Abridged version
CEC Discussion Document for COSATU’s 6th Central Committee
1. Introduction
The report is divided into various volumes which in reality constitute a single seamless report only divided as such for purposes of being user friendly and ensure effective management of discussions at the mid -term session of the Workers Parliament (i.e. 6th Central Committee). As part of an attempt to ensure seamlessness, the report also attempts to avoid possible mechanical dichotomy between politics, economics and the organisational work based on an understanding that “politics is the most concentrated expression of economics, its generalization, and its culmination”. Organizational work must be understood as a systemic response to this culmination.
The report is divided into the following sections: (a) introduction which summarizes the context of the 6th Central Committee (b) Analysis of the international balance of forces and its alignment and impact on the domestic balance of forces. In this context, we look at the emerging political and economic trends. This includes the conditions of the working people and the challenges facing the NDR and the entire movement (c) what is to be done. This deals with an inevitable need for a Second more radical phase of our transition characterized by Radical Economic Transformation and in this context we make proposals on the needed interventions. It also includes a political programme and the overarching Organizational tasks to be undertaken by the federation as a response to the challenges facing the working class in general and workers in particular. In this framework, we deal with the challenges facing the labour movement, COSATU in particular and what is to be done.
Whilst the report elevates our organizational successes, it also deliberately deals with our challenges but more importantly make proposals on the practical interventions to be undertaken.
We come to this 6th Central Committee with our heads up, knowing that whatever the challenges we have been going through , COSATU continues to leap from one great victory to another:
a) We are more united than we were when we went to the 2015 Special National Congress.
b) The founding principles of the federation remain intact and are not under threat
c) More unions are applying to affiliate to COSATU because our record speaks for itself
d) As COSATU, we have been engaging in struggles both in the streets and in the boardroom. All signs show that COSATU affiliates are busy on the ground, leading workers struggles as corroborated by a report from the DoL showing that in 2015 alone, more working days were lost because of disputes relating to wages, bonus and other compensation and all these protests actions are accounted for by struggles led by COSATU affiliates. In this regard, the report shows that NUM, NEHAWU and SADTU had the largest share of working days lost in 2015. The report is also showing that the NUM recorded the highest working days lost in 2014 and was ranked the top at 15.1% in 2015.
e) We have secured victories on a number of Policies and these include on UIF benefits ; the national minimum wage ; Our struggles for the realization of NHI has resulted to NHI being piloted in various selected provinces and our focus is now on ensuring that NHI is implemented in our life time; we have been able to force the commencement of discussions about the comprehensive social security and the white paper is now out;
f) We have been involved in serious working class policy battles which on amongst others include 20 sectors. These include labour market transformation ; Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; Basic Education; Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs; in Economic Development; Environmental Affairs; Higher Education and Training; Home Affairs; Justice and Correctional Services; Mineral Resources; The Police ;Public Works; Rural Development and Land Reform; Social Development; State Security; Trade and Industry; Transport ; National Treasury; Women’s Affairs:
g) Strategic Questions :
h) The overarching Strategic Question to be answered by this Central Committee is what must be done to keep the momentum of building a united, fighting, militant and radical COSATU that will remain the hope and home for the aspirations and plight of all workers in South Africa?
2. The international Balance of forces
The current international balance of forces is characterized by the following:
A. The inherent crisis –prone, unstable, and self destructive character of capitalism is reaching its limits.
The communist Manifesto accurately said that, “a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”. It is characterized by the following amongst others:
a) In 2016, the number of unemployed people in the world stood at 197, 7 million and the recent report by ILO has projected that the global unemployment rate is expected to rise from 5.7 to 5.8 per cent this year representing an increase of 3.4 million in the number of jobless people and the number of unemployed persons globally this year is forecast to stand at just over 201 million – with an additional rise of 2.7 million expected in 2018.
b) The ILO research also shows that vulnerable forms of employment are expected to stay above 42 per cent of total employment, accounting for 1.4 billion people worldwide in 2017.
c) in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008–09, global real wage growth started to recover in 2010, but has decelerated since 2012, falling from 2.5 per cent to 1.7 per cent in 2015, its lowest level in four years
d) The conditions of the working class has gotten worse all over the world particularly in the epicenters of capitalism , including in countries where the left governments or left leaning governments have been in power . The exploitation of working men and women worsened with cuts in real wages; Intensification of work periods; deregulation and increase in working hours; deregulation of labour markets ; widespread casual labor, particularly among the women and young workers; and overexploitation of migrant workers. This also included the appropriation of labor productivity gains by capital; increase in the retirement age; cuts in pensions and retirement benefits; increase in unemployment rates; regression of social and labor rights; the denial of the right to bargain collectively and to strike
e) There is an open coexistence of poverty, unemployment, inequality on one side and opulence on another side all over the world. Report by OXFAM shows that 62 people control as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. Since 2015, the richest 1 percent of the world’s population has owned more than the rest of the world put together, and that over the past quarter century, the top 1 percent has gained more income than the bottom 50 percent combined[1].
f) The population of 25 of the world’s most advanced countries ,which includes the United States, Sweden, the UK, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, was experiencing declining or stagnating incomes between 2005 and 2014
g) A report by Oxfam shows that seven of the world’s 20 most unequal countries are in Africa, with Swaziland the most unequal, followed by Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa.
h) In South Africa, the richest 1% owns 42% of the country’s total wealth and three billionaires have the same wealth as the bottom 50% of the population.
i) The economic crisis has forced national economies to be more inward looking and protective of their local markets. It has set the epicenters of capitalism against each other as seen with the recent political rapture in the European Union in which Britain has taken a decision to dismember itself from the European Union leading to economic shocks all over the world.
j) In the process of the deepening economic crisis , left organizations have been seen or regarded by the working class as guilty co-conspirators that have also colluded against the poor . The current dominance of capitalism in the world is not based on the strength of capitalism alone but it is rather as a result of the resultant subjective weaknesses and incoherency of the left axis internationally. This is despite the fact that the case against capitalism is glaring for all to see and also regardless of the fact that the left forces have enormous organizational capacity, which lies untapped and dormant but ready to take up the fight. It is this organizational incapacity which our class enemies have exploited to their own advantage as seen in the sweeping right wing emergence all over the world.
B. The rise of Economic Nationalism advanced by the emboldened Right Wing which has intersected with acute failures of Globalization and the worsening global economic crisis.
How the right wing gained political space?
a) During the period of heightened globalization and the global economic crisis the practical and real experiences of the working class all over the world were different from the perspective articulated by many of the leadership from the left political parties, who have been co-opted into the axis of power and played a role of neutralizing militant struggles, which had a potential to effect fundamental changes. This is happening with the exception of a few remaining mass Communist Parties committed to sweeping capitalism into the dustbin of history.
b) No left alternatives were coming forward against deindustrialization, redundancy, de-unionization, income stagnation, reduced and underfunded social services, and crumbling physical infrastructures and this created hopelessness and despair
c) To step into this void, to present an alternative for workers, to establish a working-class beachhead, new political figures and formations sprung up throughout Europe, North America including on our home front to advance demagogic populism.
d) The right wing seized the moment through demagogic politics and presented an inspiring nationalist alternative to the free market globalization, promising jobs on the basis of protected borders from foreign workers and global trade, and conjuring metaphors and imagery of a lost golden age, politicians and parties challenged the monolithic ideology of unimpeded market relations and global exchange that brought such pain to the working classes.
The right wing agenda
a) Their agenda is economic nationalism and is directly challenging the laws and institutions that promote human dignity, tolerance, and equality. It includes a call for their once open countries to close up and turn inward, which is basically a call for a shift from economic liberalism to a policy of protectionism and is against globalization.
b) Prominent in their campaign is racism dominated by white supremacy, open Xenophobic call which in other instances depending on the location of the organisation becomes a call for a shift even within their own parties from anti-Semitism to an anti-immigrant, islamophobic position; instigating voters to have fear of foreign nationals that are allegedly taking jobs, against foreigners threatening indigenous culture and security. Disaffection with the establishment is a uniform feature of right-wing populism across Europe and the United States but it takes different, nationally specific forms.
c) The rise of the right-wing agenda is also seen in the continued attacks against trade union rights all over the world as the crisis of capitalism and as capital tries to shift the burden of the crisis to the workers and the working class.
d) An annual survey conducted by ITUC on the trade union rights shows that 82 countries exclude workers from labour law, over two-thirds of countries have workers ,who have no right to strike, more than half of all countries deny some or all workers collective bargaining, out of 141 countries, the number of countries which deny or constrain free speech and freedom of assembly increased from 41 to 50 with Algeria, Cameroon, the United States and Pakistan joining the list, Out of 141 countries, the number in which workers are exposed to physical violence and threats increased by 44 per cent (from 36 to 52) and include Colombia, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia and the Ukraine, Unionists were murdered in 11 countries, including Chile, Colombia, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Iran, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Turkey.
Role of the media in advancing right wing populism
a) Populism’s central and permanent narrative is the juxtaposition of a (corrupt) political class, elite, or establishment, and the people.
b) In general, right-wing populist parties profit from the mechanisms of modern media (even though they make it a point to consider them part of the corrupt establishment) because their strategies of political communication resonate with the needs of the media in terms of market demands and the news cycle.
c) Right-wing populists receive a lot of free media attention because of the provocative, emotional and simplified nature of their political communication. This reinforces the effectiveness of their messaging regardless of the tone of the coverage. This effect is most visible in TV because the nature of most relevant TV formats (news shows, talk shows) does not allow for much reflection. In addition, public media give more room for discussion, spend more resources on fact-checking and tend to be fewer sensationalists and less focus[2]
The hegemony and authority / influence of the right wing
In Europe:
a) In France: there is National Front (FN) party leader Marine Le pen drives anti-EU nationalism and anti-elitism as mainstays of the FN’s program. Its growing base of support has shifted towards the white) working class and unemployed. The FN is now established as France’s third strongest political party and only Republican alliances prevented it from gaining seats in the second round of regional elections in 2015.
b) In Germany: Where historically no one wanted to be associated with the shameful history of the Nazis, there is today a sharp rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany/ German Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD).
It was established in 2013 as a reaction to the Euro crisis and in protest against the EU’s bailout policies. Under the new leadership of Frauke Petry, the AfD has increased its right-wing populist message, adopting much of the Pegida language of anti-establishment, anti-Islam,« anti-media and anti-immigration, in addition to the traditional Euro-skepticism. They embrace methods of direct democracy to challenge the political elite which is supposedly selling out the interests of the German people by purposefully allowing mass-migration
Due to the popularity of the right wing in Germany Angela Merkel even suffered a sobering defeat in regional elections in her constituency of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) coming third behind the Social Democrats (SPD) and the rightwing populists Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
c) In Austria: The Freiheitlich Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) is on the rise as an example for right-wing populists’ Extremism. Under the leadership of Heinz-Christian Strache, the FPÖ recovered from participation in the governing coalition and is polling at around 20 %, using instruments of direct democracy to promote their anti-EU and anti-immigrant agenda. In the first round of presidential elections in 2016, the FPÖ’s candidate, Norbert Hofer, gained a plurality of the vote (35.3 %) while the candidates of the conservative and social democratic parties which have dominated Austrian politics since the end of the war performed miserably.
d) In Poland: the ultranationalist, anti-pluralist Law and Justice Party (Prawo I Sprawiedliwosc, or PiS), founded in 2001 by the twin brothers Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński, has benefitted from a combination of agrarian traditions, the strength of Catholicism, as well as disaffection with democracy and the EU and the resulting low voter turnout. The common people are juxtaposed against a liberal, cosmopolitan elite ready to sell out the country to foreign interests. Despite this thinly veiled antisemitism, PiS is not generally considered extremist but national conservative, however, the PiS government, in office since 2015, is moving towards illiberal authoritarianism. It no longer recognizes the rulings of the constitutional court, and has weakened the media. For them the people’s interests supersede the law.
e) The Danish parliament approved a controversial "jewelry law" in January that allows the government to confiscate valuables from arriving asylum seekers to help finance their accommodation.
f) Officials in Slovakia, Estonia, Bulgaria and Poland have said they want to take only Christian asylum seekers or none at all, the nationalist government in Hungary even called a referendum on the issue.
g) Russia: Recently of the 26th March thousands of people participated in anticorruption protests in Russian cities Moscow and St Petersburg. More than 1,000 were arrested people and hundreds in other parts of the country. The march was induced by widespread corruption and the rising cost of living which left many in poverty.
