South Africa's new social movementsIt was a surprise for those who had expected from him a hard-nosed defence of free markets in general and South Africa’s neoliberal Gear (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) plan in particular, which has broadly followed the path of adjustment plans urged on middle-income countries elsewhere in the world.
Since the democratic election of 1994, neoliberal economic policies have massively increased job losses, instead of creating the thousands of jobs promised, and generated a widening gap between white and black, rich and poor. The share of the poorest two-thirds has dropped about 15 per cent. The average income of African households fell around 19 per cent while the average white household rose 15 per cent. Unemployment doubled - there are now around eight million unemployed in the country.
Yet even with statistics like these the ANC will retain majority support, more or less come what may, and therefore the government does not have to try particularly hard to satisfy its constituency - a predominantly poor African one. A survey on political trends from March 1999 to March 2002 carried out for the liberal Helen Suzman Foundation found that the ANC could count on retaining up to 66 per cent of its support, even when voters are dissatisfied. Among African voters, 77 per cent of those who voted for the ANC in 1999 would still support the ANC - and this, in spite of a finding that three-quarters of ANC supporters believe the party neglects the poor and the unemployed.
So the government could soldier on without any active intervention while waiting for a trickle-down of benefits from a growing economy. But at the ILO Mbeki, in a speech that could be referring to South Africa, was hinting darkly at a revolt by the world's poor. His government has already changed tack and in its annual budget in March allocated more resources to social programmes in a modest Keynesian way. The June 'Growth and Development Summit' agreed on job creation projects and infrastructure investment. And the government has announced an ambitious Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programme to transfer resources from whites to blacks.
The Growth Summit committed government to public investment initiatives that would see capital investments by the national and provincial governments grow by 15 percent per year in the next three years. Other objectives were the expansion of public works programmes to bring relief to the unemployed, and an increase of the number of jobless drawn into learnerships to 72,000 by May next year. The agreement would also seek to give the poorest households access to free general education.
The changes in policy seemed to indicate a shift back to some of the elements of the Reconstruction and Development Programme which had effectively been abandoned for Gear when the ANC government took power in 1994. Cosatu (the Congress of SA Trade Unions) says that this swing to social investment hardly represents a justification for Gear, and other critics call the budget timid in the face of the massive social reconstruction needing to be done. The economic marginalization of millions has led to the growth of resistance to overall ANC policy, both within the Triple Alliance (the ANC, the unions and the SA Communist Party) and outside, among new and radically left-wing social movements.
The unions acknowledge that the Triple Alliance is losing its hegemony in civil society; the problem for Cosatu is how to remake links within civil society and show its relevance to on-the-ground struggles outside the workplace. Cosatu says it cannot work closely with the 'ultra left' who are so active in the new movements because the differences run too deep, but that it can work with other civil society organizations. However, when it does so, "the authoritarian clique" in government accuses it of becoming part of the ultra left and of seeking a relationship with the rest of civil society in order to create a new workers' party.
Civil society and the new social groups
Mbeki's strategy may have been all along to deliver the social benefit goods just before his re-election next year. But it may also have been a response to pressure from mass actions by Cosatu last year, and from the 'new social movements'. These new groupings attracted international attention at the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in September 2002, when they gathered together for the first time under the umbrella of the Social Movements Indaba, and when their protests outstripped demonstrations backed by the government. Their vociferous criticism of the government's policies found a ready response among many international delegates, who saw in the SA struggles a reflection of their own.
South African civil society is filled with organizations and groups dating back to the anti-apartheid struggle; there is therefore a culture of resistance to officialdom and some of the new groups carry on traditions initiated by the broad-based United Democratic Movement of the 1980s and by non-governmental or church organizations.
But what is new is the development of radical groups mobilizing support around disaffection from government policies and around anti-globalization issues. These groups are winning support on land, housing, health and privatization issues in overtly political and confrontational actions against the government. Sometimes they are led by left-wing radicals, or former members of the ANC or the SA Communist Party, or members or adherents of various Trotskyist groupings. In other instances leaders are veteran dissidents from the broad anti-apartheid movement. The focus of the new social movements has been on HIV treatment, land reform and housing, and privatization, especially the privatization of services.
Common cause with the 'old left' was most visible in the alliance struck between the Treatment Action Campaign and Cosatu, a breakthrough in the thinking of traditionalists. The TAC first led a legal campaign against the pharmaceutical giants and secured an out-of-court agreement which opened the way for the manufacture of generic anti-HIV drugs. Then it took on the government and successfully fought a case in the constitutional court obliging the State to provide treatment drugs to prevent mother-to-child transference of the HIV virus. The victory in the battle to force government to provide treatment in State facilities can largely be put down to its campaigning, in the view of local analysts. It was the combination of Mbeki's obstinacy on the issue of treatment and the urgency of the AIDS situation that convinced Cosatu to make this alliance. But the ANC in government was deeply unhappy about the prospect of similar alliances, breaching the containment field it had placed around its constituency of the working class and poor black population.
