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--Class Struggle, Capitalism and the State --Fighting and Defeating Racism --Ending Women's Oppression --Trade Unions and Revolution
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By Bikisha Media
Collective The South African
working class is on the retreat. It is not defeated, but is falling back
in the face of a major neo-liberal offensive by the democratic
government elected in 1994. A vicious "home-grown Structural
Adjustment Programme," called "GEAR" or the Growth,
Employment and Redistribution strategy, is in place, and it has directly
contributed to a million jobs lost, to cuts in social services, and to
rapidly growing class inequality. The disarray caused
by GEAR is matched only by the political confusion prevailing within the
trade union movement: having voted the ruling African National Congress
(ANC) into power, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is
massively disorientated by the ANC's neo-liberal agenda.
SOUTH
AFRICA South Africa is the
most industrialised country in Africa. It is responsible for about 44%
of the total GDP of sub-Saharan Africa, and for 52% of the region's
manufacturing output. Within southern Africa, South Africa accounts for
over 90% of economic output. Corresponding to
this level of economic development, South Africa also has the largest
working class in the continent: indeed, it is the only African country
in which waged workers - both manual, clerical and menial- comprise the
majority of the population. South Africa is also home to the most
powerful national bourgeoisie in Africa. Around 60,000 large commercial
farmers own over 90% of all arable rural land, whilst 5 large
corporations control about 80% of all shares on the Johannesburg Stock
Exchange. In 1991, the richest 10% of South Africans received over half
of the total income in the country, whilst the poorest 40% received only
4%! APARTHEID Historically, South
African capitalism developed on the basis of the national oppression of
African people, who formed a vast reservoir of cheap labour. Internal
passports (pass laws), racial segregation, the widespread use of migrant
labour, and the denial of basic political and union rights to Africans
provided the social infrastructure for the cheap labour system. On the
mines, for example, the average real wages of African workers remained
unchanged between 1910-1970, whilst the bosses also enjoyed
"industrial peace": only one general strike by African workers
took place on the mines in this period, and that was in 1946. Coloured
and Asian workers also provided cheap labour, although they suffered
less overt national oppression than the African proletariat. In short, the
apartheid system in South Africa was the political expression of a
system of "racial capitalism" based on the super-exploitation
of the African working class. Capitalist relations of production were
built upon relations of colonial domination, which were reinforced for
the benefit of capitalism, and of a capitalist class historically
derived from the local white population. White workers, militant until
the 1920s, were co-opted by the racist welfare system and job
reservation. The effect was the
entrenchment of deep racial divisions within the working class, and a
pattern of racial inequality within the society as a whole. Apartheid
society was highly authoritarian and racist, characterised by coercive
workplace relations, naked racial oppression, the destabilisation of
neighbouring countries, widespread censorship and the suppression of
left-wing political parties and movements. TO
NEO-LIBERALISM As the result of a
titanic struggle by the African working class between 1973-1994, the
apartheid system was overthrown, and a parliamentary democracy
established and inaugurated with the April 1994 elections: the first
proper bourgeois-democratic elections in the country's history. The holding of the
elections represented, on the one hand, a massive advance for the
African working class, insofar as the election signified a new political
order in South Africa that outlawed national oppression. On the other
hand, however, the elections were the product of a compromise between
big capital and the leaders of the ANC: the price was the preservation
of capitalism, a concession that the ANC - whose historic class agenda
was to advance the interests of the frustrated African middle class and
bourgeoisie- was only too happy to make. AND
THEN? Popular expectations
that social and economic redistribution would follow from the struggle
and from the election of the ANC have proved an illusion. Firstly, despite
this struggle, class divisions within South Africa - and within the
African population - widened rapidly. The white working class was
increasingly impoverished, as its privileges were stripped away by the
late apartheid government. The income of the poorest 40% of whites fell
by 40% in the period 1975-1996. At the same time, economic growth and
government policy led to a rapid growth in the black middle class, in
particular, in the State bureaucracy. Between 1975 and 1996, the income
of the richest 20% of African households grew by almost 40$%, whilst the
income of the poorest 40% of black households fell by around 40%. Secondly, the ANC,
as a bourgeois-nationalist party, adopted a hard-line neo-liberal
approach once in office. The party had previously been sympathetic to a
social-democratic programme. However, it had been shifting towards
neo-liberalism throughout the 1990s: as a bourgeois-nationalist party,
it could only realise its historic class agenda within the framework of
the latest phase of capitalism i.e. neo-liberalism, which has swept the
world since the 1970s. As part and parcel of the capitalist class, its
leadership, furthermore, recognises the importance of neo-liberalism to
the restoration of the rate of profit. The ANC's
neo-liberalism is codified in GEAR, which was released in June 1996.
