 Time to recognise that red scare is a red herring Steven Friedman, Business Day, 4 November 2009 WE CAN continue the mania for finding “shifts to the left” in just about everything the government does. Or we can begin debating how to address our challenges. But we cannot do both. Last week’s medium-term budget policy statement provided new evidence of how odd the quest for “shifts to the left” has become. Having spent days warning that markets were waiting with bated breath for the lurch leftward, the media stunned the nation by announcing afterwards that the lurch had not occurred after all. The possibility that it did not happen because it was always a figment of the imagination was not entertained. Almost two years after Polokwane, there are still no signs that the change in leadership altered the African National Congress (ANC) economic policy framework. The Congress of South African Trade Unions seems to have noticed this — its recent conference hardly seemed happy about policy. And yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the leftward shift remains a part of mainstream mythology. Why? First, because key political figures gain from creating the illusion of a policy shift. The leaders of the ANC’s alliance partners persuaded their constituencies to back President Jacob Zuma by insisting that his victory would produce policy shifts, so it is in their interests to insist that policy has shifted even when it has not. At the same time, jockeying for posts and power has become highly visible as the ANC moves from a movement in which open contest for posts was frowned upon to one in which it is routine. Politicians seeking power prefer to dress their competition up in ideological garb despite the fact that the differences between the ANC rivals is not great and the contest is more about who belongs to what network and who wants which job — after all, it sounds more respectable to fight for or against socialism than to scramble for posts. Thus Joel Netshitenzhe’s departure from the Presidency was portrayed as a defeat for the right, rather than the predictable elbowing out of a Thabo Mbeki associate. And yet only days later, Netshitenzhe, according to this newspaper, attended a commemoration ceremony for the South African Communist Party journal, African Communist. This illustrated better than an academic paper the degree to which the differences between “right” and “left” in the governing party are far less obvious than we are led to believe. Second, the “rise of the left” confirms the worst fears of many in business and the professions, who believe that a majority-ruled government must go off the rails sooner or later. The foreboding that western-educated politicians in suits must be replaced by hotheads who want to take away the assets of the well-heeled runs deep and so claims of a leftward shift enjoy a ready audience, even if it can be shown that all the policy measures attributed to the “radicals” were actually formulated by the “moderates”. Those in business who have not noticed that dogmatic market fundamentalism landed the world economy in deep trouble — and who also believe that any intervention in the economy by a majority government must be disastrous — find it useful to raise the bogey of a “shift to the left” to try to silence discussion on the measures we and other market economies have to take to get out of the current hole; and so adjustments that were considered normal when they were taken by conservative western governments are painted here as portents of revolution. The mania about leftward shifts relies not on evidence but on a community of interest between figures on the ANC left keen to exaggerate their influence and those on the other side of the spectrum, who fear the rise of the “barbarians”. This may explain why the frenzy has been marked by no discussion of what a shift to the left is and how we would know one if we saw it. None of this might matter if it was not diverting us from the real issues we need to confront. First, it prevents a serious evaluation of what the government and the society can and should do to stimulate growth and tackle poverty and inequality: proposals are examined to see whether they show leftward bias, not for their merits or flaws. Second, it distracts us from the most urgent demand of the times, making the government more effective. Here, as in all other market economies, the government will have to play a key role in reducing the effects of recession and helping us to a new growth path: more effective government is our chief economic priority, but the fuss over the “leftward shift” obscures this. Third, it diverts us from the real danger to appropriate budgeting and policy-making — ambitious politicians trying to build power bases by distributing goodies. The dangers of patronage are far more pressing than whether policy is left or not. And yet the preoccupation with the left prevents us from asking whether public resources and purposes are being diverted to sectional power-holders. The red scare is a red herring. We need to kick our addiction to this dangerous fantasy so that we can soberly address our realities.
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