These conditions have been exploited by the far-right and pro-Western oppositionist politician Alexei Navalny. He pursued the politics of far right nationalists and fascists whose agenda is expressed in the slogan “ Russia for the Russians: He was part of a cohort which in 2010, attended CIA led US special six-month course at Yale University in the US as part of a program which is aimed at preparing “new world leaders and expanding international understanding. He operates and mobilizes through social media and uses YouTube to popularize his campaign against corruption.
h) In the United Kingdom: There are several new right-wing populist actors who have begun to change the political landscapes and who, while in opposition and with limited electoral support, have influenced sitting governments’ policies. For an example n the United Kingdom, the UK independence Party (UKIP), founded in 1993, has been consistent in its anti-EU and anti-immigration message and is now profiting from changed public opinion. Under the leadership Nigel Farage, UKIP saw first successes at the elections for the European parliament and has performed well nationally since 2011. While considered to be part of the radical right by some observers, they have been able to distance themselves from the extremist British National Party by highlighting their (economic) libertarianism and their inclusive concept of a British nation.
Nevertheless, the current influx of refugees to the European Union has highlighted UKIP’s skepticism regarding immigration. UKIP’s greatest impact has been on the policies of the current conservative government which, in the face of UKIP’s popularity, has resisted allowing refugees to the UK and scheduled a referendum about a possible exit from the EU.(The Rise of Right-wing Populism in Europe and the United States- A Comparative Perspective- Thomas Graven – FES :2016)
One of the reasons for Brexit is that the UK does not want to be subject to the jurisdiction of the European court of Justice and wants to determine its migration policy.
i) In United States of America: The most recent and internationally visible victory of this right wing nationalism has been the swearing in of Donald Trump as the USA president openly advancing economic nationalism and openly identifying China as one of the targeted enemies.
Right wing influence in selected Asian countries
a) A new right-wing nationalism with the potential to reshape the region’s politics has been evident over the last couple of years in Asia as seen in the election of Shinzo Abe in Japan and Park Geun-Hye in South Korea . Park Geun Hye has since been impeached. South Korea’s Constitutional Court unanimously upheld the National Assembly’s impeachment of Park Geun Hye paving the way for new elections to be held within 60 days of the ruling
b) South Korea has seen the mobilisation of groups often sponsored or facilitated by right-wing parties. Over the past decade, civic organizations such as the New Right movement and the Liberty Union, which combine economic liberalism and anti-communist ideology, have been to the fore of conservative – often middle-class – mobilisation. The activities of Protestant mega-churches and right-leaning think tanks have reinforced this mobilisation in Korea.
c) Recently in Japan, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been embroiled in a widening scandal over his alleged involvement with a private elementary school project in Osaka by Moritomo Gakuen, an extreme-right educational organisation. The allegations, which also involve Abe’s wife Akie, have contributed to falling opinion polls for Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government.
The impact of the Right wing in Latin America
a) Latin America has been a region from which we drew inspiration, when the left axis shifted the entire political landscape in the hemisphere and, indeed, worldwide and when they challenged the neoliberal order and placed socialism back on the agenda. In the process, they raised fundamental questions over political struggle and social change in the age of global capitalism.
b) The progress which has been achieved regarding the rising of the left movement in Latin America is gradually being reversed. A new correlation of forces has emerged in the region. It is clear that with the socialist agenda being anchored in Latin America, the USA led imperialist forces never ceased in its objective to stop the socialist advances.
c) As they did with many other progressive governments , they exploited the big economic difficulties arising because of the world crisis of capitalism, and especially the drop in the prices of our raw materials, ultra neoliberal rulers have been installed in Argentina and Brazil and they are trying to block and redirect the advances of the Bolivarian revolution. This has compromised the struggles and processes put in place to achieve social equality, political democratization, for national sovereignty, and for regional integration.
d) In Brasil, the right wing have succeeded to impeach and remove the president of the Socialist Workers Party, comrade Dilma Rouseff and this happened despite the working class mounting a defensive campaign against the right wing establishment.
e) It has been reported that on the 15th March this year there was a national day of struggle and paralysis throughout Brazil against anti-worker reforms applied by the illegitimate government of Michel Temer. This was the most important workers’ and popular mobilisation since Dilma Rousseff (PT) was removed from power. These marches were called in a united manner by the various trade union confederations and by the ‘People without fear’ front (which includes the MTST, homeless workers movement, which is its main promoter) and the ‘Brazil Popular Front’ (which is dominated by social movements which are closer to the PT and Lula).
f) In Venezuela the right wing offensive is intensifying every day and the opposition party continues to intensify a campaign to get the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro to be impeached. When the popular government agreed to meet with them to listen to their concerns , they agreed but later refused to continue negotiations with Maduro, unless the government meets certain preconditions including the overhaul of the country’s electoral authority, early elections , and the release of more alleged "political prisoners".
g) Banks and Finance capital in general have been the most dominant factor in the USA – led international imperialist manoeuvres against the progressive Latin American governments including Venezuela and their strategy included manipulating oil prices in support of the regime change agenda.
h) Recently on March 1, the United States Senate passed a resolution calling on President Donald Trump to escalate measures against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. These moves are part of a concerted effort by American imperialism to oust the ruling left party and replace them with a right-wing regimes more aligned with American interests.
i) In Argentina: After years of left wing rule by the Kirchner , Argentina elected Mauricio Macri, a former businessman running on a right-wing platform.
j) The government of Mauricio Macri has closer ties with the Israeli government. Recently Netanyahu spoke of a new era of relations between the two countries ,while Macri expressed a willingness to establish a strategic alliance and develop joint business relations, especially in the area of security.
k) As a result of the rise in the cost of living and workers rights being attacked, the country has been experiencing a number of protest actions. Recently tens of thousands of teachers and other workers marched in the capital Buenos Aires on March 22, as part of a nationwide school strike against President Mauricio Macri’s austerity measures.
Strategic Questions
a) What are the factors which led to the working class embracing the wing agenda. How can this challenge be addressed.
b) How should COSATU position itself and which tasks needs to be understood to respond to deal with the impact of the right wing policies in the labour market.
c) Experience has taught us that even the trade union movement from the north , when the calls are made in any international plartform such as in the WTO , to choose between acting to advance the interest of the international working class and their national economic interest , they choose their national economic interests.
How can COSATU use other strategic international platforms where it participates to launch an offensive against right wing political and economic policies?
d) How can COSATU specifically shape the agenda and programmes of the ITUC to focus on fighting righting wing policies?
The state of BRICS – Strategic Reversals
BRICS was founded on the basis of ensuring “profound shifts in the world as it transitions to a more just, democratic, and multi-polar international order based on the central role of the United Nations, and respect for international law. Its central focus is on strengthening coordination of efforts on global issues and practical cooperation in the spirit of solidarity, mutual understanding and trust. It is also founded on the belief of the importance of collective efforts in solving international problems, and for peaceful settlement of disputes through political and diplomatic means, and the commitment to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
BRICS has committed to support Africa’s implementation of its various programmes in pursuit of its continental agenda for peace and socio- economic development. It has committed to engage in joint endeavors to advance Africa's solidarity, unity and strength through support measures for regional integration and sustainable development.
BRICS is in the process of operationalising the New Development Bank (NDB) and of the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), which is intended to contribute to the global economy and the strengthening of the international financial architecture. This also includes the operationalisation of the Africa Regional Centre (ARC) of the New Development Bank.
But the question is whether BRICS in reality and in practice represents a counter hegemonic block to the USA-led imperialism.
It is now clear that despite the hope that the emergence of BRICS represented a counter-balancing force against the USA-led imperialism, in reality BRICS is not an ideological counter hegemonic block but an economic initiative that is intended to allow an alternative source of funding for developing countries ,particularly those who are members of the block. The developments in India in which the right-wing government took over from the National Indian Congress and the recent developments in Brazil have made any hope of an ideological leaning of BRICS to the left even more of a distant dream.
The Situation in BRICS member Countries
a) India is currently counted as being amongst the ten worst countries for working people and it is reported that India regularly use disproportionate violence against workers holding protests with many detained for simply exercising their labour law rights that are guaranteed in national laws.
In September 2016 tens of millions of workers joined the strike, including in the transport, banks, public services, manufacturing and other sectors amongst others demanding that the government should ratify the ILO Conventions 87 on Freedom of Association and 98 on Collective Bargaining. The strike was also aimed at mobilizing workers against privatization and outsourcing of government services.
In reality, under Narendra Modi, India has become a useful “frontline” state in Washington’s drive to strategically isolate, encircle and prepare for war with China. New Delhi has opened India’s military bases to routine use by US warplanes and warships; expanded bilateral and trilateral military-strategic cooperation with America’s principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia; and continuously parroted Washington’s provocative stance on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The US has reciprocated by proclaiming India a “major defense partner,” thereby giving it access to the Pentagon’s most advanced weapons systems.
a) In Brasil a new president from the right wing has replaced comrade Dilma Rousif. The New president Michel Temer, installed by a parliament riddled with corruption after the political coup against President Dilma Rousseff, has launched a brutal programme of budget cuts targeting workers and the poor as his government races against time to lock-in its business-friendly agenda before a new round of expected corruption cases threatens to bring the government down. In a march organized by a coalition of progressive forces addressed by comrade Lula Da Silva, comrade Lula said that “Temer has managed to assemble in Congress a political force that no other elected president has achieved. They are determined to impose a social security reform that will practically prevent millions of Brazilians from retiring. Poorer workers, especially in the rural Northeast, will retire with half a minimum wage.” According to a report from ITUC, the Temer government is poised to launch a further push aimed at weakening civil society, by attacking the rights of workers to join trade-unions.
Despite the right wing changes in Brasil, China has continued to strengthen its economic relations with Brasil. China’s ideological orientation is itself controversial, it purports to be left and yet it belongs to almost all of the capitalists’ centers of power such as the WTO and the IMF and World Bank. However, it may be difficult to blame China because it has the policy of non-intervention in domestic affairs and as a result, it pursues its policies with any country and any institutions as long as its national interests are protected.
b) China is counted as being amongst the 25 countries with the worst record of trade union rights violation and where there is no guarantee of workers’ rights.
She has linked her economy with the international capitalist market. In this sense it does not have a choice not to join the capitalist world economy because as an industrializing economy it has to import machinery and technology form developed countries. It participates actively in the global capitalist allocation of roles as a massive "factory' with a cheap labour force, with high rates of profits for the domestic Chinese bourgeois and foreign investors.
China has been embraced by other strong imperialist powers, above all by the USA, and also by Japan, the EU, due to its dependency on them as a global exporting power. It is an integral part of the international imperialist system. This relation of dependency and inter-dependency is expressed by the fact that China possesses more than trillions in American bonds. The unintended result of being a factory of the world has meant a depression of wages in importing countries, loss of jobs, global economic balances, rise in the services sector contribution to the national production, and a gradual process of de-industrialization as domestic producers turn into imports and distributors of Chinese produced goods.
China has a desire to control many natural resources as possible, which are increasingly controlled by the Chinese corporations. Africa is at the centre of this activity. The following is particularly characteristic: In the 1990's Chinese trade in Africa as a whole was about 5-6 billion dollars, by 2003 this had increased to 18 billion dollars and in 2008 it reached 100 billion dollars.