GEAR's key strategic aims are: * The privatisation
and commercialisation of state-owned companies and utilities, including
electricity, water, steel, and telecommunications * Cutbacks in social
spending and in the size of the public sector workforce * The deregulation
of trade, imports, capital movements and prices * The promotion of
labour market flexibility, and the development of a layer of precarious
workers * An overall
reduction in state spending and strict neo-liberal monetary policies * Investment and job
creation must be led by private business, and, in particular, foreign
investors What this means in
practice has become clear over the past five years. It means cuts in
state pensions, massive layoffs, declining public hospitals, schools and
roads, a general decline in wage levels, daily electricity and water
cut-offs in poor communities, and deindustrialisation under the impact
of intensified global competition. GEAR promised 400, 000 new jobs a
year by 2000: instead, over a million jobs were lost, and total
employment has shrunk to the levels of the early 1980s. Welfare spending
has fell consistently over the last five years, whilst tax on large
companies has been cut such that tax on company profits now makes up
less than 15% of overall government income (down from over 50% in the
1970s). RESISTANCE Resistance has been
hampered by political confusion prevailing within COSATU. Many union
officials, and ordinary members, retain their loyalty to the ANC, and so
fail to correctly grasp the class agenda and class nature of the ANC.
There has been no co-ordinated response to GEAR, or even an official
review of COSATU's ongoing alliance with that party. By failing to
understand the role of the ANC in the war on the working class, COSATU
has been unable to formulate a coherent and effective response, and has
instead falling back on pleading with the ANC to "consult" the
unions more when developing policy. This is a far cry from the
revolutionary and combatitive COSATU of the 1980s, which fought the
apartheid State to a standstill. COSATU's failure to
give a lead to other sections of the working class in the fight against
neo-liberalism has undermined the possibility of a countrywide, working
class-based campaign against neo-liberalism. However, there have
been a number of important local struggles that clearly demonstrate the
willingness of workers to fight privatisation and austerity. A wave of
new community organisations has sprung up to fight against neo-liberal
attacks by local municipalities. In Chatsworth township near Durban,
African and Indian workers and their families have fought back against
evictions and service cut-offs. In Soweto, the Electricity Crisis
Committee has mobilised resistance to electricity cut-offs and
outrageous service charges. At the University of
the Witwatersrand, militant academics, students, and above all, workers
in the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU)
fought a courageous, but ultimately unsuccessful, six-month battle
against 613 retrenchments in 2000. In Johannesburg and other cities, the
mainly African South African Municipal Union (SAMWU) and the mainly
white and Coloured Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (IMATU)
have campaigned against the privatisation of municipal services. Despite
being a COSATU affiliate, SAMWU has taken a principled stand against
GEAR and privatisation, and has not been afraid to tackle the ANC
directly. The most important
recent development has been the unification of anti-neo-liberal
campaigns in Soweto, at the University of the Witwatersrand, and in
Johannesburg in the Anti-Privatisation Forum in July 2000. The new
coalition - to which Bikisha Media Collective is also affiliated- has
sought to link union and community struggles through joint actions and
strike support; a rolling campaign will also be launched in 2001. CONCLUSION Bloodied, bowed, but
as yet undefeated, the South African working class holds the key to
social and economic transformation - to revolution - in South Africa,
and, indeed, in Africa, more generally. Its' victory will shake the
world; its defeat will strengthen capital the world over. But there can be no
"South African road to anarchism," no "national
revolution." Our victory is only possible on the basis of
international support and international solidarity. The struggle against
neo-liberalism is our struggle, and yours too: we must meet the
globalisation of capital with the globalisation of labour. The
conference is an important step in the necessary direction: a working
class united will never be defeated. Back to other writings |
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Bikisha
Media Collective