Economic Freedom Fighters 1st National People's Assembly Discussion Documents:
People's Power for Economic Freedom
ECONOMIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS' PROGRAMME TOWARDS JOBS FOR ALL:
INTRODUCTION:
This concise perspective provides a cogent programme towards creation of jobs for all in South Africa. Often, political parties provide abstract and in most cases impossible solutions to the crisis of unemployment and therefore poverty in South Africa. As a movement for economic emancipation, we carry the obligation to provide cogent and implementable solutions to the crises of unemployment in South Africa. The key propositions are informed and guided by the EFF's Founding Manifesto, which clearly defines the content and form of economic transformation programme the EFF is in pursuit of.
A thorough understanding of South Africa's crisis of joblessness and unemployment in South Africa requires a thorough understanding of the nature and form of South African capitalism. For purposes of this discussion, it is important to properly dissect the nature and form of capitalism in South Africa in order to help locate and understand the nature and character of South African capitalism. The following three aspects should be understood in context for purpose of the proposals that will follow:
a) Racialised capitalism.
b) Minerals-energy complex.
c) Capitalist concentration in few hands.
These subsections will help in the thorough understanding of the primary research question, but also enlighten the secondary question of how capitalism in the form it is influences every aspect of South African society. This understanding will also explain why South African capitalism fail to absorb the entirety of its workforce.
a) Racialised capitalism.
The emergence of capitalism in South Africa predates the introduction of racial segregation and both these predate the emergence of apartheid. Apartheid is a politico-social system of racial and racist exclusion, discrimination, suppression, oppression and exploitation of the black and African majority by a set of rules and brutal actions of the white minorities in South Africa. Apartheid was a means to consolidate and continue the racial capitalism which had been definitive of South Africa since the beginning of capitalism in the country.
The notion of apartheid as a consolidation of racial capitalism in the political territory should be understood within the context and reality that the very unity between the four colonies of Transvaal, Orange Free State, Cape and Natal to form the Union of South Africa in 1910 was another major step to consolidate racial capitalism, which had begun with the arrival of settlers in the 15th century. The laws and legislations that were passed by parliaments in this regard were consolidation of the conquest that had been in place since the battles and wars of dispossession were fought and won by the colonial settlers.
Apartheid was in itself not the beginning of racial capitalism, but the most brutal, racist political, social and economic form to consolidate racial capitalism which had been definitive of South Africa since the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. Its racist segregationist laws, legislations and practices affected even sectors which would otherwise be understood as pre-capitalist, mainly for the continued supply of cheap labour to the Mines and Farms.
It is important to highlight the fact that South Africa's capitalism emerged, consolidated and triumphed on the backdrop of racial segregation. It was primarily capitalist interests which gave shape and content to the many racial segregation policies that followed colonial conquest and subjugation of the black majority and Africans in particular to capitalist exploitation. Political systems in place were designed to legitimate the continued exploitation of black labourers, preserve private property and guarantee continued profitability of factions of capitalist interests, mainly centred on the extraction of mineral resources.
Post discovery of minerals resources in South Africa, emerging mining capitalists were the first through the Chamber of Mines to promulgate and advocate for racial segregation. Following the Glen Gray Act which compelled Africans to pay taxes and rents as a way of forcing them into wage-labour particularly in the Mines, the Chamber of Mines was the first South African capitalist entity, representing mining capital to push for legislation which excluded Africans from mainstream economic participation, (Lipton, 1986: 119 - 121).
Lipton (1986) illustrates that
"The mines, like the white farms, had immense difficulty securing sufficient labour at a price that it was economic for them to pay. Mine owners, like white farmers, therefore tried to find ways of forcing blacks to work for them, and of reducing the competition from higher urban wages. They supported restrictions on black land ownership, as well as taxes to force them to work for cash wages. Cecil Rhodes, leading mine owner and Premier of the Cape Colony, sponsored the 1894 Glen Grey Act... its land tenure and tax provisions would, he said, act as a ‘gentle stimulant' to blacks to work and ‘to remove them from the life of sloth and laziness... teach them the dignity of labour... and make them give some return for our wise and good government" (Lipton, 1986: 119).
Furthermore, mine owners supported the 1913 Land Act, and as Lipton (1986) illustrates, the President of Chamber of Mines (COM) argued that the 1913 Land Act will ensure that ‘the surplus of young men, instead of squatting on the land in idleness ... earn their living by working for a wage' (Lipton, 1986: 199-120). It is therefore these capitalist interests which planted the tree of racial capitalism, which when managed by the apartheid government post 1948 became more politically, socially and economically oppressive brutal and exploitative even to the extent that it drew international condemnation.
Further simplified, this means that the major economic resources, such as land, mines, banks were under the control and ownership of white minorities, and the African majority did not control any substantial components of these. The development of capitalism in South Africa was through a process of capitalist influence over the political aspect, and apartheid is part of consolidation of capitalist rule, yet contested by various fractions of capital.