Today China has a significant economic presence in nearly all the African countries. In the copper belt of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), there exists the fastest growing Chinatowns in the world. Sudan has become one of the main suppliers of oil to the Chinese market: 600,000 barrels of Sudanese oil are sent to China on a daily basis. A third of all China's imports come from Africa, with Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Sudan being the largest suppliers. In addition, Chad, Nigeria, Algeria and Gabon supply China with oil. In exchange for the access to the natural resources of the African countries China invests in road infrastructure and ports, in infrastructure necessary for the reproduction of labour power (school buildings, hospitals, housing), as well as in industrial infrastructure in these countries. Chinese companies are building roads in Angola and Mozambique as well as upgrading their ports and railways. Chinese companies are also involved in many projects in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and in Nairobi, Kenya. But this massive investment does not create quality jobs for the workers in these countries because they import their own Chinese workers and sometimes use slave workers from North Korea.
c) Russia itself which was once the hope of the left is currently under the leadership of Vladimir Putin whose policies have closed political space for trade unions in the country. It is reported that the greatest difficulty in developing the trade union movement in Russia today is legislation, according to which it is practically impossible to hold a strike or come to an agreement with an employer.
Workers are limited in their collective bargaining rights. And it is practically impossible to organize a legal strike. In its 6th Congress the General Confederation of Trade Unions observed a serious drop in the living standards and social protection of workers, attacks on their rights, and attempts by governments and employers to dilute the very essence of social policy. They further expressed deep concern with the anti-union campaigns inspired by employers and authorities at different levels that have become too frequent in the region, as elsewhere in the world. The purpose of the attacks they argued has been to curtail the universally recognized trade union freedoms, and the rights of trade unions to protect workers’ interests, including the fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively as enshrined in the ILO Conventions. Despite its bad internal labour and human rights record Russia has remained the forefront of the fight against EU and US imperialism.
Progressive elements of BRICS
It is however noted that even as the BRICS are operating in the context of what is considered as institutions of capitalism but they are a force which presents a serious contest inside Breton Woods’s institutions in the interest of the developing countries. This include the following positions which they have taken:
a) BRICS countries have committed to the need for a comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council, with a view to making it more representatives, effective and efficient, and to increase the representation of the developing countries so that it can adequately respond to global challenges. China and Russia reiterate the importance they attach to the status and role of Brazil, India and South Africa in international affairs and support their aspiration to play a greater role in the UN.
b) This also includes commitment to ensuring that UN Peacekeeping operations should perform the duty of protection of civilians in strict accordance with their respective mandates and in respect of the primary responsibility of the host countries in this regard.
c) They are committed to the stipulation to implement a two-state solution on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of the relevant UNSC resolutions, the Madrid Principles and Arab Peace Initiative, and previous agreements between the two sides, through negotiations aimed at creating an independent, viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian State living side-by-side in peace with Israel, within secure, mutually agreed and internationally recognised borders on the basis of 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, as envisaged in the relevant UN Resolutions
d) The progressive elements of the BRICS block have also been seen in the recent reports which shows that in the past decade, BRICS countries, in addition to emerging markets like Kenya, South Korea, Cuba, Egypt and others have aggressively pushed their research and development in the pharmaceutical industry to offer cheap generic drugs to their populations.
e) Major global pharmaceutical companies, which are mostly based in the EU and the US, have pressured their governments to use trade provisions during negotiations with developing countries to push intellectual property rights and strengthen drug patents.
f) But BRICS countries are in agreement about protecting the flexibility provisions in TRIPS and largely support the UN’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines.
g) Last December during the 6th BRICS Health agreed to place public health goals above trade deal priorities.
In economic terms the following picture is emerging in BRICS countries:
a) BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – account for 43 per cent of the world’s population and 25 per cent of the global economy. Despite a global economic slowdown, BRICS has been a main economic engine for the world economy.
b) BRICS countries have also made gains in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017.
c) Despite battling a recession of its own, South Africa, which has seen its rand currency fluctuate against the dollar, also moved up two places to 47. Recently in 2017 SA debt has been downgraded to junk status which would inflationary results and an increase in interest rates and making job creation opportunities difficult to implement.
Strategic Questions :
a) We are already participating in the BRICS forum of trade unions to advance a programme to re-orientate BRICS towards prioritizing the interests of the working people. What can COSATU do to take forward the declaration adopted at the trade union BRICS Summit held at held in New Delhi on the 26th – 27th September, 2016. What preparations needs to be made to prepare towards the China Summit
b) Given the changes in many of the BRICS countries, how should COSATU relate with the trade union movements in these countries? Will it not assist to have bilateral meetings with sister federations in these countries?
C. In South Africa there has been a similar phenomenon in which the Rise of the right wing/ the Neo –Liberal and Pseudo left axis intersected with the worsening conditions of the working class and internal challenges in the movement
a) Our movement and our revolution is currently confronted by what Gramsci called the crisis of “authority” and the crisis of “legitimacy” on one side and the ideological and political leadership vacuum with has been filled by right wing and pseudo left opportunism.
b) In the process of the ANC led movement committing mistakes and arrogantly dismissing the left axis in the alliance ,when we raise issues and instead giving more political space to the neoliberal ideologues, the coherency and unity of the progressive forces has been weakened and the ANC led movement’s leadership role in society has been compromised. This vacuum has been closed by a rise of two opposing ideological axis, which have found unity in their hatred against the ANC led movement.
c) The first axis is the DA led Neoliberal and right wing axis ,which continues to grow in confidence under conditions in which the credentials of the ANC led progressive forces is being questioned. This also happens under conditions in which the progressive forces are in disarray and lacks coherency in both strategy and tactics.
d) It is worrying that in the face of the continued rise in the confidence of the right wing our movement is not showing any signs of coherency instead infighting continues both inside the movement and in the state. There is a political stampede where everyone is jostling for power.
e) Week in and week out comrades openly go the media to attack each other or to present positions which differs with the official position of the ANC. Veterans of the movement do not use internal organizational platforms but instead go to the media to express their concerns.
f) As we were approaching the Central Committee the succession battles had become even more acute , more open , more pointed , more brutal ,more destructive and more sharper.
g) Every week we have been bombarded by allegations of how leaders of the ANC are plotting against each other. In this context a number of developments have taken place which includes (a) the contested KZN EThekwini Regional and provincial congresses leading to court cases and followed by alleged political assassinations. (b) The emergence of recognizable factions in the ANC which include Premier League, Veterans 101, etc. Allegations of the abuse of state security agencies (c) Charging and withdrawal of charges against the Minister of Finance and later his removal (d) The release of the Public Protectors Report on the state Capture investigation in which allegations have been raised about how the GUPTA family had captured some sections of the state including the state president (e) The recent cabinet reshuffle which happened without the consultation of the Alliance or without a consensus amongst the ANC top 6 based on prerogative powers. The ANC led movement, despite its good work in improving the lives of our people; it has been engulfed by the dark cloud of internal accusations and counter accusations. It appears to be a movement that has lost its high moral authority, it is decentred and without political and moral compass.
h) As we meet here today the authority of the National Democratic Revolution as led by the ANC is in shambles. We suffer from the crisis of authority and hegemony.
i) Our state owned enterprises have dismally failed to rise to the challenge of directing the content of the National Democratic revolution. They have failed to increase the labour-intensity of their budget expenditure and contribute towards overall labour-intensity of the economy. They have failed to provide decent work, eliminate outsourcing, the use of labour brokers and precarious work. They have failed to procure inputs from local industries, in support of IPAP 2, they have failed to play a leading role in revitalization of rural economies through economic and social infrastructure provision. They have failed to lead in skills development through bursary schemes, partnerships with relevant institutions, targeting those located in rural areas and former Bantustans. They have failed to support research and development of new technologies to promote cost-effective ways of producing and to benefit downstream industries. They have failed to eliminate the profit motive from the delivery of infrastructure, by directly delivering infrastructure, basic goods and services to the economy and communities—this means building internal skills. They have failed to produce strategic inputs for industries: water, electricity, steel and other metals, cement and chemicals
j) As a result of these failure the ANC led movement is no longer defined by its struggle credentials but by the problems in the country’s State Owned Companies ,which include the crisis in ESKOM which recently saw the shamefull possible re-employment of Brian Molefe, the movement is today defined by the crisis in SABC, by alleged capturing of some sections of the sate including SOEs by one family ,the GUPTA family in which the president’s son is involved , by the landing of a GUPTA airplane in Waterkloof . In all these, the state president has not acted instead he is forever implicated and has never taken the alliance partners into confidence nor explain to society about these challenges.
k) The entire movement including the left axis remains in disarray. Mistakes are committed as if there is no learning from our past; our shared understanding of what and who constitute the enemy/primary enemy of the revolution has been shaken. There are even differences on whether the Regime change agenda constitute a threat to the National Democratic Revolution and this is despite glaring similarities between what is unfolding in South Africa and what has happened in some countries in Latin America.
l) The motive forces have been demobilized where they are mobilized, it is not based on a uniting programme to confront our common enemy but it is at the service of factional activities. We have failed as a movement to fundamentally transform the colonial and apartheid economy , even when various comrades are calling for radical economic transformation, there is either no trust that they are genuine or no agreement about what should be its content ( this matter is dealt with later); as the movement we have not practically appreciated and systematically responded to the reality of the limitations imposed by waging a revolution within the parameters of constitutional Democracy; we continue to maintain and promote a degree of federalism through the existence of provinces and the electoral system that does not promote accountability of people’s representatives.
m) This is the basis and the context within which the DA led right wing, racist axis and other opposition parties have established their united front against the ANC led government.
n) These right wing forces have in the main been ideologically represented by the Democratic Alliance, and some sections of civil society. Evidence of their confidence has been seen in the extent to which they are making electoral inroads in constituencies where the ANC led liberation movement used to enjoy hegemony.
o) The DA has improved its political camouflage overtime; they now use black and African people as the face of their organisation. Black faces are used as the President of the DA, as the national spokespersons, and essentially the DA is now defending white privilege using the voice and faces of black people themselves.
p) In the same way as the right wing all over the world get assisted by the media , the DA’s agenda has been imposed to society with the assistance of the media and they get assisted by black journalists and black editors who will choose to write about a distorted story ,which cast aspersions against African leadership but less energy to write and expose the painful experiences and exploitation of farm workers, exploitation in the hospitality industry and racism in society including corruption in the private sector.
D. The rising hegemony of the right wing camouflaged as left rhetoric
a) The second axis has presented itself as left but stand in opposition with the ANC led revolutionary Alliance movement, and have actually defined the SACP and COSATU as a strategic enemy. Whilst this grouping may appear as if they are new but their ideological roots can be traced from a section which had existed without enjoying ideological hegemony in almost every component of the ANC led movement .Their views have historically been defeated except in the recent past when the movement began to be incoherent.
b) These so called left forces are divided into various categories. The first category is those who have emerged inside the progressive trade union movement.
c) They have dressed themselves in the clothing of the politics of the National Democratic Revolution and they shout slogans, sing songs and even quote from the leading theorists who pursue the National Democratic Revolution. The essence of their perspective is based on the belief that the trade union movement should be the spearhead of an attack in the struggle against capitalism and colonialism, including leading the struggle for socialism. Their posture finds resonance with the racist right wing and in many instances they share a common anti - ANC led government platform with the racist right wing. They have presented themselves as corruption busters and yet use left wing rhetoric and militancy as a license to be corrupt without being questioned or to hide their own corruption.
d) The second category is the group which also relies on pseudo militant rhetoric and through this rhetoric has in the process won mass following mainly from the youth, the students and the unemployed sections of society. They identify themselves as a Marxist, Leninist, and Fanonian organisation claiming socialism as their vision and as a basis guiding their thinking and development of their political line.
e) Whilst this grouping purports to apply the tools of Marxism Leninism in their analysis but in reality as seen in their articulations, both spoken and written, they are incapable of distinguishing between the principal contradiction and the secondary contradictions. As a result it has become impossible for them to determine the class alliances required by the tasks of the stage, the location of the line of demarcation between friends and enemies. The result is that it is impossible to carry out a correct united front policy which assumes that the contradictions which are secondary objectively are kept so by making concessions to one's allies. This is the bases upon which in their early life they started talks with the bourgeoisie political organisation such as the DA for a possible coalition
f) This is the same reason they wanted to force COSATU to identify civil society formations as the principal ally above and at the exclusion of the Revolutionary Strategic Alliance with the ANC and the SACP. This is also the same reason why they invest all their energies in attacking the ANC and the SACP and not monopoly capital and white monopoly capital in particular, when they do it is only meant to woo the unsuspecting masses.
g) Today what we have always suspected of a possible alliance between the DA and the EFF have become a reality, with the EFF giving the DA a majority in all municipalities resulting to the DA taking charge of the strategic municipalities such as Johannesburg metro, Tshwane metro, the Nelson Mandela Bay metro .This alliance has also find expression in the chambers of parliament.
