No to a complacent business-as-usual attitude amid an unemployment tsunami!
29 August 2021
The Central Committee is the highest decision-making body of the SACP in between the Party’s National Congresses. We hold at least one Central Committee plenary every four months per annum. The plenary we concluded on Sunday, August 29th, started on Friday, August 27th.
We held the meeting virtually to protect life against the spread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
The Central Committee discussed the Secretariat political and organisational reports covering a wide range of issues, with a focus on key economic, social, and political developments taking place in our country and internationally. This included an assessment of the state and challenges facing the working-class, the SACP, the Alliance, and the way forward.
No to a complacent business-as-usual attitude amid an unemployment tsunami!
The devastating (but not unexpected) announcement of new record levels of unemployment demonstrates what we all should already know. With 34,4 per cent unemployment in the narrow definition, 44,4 per cent in the more accurate broader definition, and with youth unemployment soaring to more than 60 per cent, we are living in a failing society. We are locked into a trajectory that economically, socially, morally is indefensible and absolutely unsustainable.
These dismal statistics must serve as a wake-up call, not least to those in government who continue in their blinkered way to impose ultra-orthodox, neoliberal austerity. They do so at a time when much of the rest of the world, including most of our peer group developing countries, have responded to the COVID-19 crisis with a range of imaginative, heterodox stimulus interventions.
The levels of social desperation in our country are evident in the fact that over six million South Africans have registered for the meagre R350 per month Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant. It is less than what the richest one-percenters in our country spend in one hour on a single light meal. It was a grant that was cruelly cut off in the middle of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. It has thankfully now been reinstated, but only until the end of February next year.
Following the scenes of desperate mass looting in early July (a powder-keg of course irresponsibly lit by would-be insurrectionists) senior voices within government appeared to be open to considering a universal basic income grant. But that door seems to be shutting. Timidity in the face of crisis appears to be returning. Faith in some miracle private investor-driven labour market recovery continues to be the carrot on the end of a long stick.
Tracking the official unemployment rate over the 27 years since the end of apartheid tells a different and sobering story.
In 1995 unemployment in the narrow definition stood at a whopping 16,5 per cent. But that was the last year in which unemployment was under 20 per cent. With the imposition of the GEAR neoliberal shock-therapy in 1996, unemployment rose rapidly to 26,1 per cent by 1998. With increasing financial liberalisation, unemployment reached a first high point of 27,8 per cent in 2002. With the commodity boom in succeeding years there was some marginal respite, but unemployment in South Africa remained at world-record levels above 20 per cent. That marginal levelling off all came to a predictable end with the global capitalist recession of 2008. By 2010 unemployment at 25,8 per cent began its remorseless climb once more.
There is a lot of correct emphasis in the health-care sector about the need for evidence-based policies. It is an emphasis that is woefully absent when it comes to economic policy.
What is to be done?
In the first place there needs to be a rapid emergency response. The SACP joins a wide array of trade union and social movement forces in calling for the introduction of a universal basic income grant at a reasonable level. It needs to be universal to avoid excessive administrative costs. A false binary is often advanced between a U-BIG and jobs, between social security and economic growth.
This returns us to an old debate. The ANC’s original electoral mandate, the Reconstruction and Development Programme of 1994, understood that economic growth and redistribution were co-dependent, that sustainable development in South Africa required active redistribution. GEAR displaced this with the idea of profit-driven, capitalist growth first and only then trickle-down redistribution.
But a universal basic income grant can, and will, act as an economic stimulus not least for the millions of South Africans working in the informal and SMME sectors, sectors that have been most severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployed and under-employed poor, who will be the major beneficiaries of a universal basic income grant, are precisely those who will spend in these sectors, on basic food and other necessities. This is unlike the one-percenters whose savings go into off-shore speculation, and whose consumption patterns favour imports. All major international studies in basic income grants in other societies indicate important economic multiplier effects.
The current Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant can be used as the basis for expanding into a universal basic income grant and this must be phased in as rapidly as possible. We urge all partners at NEDLAC to appreciate the urgency of implementing a universal basic income grant. These partners must now move with a full sense of their responsibilities.