It has been generally and correctly accepted that South Africa's apartheid was a system that safeguarded capitalist interests, and implemented and buttressed by racist legislations and statutes aimed at securing cheap labour for predominant sectors of the South African capitalist economy particularly in agriculture and mining, (Alexander 2002). Alexander (2002) correctly argues that "the whole edifice of repressive laws and bureaucratic structures, ranging from ‘native reserves' and Bantustans at the one end to the ludicrous details of ‘petty apartheid', such as separate post office queues and cemeteries, is explicable ultimately in terms of a racist logic, the end of which was to guarantee cheap black labour and the continued profitability of ‘maize and gold'" (Alexander, 2002: 22).
Sachs (1952) argues that, "It is abundantly clear to anyone who has the welfare of South Africa at heart that the future of the people and the whole country depends on extensive and intensive industrial development, and that the mining of precious minerals can serve the interests of the country only as a stimulus for the development of other branches of the national economy ... It has always been the policy of the Chamber of Mines to subordinate the entire economic life of the country to the selfish interests of the mine owners" (Sachs 1952: 102). This particular assertion confirms that statutory apartheid was a convenient superstructure for SA's capitalist accumulation and exploitation of labour.
b) Minerals-energy complex:
While apartheid was racial capitalism, it is important to highlight another aspect of South Africa's racialised capitalism, such that it is not just understood as racial capitalism with no other unique and specific features. This understanding if derived and informed by Professor Ben Fine's Minerals Energy Complex (MEC). Responding to the question of what is MEC, Fine (2012) says,
"It is the specifically South African system of accumulation that has been centred on core sectors around, but more wide-ranging than, mining and energy, evolving with a character and dynamic of its own that has shifted over time. Its history and consequences can be traced back to the emergence of mining in the 1870s through to the present day. In the interwar and immediate post-war period, core MEC sectors drove the economy, furnishing a surplus for the protection and growth and, ultimately, incorporation of Afrikaner capital. State corporations in electricity, steel, transport and so on, represented an accommodation across the economic power of the mining conglomerates and the political power of the Afrikaners, an uneasy compromise of evolving fractions of classes and their interests forged through both state and market", (Fine, 2012: 558).
While this argument reflects the reality of a MEC economy, it also reflects the reality that the fractions of capital that constitute the MEC have historically dominated the content and form of capitalism in South Africa, and did so even in the transition from apartheid to an electorally inclusive political system. As will be illustrated in the fractions of capital discussion below, this happened at the expense of other fractions of capital, particularly agriculture which was protected by the apartheid system. Most evidently, the MEC dominated the economic aspirations of the ANC-led National Liberation Movement.
This argument reflects reality because a radical socio-economic redistribution programme in South Africa should necessarily be about deconstructing the MEC, not black economic empowerment which has thus far happened through co-option of few politically-connected individuals into upper echelons of capital as shareholder capitalists who do not add much value to industrialisation and development of productive forces.
Deconstruction of the MEC entails economic diversification through industrial development in other sectors, than in the minerals and energy sectors. This is important to highlight because if such had happened post 1994 in a thoroughgoing industrial development process which includes state leadership and participation of all South Africans, liberals would be justified to argue that race no longer structures economic advantage and disadvantage. The very fact that the MEC, as Fine (2012) argues, remains intact means that the economic conditions that prevailed for different races before 1994 are still predominantly present.
The continued dominance of the MEC is important to highlight because the MEC condemns into insignificance other industrial sectors, which could create job opportunities for the millions of South Africans who remain without jobs. It is primarily the MEC dominance that causes high levels of structural joblessness and therefore unemployment. Monetary policies pursued by the Reserve Bank tend to protect the continued dominance of the Minerals Energy Complex, and if this were to change, it could be made to protect massive industrial expansion.
c) Capitalist Concentration in Few hands.
Another important feature of South African capitalism is the reality that ownership is concentrated in few hands, and controlled by relatively few corporations and individuals, which as will be seen later, played a critical role in ushering in reforms which would guard and protect their interests and aspirations.
While existing in various sectors, these business interests were concentrated in very few hands. In June 1983 the Financial Mail reported: ‘At the end of 1982 the top 100 industrial companies in South Africa had total assets of R41 billion. Of these, the combined assets of the first 20 were worth R25 billion or 61% of the total. Of this R25 billion, 39% was accounted for by companies associated with Old Mutual; 28% by Anglo associated companies, 10% by Sanlam associated companies, and 8% by state firms. The remainder, 10%, represented independent companies in a manner of speaking. For every one of the top 20 industrial companies were connected, by numerous interlocking directorships, not only to each other but with the largest mining house, the two largest life insurance institutions and four of the five major banking groups.' (Financial Mail, 24.6.83)
Nattrass and Seekings (2010) illustrated that "Apartheid produced an almost entirely white business elite. This elite was highly concentrated in terms of corporate ownership and control. In 1994, the giant, mining-based Anglo American controlled 44% of the entire capitalisation of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, whilst the top five corporate groups together controlled 84%" (Nattrass & Seekings, 2010: 6).