Strategic question(s)
The reality of the right wing opposition parties cannot be wished away , they have won the support of large sections of our society and have gained massive electoral support in three strategic what is it that needs to be done to respond to their rising hegemony in society .
How can the left forces reassert their hegemony on the ground?
D. The state of the Alliance
Tripartite Alliance- 30 years of political impotence?
ANC – We need an honest critique of the Alliance if we are to arrive to serious revolutionary interventions.
a) The fluid current political epoch forces us to do an honest critique of our Alliance. It is very necessary for us to do this because in order to avoid the temptation of succumbing to political tribalism which lends itself to myopia, and breeds the fallacy of composition – sometimes we can end up dismissing an entire Alliance on the grounds of one component we don't like, but also we can keep flogging a dead horse for historical and sentimental reasons. This moment calls for us to stop idealising the past but start imagining the future. Workers cannot afford to resort to conventional wisdom and slogans, we risk losing an opportunity to read the moment correctly and self correct where necessary.
b) In trying to understand what has gone wrong with the ANC and in order to properly diagnose the current political challenges correctly, we will also need to look at the ANC that came back from exile and its relationship with the workers as led by the progressive federation COSATU. What was obvious from the ANC, when it came from exile was that it had become an organisation that was not ready and to a certain extent unwilling to learn from the people inside the country. Inside COSATU, as far back as 1991, there was growing anger about the ANC leadership’s lack of consultation with its own members and with COSATU, and also about its poor negotiating strategy. Despite these criticisms, the majority inside COSATU saw their task as that one of supporting, strengthening and democratising the ANC, rather than distancing themselves from it.
c) COSATU in the early 1990”s understood the enormous pressures that the ANC was facing at the time. This was an organisation that was relocating from Lusaka to South Africa, trying to build a legal mass organisation from scratch; they were flung into complex and tricky negotiations with a hostile and to a certain extent savvy regime. They were still trying to reorient their politics to meet the needs of the new situation; responding to demands for consultations with every kind of organisation and interest group and also still trying to develop policy on a wide range of issues. We should also never forget that the ANC at the time was facing a campaign of violence from Inkatha and the security forces on the grounds.
d) But even then, what was glaring and troubling with the ANC from exile was its failure to consult with its allies, especially COSATU and the overall lack of consultation and democracy within the ANC itself. The ANC of the early 1990’s lacked strategic perspective, coherence and collectivity at a leadership level and nothing has changed. Its leadership was dominated by exiles with an inadequate understanding of mass organisation and action and the organisation’s lack of a programme of action and organising programme worsened the situation. It was prone to secretive negotiations, adopted a poor negotiating strategy, and had willingness to compromise on major issues, such as a demand for a constituent assembly and privatisation of the reserve bank.
e) Like in the early 1990’s the ANC in the mid nineties allowed old- style bureaucrats; reactionary consultants; and advisors from the IMF and World Bank to supervise and usurp policy formulation in critical areas. This happened while the Alliance was largely marginalised from policymaking.
f) This lack of consultation resulted in the ANC-led democratic movement being forced to adopt the GEAR policy with little or no consultation. This contradictory economic policy strategy, GEAR, which on the one hand , committed to providing basic services to the people and changing apartheid labour regulation; while relying on a conservative macroeconomic framework has been the source of the rising unemployment and a fall in incomes for workers.
g) This is also what happened when the National Planning Commission {NPC} was put together and when the National Development Plan {NDP} was adopted in Mangaung, the ANC did not consult its structures nor its Alliance partners.
h) There were robust debates and concerns inside COSATU, early on about the character of the recently relocated ANC in the early nineties; on whether it was an organisation with a bias towards the working class or if it could be called a revolutionary organisation at all with its internal shortcomings. This was a big issue because the mass democratic movement had developed its mass character, its working class orientation and its revolutionary experience in the mass struggles of the 1980’s.
i) One of the mistakes that was made at the time of the unbanning of the ANC was that many people assumed that the exiled leadership was faultless. Very few people appreciated the effects of exile, working underground. There was temptation to romanticise the role of exiles and Islanders but we have all grown to appreciate that their particular skills and experiences have placed limits on their contribution. The ANC activists come from three traditions, the Island, exile and the MDM. The ANC has never analysed these different traditions and learned how to integrate them, but has only imposed the exile traditions which is why the succession debate is so factionalised and so dirty in the ANC.
j) Part of the problem in the past was the personal power wielded by Cde Nelson Mandela. He was a man of great personal strength and while he had firm principles and a lot of integrity, his imperial style of leadership did not encourage collective and democratic decision making. We have seen this replicated again, when Cde Thabo Mbeki was in charge. He was surrounded by a weak NEC and he was allowed to engage in endless philosophical disputations, while thousands of people were dying of HIV and Aids. Lately we have seen the impotence of the ANC NEC under Cde Jacob Zuma.The country is in a crisis and they are helpless to provide leadership.
k) Historically, COSATU always struggled with this tradition because it grew up under the tradition that was established between the UDF and COSATU in the 1980’s that was characterised by consultation, struggle and mutual respect.
l) We cannot properly deal with the current problems if we fail to acknowledge or appreciate that the weaknesses and failures of the ANC, and its leaders is something that is rooted in the organisation’s failure to adjust and transform its traditions after it’s unbanning. Without the revitalisation of leadership and the traditions of the movement, the alliance will never work.
m) Many workers for the last decade have been frustrated by a lack of coherence amongst the ANC leadership and what we have seen happening in Mangaung during May Day was a public reflection and demonstration of that anger. The most recent example was the Cabinet reshuffle that proved once and again that the ANC had not changed in the last twenty two years. We saw its leadership collective giving different positions and changing their decisions in public. This is the same thing that happened on the weekend of 15-16 June 1991, when some members of the ANC publicly said that the ANC was flexible on the demand for an interim government, while Mandela reiterated an inflexible position. Even at that time many NEC members that clustered around Cde Mandela were ineffectual men with no independent base and they were constantly seeking his favour because he was seen as source of power. This is what is happening with the current ANC NEC, they are falling into the same trap. The biggest problem that has confronted the ANC leaders after the unbanning is that they have failed to surround themselves with strong representative leadership that will ensure that their individual strengths don not become their weaknesses.
n) The truth of the matter is that since the ANC took political power in 1994 monopoly capital (white monopoly capital in particular) has continued to benefit in the same way it did under the apartheid regime as the economy is still in their hands.
o) The discussions underway in the left axis about breaking away from the alliance, contesting State Power, service delivery protests, student uprising, workers’ strikes are a reflection of the state of the revolution. Workers and the working class in general no longer feel that the ANC has the capacity to provide the necessary leadership.
p) The Alliance is reduced to explaining away vulgar corruption in the state and elsewhere, which has further alienated it from the people. These have gradually eroded the high moral ground and weakened the political credibility of the alliance in the eyes of society.
q) It would therefore be naive for the ANC to reduce the recent developments and dismiss this message from the working class as nothing but a fleeting inconvenience that will pass. The working class, as a dominant class in the membership character of the ANC, and as a primary motive force of the NDR should ask itself some difficult questions on whether the ANC can still be trusted to lead the revolution and whether the Alliance after 30 years can still deliver on the goals and the aspirations of the workers and the working class in general. The working class has to understand that it cannot continue to sit idly while its aspirations are rejected and dishonoured. The role of the CC is to open this debate for the 13National Congress to resolve.
Strategic questions
a) There is agreement that the federation should engage the ANC regarding the need to have the Alliance Political Council playing a role of being a nucleus that drives the revolution. This include agreeing on deployment of cadres, implementation of policy and keeping deployees accountable What if the ANC rejects all these proposals and continue in the same trajectory as it has happened in the past years where alliance resolutions are ignored ?
b) The ANC will be having its National Policy and consultative conference very soon this year .What are the three to four things we would like to see as outcomes of this conference?
c) COSATU and the SACP have called for the president to step down and COSATU has also announced its preferred candidate for a cadre who will become the next president. What should be our plan beyond the 54th National Conference of the ANC? Should we not for an example consider convening a Special Congress after the ANC 54th Conference to decide on the way forward informed by our recent and past experiences?
The SACP
a) The question that needs to be answered is whether the two working class formations SACP and COSATU have properly analyzed and understood the conditions facing the working class in South Africa. We have a massive challenge to rehabilitate socialism after what has happened to the Soviet Union and to a certain extent in Latin America recently. This means that we need to restore and enhance the mass inspiration and enthusiasm that were once the hallmarks of socialist movements around the globe.
b) We also need to ask whether these organizations have managed to unite the progressive forces and also work together to develop a combined and coherent response to the current political challenges facing our revolution.
c) The system of capitalism continues to hold sway over virtually the entire globe and its brutality and barbarism is intensified by the fact that it has been mired and bogged down in a systemic crisis since 2008, with no end in sight. Its negative effects have affected the workers and working class the most. We need a debate on whether the party has done enough to prepare an environment to build socialism in South Africa. The Party should be leading a debate on new and practical ideas to try and build socialism on a firmer foundation. Hundred years after the Bolshevik revolution, we need to come up with some bold and honest explanations and assessments of past approaches, deal with the misconceptions, mistakes, distortions and betrayals of the past in order to learn from those mistakes.
d) There is a convergence and a broad consensus now that the 1994 breakthrough flattered to deceive. Over the last quarter of a century we have seen the growth and expansion of existing power structures and the incorporation of the oppressed and the exploited into them without changing their substance. This cannot be called a revolution.
e) In response to this, we need to come up with practical questions of building socialism. We have to admit that we currently do not have a global international working class movement and we have not presented a coherent and a popular theory of an alternative world economy to challenge the free market system. What does all this mean for the working class and the struggle for socialism in this country? The party should help us answer these questions.
f) There is also a consensus that nationalisation does not necessarily equal socialism, but what are socialist solutions to the problem posed by alliance capitalism and the rising unemployment in South Africa.
Strategic Questions
a) How can COSATU and the SACP work to develop clear and distinct socialist programmes informed by our shared strategic perspective that we are waging the struggle to attain socialism in the context of the NDR which represent a shortest and direct route to socialism.
We are in Alliance with the SACP but the SACP as a party of the working class does also work with other federations. How can we ensure that this does not undermine our alliance with the SACP.
State capture
a) We need a thoroughgoing discussion on what the state and the government of the day are and about the location of power in a capitalist society. This has created a lot of confusion in the discussion around state capture with some people referring to the alleged undue and direct influence apparently exerted by the Guptas in the office of President Jacob Zuma as “state capture.”
b) In a capitalist society the state and the government of the day do not exist as stand-alone entities, disconnected from societal class relations. Whilst they may have relative autonomy, which is why they are contested, ultimately they reflect the balance of class forces of a capitalist society. The South African state is a capitalist state and so if the balance of class forces favours the ruling bourgeois class, then the state would reflect that bourgeois hegemony. The delaying tactics and current attempts to water down NHI through the use of public-private partnerships {PPPs} . We also saw the same thing with the NMW negotiations at NEDLAC where the alliance between big business and government attempted to frustrate the implementation of the NMW, which was followed by attempts to use bogus research which was proposing that workers were to earn below R2000. We saw a similar attempt in the delays towards the release of the paper dealing with comprehensive social security at Nedlac. It was the same story with the failed attempt to impose the anuitisation of workers retirement savings without consultation through the Taxation Amendment Act of 2015.