One key immediate intervention that South Africa needs is to intensify vaccination against COVID-19. All sectors of society, all organisations, every person, all state institutions, with the executive more robustly driving the vaccination campaign, must play their part through social mobilisation and informed public awareness at all levels to accelerate the programme. Achieving population immunity is crucial to lifting restrictions towards full capacity utilisation in every sector of our economy.
This will unlock work to unfold in sectors still affected by short-time, temporary lay-offs, and closures. Full capacity utilisation in all sectors, including the worst affected sectors such as tourism, hospitality, sport, and the creative industry, to name but a few, stands to also address the employment constraints such as the subdued level of activity and restrictions that still affect active work-seekers.
Accelerating the COVID-19 vaccination programme should be combined with a decisive shift to full implementation of the National Health Insurance. One key lesson from the rapid global spread of COVID-19, the loss of life and the devastation it caused is that the provision of quality healthcare for all through the NHI is essential to safeguard the health, social and economic needs of society.
The SACP will continue to interact with the Alliance, trade unions and progressive social movements and NGOs to ensure that there sustained popular pressure and mobilisation for the rapid introduction of a universal basic income grant.
A significant expansion of Public Employment Programmes
The second emergency response to the unemployment crisis must be a significant and rapid expansion of a range of public employment programmes. The Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme, focused in particular on community health care workers, and school assistants, underlined the possibility of rapidly scaling up on these kinds of programmes, in addition to the long-running Expanded Public Works Programme including Community Work Programmes.
There are millions of South Africans who are desperately willing and able to work, and there is a wide range of work that needs to be done: maintenance of community resources and infrastructure, community safety and neighbourhood protection, environmental rehabilitation to build resilience, community food gardens, school sports coaching, early childhood care, and much more. But the for-profit, capitalist labour market is singularly incapable of providing work in these socially necessary sectors. This represents a huge market failure. It requires public employment intervention.
The question is not: can we afford it? The reality is that as a country we cannot not afford public expenditure on affirming the Freedom Charter’s clarion call for the right of all to work.
Systemic transformation is required
These two urgent interventions—a universal basic income grant and public employment programmes—are, themselves, not silver bullets. They need to be part and parcel of a broader systemic transformation of our political economy. In the first place this means that our key macroeconomic and social indicators need to be based on assessing progress in employment levels, and in the reduction of poverty and inequality. While gross domestic product growth, or inflation, or public debt are not irrelevant, they need to be de-throned from their current be-all primacy as we seek to assess what needs to be done, and to evaluate the effectiveness or otherwise of what is being done.
The affordability of critically required interventions should not swing narrowly or entirely around taxation. Certainly, strategic taxation needs to be part of any public sector armoury, not least in the context of the huge windfall profits that our gouging cell-phone companies have been scoring in the midst of the pandemic, or the equally soaring windfall profits that SASOL has been making with the oil price around $70 a barrel.
But there is a range of other interventions that need to be used. The South African Reserve Bank should purchase primary state bonds rather than these being passed on to the private banking sector as a profit-making indulgence. Investment of these bonds should be ring-fenced and tightly monitored to ensure their productive use for key infrastructure build programmes, for instance.
In the midst of our current economic crisis and public sector budget squeeze, at least two of our major private banks have just declared major profit earnings. Now more than ever before what is needed is a state bank in which sustainable public interest trumps private profit-taking. With African Bank currently 50 per cent owned by the South Africa Reserve Bank and 25 per cent by the Public Investment Corporation it is surely a ready-made candidate for not just effective public ownership, but for social ownership and a strategic public interest mandate.
The industrial scale looting of our key state-owned enterprises has, unfortunately but predictably, now become an argument for further moves towards privatisation. In this context the SACP welcomes the game-changing proposal for Eskom to do a debt swap for green fund financing to deal both with its crippling R400 billion debt but, of equal importance, to enable this critical public asset to become the strategic leader in our country and region’s shift to renewable energy production. Without such a shift, Eskom will be left with stranded assets in the face of very rapid and necessary global moves to address the dangers of unsustainable global warming. Without a public sector lead in greening our economy there will be no just transition.