The concentration of capital in few hands meant that when these owners of the key means of production realised that the apartheid will endanger their businesses, continued profitability and thwart their aspirations to expand to other parts of the world, they had to change it. Amongst these few hands, the most dominant is the Anglo American Corporation, and the Oppenheimer family, which (as illustrated below) wielded tremendous economic power, and also capacity to mobilise other economic interests behind the view of changing aspects of apartheid which caused sanctions, mass revolts, international isolation, etc.
Overall, the nature of South African capitalism can be basically be characterised as a form of racialised capitalism, which has adjust to different political system in its historical development, and because of the dominance of the minerals-energy sector, this racialised capitalism is best described as minerals-energy complex. An important feature of this racialised minerals-energy complex is the reality that it is concentrated in few hands, and the citations here on the content of ownership and control of strategic and key sectors are adequate evidence.
As will be illustrated and argued below these dominance features of South African capitalism have not been changed in the transition from apartheid to an inclusive political system. Capitalists continue to be white, and the as Fine (2012) argues, the minerals-energy complex remains intact and concentrated in few hands. The superficial, but politically significant changes that have occurred since the transition to an inclusive political system are the inclusion of a black politically connected elite into the MEC, in most instances with the assistance of the dominant fractions of capital and within the few hands that control and own capital in South Africa.
Unemployment should therefore be understood within this context, because any other form of understanding amounts to a misdiagnosis. South Africa is a capitalist country dominated by monopolies and whose economy is largely dependent on the minerals and energy sector. Discontinuation of private ownership of these sectors and deconstruction of the minerals energy complex constitute a programme to redistribute and diversify the economy for the benefit of all.
UNEMPLOYMENT VIRUS IS A NATIONAL DISASTER;
South Africa's mass unemployment crisis - is just that - a crisis. More than 40% of the working age population have been cast onto the scrapheap; their creativity, imagination and energy, vital to the rebuilding of our country and region, destroyed! Excluded from official statistics are the beggars, scavengers, the hawkers and others amongst the active unemployed who have no choice but to subsist by some means or starve and by virtue of earning some income are not recorded as unemployed. As a result a two tier labour market has emerged with a third of all workers now employed in the informal sector with no rights and poor working conditions. 70% of the unemployed are youth and the majority are women. Some parts of the country record more than 70% unemployment. South Africa's unemployment levels is one of the worst in the world and must be understood as a national disaster, not a natural one but a social disaster - the outcome of failed policies.
For millions without a job it is not just the loss of being able to afford the basic things of life it is also the loss of dignity that destroys people and their communities. It is why we can talk about unemployment as a virus, which has turned our communities into places of fear and misery, with violence, abuse and crime our daily reality. It is women as the most exploited section of the workforce, as caregivers, as mothers and as young girls who are forced to carry the bulk of this burden.
On the 6th of May 2013, Statistics South Africa released the Quarterly Labour Force Survey which indicated that again, South Africa's unemployment rate is 25.2%. In simple terms, this means that more than a quarter (4.6 million) of active and employable South Africans who are diligently looking for employment opportunities cannot find jobs. Added to this, more than 2.4 million active and employable South Africans are now discouraged work-seekers, bringing the expanded (real) unemployment rate to 36.7% of the South African labour force, the highest since 2008.
Now for Africa's biggest economy and member of a group of developing economies in the world, BRICS, alongside genuinely developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, this is disastrous and a humiliation. Nevertheless, what is more disastrous and humiliating is the persistent failure of Policymakers and Government leaders to correctly diagnose the real cause of South Africa's crisis levels of unemployment. Politicians and neo-liberal Policymakers at the highest level of policy making and implementation recurrently blame low levels of skills and the cost of labour for unemployment. All unemployed people are employable in one sector of the South African economy or another, particularly in manufacturing, agriculture and mining.
Whilst important, skills shortage is not the reason why South Africa has experienced and will continue to experience crisis levels of unemployment. For instance, Zimbabwe's skills ratio is above that of South Africa, yet unemployment is still very high. The structural inability of the South African economy to absolve the entirely of its labour force, i.e. joblessness is instead the major cause of unemployment and it will remain so unless decisive State led economic development interventions are made on research and development, innovation, infant industries, manufacturing, and small scale agriculture. Even if all unemployed people can be skilled in two weeks, the economy still cannot absolve all of them. This is reflected on the reality that 100 000 people who had jobs in December 2012 no longer have jobs as of April 2013, and it is not because they lost their skills or capacity to work within the three months.
Since 1994, South Africa has misconstrued development as simply meaning the provision of free services such as houses, education, healthcare, social grants, and attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Whilst these social welfare aspects are vital in South Africa, they do not constitute the core of development realised by all industrialised and developed nations in the world, particularly those that realised massive economic from the mid 20th century, such as Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. These also do not reflect the core of economic development underway in Brazil, India and China. The common and irreplaceable feature about these developed and developing economies has been State aided industrialisation, particularly of tradable sectors in manufacturing and industrialisation, i.e. development of the productive forces. This is usually buttressed by salient, yet subtle import substitution through protection of infant industries, tariffs, and other measures, including insulation of agriculture and food production.