This bourgeois hegemony is exercised over society as an organic whole, including the state, and it imposes limits with regard to what the government of the day can do. Hence, despite resolutions of ANC conferences and Alliance summits, macroeconomic policies are dictated by finance monopoly capital, whilst the sovereign rating agencies provide an on-going oversight role.
Thus “It is crucially important that we distinguish political office from political power. Political office refers to control of ministries conferred on a party on the basis of the results of a general election.
Thus it is conceivable in a capitalist country, as happens in France, Britain, Sweden, etc, that a party of the working class may win the elections and assume political office — that is, it is given control over the ministries — without that in any way altering the fact that political power remains in the hands of the capitalist class. What happens in such instances is that a party of the working class is allowed to administer the capitalist state, introduce ameliorative reforms, even impose certain controls on the activities of the capitalists just as long as it does not tamper with the central sphere of capitalist political power. Forming the government, therefore, is not the same thing as acquiring political power. As already stated, political power is expressed through the state.
It is the nature of property-owning classes that their members compete with each other and consequently, coalesce into conflicting interest groups that collide and quarrel with each other over the division of the spoils, as it were[3]”.
c) Sometimes the organs and functions of the South African state are even outsourced to capital, including policy-making and research. Therefore, the overarching question of the moment is not whether or not there is corporate capture of the state, but it is whether the ANC has the capacity, consciousness and commitment to use its access to the state to resist the power of monopoly capital and to catalyze radical socio-economic transformation.
d) This include the debate on corruption which must be located in the context of the fact that the movement ascended to political office and seeked to use untransformed state power to push for transformation, and this means that the movement failed even before it started.
Our understanding of corruption was captured in a media statement issued by COSATU and the SACP which said that “the fight against corruption is not just an ethical or law and order matter, it has also to be understood as a struggle to roll back the profit-maximising, dog-eats-dog, possessive individualism of the capitalist system. (COSATU, SACP: 2014)
The Deputy General Secretary of the SACP comrade Jeremy Cronin in 2012 wrote an article titled “The unholy trinity – the roots of corruption in our society” said on among others that “the idea that politicians and the state are, more or less by definition, corrupt is liable to undermine our determination to use state power (along with social activism) to deal decisively with corruption. It also helps to obscure the fact that where corruption occurs in the public sector there is, invariably, a private sector corrupter, a Glenn Agliotti or a Brett Kebble.
For every black property tycoon working in collusion with senior public servants to lease buildings at hugely inflated prices to government there is typically a big bank. The bank might well not literally be breaking the law, but its own senior staff involved in the lease will know exactly what is going on. They will quietly earn inflated bonuses for bringing in business, while the bank chairman publicly condemns the corruption of the new “extraordinary breed of politicians.”
He continued and argued that ...there is a failure to recognize that the established white bourgeoisie did not stand idly by in the face of the new, post-1994 political reality. They continued to pursue the agenda of late-apartheid, namely to build a relatively substantial “buffer” black middle strata. This was already the agenda of big capital in the early 1990s negotiations period, for instance.
By the mid-1990s, a key strategy for engineering “social distance” and for consolidating a buffer black elite stratum was the policy of “black economic empowerment”. This amounted to a social pact between elements within the new political elite and established big capital. From the side of established big capital it represented in many respects a re-run of how mining and banking capital had once accommodated itself to the 1948 Afrikaner nationalist political victory.
The first wave of BEE advancements were not necessarily all corrupt (although many questions still surround key early BEE-related moves – notably the arms deal). But the canonization of “BEE” as a central programme of government brought into play a dangerous nexus between political office, personal enrichment, and established capital
He then concluded that ... unless we grasp the triadic nexus, this unholy trinity, we will not begin to understand the systemic roots of corruption in our society. Nor will we be able to develop an effective multi-pronged counter-strategy”
e) Whilst it true that corruption must be fought and those found guilty be arrested, tried and convicted but such a focus must not reduce us into simply corruption busters and anti corruption crusaders because our job is not to clean and give the capitalist system a human face of legitimacy but is to fundamentally destroy it root stem and branch and replace it with socialist alternative.
f) This how the alleged corruptive relationship between the President and the Guptas, a phenomenon that is also replicated at provincial and local government levels where tenderpreneurs are power-brokers and influence outcomes of regional and provincial leadership contests, should be contextualized . This is how the latest revelations that Cde Pravin Gordhan and Nhlanhla Nene were involved in awarding an irregular tender processes should be approached and this is the context of understanding the revelations in the Davies Commission report that from 1985 to 1992 the South African Reserve Bank provided assistance to Bankorp and, for the period 1992 to 1995, to its new owner, Absa. After the existence of that assistance belatedly became public knowledge, its nature and validity became the subject of controversy which was not resolved.” This amount to R2, 25 Billion given to ABSA bank as part of an unlawful apartheid-era bailout. . This report was known to comrade Tito Mboweni, the then governor of Reserve Bank, comrade Trevor Manuel, the then minister of Finance and President Thabo Mbeki but all did nothing to address it.
Strategic Questions :
a) Both the SACP and COSATU have called for comrade Jacob Zuma to step down, what type of a programme do we need to achieve this objective?
b) How can we link our genuine struggles against corruption and the parasitic elements to a visible programme for socialism?
c) What are the possible scenarios beyond comrade Jacob Zuma at the helm of the ANC and the government?.In others words after comrade Jacob Zuma step down, what next?
The state of the African Continent
Illicit financial outflows from Africa
A joint report by the African Development Bank and the Global Financial Integrity Institute of Washington, which was launched at the 48th AFDB Annual meetings in Marrakech, Morocco reveals that the African continent has been a long term net creditor to the rest of the world, when it said, “Africa suffered between US$ 597 billion and US$1.4 trillion in net outflows between 1980 and 2009 after adjusting net recorded transfers for illicit financial outflows. More than one trillion dollars flowed illicitly out of Africa in the past 30 years, dwarfing capital inflows, and stifling economic development”, noted GFI Chief Economist Dev Kar.
Further a 10-member High Level Panel in Illicit Cash Flows which was set up by the African Union (AU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) reported that in its working visit to Mozambique as the seventh country on the Panel’s itinery after the DRC, Kenya, Tunisia, Liberia, Nigeria and Zambia, it made the following observation, “when it comes to illicit cash flows, government corruption and criminal activities are dwarfed by more sophisticated means of draining money; commercial tax evasion and it does not have to be illegal strictly speaking.”
Continued Plunder of African Resources by former Colonial Powers intersecting with Corruption and the Corresponding Regime Change Agenda pursued by former Colonies
France is a good case study of global plundering of Africa’s natural resources through local collaborationism by some African corrupt elites.
According to Mawuna Koutonin, “France made Haiti pay the modern equivalent of US$ 21 billion from 1804 till 1947 for the “losses” caused to French slave traders by the abolition of slavery and the liberation of the Haitian slaves.
When Sekou Toure first President of Guinea liberated his country from France in 1958, the French colonial regime resorted to desperate measures by destroying everything they regard as “benefits from French colonization”, taking away all their property, destroying schools, hospitals, public administration buildings, cars, books, medicines, including cows, horses in the farms being killed and food in warehouses being burned or poisoned.
There are painful conditions imposed by France on its former colonies as part of the neo-colonial relationship extending beyond its formal departure as a colonial power and these are:
1. Automatic confiscation of each country’s national reserves.
2. Right of refusal on any raw material or natural resource discovered in the country.
3. Priority to French interests and companies in public procurement and public bidding.
4. Exclusive right to supply military equipment and train the country military officers.
5. Right for France to pre-deploy troops and intervene militarily in the country to defend its interests.
6. Obligation to make French the official language of the country.
7. Obligation to use France colonial money FCFA, which puts about 500 billion dollars from Africa to its treasury
8. Obligation to send France annual balance and reserve report and without report, the reserve money is forfeited.
9. Renunciation to enter into military alliance with any other country unless authorized by France.
10. Obligation to ally with France in situation of war or global crisis.
Therefore, if Africa is serious about a new and just world order in which the “rise of Africa” shall have real meaning, the following are key:
a) Building a mass based organisation which will lead mass uprisings and mobilisation of the people to rise against those who loot or assist the looting of our natural endowment and abundant resources, particularly the corrupt elites who sustain and service these corrupt systems. The people of Burkina Faso, Tunisia and Egypt have made attempts in that direction, but their gains have been eroded by poor leadership, weak organisation and lack of ideological and political grounding in real alternatives to the crisis of the dominant system
b) Popular rejection of imperialism and all forms of neo-colonialism, including their structures that reinforce the notion of neo-liberalism in economic models of development.
c) Development of organic and local models of re-organizing society to serve the interests of the people and change the power relations and structures of society, fundamentally
d) Development of a progressive intelligentsia loyally serving the just cause of the people and not embedded in the co-opted structural designs of the existing order and its failures. It must be an intelligentsia that refuses to be used against its own people, whatever the personal and material gains at hand. It must forge common cause and even lead the popular struggles of the people for a new and just society.
However, the lessons from the Arab spring is that change in government leadership which is spearheaded by different social movements will not result in fundamental changes in society as NGO’s lack the political legitimacy to bring about fundamental changes in society.
COSATU has consistently been calling for a developmental approach to job creation, which should result in industrialization through the beneficiation of our mineral and other natural resources as a continent.
We have identified infrastructure development as a key anchor of that agenda in order to create jobs, build and develop new industries, sharpen our skills and research capacity, as well as enhance the all-round development of our country and continent.
COSATU has long called for a Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of Southern Africa in view of the destruction by apartheid and colonial underdevelopment of the region
Strategic Questions:
a) How can we build an African trade Union movement encored around advancing Africa’s developmental agenda
b) What are the primary focus areas of socio –economic and political development around which w can mobilize
c) Whilst we have been able to mobilize worker to worker relations in the BRICS countries but we have not been able to mobilize a similar partform around the African Union’s agenda 20163 What is it that we need to do , the develop a visible and popular campaign focusing on th African development agenda?
3. What is to be Done?
A. A need for a Second Radical phase of our transition characterized by radical economic transformation and unmatched corresponding organizational capacity
With all the challenges currently facing the NDR but the current developments in South Africa are also being marked by a new resolve from the ANC- led Alliance and government to advance a second more radical phase of our transition which must be dominantly characterized by radical economic transformation. This represents an opportunity for the left to translate this from being a potential rhetoric into an implementable radical programme. It is the left that must occupy the front ranks to define what should be the content of the second more radical phase of our transition building and enriching the SACP’s “Going to the Root document, existing COSATU policies and the recent ANC perspectives.
B. COSATU’s understanding of the notion of a Second Radical Transition
As COSATU ,we proceed from an understanding that international experience including in our own country has shown that in the context of anti-colonial transformations, the First Transition describes the period of “political consolidation” in the aftermath of the national liberation movements coming into political office. History suggests that during this period, the socio-economic conditions of the working class, the peasants and sections of the petit-bourgeoisie deteriorate.
Beyond a certain point, this gap between the deteriorating socio-economic conditions of the people and the ascendance to political office begins to eat away the cement that holds the multi-class coalition upon which the national liberation movement is based. This then tends to trigger a radical shift in rhetoric. Many left scholars view such radical left-ward shifts in rhetoric more as a desperate attempt by the leading petit-bourgeois elements in the national liberation movement to remain relevant and legitimate to “the masses”, than genuine ideological transformations that sought to establish working class power over the bourgeoisie.
