The NDP and Policy Framing
The recent criticism levelled by the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), Irvin Jim, against the National Development Plan (NDP) provides a useful opportunity to briefly examine policy framing in South Africa. The basic premise of framing theory is that an issue can be viewed from a variety of perspectives and be construed as having multiple possible implications.
It attempts to refute the belief that different actors are able to observe the same social phenomena and subsequently arrive at the same conclusions. The process can be defined as involving actors confronting a situation where understanding is uncertain and problematic; shaping an understanding or story that helps analyse and interpret the situation; and then acting (and persuading others to act) on it. In applying this process analysis, it becomes possible to interpret the union's criticism of the NDP.
After scrutinising the NDP, NUMSA's central committee came to the "extremely disturbing conclusion that significant and strategic parts of [it] were directly lifted from Democratic Alliance (DA) policy documents. The reading of the documents is shocking." This conclusion was largely based on an analysis carried out by NUMSA entitled "The National Development Plan: Mixed Bag or Downright Neoliberal?" This title alludes to the essence of the discussion: that the NDP is "anchored in neoliberalism," represents a "deviation from the NDP" that "paves a path that derails a socialist-oriented National Democratic Revolution (NDR)."
The document then goes on to systematically compare the parallels between the policy proposals of the NDP and those of the DA to prove that they are indeed neoliberal. This brief summation reveals a great deal about NUMSA's attitude towards policy framing. It uses DA policies as a proxy for neoliberalism, confident in the belief that the public considers policy proposals emerging from the DA as automatically being neoliberal. According to this view, DA policies define neoliberalism.
The next step in interrogating this situation is to attempt to ascertain whether DA policies are indeed proxies for neoliberalism. Even a superficial examination reveals the possible pitfalls of this assumption. The most prominent example is the Youth Wage Subsidy (YWS), a policy originally proposed by the African National Congress (ANC) and subsequently enthusiastically championed by the DA.
The DA adopted this position despite the fact that the YWS patently represents a significant intrusion into the functioning of the "free market" - the quintessential neoliberal no-go. A further relevant example emerges in the field of social security, where the DA will "make an Income Support and Unemployment Grant of R110 per month available to all South Africans earning below R46 000 per annum who do not receive another state grant."
While this policy could potentially be prudent in terms of addressing the gaping hole in the social safety net, the notion of simply giving money to the poor on an unconditional basis is certainly very far from really being neoliberal in orientation. Indeed, these types of programmes are deemed to "challenge neoliberalism, because [they] are redistributive and involve governments reallocating resources within the country."
The same goes for Expanded Public Works Programmes (EPWP), another policy supported by the DA that is at odds with neoliberalism. This is not to argue that the DA does not oppose many of the policies punted by NUMSA - and it certainly does support free enterprise. The point is rather that arbitrary statements simply assigning contemporary political parties operating within complex developing societies to distinct ideological camps is untenable. The grey area between "neoliberalism" and "socialism" has become much bigger than the black and white.
To prove the futility of attempting to bluntly equate the DA (or any other contemporary party) with neoliberalism (or any other ideology), consider that these very same policy proposals may well be deemed "socialist" in other quarters precisely because they represent significant state interventions.
In fact, the confusion emanating from the (thoroughly disappointing) policy debate regarding the NDP is emphasised when considering criticism emerging from other quarters. A popular libertarian blog concluded that the NDP was "the government's crony-socialist piece de resistance" and a mere reincarnation of the NDR, but with a more effective public relations strategy.
While NUMSA concludes that the NDP is a neoliberal attempt to undermine socialism, libertarians conclude that it is a socialist attempt to undermine capitalism.
This is a classic example of the power inherent to policy framing. In the case of the NDP, it potentially represents a significant threat - a perception that is certainly not lost on the National Planning Commission (NPC) if one is to judge by their reaction to Jim's comments. This is because the NDP explicitly attempts to "shape a consensus on what to do about the key challenges facing us."
The document was enthusiastically adopted at the ANC's Mangaung Conference and welcomed by opposition parties (including the DA) and broad sections of the South African public. Framing the NDP's policy proposals in the partisan way that NUMSA has done could undermine this key feature as the government seeks to build some kind of shared vision in the highly fragmented context that is South Africa.
And herein lays the problem: NUMSA chose to turn it into a partisan issue by identifying it with DA policy as a surrogate for neoliberalism, instead of comparing it to some other set of more objective and accurate neoliberal indicators. Nobody proclaimed the DA to be the global custodians of neoliberalism (and they certainly never anointed themselves). But the union chose to assign them this status because comparing the NDP to an academic set of criteria defining neoliberalism would have revealed that the plan is, in fact, not neoliberal. It is also not socialist.
Instead, it is a pragmatic attempt to respond to an infinitely complex set of challenges - a familiar scenario in highly unequal middle-income developing countries caught between the "two worlds" of prosperity and poverty. Look no further than Brazil to find a case of a supposedly "socialist" party enacting pragmatic, (at least partly) consensual reforms to achieve great developmental success. But the simple comparison to the DA was too politically tempting to let these facts get in the way.
By using the DA as a proxy for neoliberalism, NUMSA has misled the public on the true nature of the NDP's policy proposals. The same is true for the out-of-context interpretation offered by the libertarians. However, according to framing theory, this should not be a surprising outcome. Actors tend to interpret policies in ways which they expect to most powerfully affect the attitudes and behaviours of their audience.
In this sense, framing can be viewed as a strategy to manipulate public preferences. NUMSA clearly concluded that comparing the NDP to the DA's policies as a proxy for neoliberalism - whether that was an accurate assumption or not - was the most effective way to manipulate the preferences of the public in a way deemed desirable.
The result is that while NUMSA may have succeeded in the narrow goal of creating public angst in some quarters about the orientation of the NDP, the broader effects could potentially undermine the government's efforts to foster consensus and construct a coherent policy vision - an attempt that the union has a stake in through membership in the tripartite alliance. This threat emerges because, due to the imperatives of policy framing, they were being economical with the facts.
These facts are that the ANC's highest decision making body unanimously adopted the NDP, which was designed by a diverse set of experts (including representatives from organised labour). It is a very pragmatic document that eludes attempts at simple ideological classification. It is also a fact that no political party on the contemporary landscape, including the DA, can simply be regarded as a proxy for any particular ideology. The South African reality is far too complex for this.
But, as most of us intuitively know, facts and complexities are often mere inconveniences in the quest to manipulatively frame policy proposals.
*Leon Schreiber is a South African PhD student in Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany. The views expressed are his own. This article first appeared on his blog at http://theschreiberei.wordpress.com/. He can be followed on Twitter here.
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