If realisation and attainment of these important service delivery measures is real development, then countries such as Cuba with unparalleled access to healthcare, education, social welfare services, low infant mortality rates, longer life expectancy, would be the most developed territories in the world. Cuba does not fall in the category of developed nations because the correct understanding of developments realised in the 20th century development of Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Finland, and Taiwan is about development of manufacturing industries for domestic and global consumption. South Africa should, concurrent to provision of essential services, pursue this kind of economic development to create sustainable jobs.
Now, due to South Africa's development economics' naïveté and the need to be seen to be doing right in the eyes of Neo-liberal powers, the country adopted neo-liberal policies that lowered tariffs, removed or neglected protection of infant industries and agriculture, and lowered trade exchanges, which could absolve a larger section of the country's labour force. Heterodox economists such as Cambridge University's Ha-Joon Chang and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Alice Amsden have perfectly illustrated the reality that virtually all developing economies that imbibe and naturalise the neo-liberal policy prescriptions of the International Financial Institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund) have and will never realise real economic development witnessed in all developed economies. Ha-Joon Chang describes the IFIs and their masters as ‘kicking away the ladder' because they impose policy prescriptions, which they did not use to climb to their own labour-absorptive economic development.
UNEMPLOYMENT IS A CRISIS OF GLOBALISED CAPITALISM;
Yet, even though SA has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, the unemployment crisis is a global phenomenon. Capital, released from its national constraints, has been freed to rove every corner of the globe in thirst of profits. The intensification of competition has led to a race to the bottom as companies seek ways to reduce costs to the absolute minimum and profits to all time highs. As a result wages, working conditions and jobs have shrunk. More than 200 million workers are estimated to have been made unemployed.
The state, regardless of country or which party is in power, has become a haven for investors, financiers and the super-rich at the expense of the worker, the landless and the poor. Tax cuts for the rich, cuts in public spending, privatisation, free trade policies and export led growth with increased mechanisation and high interest rates policies have not only killed jobs but destroyed decent work and attacked the welfare of the majority. The poor and the unemployed are now expected to pay for everything, water, energy, schooling, health, transport as these are no longer run as services but as profit maximising enterprises.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
As a broad but necessary approach, the South African state and government should develop the productive forces, deriving only useful lessons from the late industrialisers which realised massive industrial expansion post World War II. While there are varying and sometimes contradictory narratives on how the late industrialisers caught up in industrial expansion, the observations made by Robert Wade (1990) holds some water and constitute key components of what South Africa should pursue.
Discussing the Developmental State in a document prepared for the Development Bank of Southern Africa, Gumede (2009) cites Robert Wade (1990), who argues that "market ‘guidance' in East Asia happened essentially by (a) redistributing agricultural land in the early post-war period, (b) controlling the financial system and making private financial capital subordinate to industrial capital, (c) maintaining stability in some of the main economic parameters that affected the viability of long-term investment, especially the exchange rate, the interest rate and general price levels, (d) modulating the impact of foreign competition in the domestic economy and prioritising the use of scarce foreign exchange, (e) promoting exports, (f) promoting technological acquisition from multinational companies and building a national technology system, and (g) assisting particular industries and, in the case of Japan after 1970, introducing industry-specific policies to prevent industrial decline" (Gumede, 2009).
Now, these are elements of what South Africa should pursue, but the distinguishing factor between what happened in East Asia and what should happen in South Africa is that the state should play a decisive leading role, particularly in ownership and control of strategic sectors of the economy. Coupled with the concrete interventions and strategies outlined below and decisive political leadership that does not cow to the dictates of dishonest trading partners in the World Trade Organisation, South Africa can realise developed productive forces and full employment within a generation. Now, here is what is to be done:
1. REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH TO CREATE DECENT WORK;
Apartheid was a system that ensured the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. A major outstanding task of the post-apartheid government is to carry-out major redistribution of wealth reforms to overcome inequality, poverty and unemployment.
1.1. Land Reform
Just more than 3% of the land has been redistributed since the end of apartheid. Rapid land redistribution can facilitate massive job creation in agriculture and in related industries. To facilitate this the government needs to scrap the willing seller willing buyer policy and greatly expand the agricultural support given to new or recently re-stored farmers.
1.2. Nationalise natural resources for local beneficiation and industrialisation.
An important component of our struggle is to ensure that strategic natural resources are brought under state control and ownership with the sole aim of ensure massive local beneficiation and industrialisation.
1.3. Reverse privatisation
Privatisation represents a form of wealth redistribution, from the poor to the rich. State assets worth R32 billion have been sold since 1994. The privatisation and commercialisation of a number of state-run enterprises and services has led to massive job losses, increases in the cost of basic services and huge profits for the new owners. Not only should these be reversed but the public sector must be massively expanded to meet the needs of job creation and sustainable development.