There are a number of examples to demonstrate this. In 1969, seven years after independence, Uganda embarked on what some scholars referred as “the second phase of ideological assertion. In the case of Tanzania, six years after independence, the Tanzania African National Union under Julius Nyerere published the Arusha Declaration of 1967, which “explained the meaning of socialism and self-reliance, and their relevance to Tanzania”, marked a radical shift to the left. ”[4]. In Zambia, four years after independence, the United National Independence Party under Kenneth Kaunda pronounced the Mulungushi Reforms of 1968, which marked Zambia’s Second Transition. In India, the a Second Transition was initiated with the ascendancy of Indira Gandhi as the head of the mass-based and multi-class Indian National Congress in the late 1960’s.
In Malaysia the a Second Transition was instigated by the race riots of 1969, which were sparked by the growing inequalities in Malaysian society, particularly the marginalisation of indigenous Malaysians from ownership and control of their economy. More than 60% of the Malaysian economy was owned by foreigners and more than 97% of the economy was not in the hands of indigenous Malaysians, who constituted more than 65% of the population.
The Second Radical Transition in Malaysia was embodied in the New Economic Policy, which sought to address ownership and control of the economy and elimination of poverty. In South Korea the Second Transition was initiated by the Park regime which came to power through a coup in 1961. This coup occurred in the backdrop of massive protests against continued control of the state apparatus by colonial forces, corruption, the re-establishment of ties with Japan and the on-going socio-economic hardships faced by the masses.
There are therefore two streams of ideological orientation that emerge from the concrete-historical treatment of the notion of Second Radical Transition. One stream is the more recent version, inter-laced with neo-liberalism, which seeks to keep existing property relations intact and merely wants to perfect the functioning of the existing system of capitalist accumulation. Another ideological stream, which is left-oriented with strong socialist under-tones, seeks to tackle property relations as the starting point, and thus wants to lay the basis for the development of society along egalitarian lines.
In historical terms ,the “First Transition represent a phase in which economies that were part of the socialist world moved away from central planning towards “free market” economics. In this perspective, the “Second Transition” describes the consolidation and stabilisation of the capitalist mode of production in these economies. However it would be a mistake to divorce these transitions from the concrete-historical context within which they were initiated. For example, one set of these transitions has to do with transformations out of a colonial situation and another, more recent set has to do with transformations from central planning to the consolidation of “free-market capitalism” and the modifications of development strategies within the context of the operation of market forces.
What a second radical phase of Transition should not be
Firstly as COSATU we remain vigilant in that the notion of a Second more radical phase of our Transition is not used to mean transformations that either seek to consolidate the capitalist mode of production or to amend the national accumulation strategy without fundamentally transforming the underlying property relations, and without effecting a fundamental shift in ideological orientation.
Secondly, in this context we argue that the second more radical transition cannot and must not be predicated on the National Development Plan. The fact of the matter is that the revolutionary class forces, especially the primary motive force, the working class, do not share the neo-liberal approach of the NDP, which seeks to effect cosmetic changes to Colonialism of a Special Type, by consolidating and perfecting the mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production and imperialist domination. Our perspective on the strategic objectives of the NDR remains:
“Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation. We have suffered more than just national humiliation. Our people are deprived of their due in the country`s wealth; their skills have been suppressed and poverty and starvation has been their life experience. The correction of these centuries-old economic injustices lies at the very core of our national aspirations. We do not underestimate the complexities which will face a people`s government during the transformation period nor the enormity of the problems of meeting economic needs of the mass of the oppressed people. But one thing is certain - in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals, be they white or black”.
The NDP rejects this approach with a wave of the hand and instead creates a fog in understanding by wrongly asserting that that our problems are education, health, infrastructure, etc., as if these are not manifestations of the deep-seated structural crisis of the capitalist property relations that define Colonialism of a Special Type.
Thirdly a Second more radical phase of our Transition must not be predicated on a fallacious notion of an attempt to separate GEAR from neo-liberalism. Neoliberalism is characterized by the reduced role of the state in the economy, privatization, trade and financial liberalization, labour market de-regulation, restrained fiscal policy, inflation-targeting as the overriding goal of monetary policy and central bank independence. All these embody features of what came to be known as the Washington consensus. They were implemented under GEAR in the following examples: trade liberalization was effected through tariff reduction, financial liberalization through exchange controls relaxation, privatization through the sale of Telkom (Vodacom), unbundling of ISCOR, inflation targeting and fiscal austerity, etc.
Fourthly as COSATU we do not agree with the argument that the need for a second radical transition has been induced by the reality that although we have liberalised and integrated into the global economy and we have macroeconomic stability, the structure of the apartheid colonial economy has remained the same”. This is mentioned as if the so called “stability” is the “stability” of something else, and not that of “the apartheid colonial economy”. But how can we agree that there has been macroeconomic stability when income distribution, unemployment and poverty have worsened in the democratic decade? How can we really agree that this “liberalisation and integration into the global economy” and the alleged “macroeconomic stability” are not true pillars of genuine neo-liberalism?
We also know that this so-called “tactical detour”, put structural impediments for effective implementation of the NDR. For example, allowing conglomerates to de-list from the JSE and take the money out, open doors for foreign-imperialist domination of South African banks and monopoly industry, etc. These major interventions cannot be called “tactical detours” because they generated huge barriers for the achievement of the long-term objectives of the revolution.
What should be the content of the second Radical phase of our Transition?
There must be an unambiguous re-assertion of the Freedom Charter, as the over-arching document that should guide a Second more radical phase of our Transition. Indeed our movement’s proposals on economic transformation have always been centred on the need to implement the Freedom Charter and to advance the proposals of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The pillars of our economic transformation programme should remain:
1. Redistribution of Economic Power, Resources and Income
2. Democratising Patterns of Ownership and Control of the Economy
3. Meeting Basic Needs
4. Industrial Development
5. Environmental Sustainability
6. The Development of the Southern African Region
On the redistribution of economic power, resources and incomes, the policies of a Second more radical Transition must revolve around the following :
a. The need to reduce protection of property for the benefit of all citizens
One of the fundamental elements of SA’s free market capitalist economy is the protection of property rights which goes beyond protection of investment in real property and includes intangibles such as intellectual property rights e.g. Patents and shares. Protection of property is one of the main pillars of the neo-liberal agenda as set out in the GEAR policy and this protection is entrenched in section 25 of the Constitution (the so-called property clause). There are various interpretations that have been given to section 25. The thorny issue on section 25 is compensation. However, compensation is not always at issue as there can be expropriation without compensation. Despite this, the existence of section 25 has strengthened the bargaining power of the wealthy at the expense of the public and as a result, it has delayed and frustrated the pace and content of transformation
If South Africa has to expedite industrialization the government must take back or at least direct the policies of state companies that have been privatized such as SASOL, Telkom and Arcelor-Mittal South Africa (formerly ISCOR). It would be impossible to industrialize if certain rich people and foreign investors still want to use section 25 to intimidate government in not transferring the wealth to the working class and the poor. Section 25 is a guarantor of income and assets inequalities and ensures that this inequality is transferred from generation to generation.
b) To ensure decisive State intervention which must also include increasing state-ownership of the financial system, including insurance companies, in order to support social and economic development.
In this regard, the resolution to create a State Bank, operating on the same platform and scale as current commercial banks is non-negotiable
In terms of the neo liberal economic policy called GEAR which is still the basis of our economic policy as spelled out in the NDP, the government had to intervene in the economy using the private sector to deliver on its socio-economic development obligations. As a result, the State has been relegated to being a tool to transfer funds from the fiscus to the private sector through among others privatization and public private partnership contracts which are not transparent. The state needs to intervene in the economy directly by being involved in the production of goods and services in particular in the major sectors such as production of machinery and equipment, chemical, steel automotive, banking and construction sectors and food. In order to be actively and directly involved there is urgent need for a state bank. It is a misnomer that the majority of citizens in capitalist state such as SA, do not have access to capital to produce goods and services and create jobs. The state should no longer rely on the monopolistic banking sector to deliver its developmental and radical transformation mandate. All BRICS countries have state banks and there is no reason why SA should be an exception.
In order to prevent the international economic crisis from spilling over into the SA economy again there should be regulation of banks in terms of which financial products they can sell, and the price that they can charge for their services. Many consumers have been sold bad credit because of non- regulation and a false belief that banks would promote the interests of the public, a belief which has led to the financial and economic crisis in the US and to other economies.
According to the National Credit Regulator,[5] as at March 2016 credit bureaus held records for 23.88 million credit active consumers of which, 14.33 million (60.0%) were in good standing while the balance of 9.55 million (40.0%) had impaired records. This means that close to 10 million credit consumers are struggling to service their debts and about 449 467 consumers were under debt review which is similar to business rescue for companies. The high cost of living coupled with low wages means that household debt constitutes a crisis. The high indebtedness shows the total failure of SA neo liberal economic policies. The indebtedness affects not only those that have jobs but also pensioners. Whilst the racial profile of debtors is not disclosed the majority will be black as they do not in the main have collateral. Therefore, the financial system continues to exclude African in particular black people from the economy.
Already developmental finance is provided for by various state entities. However, these entities are mostly focused on big projects and are regulated by different laws and accountable to different ministries.
The Governor of the Reserve Bank should be instructed to register and license a state bank and ensure that all legislative barriers are removed towards this objective. This bank would provide loans to the poor at lower rates compared to commercial banks in particular to finance the establishment of factories, the creation of local technology and creation of jobs. Since this would be a state bank it should be exempted from normal requirements of establishing a bank.
c) The Freedom Charter says the people shall share in the country’s wealth. It then proceeds to call for the democratising patterns of ownership and control of the economy.
This includes the fact that the state must exercise its popular mandate to implement the Freedom Charter provisions. This will on amongst others also include the following:
i. The democratic state “must, where necessary, expropriate property in the public interest, or for public purpose, in accordance with the constitution to achieve equity, redress, social justice and sustainable development”[6].
ii. Transfer monopoly industries (e.g. forestry, petro-chemicals, steel, and metals fabrication) to the people as a whole.
iii. Breaking the power of monopoly capital and white monopoly capital in particular, which continues to own decisive industries such as petro-chemicals, steel, finance, wholesale and retail and the agricultural value-chain
iv. Improving access to quality and affordable basic services such as education, healthcare, housing and basic infrastructure by working class communities, including rural areas
v. Measures to reduce income inequality through among other instruments, progressive taxation and redistributive public expenditure
d) To ensure Land and Agrarian Reform
The nature of the land question is inherently problematic due to the difficult negotiations that surrounded the constitutional framework. Land reform has not been envisaged as a wider process of agrarian reform that will be instrumental in rearranging the class structure of the rural economy. The progress made on land reform has been slow and most of the present targets have not been met.
The colonial apartheid system placed about 87 percent of the land and the mineral resources that lie in its belly in the hands of 13 percent of the population. Consequently, white South Africans wield real economic power while the overwhelming majority of black South Africans are still identified with unemployment and abject poverty.[7] The challenges facing the majority of South African of unemployment and poverty can be directly traced back land dispossession and poll taxes.
In most of the land claims, land restitution is in the form of financial compensation than through land and thereby defeating the objectives of land restitution. This is an indication of the severity of the challenges that our people are faced with, including the absence of alternative sources of income, which again, is a consequence of the Natives Land Act.[8]
Compensation for land represents an opportunity cost for government. In 2015/16 the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights received the budget of 2.6 billion rand. The bulk of the funds were disbursements to claimant households via financial compensation or for the purchase of land in the amount of some R2, 065bil. Instead of paying land owners huge amounts of money this money should be dedicated towards agrarian reform and ensuring that ordinary people produce food in order to ensure food security.
One of the radical laws introduced by the ANC led govnemrent is the Policy on Strengthening Relative Rights of People .which requires a farm owner to retain 50% of the ownership of the farm and to cede 50% to workers depending on the length of their service. This policy should be supported. However, it is worrying that the policy may be abused by famers who may be interested only in receiving government subsidies but failing to declare dividends to farm worker-owners. [9].