The government's uncertain handling of the land issue opened the way for further inroads by radical groups into the constituency of the landless and homeless. The government has found it easier to move on land restitution, handing back land to communities driven off by apartheid laws, than to supply the need for houses, and inevitably its police have been engaged in highly visible evictions of squatters, mobilized by the new radical groups, on the outskirts of cities. On land reform its strategic aim has been uncertain and its tactics unsure, and again this has allowed mobilization by the far left. Here the lead has been taken by the National Land Committee (NLC), formed in the last years of apartheid to oppose forced removals. It overlaps with the Landless People's Movement (LPM), the largest of the social movements, formed in 2001 to speed the pace of reform.
Another area of mobilization concerns the privatization of parastatals, at the centre of the government's macro-economic strategy. Battle has been waged on this front since the inception of Gear in 1995. The Anti-Privatization Forum (APF), an umbrella for 16 smaller organizations,was formed in early 2000 in response to municipal services privatization, and there has been widespread publicity for the actions of its affiliated Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), formed in 2000 in response to power cut-offs in the East Rand, Vaal and Soweto. Its campaign involves the illegal reconnection of residents' electricity, but it also campaigns against water cut-offs and privatization and the eviction of township residents .
Characteristically the unions do not reject the concept of privatization out of hand but remould it as 'restructuring' and seek to install guarantees of black staff empowerment through worker shares in the newly privatized companies and job guarantees. Typically the government seeks to restructure the parastatals to make them saleable in chunks and – according to critics – by boosting their profitability through expelling workers and squeezing consumers. Sometimes the demands of government and unions overlap on contested ground - as over Black Economic Empowerment considerations. Mostly they are at odds.
The unions have focused on job losses through privatization. The new social groups are focussing on the privatization of services such as water and electricity. For every government announcement of successes in social provision the new groups produce more data on water and electricity cut-offs as a result of the privatization process. The issue may come to a head at the forthcoming World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancún, Mexico in September, which will discuss the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); South Africa’s new social groups will be active as part of an activist groundswell against the privatization of basic services.
Privatization, for the unions, is primarily a workplace issue related to unemployment. In the wider context of the National Democratic Revolution, to which Cosatu and the SACP subscribe, it also relates to working class economic power and State influence. For the radical new social movements, who reject the notion of the NDR, the central issue is the privatization of services because of its effect on the marginalized poor.
The new social movements are not only filling in the spaces left by trade union organization and mobilization. They are also covering ground not occupied by existing political parties; on the left, the SA Communist Party is also in the Alliance, muting its public voice in opposition. Some in the new groups are starting to wage a political campaign inside the labour movement to end its alliance with the government and to foster the formation of an independent workers’ party.
On these and other issues - from apartheid reparations to 'odious debt' - the new social movements have become well-known as part of a fluid international anti-globalization movement. But Cosatu recently reminded its members that it is still by far the largest - with 1.7 million members - and best organized of civil society institutions. In many ways the new groups respond to its actions (or lack of action) as much as they do to those of the government. It is therefore important to assess the future of the trade unions.
The trade union movement and the alliance
The Congress of SA Trade Unions acknowledges it is in crisis. It is not an unfamiliar crisis for the labour movements of relatively advanced, modern capitalist states, and it relates in the country’s 'formal' sector to structural changes in industry in view of increased international competition. Workforces have been cut as industry moves to more capital- intensive operations. As a result of this and relatively low growth, as well as the depletion of the workforce through privatization, there has been a massive loss of jobs (the current unemployment rate is 30-40 per cent) and therefore of paying members of the unions. Even among the employed only about half of South Africa's workforce belongs to unions.
In some ways the same forces at work earlier in the more developed capitalist economies are at play in South Africa; in other ways the situation of the unions and the new social movements is very different. A large part of the potential workforce is in the unenumerated 'informal' sector and Cosatu is trying to organize in this notoriously difficult sector of the unemployed and the economically marginal. This is where the new social movements have mobilized, primarily around issues of living conditions in the townships and the rural areas, and not in the workplace.
The unions, struggling to stay relevant and influential on government, are in a contentious relationship with the new social movements' far left positions. The intra-ANC left hold instead to a continuing 'National Democratic Revolution' (somewhat variously defined, depending on the interests of the speaker) while many of the new social movements' leaders see the active polarization of the classes as the route to social revolution.
There has a been a good deal of fluidity in party politics in South Africa, with the New National Party moving into alliance with the ruling ANC and the much reduced Inkatha Freedom Party, and the IFP itself moving closer to the Democratic Alliance. A number of small parties have also been formed in recent months. Nothing, however, is denting the hegemony of the ANC, which still maintains its credibility as a national liberation movement. The ANC's alliance partners have been remaining under its wing to retain influence on policy. If the new movements and rebellious memberships succeed in driving them out to form a workers party there seems little chance that it will have the same measure of influence.