We need a radical restructuring of our health service, by, amongst others, urgently and rapidly eliminating the two-tier health system inherited from apartheid, in which most money and resources goes to the small - and reducing - minority with private health insurance Similar expansion in primary, secondary and tertiary education is needed to overcome the legacy of Bantu education and to meet the needs of a fundamental social transformation.
State investment and the development of state enterprises will be needed to, not just to expand infrastructure, but to ensure the diversification of our economy away from its dependence on the production and export of raw materials. It will be the state and not the private sector that will need to initiate these new industries as was done in the first phase of industrialisation which saw the government establish ESKOM, ISCOR, TELKOM and the transport industries.
1.4. Build State capacity to do business and provide services.
For industrial expansion, the state should play a leading role. There are existing state owned corporations that are playing a critical role and state owned. The state should build capacity to engage in massive projects which no private individual or corporation can immediately engage in. These include high technology projects and electronic engineering and manufacturing.
1.5. Combat Transfer Pricing:
The most complex difficulty defining South Africa as a resource rich country are the phenomena of transfer pricing. Transfer pricing refers to the practice of multinational corporations establishing subsidiary companies. Proper legislation should be put in place to combat all forms of transfer pricing, base erosion and profit shifting. This will in turn mean more resources for South Africa and can provide a solid basis for localisation of upstream and downstream industrial expansion.
2. TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIC STRATEGY
If we are to provide decent work and a living wage to all workers the current economic strategy of trickle down, free markets and export-led growth will have to be abandoned. The accumulation path dominated by the financialised Mineral Energy Complex must be broken We need an alternative economic development strategy based on satisfying our people's needs, overcoming inequality and poverty.
2.1. Growth through Redistribution
Growth through redistribution requires the redistribution of wealth as a pre-condition for economic growth to occur. Such a strategy begins with the state taking control of the productive and financial resources of the country and redirecting them towards housing, feeding, clothing and educating our people. Overcoming poverty and inequality is the means for creating a sustainable productive base for our economy. This can be done through:
2.2. Inward oriented industrial strategy
Production of basic needs in terms of durable and non-durable goods as well as social programmes of education, health, environmental repair, transport, housing, infrastructure and communication lie at the base of an alternative development strategy.
2.3. Diversify our economy
To satisfy these needs we need to diversify the economy away from the production of raw materials and heavy industrialised goods. We need to use our mineral wealth as a platform to produce light intermediate capital goods such as machinery and other equipment necessary in the production of finished goods.
2.4. Different Trade Policy
This cannot be achieved within a "free trade" framework currently policed by the WTO. To ensure the space to meet our people's needs through the production of local goods and services we need to be able to support our industries especially new, vulnerable and strategically important ones. These must be protected from international competition and allow us to ensure decent work and a living wage. This means we must not only resist the WTO free trade agenda but fight for a different framework for regulating trade internationally, i.e. based on equality and solidarity.
2.5. Consider Dual Currency
In a globalised economic framework, sustainable monetary and fiscal framework and reality are a sin qua non. Depending of sectoral and sometimes immediate interests, trade unions in South Africa have been making calls.
2.6. Integrate our region and promote regional solidarity
An alternative economic development strategy that guarantees decent, work, a living wage, full employment and the end to inequality and poverty will be achieved not at the expense and domination of our region and continent but through co-operation and an integration based on solidarity. Our region is rich in natural resources and
3. CONSTITUTIONALISE THE RIGHT TO WORK
The right to work is fundamental to reversing this catastrophe. Without the right to work - decent work - all other democratic rights become paper rights. Unemployment robs us of the daily necessities of life, self-respect and the possibility of participating in public life as equal citizens. While, constitutionalising the right to work will not by itself guarantee full-employment and a living wage, it is a first step to ensuring government's policies are made accountable to full decent employment.
3.1. Launch Campaign for the Right to Work
We accordingly resolve to launch a campaign for the right to work to fight for the immediate needs of the unemployed and the underemployed, decent work and the economic and social policies that will guarantee full employment with decent conditions of service and a living wage.
3.2. Guarantee the Right to Work as a fundamental Human Right
We demand that the government constitutionally guarantees the right to work as a fundamental human right. In addition, we demand that all government policies should be centred around the mandate of full employment and a living wage. The South African Reserve Bank's mandate must change to be centred on ensuring the creation of decent work for all and combating unemployment.
3.3. Protect the rights of all workers
Providing rights to some workers while giving others less rights and informal sector workers no rights is not the way to solve our unemployment crisis. Labour flexibility is a strategy to increase profit rates for the bosses. We demand the right to work for all workers and demand a living wage and decent conditions for all workers irrespective of the size or location of the work place or the age of the workers. To this end we support the immediate banning of labour brokers.
4. ADDRESS THE IMMEDIATE NEEDS OF THE UNEMPLOYED
4.1 Unemployment Benefits for those without work
More than eight million people are without any work and income. Most are condemned to lives of absolute misery in rural and urban slums. The unemployed can no longer be treated as outcasts, excluded and marginalised. The first step towards reversing this situation is our demand for the immediate implementation of full unemployment benefits starting with a basic income grant financed through a tax on the wealthy.
