following calls to that end. However, together with the Industrial
Policy Action Plan (IPAP), the NDP was subordinated to the logic of the
trickledown economics ideology reintroduced through the NDP.
On 1 September 2013, the Alliance adopted a declaration at its National
Summit recognising the reservations expressed by the SACP and COSATU
about the NDP, particularly its economy chapter. However, an agreed upon
review of the NDP to address the concerns raised did not see the light
of the day.
Meanwhile, the endemic crisis of capitalism continued to complicate
South Africa’s economic and consequent social and political problems.
This is the context in which President Ramaphosa delivered the State of
the Nation Address under the devastating Covid-19 pandemic having
worsened the country’s economic crisis.
*State capture and neoliberalism—two sides of the same coin?*
The measures that the SACP called for are supported by a shared
strategic perspective, that of the strategy to place our economic and
broader social transformation and development into a second radical
phase towards the goals of the Freedom Charter. Two key tendencies,
state capture and neoliberalism, have caused a major setback against the
Alliance’s shared strategic perspective to advance, deepen and defend
the national democratic revolution.
So far history shows that the relationship between the two resembles
that of the two sides of the same coin. The one tendency is
characterised more by brazen smash-and-grab tactics, while the other is
characterised more by using the policy space to legitimate its agenda.
Despite their differences in approach, in the ultimate analysis they
both involve using state power to feed private wealth accumulation
interests—others more corrupt, and others justifiable but only in the
realm of the legally established norms of the exploitative capitalist
system. However, the brazen smash-and-grab tendency is not corrupt only
in the sense of corruption as an end in itself but also comprises
elements that seek primitive accumulation, or a precursor to the
accumulation of wealth based on legally established capitalist norms.
The neoliberal tendency blames the brazen smash-and-grab tendency, and
often legitimately so. But it uses that more as a blame game to advance
its own neoliberal agenda. The two tendencies do not seek to advance the
Freedom Charter’s clarion call to build ownership of our national wealth
by the people as a whole. They both substitute the elite of black
individuals often networked in BEE dealings for the people as a whole.
The associated privatisation and tenderisation regimes share one thing
in common—the conveyance of the targeted public resources and/or related
infrastructure to control by private profit interests.
For the national democratic revolution to succeed, the working class
must confront both the state capture and neoliberal tendencies on all
fronts, including in the policy space.
*Broadband spectrum *
The SACP has strongly cautioned against wholesale privatisation of our
national broadband spectrum
<https://www.sacp.org.za/content/sacp-expectations-state-nation-address>.
Managing the control of the broadband spectrum must therefore be fair in
all respects. This is the basis upon which the SACP called for a
sufficient set aside for the people as a whole—for the state to support
access to education, healthcare awareness, other information, and justice.
We have already seen that, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic,
wireless and mobile communication took the centre stage as schools,
colleges and universities shifted learning and teaching to online
platforms. The government itself increasingly used wireless and mobile
communication in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The courts and the
Commission of Inquiry into State Capture also did the same. The
importance of wireless and mobile communication as well as its political
economy is entrenching, and the broadband spectrum, also known as the
fuel of wireless technology and mobile communication, is its foundation.
Auctioning off the broadband spectrum, thus automatically excluding
democratic control and the millions of the workers, the unemployed, the
poor who do not have any capital of their own from participating in its
control will be unfair.
The state’s set aside of the broadband spectrum is also key for ensuring
our territorial integrity, defence, national security, and responding to
natural and other disasters without censorship or a reap off by
self-enriching commercial interests. The state must draw lessons from
the prevailing high cost of mobile communication data in South Africa,
dominated by the private monopolies. It must manage the control of the
entire broadband spectrum in ways that will de-monopolise the
telecommunication industry, deliver a fall in the cost of mobile
communication data, and ensure connectivity across the country,
including in rural areas. This must include providing access to free
Wi-Fi, with historically disadvantaged areas prioritised as part of the
national imperative to end uneven development.
It is also important to pay attention to the issues raised by Telkom in
its court challenge against the process to auction off the broadband
spectrum. Telkom is a significantly State-Owned Corporation, with a
significant stake held by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) which
manages and by that virtue represents workers’ pension fund interests.
The working class should therefore be more interested in this matter.
*Anti-Corruption Advisory Council *
The President announced the creation of an Anti-Corruption Advisory
Council. Is this helpful, given the billions of rand already spent in
investigations by the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, the
Special Investigating Unit, and the Directorate for Priority Crime
Investigation also known as the Hawks?
People from across different walks of life called upon the President to
be firmer against corruption. This means his announcement to strengthen
capacity by creating an Anti-Corruption Advisory Council should be
commended. The outcomes of the work from the Commission of Inquiry into
State Capture will require implementation, as commissions of inquiry
often conclude their reports with recommendations. The Special
Investigating Unit and the Hawks will have to play their role, and so
will the National Prosecution Authority, as well as the courts. But the
executive arm of the state as led by the President will also have to
play its role, as called upon by the overwhelming number of South Africans.
*State capacity*
The overall direction articulated in energy policy should result in the
state fixing Eskom, ensuring the security of energy supply, and building
state capacity in cleaner and renewable energy production. This is one
important way in which Eskom can reduce its carbon footprint with the
state still playing a key role in energy production, including through
investment in clean coal technologies.
In the same vein, the state should invest in democratic public control,
in addition to the telecommunications and energy sectors, in other
network infrastructure industries, such as rail, water, and roads.
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UMSEBENZI ONLINE IS THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WORKING CLASS
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ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
EST. 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA | CPSA
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