JOHANNESBURG - Developments over the past week relating to the strike by public servants invoke memories of an aphorism coined 45 years ago: "A week is a long time in politics."
During the past week President Jacob Zuma returned to South Africa from a state visit to China and, in an unusual display of decisiveness, ordered government ministers to return to the negotiation table.
He set the scene for another hopefully final round of negotiations in a speech he delivered at the funeral of former African National Congress stalwart Joe Matthews by reiterating government's respect for the rights of workers, including the right to strike, but simultaneously reminded them that they, in turn, had to respect the rights of the citizenry in general.
Within three days of Zima's return the government, led by the Richard Baloyi, the minister of public service and administration, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the largest and most powerful trade union federation in South Africa, resumed settlement talks.
Even before the rekindled negotiations had started no less than three Sunday Newspapers, including the Sunday Times, the largest Sunday newspaper in South Africa, predicted that Zuma was unlikely to be re-elected as ANC president at the ANC's national conference in Bloemfontein in December 2012.
The disappointing performance of his administration, as well as its failure to act decisively on allegations of corruption within the cabinet by initiating a thorough investigation into them, were cited as reasons for his anticipated fall from power. To emphasise its point, the Sunday Times quoted a statement by Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of Cosatu, in which he characterised the Zuma administration as one "heading rapidly in the direction of a full-blow predatory state" run by "corrupt demagogic hyenas."
But after the resumption of negotiations to bring the disruptive public servants strike to an end Zuma looked less vulnerable and less likely to become a one term president, particularly after it improved its settlement offer from a salary increase of 7% to 7.5 % and its monthly housing allowance from R700 to R800.
The buoyant mood was enhanced by initial reports that the offer had not been rejected outright by the trade union federation and the members of its affiliated unions.
Soon afterwards, however, several Cosatu-affiliated unions whose members were drawn from the public service, including the militant National Education Health and Allied Workers Union, rejected the government's revised offer and insisted on receiving their orginal final demands for salary increase of 8.6 % and a monthly housing allowance of R1000 a month.
As a result Zuma's intervention looking more like incompetent meddling than decisive action and, as a consequence, he began once again to look vulnerable and dispensable.
Even as South Africans were bracing themselves for a resumption of demonstrations by public servants and continued disruption of public hospitals and schools, a representative of Standard & Poor's risk assessment agency issued a warning that could only have been disconcerting to Zuma (assuming of course that he was listening to it or that a summary of it was drawn to his attention).
The representative warned that Standard & Poor's might have to downgrade its assessment of South Africa as a country in which to invest, the rationale being that once public salary disbursements reache an unsustainable level they cannot be pared down as they are not an optional expenditure.
Though the official concerned emphasised that his remarks were not made in direct reaction to the public servants' strike, it was almost impossible to disconnect them from the strike. As Julius Lewin, a former lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand was wont to remind his students, a privilege once granted can only be withdrawn at grave risk to social and political stability.
As Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th French political thinker, remarked revolution is born of a paradoxical marriage of hope and despair: granting salary increases raises hopes of a better life while withdrawal or refusal to grant them when they have come to be expected introduces an incendiary spark of despair.
A similar logicality applies to the expansion of social grants to South Africa's still large number of poor people who constitute the bulk of the between 20% and 40% of South Africans of working age who are unemployed, depending on whether the strict or expanded definition of unemployment is used.
The number of South Africans who are dependent on social grants has increased sharply in the past six to eight years.
In a 2005 edition of the Fast Facts, the monthly publication of Institute of Race Relations, John Kane-Berman, the institute's chief executive officer, reported that one in four South Africa was dependent on social grants to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their circumstances. He calculated that the government expenditure on social grants had increased by 26% in the previous four years.
Kane-Berman estimated that the rate of growth would slow over the next four years but the increase would still be at the relatively high level of 11 %
A more recent study published by the Institute of Relations calculates that the number of social grant recipients is growing faster than the number of taxpayers. Calculations show that in the financial year 2004/2005, the ratio of taxpayers to grant recipients was 1-to-1.8 and in the financial year 2007/2008 it stood at 1-to-2.3. Extrapolation of these figures suggests that a ratio of one taxpayer to every three grant recipients may not be too far off.
A sustainable basis for social grants is reckoned to be one of parity between taxpayers and grant recipients, which, if correct, has ominous connotations for South Africa. A paring back of social grants may alienate South Africa's impoverished citizens and metamorphose them from quiescent to turbulent citizens.
It might be particularly disadvantageous to the ANC government, as according to Lawrence Schlemmer, the doyen of South African sociologists, the expanded system of social grant has helped to sustain the loyalty of poor black citizens to the ANC. While an increasing number of them may no longer vote in elections, the grants may immunise them against the opposition canvassers seeking to persuade them to vote against the ANC in future elections.
As noted previously, Planning Minister Trevor Manuel in his previous capacity as finance minister expressed concern about the sustainability of the system of social grants if its present rate of growth was not curtailed by ensuring that a larger proportion of young South Africans entering the labour market for the first time are able to attain employment and become tax-paying citizens, it would contribute greatly to solving the problem.
That, however, as Manuel, who won wide respect for his prowess as finance minister, knows too well, is easier said than done.
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