4.2 Free Transport
Government must provide free transport for unemployed workers so they can effectively look for work rather than excluding them from the statistics on the basis of being as so-called "discouraged workers" because they cannot afford to look for work.
4.3 Food security
State nutrition schemes must be implemented in poor communities to ensure that no one goes to bed hungry. These can and should be incorporated into public works programme.
4.4 Free basic services
All unemployed people shall receive free basic services such as water and electricity. The amount provided in the case of water and electricity shall be sufficient to meet real needs, in a rich country in the 21st century. Privatisation of social service provision should be immediately stopped and reversed.
4.5 Cancel the debts of the poor
Many unemployed people have fallen into a debt trap unable to repay their debts - much of which was irresponsibly off-loaded on to them by unscrupulous lenders. These loans should be immediately cancelled and the system of blacklisting should be abolished.
5. PUT OUR PEOPLE TO WORK
A government that says it cannot create jobs nor is it their responsibility to do so, is unfit to govern. Our country needs to be rebuilt after the apartheid years of skewed development and underdevelopment during apartheid. Enormous resources exist to overcome the destruction of the Bantustan policies and to put an end to our apartheid divided cities and towns. Millions are without houses and other basic infrastructure. Millions are ready to give of their sweat and toil to overcome this legacy of apartheid but we need to match supply with demand. This will mean the state will have to take the lead by providing the "bricks and cement" for rebuilding South Africa. Black economic empowerment should be black employment empowerment with employment placed at the centre of government policy.
5.1 Introduce national reconstruction service
Urgent measures are needed to combat youth unemployment. As part of marking the anniversary of the 1976 youth uprising, our government must introduce a compulsory national reconstruction service for 18 year olds who would be conscripted into a national service for one year into programme for reconstruction, where skills will be gained in agriculture, construction, conservation, education, health and a host of other work experiences and for which a basic income will be provided.
5.2 Expand the EPWP
In order to meet the immediate needs of more than 8 million people for work the EPWP must be reorganised and expanded to provide a million jobs annually at a living wage for at least one year. The practice of using the EPWP as a means of creating a black bourgeoisie by outsourcing public sector activities like road construction to private companies must be stopped. The EPWP must be directed towards expanding the public sector.
5.3 Developing Skills Providing Apprenticeships
While it is not true that poor skills explains South Africa's unemployment crisis, decent education and skills development are important for young people in finding decent work and in contributing to the rebuilding our country. There is a massive housing shortage in our country. This will require plumbers, electricians, engineers, carpenters and other skilled workers. We demand the development of the apprenticeship system whereby young people have the opportunity to develop skills and knowledge, gain qualifications and earn money at the same time.
5.4 Fill all posts in the public sector
Presently hundreds of thousands of jobs in the public sector are frozen. Millions of unemployed could be in work if these positions were filed and the scandalous rollover of unspent monies would be overcome. As a result public sector capacity would be enhanced, services improved and needs met.
5.5 Increase Public Sector Investment
Presently public sector investment lags way behind what is needed in spite of government increases in infrastructure investment. If jobs are to be created at a scale needed to absorb new entrants to the job market much greater state resources need to be spent. Sustainable jobs can be created if government undertook, amongst other projects, a massive housing programme as proposed in the RDP. Investing in housing would have the virtue of stimulating downstream industries leading to more jobs in construction, furniture, appliances, etc. With more working people employed at a living wage greater demand would be created for food, clothing and other consumer goods leading to further economic expansion and faster job creation. The same logic applies with the development of a decent public transport system. As opposed to elite projects like the Gautrain, fast national rail systems should be developed to transport people and goods across the country. An effective public transport system would ease the burden on our roads, drastically reduce the death and carnage on our roads and overcome current high levels of carbon-dioxide pollution.
5.6 Introduce Prescribed Assets
Government must direct the huge assets of all financial services towards investment in the productive sectors of the economy, especially those sectors that have high employment multipliers. The financial services industries shall by law required to invest no less than 10% of their asset base in a government fund dedicated towards social investment and job creation.
5.7 Cut interest rates and abandon inflation targeting
High interest rates cut off job creation by attracting money into the speculative sectors of the economy rather than the productive sectors where jobs are created. Reducing interest rates would lead to greater job creation and make it easier for firms to access credit to expand their businesses. This would require the abandonment of inflation targeting which can only be maintained through interest rate increases. Higher levels of inflation pose no threat to jobs and consumers, especially if more and more people have decent work. Price control on basic goods foodstuffs and rent would be put in place to protect the poor.
5.8 Encourage labour intensive production
Thousands of additional jobs could be created if labour intensive industries were targeted for growth and protected from international competition along with the removal of tax incentives promoting capital intensive expenditures. These include agriculture, agro-processing, furniture, wood and paper, accommodation and transport and community servicing. By targeting these sectors through various incentives and protections large number of new jobs can be created in these sectors as well as creating jobs throughout the economy.
