Business Day
*Spin and hysteria cloud ANC’s ‘dramatic’ changes* *Steven Friedman, Business Day, Johannesburg, 7 March 2012*WHEN the African National Congress (ANC) and many of its critics have a mutual interest in overstating how much change lies ahead, working out the truth about our politics becomes harder than usual. The release of ANC policy documents ahead of this year’s conference illustrates the point. We are told of "dramatic" changes that will threaten property rights, compromise the Reserve Bank’s independence and control the provinces. What we know of the documents so far suggests that what we are actually getting is major rhetoric and minor change. This is likely to be a pattern this year because ANC politicians have a reason for exaggerating the changes they plan, and their critics are sure to help them by overreacting to every proposal for change.
Initial coverage of one of the documents, on ANC strategy, illustrates the point. Its rhetoric suggests changes are on the way that threaten the interests of racial minorities in general, the affluent in particular. The ANC is talking of a "second transition", by which it means that some sections of the constitution were inserted to mollify minorities and the well-off. The time to placate them is over and so changes to the constitution may be needed to ensure it can fight poverty and lead economic development.
When we look at what constitutional changes are suggested, the "second transition" seems a great deal less dramatic than the first. The document is not proposing less independence for the Bank — it suggests looking at its "narrow mandate". This means considering the argument that it should be charged not only with protecting the currency but with stimulating growth. This would not affect its independence: it would require it to consider a wider set of issues.
On land, the document repeats a time-worn ANC view that "willing seller, willing buyer" does not work. It has been saying this for at least seven years and clearly hopes to negotiate some changes. But all it is saying is that the bargaining that has been under way for a while will continue.
As for provinces, the documents say the ANC wants a "blueprint policy to underpin and guide the task of reforming, rationalising and strengthening" them to be devised by a panel of experts. So at some point we will have suggestions for change. No-one knows what they will be because the panel has not yet been appointed.
None of the documents contains firm decisions. They are proposals for discussion that will be taken to the ANC’s midyear policy conference and to Mangaung at year’s end. Even if they are adopted, they are not law or government policy until they pass through a process: some policies adopted at the ANC’s previous conference almost five years ago have still not been implemented. Any changes it does adopt will look very different if they ever become law — that is the way policy works in every democracy on the planet.
So why these promises of major change — by the ANC and commentators — followed by modest proposals that might never happen? The ANC has realised it is under pressure to show disenchanted supporters and a wider public that it is not simply a vehicle for the connected to enrich themselves. It believes the best way to do that is to be seen to be planning major changes that will assist development and ensure a better life for all. The constitution is a handy scapegoat because blaming it enables politicians to insist that limited progress against poverty is not their fault but that of the compromises that had to be made to win majority rule.
But most ANC strategists also know the constitution is not really the problem — there is nothing the government could have done since 1994 to help us towards a more equal society that was prevented by the constitution. They also know the realities that produced compromises in the early 1990s have not disappeared — minority interests still need to be taken seriously if we are to have growth and stability, and law and policy must reflect that.
The obvious solution is to promise great changes to gain credibility and to plan only modest ones to preserve stability. The ANC is partly helped in this endeavour by opinion-formers, who are only too happy to blow out of proportion any change it suggests. Many ANC critics believe majority governments always tear up the constitution, crack down on opposition and confiscate wealth. This is simply prejudice but ensures that any ANC proposal to change anything is seen as a sign that Armageddon is coming. That is why, earlier this week, commentators were already analysing changes that are not proposed.
All this makes working out what is really happening difficult. The only way to cut through the one side’s spin and the other’s hysteria is to believe only that which appears in black and white in policy documents — and to remember that any change that follows from them will not happen soon and will look different after it is negotiated.
* Friedman is director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy. ** *From: http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=166763* ** ** ** -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
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