The current legal framework on land as set out in section 25 of the constitution entrenches and perpetuates income and asset inequalities. The government should own all the land and land should only be leased to the citizens and foreigners
Having mentioned all this, we insist that without putting the transfer of the basic wealth of the country to the ownership of the people as a whole, social development initiatives will only achieve cosmetic progress. In fact the basis for genuine social emancipation lies in decisively tackling the underlying capitalist relation that defines Colonialism of a Special Type. This on among others includes ensuring the following:
a) Extending public ownership in critical sectors (e.g. pharmaceuticals, capital goods and equipment, cement, construction)
b) Promoting co-operatives (e.g. in clothing and textiles, agricultural value-chain, etc.) and ensure that working class power is promoted in the economy
c) Supporting SMME’s and the private sector, where these are not in conflict with the overall strategy of economic development
d) Putting limits on foreign ownership across all sectors, with specific limits determined on a case-by-case basis, cognisant of the foreign exchange implications
On Meeting Basic Needs,
The ANC needs to consistently maintain that this should be at the centre of economic development and must include:
a. Access to quality education, skills development and training, healthcare and housing should be extended in working class communities in both urban and rural areas
b. Access to quality and affordable public transport, including by people in rural areas
c. Universal access to quality and affordable basic services such as water, energy and sanitation
d. Provide the appropriate macroeconomic framework, underpinned by the restructuring of the entire tax system with a view to introduce progressive taxation, to finance meeting the basic needs of our people
On industrial development, we need to resolutely pursue a strategy to build and broaden industrial linkages in line with the RDP proposals. In this regard, industrial strategy must identify strategic and critical value-chains that should constitute a cohesive domestic economic base. This includes the following interventions:
a. Beneficiation of minerals and raw agricultural products
b. Using broad-based infrastructure development as a crucial link to support industrial development and social upliftment
c. Directing the inputs that are produced by monopoly industries, e.g. petro-chemicals (SASOL) and steel (Arcelor-Mittal), towards supporting domestic downstream industries
d. Promoting local procurement by putting in place a system of incentives and disincentives
e. Implementing a developmental trade policy, e.g. tax on selected exports and in some instances export bans, tariff adjustment to protect local industries and imposition of import duties
f. Improve access to finance to targeted sectors and linking this to developmental goals
g. Building strong links between agriculture and manufacturing, also as part of a strategy for rural development
h. Provide an appropriate fiscal and monetary policy framework to support industrial development
On Environmental sustainability, the ANC must adopt a policy stance to ensure that industrial and social processes:
a. Minimize the disruption of natural processes
b. Limit environmental degradation and adverse changes in bio-diversity
c. Combat, soil erosion and desertification
d. Reduce emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide
e. Reduce the pollution of water streams and ground water
On the Development of Southern Africa and Africa, our policy positions must involve the following proposed interventions:
a. Promotion of worker rights, democratic institutions and the creation of decent work
b. State-led and state-driven infrastructure development as a primary means to integrate the regional economy
c. State-driven and state-directed industrial development and trade policy to support broad-based regional industrialisation and job-creation
d. Addressing the problem of forced migration, especially due to social and economic hardship faced by the working class and the poor in the region
e. Support food, water and energy security of the region through improving infrastructure roll-out and maintenance
f. Improved regional access to basic services such as health services, quality education, skills development and training.
An urgent need to Convene a Job Summit
The South African economy is shedding jobs particularly in the primary sectors; agriculture and mining, which should be the engine of growth. The Labour Relations Act in sections 189 and 189A contain flexible labour law that favours employers. These sections state that employers have a right to dismiss workers for various reasons including the lack of economic growth, decrease in the market shares, imports, introduction of technology and improved working methods. Courts have interpreted this flexibility to mean that employers can dismiss workers in order to increase their profits. In essence workers cannot protect or defend themselves against these ‘lawful retrenchments.’
The South African economy has continued to shed jobs in all sectors, except construction and community services. As at 2017 March there were close to 9 million people who are unemployed. The number of people who are the recipients of social grants (currently about 17 million) is now exceeding the number of the people who have work (about 15 million). This is clear indication of the failure of government to preserve current jobs and to put in place viable job creating policies.
Government has come up with radical policy interventions including the industrial policy action plans and special economic zones. However, these policies tend to favour big capital projects and foreign companies than local and small companies. The process of establishing factories and reviving industrial parks in the former TBVC states or homelands is progressing at a snail’s pace. The failure to transform the productive sector has resulted in government incentives being channeled to mainly white companies and factories being concentrated in coastal cities; Cape Town and Durban and in Gauteng which is unacceptable because SA has 9 provinces. The inputs and final products that used in the infrastructure projects such as steel have been imported rather than produced locally.
The poultry sector is under pressure from imports. It is projected that about 5000 jobs would be lost in the sector. Rainbow Chicken; one of the largest chicken producers has published a notice for the sale of some of its poultry farms in KZN province and other chicken producers have also issued out notices of possible retrenchments. According to chicken producers, the reasons for the retrenchment is that they are unable to compete with imports of chicken leg quarters mainly from the EU countries because these imports are dumped and sold in SA at a lower price and in order to survive they have to lay-off workers. Trade policy tools such as tariffs are not available to SA because SA signed a trade agreement in 1999 wherein it promised not use tariffs against imports from EU countries. South Africa made a mistake by joining the WTO as a rich country. SA should review its WTO commitments if not possible it should withdraw and rather conduct its external trade on a bilateral basis.
The poultry sector like many other sectors in the economy is untransformed. The sale of the chicken farms is an opportunity for government to introduce worker owned companies and co-operatives in the sector and thereby preserving jobs at the same time.
The coal sector is likely to shed jobs because of the introduction of renewable energy. As part of SA’s commitment under the international climate change agreement to reduce the use of coal in the generation of power, SA has committed to introduce renewable energy into the electricity grid. What our policy approaches failed to recognise is the belief that renewable energy should create than destroy jobs. In addition is the failure to fully understand the meaning of just transition.
Other sectors are also shedding jobs including the services sector and the new jobs that are created in the sector are more casual, non-permanent and more precarious. The companies in the mining sector are also going through retrenchment procedures. Some of these are justified whilst many others are based on greed or increasing dividends to the owners of capital.
The Social Transformational Content of the Second radical phase of Our Transition
Our perspectives on social transformation must draw from the Freedom Charter as the foundation document of our movement. In doing this, there is a need to always maintain a dialectical understanding that social development provides the basis for the masses to effectively participate in the process of political and economic transformation and that, political and economic transformation should provide the basis for social upliftment. Viewed in this reciprocal dialectical inter-related fashion, it becomes clear that the idea that social development interventions produce a “culture of dependency” whilst those interventions that are specifically aimed at addressing economic challenges are “developmental” is misleading. It is from this perspective that we should approach the process of radical social transformation.
The leading issues that occupy pride of place in discussions on social transformation are numerous. Here, we highlight a few and signal the change in approach that is required to give revolutionary content to the Second radical Transition. Firstly social cohesion must be conceptualized in its concrete-historical form, to deal with the discrimination of people with disabilities, the class, race, gender polarisation that continues to define South African society. Sports, Recreation and Cultural industries must be transformed to route the exploitation of workers and to change the power relation that obtain in the Sports and Creative industries. However, as the major events such as the Rugby and the Soccer World Cups have shown, social cohesion will remain elusive unless the basic wealth in our country is transferred to the people as a whole. We should draw lessons from countries that have undergone “Second Transitions” in this regard.
Secondly, a comprehensive strategy of youth development should be developed to include areas such as education and skills development including apprenticeship schemes, youth brigades covering areas such as coaching in different sports codes, health, literacy and green economy and developing a national youth cooperative scheme. The most important area of emphasis is to restructure the education system so that young people enjoy a variety of options in the post-school education. In this regard the on-going efforts to transform the post-school and training environment and the intention to drastically expand the FET sector should be escalated. Nevertheless, it should remain the primary responsibility of the state to facilitate school-to-work transition through effective use of its organs, developing a forecasting and planning system, and hosting an up-to-date database on labour demand by various sectors of the economy. It should be the primary responsibility of the state to ensure that no young person fall through the cracks in the education and training system.
Thirdly, as part of the anti-poverty strategy, there is a need to define a basket of social services and the social wage to which every South African is entitled. This basket must include defining the quality of human settlements, access to quality health and education, affordable, safe and reliable public transport, food security and access to a balanced diet, comprehensive social security and adequate social protection. In this context the idea of a “social protection floor” must be pursued and speedily implemented as an integral part of the Second Radical Transition. In this context the design and formulation of the national social security fund should be subjected to wide consultation, and must be designed so that it contains within it, the principle of redistribution.
Fourthly, the health system needs to be transformed by first putting an end to the current two-tier health system and moving towards a fully socialised health system. The private sector must be controlled to ensure that it supports social development imperatives. The state must finance health care under the NHI through three mechanisms (a) general revenue, which will provide the bulk of funding, (b) mandatory progressive contribution for anyone who pays personal income tax; and (c) payroll tax from employers.
The principle that should underpin healthcare transformation should be redistribution. Primary Health Care must continue to be the central focus of all health policies and must include awareness and prevention of diseases. A comprehensive strategy of human resource development for the health system must be pursued and co-ordinated with the education and skills development strategies. A key feature that should define the health system is that the state must play a leading role in the ownership and control of sectors that produce critical inputs into the health system. In this regard, we have to reiterate our demand for a 100% state-owned state pharmaceutical company.
Other proposals that should be considered in driving social development include a) Mainstreaming of indigenous knowledge systems, b) ensuring mass-based access to quality and compulsory Early Childhood Development, c) dealing decisively with alcohol and substance abuse, d) providing access to housing and the development of human settlements, e) ensuring a state-led water provision for growth and development, and f) mitigating the effects of climate change within the overarching framework of Just Transition.
In relation to education, we propose that the Policy Conference must develop a coherent plan to implement the free education resolution, and that the curriculum content of the education system as a whole contain an element that engenders among the youth a sense of social consciousness and progressive internationalism. This is in line with the Freedom Charter: “The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honor human brotherhood, liberty and peace”. We also note that the corporatisation of post-schooling education impacts negatively on young people whose families are caught up in poverty and unemployment, because of the increase in fees and the inability to access loans or bursaries and those historical divisions and inequalities that continue to define the education landscape must be decisively eradicated.
The principles that should underpin the education system and policy must therefore be: a) redistribution, the urgent need to eliminate the three-tiered structure of the education system which features: private institutions, model-C schools, and ordinary public schools and to redistribute resources towards ordinary public schools in working class and poor communities, b) promoting a culture of learning and teaching, c) promotion of decent work, d) promoting a sense of social consciousness and of human rights, and should be geared towards elimination of race, gender and class oppression and discrimination.
An important aspect of the education system is quality. Five aspects define quality education: the learning environment, what learners and educators bring curriculum content, teaching and learning processes and support systems for learners and teachers, outcomes of the education system. Although the education system is in crisis in all these aspects, it is the learning environment that is the most pressing. The challenge is to ensure that initiatives to improve the quality of education must have, at the core, the creation of decent work. The infrastructure and human resource backlogs in education offer an opportunity for the state to: a) directly support the relevant industrial sectors; b) expand employment directly by providing bulk infrastructure, c) support local communities, especially co-operatives, which produce basic building materials, such as bricks[10].
The Internationalist Content a Second radical Phase of our Transition
Our basic premise is that the we are essentially an anti-imperialist movement. We wish to proceed and reflect on a few points to be noted in our engagement. The most salient points to be noted in this regard are that we are both a product and champion of a liberation struggle that was an integral part of the global anti-imperialist struggle.
Secondly, the transformation of multilateral institutions to be more democratic, accommodative of developing countries’ interests and more transparent and accountable must be pursued with much more vigour.