6. DEFEND OUR JOBS
Thousands of jobs can be saved by:
Government imposing a moratorium on retrenchments. The first step in this direction would be for government to implement new labour regulations requiring that the bosses must negotiate with the workers any and all retrenchments. Currently they only need to consult the trade unions.
Similarly an immediate moratorium on farm evictions must be implemented otherwise hundreds of thousands of people will be pushed off the land and made destitute. Evicted farm workers must be reinstated or compensated.
Protect vulnerable and strategic industries from cheap imports by increasing tariffs and by providing support in the form of subsidies and other incentives.
Vigorously oppose in the World Trade Organisation, GATS and the Non-Agricultural Market Access Agreement (NAMA) that aims to dramatically reduce tariffs in all industries outside of agriculture. Our government must oppose similar trade agreements whether they be in the form of bilateral, regional or multilateral agreements. No trade agreement should be signed without prior employment and equity impact studies and far-reaching consultations with the labour movement and other organisations of the popular movement having been undertaken.
§ All sectors of the economy must be encouraged to source their goods and services either nationally or within the SADC region to expand demand and protect jobs.
7. COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE CREATE A MILLION CLIMATE JOBS DISMANTLE THE MINERAL ENERGY COMPLEX.
Climate change will exacerbate poverty in our country because, at the very least, it will reduce water availability and food security, and increase general insecurity through floods, droughts, and forced migration. It is critical that we stop the advance of climate change and build our defences against its impacts. South Africa is the 12th biggest carbon polluter in the world and the largest in Africa. To prevent climate change becoming an even greater catastrophe, we urgently need to reduce our carbon pollution, as must other big polluters across the world. This, together with building our defences against the impacts of climate change will require that we do many things.
We must use our wealth in natural resources in a climate friendly way to create jobs and livelihoods.
We can and must
Produce our electricity from wind and sun in a way that is driven by the energy needs of all people, and protects nature.
Park private cars and get onto our feet, bicycles, trains, taxis and busses.
Convert our homes and public buildings so that they use less energy and use water more efficiently
Grow enough food for all people through techniques such as agro ecology that are labour intensive, low in carbon emissions, protects soil and water, and provides healthy food.
Protect our natural resources, especially water, soil and biodiversity, to make sure that we can continue to meet the basic needs of all people.
Provide basic services such as water, electricity and sanitation so that we address the legacies of apartheid and build the resilience of our people to withstand the effects of climate change.
This will take government regulation and international agreement. It will also take a great deal of work, and this means many new jobs.
Real solutions to climate change demand that we reduce our use of fossil fuels, and it is possible to do this without compromising our quality of life - throughout the history of capitalism, industry has always changed in response to new technologies and environmental conditions.
Shifting away from fossil fuels will result in the decline and eventual replacement of some industries, particularly energy intensive industries and mining. If we plan and manage this well, workers will be protected. If we rely on markets for the solutions, workers will pay the price - we already see this in gold, coal and other mining related industries as a result of mining becoming more capital intensive.
Climate jobs are decent jobs that cut the emissions of greenhouse gasses, such as from burning coal and strengthen communities resilience to deal with the impact of climate jobs. Solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy are not just clean forms of energy but they provide many more jobs than currently exist in generating energy from coal or petrol. By building a public transport system, extending train services on a massive scale and busses we can take polluting vehicles off the road, create jobs and stop climate change. Similarly we need to refit houses and building to make them energy efficient as well as ensuring every building as a solar geyser and solar panels. Imagine the new industries and jobs that can be created by this effort. At the same time we will be dealing with the climate crisis. This is why we call these jobs climate jobs.
Linking the issue of climate change to jobs and especially the possibility for creating one million climate jobs through immediate and coordinated steps to shift to a low carbon, labour intensive economy can galvanise our nation. More importantly it can also reorient government policy in relation not just to climate change but in relation to the economy and social needs as a whole.
Developing a new energy system, building a mass public transport system. Retrofitting our building and homes, would begin the process of diversifying our economy from its current dependence on mining. New local industries would stimulate others and in combination with a mass housing programme and appropriate industrial policies and import regulations, SA would overcome the Mineral Energy Complex that has been so disastrous for jobs and the economy. Mining would provide the infrastructure for this new low carbon wage led and equitable development path, rather than repatriated profits for foreign predatory TNCs.
We believe government should take the following steps to address simultaneously the economic and environmental crisis we are facing:
1. Produce our electricity from wind and solar power. With a target of producing 50% of electricity with renewable energy in 10 years we will create 150,000 jobs and reduce our emissions by 20%.
2. Reduce energy use through energy efficiency in industries. If we implemented a 20% energy efficiency target by 2025, at least 27,000 new jobs would be created.
3. Reduce energy use in homes and buildings by constructing new buildings to be energy efficient and retrofitting existing buildings. Just by retrofitting old buildings and houses, we could create 120,000 jobs.