Other integral parts of a systemic political economy response to our all-round crisis, include a shift in trade and industrial policy to prioritise national production development. A well-resourced, high employment creating impact industrial policy must take the centre stage. This must include a major focus on skills development programmes, opening the workplace as a training space, and adequate support for co-operatives and SMME development. Critical co-ordination of these various initiatives, particularly through the District Development Model, should include a focus systematically eliminating uneven development with a strong focus on rural development as a key priority.
Tackling gender-based violence and corruption
The Central Committee strongly condemned the killing of Babita Deokaran, a whistle-blower in the Gauteng Province personal protective equipment procurement corruption case. We express our sincere condolences to the bereaved family. The investigation process must be thorough. No stone must be left unturned.
The Central Committee reaffirmed the SACP’s firm stance against gender-based violence, state capture, other forms of corruption, and labour exploitation. This struggle the SACP will intensify. Eliminating patriarchy, clamping down on corruption, and achieving equality are an essential part of moving our democratic transition into a second, more radical phase.
Attacks on the families and homes of SACP leaders
The Central Committee strongly condemned the attacks on the families and homes of SACP leaders and staff and expressed its solidarity with the affected families. Recently armed rogue elements attacked the families of the General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande, National Treasurer Joyce Moloi-Moropa, First Deputy General Secretary Solly Mapaila, Central Committee member responsible for media and communications Dr Alex Mashilo (twice), and head of organising Mhlekwa Nxumalo. The attacks included harassment, ransacking, looting, and invasive physical and technological surveillance. The SACP is attending to the life-threatening attacks with the seriousness it deserves.
International situations and solidarity
The SACP will continue its support for the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy and socialism. The Central Committee strongly condemned the Swaziland’s Tinkhundla regime for murdering activists involved in the just struggle. The plenary reiterated the SACP’s call for the release of political prisoners in Swaziland, unbanning of political parties, and inclusive dialogue towards the democratic supremacy of the people, including free and fair elections.
The SACP will be driving a humanitarian aid campaign expressing active solidarity with the people and government of Cuba in defence of their right to self-determination, including sovereign choice of their own development path, and against imperialist aggression by the United States (US). The Central Committee reiterated the SACP’s call upon the US to end its illegal and criminal economic and financial blockade of Cuba, imperialist machination in Cuban affairs, and occupation of the Cuban territory of Guantanamo Bay.
The Central Committee reiterated the SACP’s unwavering solidarity with the people of Western Sahara and Palestine against occupation by Morocco and the apartheid Israeli regime. We reiterate our strong condemnation of the unilateral decision by the African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki granting an AU observer status to Israel. The AU must reverse, investigate the decision, and take appropriate action against the Chairperson.
The United States’ colonial-type occupation of Afghanistan has failed. However, the US appears more to have merely changed its strategy of direct occupation due to its failure, its own internal challenges, and, as its President Joe Biden has said, cost considerations. The “official withdrawal” paving the way for a Taliban takeover was not underpinned by the US renouncing the imperialist interests it occupied Afghanistan to pursue.
For instance, a decade after the occupation, in 2010 the US described Afghanistan as to Lithium what Saudi Arabia is to oil, reportedly. Afghanistan is widely recognised as rich in rare earths and many other minerals, including lithium, an important ingredient in batteries used in electric vehicles, other means of transport, and devices associated with the deepening and widening technological industrial revolution.
While the withdrawal from its 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan is without doubt welcome, it apparently does not represent victory by revolutionary democratic forces. This is evidenced, historically, by the Taliban’s track record which includes unsparing oppression of girls and women, suppression of their development, and their marginalisation in governance and important public affairs. While many outside Afghanistan expressed hope that the Taliban will consider changing, others with lived experience in Afghanistan were fleeing the country in mass exodus.
Universal emancipation, human rights without regard to gender, and an end to the oppression and exploitation of one person by another are as crucial in Afghanistan as they are in every country, including South Africa. This should be the goal that defines the struggle that the world working-class movement and other democratic revolutionary forces should intensify against imperialism, whatever form its forces give it.
Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, SACP Central Committee Member, 29 August 2021