Thirdly, the G20 and other such exclusive clubs are never meant to be structures of new thinking for alternatives to the dominant paradigm, but an extension of the imperialist management power structure through the co-option. Fourthly, there is a need for a thorough review of ANC and Government international performance since the Polokwane and Mangaung outcomes and how that performance relates to our profoundly progressive perspectives for a new and just world order.
Fifthly, the centrality of the alliance in driving a new, progressive and bold international agenda and collectively committing ourselves to actively campaign on key international solidarity issues should be non-negotiable. Sixthly, a thorough discussion on Africa and our approach to the crisis facing our continent in order to develop a comprehensive approach rooted in the active mobilisation of our people is very critical and very urgent. Seventhly, defining an activist international policy is about localising international issues, struggles and experiences, internationalising local issues, struggles and experiences.
We further note that the global economic crisis has not only exposed the underlying contradictions of the capitalist system and its fragility, but has also created further possibilities for the consolidation of progressive alternatives. In view of the new emerging possibilities, have we effectively exploited those spaces to advance a progressive alternative agenda than always feeling held hostage by the “balance of forces” in the abstract.
The meaning and essence of the transformation of multilateralism and the democratisation of global power relations needs to be clarified. South Africa seeks to integrate itself into the existing and undemocratic global power structure rather than fight to dismantle it. This will, and does have, an effect on the momentum of the south-south agenda and the honesty with which we can be relied upon as a trustworthy partner in the same.
Ascendance to, and use of strategic levers of power in the global arena requires absolute clarity about what we seek to do with them, in whose interests and who are our allies in that pursuit. In this regard, our being in the UN Security Council could be an opportunity to practically advance some of our perspectives much more profoundly. In this regard, we must be able to set precise goals of our participation and leadership to assert a new ethos and goals in line with our values.
Peace-building has become primarily a military project delinked from popular forces on the ground throughout the continent. This requires us to change the approach in order to demilitarise peace-building and root it amongst the masses and their popular forces. This raises the need for a new perspective and approach to peace-keeping and building stability on the continent. In particular, we refer to the lack of emphasis on the active mobilisation of the people through building partnerships with progressive civil society formations in the war-torn countries as an integral part of this strategy.
The continued militarisation of peace-keeping has proven unsustainable and costly in both human and financial terms. It cannot succeed on its own without the active mobilisation of the people on a progressive platform. This is what international studies experts call the careful combination of both hard and soft power in the advancement of international policy objectives. The role of our country on the continent, particularly in peace-keeping missions requires a rethink of our approaches in view of the massive resource-investment and the little returns in terms of establishing sustainable conditions for peace in most of the countries where we are involved. In this regard, such situations should at the same time assist us deepen progressive hegemony on the continent.
We note and welcome various interventions that aim to consolidate and strengthen the power of DIRCO and other international state and related actors, such as the South African Partnership Development Agency (SAPDA), but believe that DIRCO must have the power and capacity to co-ordinate all international engagements, including oversight on their implementation. This will avoid fragmentation and competition, but will also enhance effectiveness, synergies and maximum results.
The role of civil society in general and the revolutionary alliance particularly, in the ANC’s international programme is rather accidental and does not demonstrate a clear recognition of their role and meaningful place in enhancing the advancement of a progressive global agenda. It is clear that state actors have a limit as to the extent to which they can be able to advance a consistently progressive international agenda, hence the importance of civil society in engaging other key sites of the international power arena.
The South-south agenda is crucial, but in its current manner, it is exclusively a state project and does not draw in the active participation of the majority of the people and their organisations. This is why we must always emphasise that only a consistently involved society will defend a popular agenda. There is no other way to transform the global reality than to forge powerful alliances and partnerships with the rest of the dominated global south in order to confront the power of the rich and industrialised countries and the power of multinational companies. .
The growing tendency to shy away from the fact that trade and multinational companies have become the most fierce and central weapons of neo-imperialism and must be engaged as sites of an anti-imperialist struggle disarms our engagement in this critical arena of our struggle. In this regard, we are called upon to link this with the issue above in order to create a common front against imperialism, particularly working with countries of the south, which have proven to be determined to rid their countries of the corrupting tendencies of neo-liberal domination.
Particular attention must be paid to the home-ground, SADC. This region will be critical in the ability of our country to realise its objectives or fail. With the deepening levels of poverty, growing levels of autocracy in some of the countries and the danger of instability resulting from all these, South Africa cannot avoid carrying some of the burdens associated with such situations.
The xenophobic violence is an example of such instances. Therefore, far bolder steps are needed to confront the situations in Swaziland and Zimbabwe, particularly. We need more than just positive statements, but bold and concrete plans to make a difference. In this regard, the size of our country and its economy would enhance that objective, particularly as it relates to Swaziland where the SACU revenue subsidize royal greed and tinkhundla oppression, to the tune of about 65%. A discussion around SADC would require deeper clarity around the democratisation of SADC as an institution.
Finally, the task of popularising international work is only through consistent campaigning and popular involvement of the masses in both country-focused solidarity and issue-focused solidarity. Even though there are references to campaigns work, but clearly, this has not been successful in previous instances since the 1994 democratic breakthrough. The conspicuous absence of the ANC in international campaigns has resulted in the non-involvement of the mass base in such issues and therefore, the little interest in them.
The effective pursuit of international relations requires the necessary political will, dedicated capacity and resources. Having clarified ourselves about what we want and how best to engage the terrain, we are called upon to assemble all the requisites for real work to happen. We need to identify the following as priority tasks in our struggles for a new just world order: a) immediate development of a commonly shared alliance International relations programme that will constitute a platform for engagement and struggle involving our mass base in these issues, b) creation of an International Solidarity Forum driven by the alliance and coordinating all international work by the alliance and civil society as a whole in a cohesive manner, c) re-alignment of our IR objectives with our core domestic values as enshrined in our Freedom Charter and in line with the most progressive traditions of international best practice. The experiences of Cuba’s internationalist outlook, both in theory and practice provide rich and useful lessons for us and the global south in general, which should be emulated,
Further issues also include a) the urgency of building capacity for the effective discharging of international responsibilities requires that we build effective machinery in our structures. The ANC decision to strengthen and upgrade its international department to equal these massive responsibilities is a positive pointer in that direction, but must be so positioned as to co-ordinate well with alliance partners, who equally have to develop their own infrastructure for such purposes, b) on the campaigning front, we need to commemorate jointly an Annual International solidarity day on various thematic issues chosen for the particular year. This would strengthen our capacity to mobilise our people around global issues of concern to humanity and drive the public discourse on international issues, as opposed to liberals determining the public agenda in this area and c) the development of our IR cadreship, which is an absolute priority.
Strategic questions
a) What are the non negotiables regarding the outcomes of a second more radical phase of our transition which must be characterized by radical economic transformation?
b) What type of organizational corresponding capacity do we require to take up the task of advancing a second more radical phase of our transition?
What are the overarching Organizational tasks to be undertaken by the federation moving forward?
Strengthening Cosatu Engines
The most urgent task to be undertaken by the federation given the current balance of forces is to build the organisation learning and guided by the words of the late comrade Govan Mbeki when he said that “experience has taught, however, that a lot more requires to be known about organising if the product of our efforts and activities, i.e. organisation, is to be effective. And if the oppressed and exploited are to achieve their end, viz to take over power, they must build effective organisational machinery. And to have such organizational machinery there is no room for haphazard and half-hearted measures. The task has to be tackled seriously and systematically.
The priority task is to build our organizations including the Alliance based on the following:
1. Through Back to Basics campaign which will include the following priority activities :
a) Building workplace organization through service and retention of membership - Reassert the unique identity of COSATU
b) Building workplace Organisation based on the listening campaign aimed at providing service to members
c) Organize the unorganized, increase trade union membership and density
d) Take forward Unity and Solidarity work amongst affiliates
e) Building our Local and Provincial Structures
2. Building the Alliance through dynamic link between State power and mass power:
3. Assert the mass character of the ANC led movement and force the Practice of the Mass Line:
4. Forcing Accountability of deployees on the implementation of progressive policies
5. Building the Alliance through political Education activities which are linked to campaigns on the ground
6. Building the Alliance through keeping dynamic contact with COSATU deployees:
7. To aggressively construct a developmental state based on an understanding that such a state will not be decreed but will be constructed based on its developmental tasks which are in line with the strategic objectives of the National Democratic Revolution.
Strategic questions
1. The central committee is a platform for mid- term review. We have had various sessions focusing on building the organisation and by now we know what works and what does not work. In your view what needs to be done to build COSATU and its unions into an organisation that attracts workers and make it to be an organisation of first choice amongst workers? What organizational elements needs to be there in our unions to define them exemplary unions ?
2. COSATU does not have the constitutional authority to intervene in unions, this includes inability to deal with unions which do not implement COSATU resolutions. This also include the fact that COSATU is always stopped from interacting directly with affilliates membership : (a) What is it that needs to be done to change this around? (b) at what stage should COSATU be allowed to interact directly with its membership in the affected union?
3. Our constitution does not talk about the possibility of empowering COSATU to effect disciplinary measures against individual leaders of union and yet there are cases where the ill discipline of a leader gets conflated with the union. This may wrongly lead to disciplinary action directed at the union than an individual leader. How can this misnomer be addressed?
4. In both our 2015 Special National Congress and in our 12th National Congress we enumerated various challenges facing the federation and amongst these was business unionism. How can this challenge be addressed in a sustainable manner?
5. Part of our political engagement strategy include being in Alliance , working at NEDLAC and interfacing with parliamentary committees but in all these platforms we are always confronted with a challenge of being treated as junior partner by the ANC. For an example some ministers do not attend NEDLAC meetings, the Alliance resolutions are ignored by comrades deployed in government , we raise issues in the ANC and we get ignored etc. We have discussed the fact that part of the problems many of us pay more allegiance to our political allies than to COSATU and the union they lead .What is it that we need to do as a federation to assert the authority of the federation , our unions and more importantly the voice of workers in these platforms of engagement?
6. COSATU has prioritized various campaigns and we have been implementing them with vigour but the resources we put in the implementation of these campaign is not equivalent with the results – We invest more only to get less returns. How can we ensure that our campaigns produce the expected results.
7. One of the challenges of the 21st century include the transformation of the workplace and the changing nature of work imposed by economic changes including the fourth industrial revolution. How should the federation respond to these challenges both organizationally and politically?
8. We have assessed that over a period of time our unions are no longer taking up solidarity campaigns to ensure support amongst each other . What is that your unions should do to ensure consistent revolutionary solidarity work with other unions? What is that needs to be done to ensure that unions are able to help each other to grow a part of addressing the challenge of dominance by a few unions in the federation
What type of organisational and leadership capacity is required by the current environment and what should be done to address it. This include organisational capacity relating to technology , to systems and structures . It include the human resource capacity relating to organizers ,other strategic staff , shopstewards and elected leadership
Conclusion
Marxism-Leninism defines a “possibility” as a potential reality and “reality “as a realized possibility.
The real task confronting the CEC is to translate all the possibilities articulated above into reality in the court of real life. This can only happen when there is a conscious leadership at the forehead of workers struggles, which can see the conjectural opportunities and act to decisively seize them.
We have no doubt that COSATU has such a leadership in the CEC and in affiliates at all levels.
The choice is between ignoring issues raised herein and standing up to implement a programme that will decisively address them.
Amandla!
Issued by COSATU, 29 May 2017
Footnotes:
[1] Oxfam 2016 report
[3] The Nature of the South African Ruling Class, ANC: 1985
[4] Nyerere J. (1977). The Arusha Declaration: 10 Years After.
[5] NCR Annual Report 2015/16
[6] ANC 52nd Conference Resolution 7 on Rural Development, Land Reform and Agrarian Change.
[7] Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng in AGRI SA v Minister of Minerals and Energy 2013.
[8] Annual report for Commission on Restitution of Land Rights 2015/16.
[9] Ben Cousins Land Reform in SA is Sinking, can it be saved?
[10] See COSATU’s Growth Path document for more details.