4. Expand public transport. Reduce our use of oil in transport by improving and expanding our public transport system. A commitment to shift just 10% of private car commuters to public transport, would create about 70,000 jobs and reduce emissions by 24 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). There is potential for even greater job creation and emissions cuts if we commit to more ambitious targets and actions. Overall, our proposals for expanding public transport would result in the creation of 460,000 new jobs.
5. Produce our food through organic small-scale agro ecology. Small-scale family farmers and peasants use farming techniques that protect natural resources, are more labour intensive and more productive per hectare. In Gauteng alone, it is possible to create nearly 500,000 new jobs in local food production in urban areas.
6. Protect our water, soil and biodiversity resources. Up to 400,000 jobs can be created if ecosystem restoration projects are increased. Ecosystem restoration has a range of benefits, including improving water quality, improving carrying capacity for wildlife and livestock, conservation of topsoil, and recharging groundwater.
7. Move to zero waste. If we adopt zero waste principles, we can create at least 400,000 jobs in the current economy, and reduce our CO2-equivalent emissions by about 35 Million Tons. Zero waste is a cheap and effective strategy to combat climate change.
8. MARINE ECONOMY
The marine economy can be another key component of an alternative low carbon, wage led, equitable development path. This will require a break with the idea that the oceans and the coastal areas of our country are just additional natural resource to be ruthlessly exploited for profit and the creation of a new bourgeoisie allied to multinational shipping, fishing and oil/gas corporations. Just as the idea of the green economy poses as a new frontier for capitalist conquest so the dominant idea in respect of the oceans and the "blue economy" is presented as a new source for the absorption of over-accumulated capital.
Already reports report suggest that almost 50% of our marine resources are fully exploited. A further 15% of marine resources are overexploited. Of equal concern is the number of species in which the current stock status is uncertain.
Currently fisheries play a critical role in providing direct and indirect livelihoods for over 140, 000 people in South Africa. Fish protein is also a critical protein source for many of the traditional fishing communities along the South African coastline, many of whom are considered food insecure. The successful roll out and implementation of a new small-scale fisheries policy will be critical in ensuring the livelihoods and food security of many of these fishing dependent communities. Sustainable fishing based on the rights of small-scale artisanal fishers can provide livelihoods for 500,000 fishers. This requires reversing the currently conceived quota system that enriches foreign owned and BEE corporations. As opposed to these big corporations artisanal fishers have a long history of sustainable fishing allowing for the replenishing of stocks.
8.1. Ports and Ship Building
The government has undertaken a massive infrastructure programme in support of the Minerals and Energy Complex including the upgrade of major ports. The idea is to facilitate its export led growth strategy by expanding the existing capacity of South African ports to export mostly unprocessed mineral and agricultural goods, and to import manufactures helter-skelter no matter the damage to our economy. Instead of these mega projects such as COEGA (‘the ghost on the coast') and now the proposed R250 billion South Durban port-petrochemical expansion (universally opposed by the local affected communities), which are destined to be white elephant projects, the construction of smaller harbours to enable local economic development driven by small scale fishers and boat builders promise many more sustainable jobs, with important stimulants to downstream industries.
South Africa has failed to position itself as a major ship-building and repair centre. Given our access to locally produced inputs such as iron, steel, wood, etc. significant job multipliers can result from state support for ship and boat-building, but we can never compete with Korean and Chinese firms now building ‘post-panamax' vessels that can carry 24 000 containers. Our boat-building must be of an appropriate scale, and contribute to fishing, recreation, alternative energy (such as tidal energy) and research activities that benefit the masses of South Africans, not the parasitic BEE bourgeoisie and their corporate allies.
8.2. Our oceans need to be protected
The impact of climate change and pollution is causing great harm to the oceans leading to acidification of the oceans and threatening fish stocks and livelihoods. The sustainable use of the oceans and coastal regions can be an important source of decent work creation. As important in creating and sustaining decent work is the many jobs that can be sustained in rehabilitating our rivers and oceans as well as protecting them from the fishing transnationals. By factoring in the substantial sea level rise caused by climate change, in relation to all our coastal activities, we can build our infrastructure properly, and contribute to the ‘Million Climate Jobs'. Because of climate change, and because of the high risk associated with offshore oil drilling (especially in the dangerous Agulhas Current from Richards Bay to Cape Town), we must rethink the government's potentially suicidal granting of oil and gas exploration licenses to companies such as ExxonMobil, Sasol and other notorious polluters who regularly show their disregard to people and nature.
CONCLUSION
The essence of what is argued here is that the there is a need to develop the productive forces in order to improve the living conditions of the people. The mechanisms proposed in this document constitute the essence and key components of how productive forces can be developed to realise full employment in South Africa. The key towards development of the productive forces is discontinuation of private ownership of strategic sectors of the economy, particularly the natural resources sector which will serve as key supplier of industrial inputs and banks which should provide developmental finance for labour absorptive industrial expansion.
Issued by the EFF, October 27 2014
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