So the current Cosatu leadership is caught between a rock and a hard place. The government wants to unseat it and to replace it with more amenable leaders. The ultra left wants to unseat it to replace it with leaders who will break the Alliance.
Labour movement fragmentation
Cosatu's problems are not only with the radical left groups and the government - the enemy is capital, not the 'ultra left', says its leadership. Its crisis is also due to its internal organization and to challenges from rival union organizations, all stemming from the radical restructuring of the economy and rocketing unemployment. Cosatu president Willy Madisha told his central committee in May that Cosatu was at a "turning point" in its history. Since 1995, when government began to collect the data, unemployment has soared from 15 per cent to over 30 per cent as of September 2002 (in the narrow definition of unemployment). If discouraged workers are included, the figure rises to over 40 per cent and close to 8 million people. The unions are increasingly describing this as a "jobs bloodbath".
"No other country has experienced such growth in unemployment unless there was an economic catastrophe underway", Madisha added. Almost three-quarters of the unemployed today are aged under 30, and almost half of all African youth are unemployed.
After a couple of national stay-aways that failed to sway the government, Cosatu seems to have for the time being turned away from seeking the basic shift in industrial policy that it has long sought. Instead, as at the June Growth Summit, it is trying to improve the government's offers. Gear is based on export-led growth and involves the opening of the formal economy to competition, and therefore constant modernization, mechanization and cuts in payrolls. But the unions are now firing off broadsides at companies who are replacing workers with machinery, or are choosing casual or part-time workers. Without full backing from the State and industry - support only weakly signalled at the Growth Summit - this seems like Canute ordering back the tide.
Even within the labour movement Cosatu is facing significant inroads into its dominance as new unions emerge. A new giant labour federation, the Confederation of South African Workers Union (Consawu), claiming to represent 400,000 workers, was launched in May. It is aligned with the Christian World Confederation of Labour based in Brussels and aims to provide a platform for independent and non-aligned unions in South Africa.
It is opposed by the other major federations, the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) and the Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa) but it will add a further layer of competition to Cosatu's drive for membership to make up for its own lost members; Consawu said it wanted to attract non-unionized workers. Its 20 affiliates include unions from the fishing, mining, trade, clothing and construction sectors.
Challenges to Cosatu are coming from other quarters, too. Fedusa, formed in 1997, is a largely white-collar union that has eclipsed Nactu as the second-largest federation. It favours co-operative agreements between labour, business and the state. Its membership is around 540,000 and it is on a membership drive for youth, women and retirees.
The one growing union is Solidarity, formerly the Mynwerkersunie (Mineworkers' Union), which is 90 per cent white and is strongest in the parastatals, the mining industry and at Iscor, but is now seeking to diversify racially, mainly among Coloured workers in the Western Cape. It has 130,000 members, and is growing primarily because of its campaign against black economic empowerment (BEE), particularly threatening to white male State employees. It wants an alternative modelled on the Malaysian empowerment programme.
It is not just white workers who are concerned about BEE; many in Cosatu's ranks are deeply suspicious of the enrichment of the new black bourgeoisie. This suspicion may increase as the mounting influence of the new elite on the ANC itself becomes apparent - according to Wits academic and independent ANC watcher Tom Lodge this group is now becoming a major contributor to the party's coffers.
So the labour movement is likely to see a significant dilution of Cosatu's power and perhaps alliances on specific issues with other unions, and with some of the new social groups.
Conclusion
The difference between South Africa's route and that of modern industrialized countries lies in the heightened inequity that is the downside to growth and trickle-down policies. The political effects of this in other countries may not be as extreme as in SA, a country where memories of organization against an oppressive state are recent, and where populist mobilization holds perils for social stability.
The government is faced with a quandary - as the unions weaken so do maverick groups increase in influence. Up till now it has chosen to play the two against each other to weaken both - notably tarring the unions and the SACP with the same 'ultra left' brush as it uses against the smaller radical groups.
With the weakening of Cosatu, which views its role as embracing the concerns of all the marginalized, it is the radical new groups who are mobilizing around their interests. The State's reaction has been antagonistic and sometimes repressive. The Freedom of Expression Institute reported that there were very few cases in the past year involving traditional forms of censorship, such as jailing journalists or muzzling media outlets. Instead most of the cases involved the shutting down of public assemblies and mass demonstrations or restrictions on public graffiti and leafleting. These are being perpetrated not only by the State but by private corporations. The rise of the new social movements and the State's reaction to them is therefore having an impact on SA's developing and still tentative democratic culture.
The government has chosen to live within the international capitalist system, seeking the goodwill of transnational corporations and of the Bretton Woods financial establishment. It occupies the schizophrenic territory most developing states find themselves in - until recently effectively accepting a trickle-down 'solution' to deepening poverty while keeping the lid on domestic instability. To many its policies - even with a Keynesian tinge - still appear little more than promises of 'jam tomorrow'.
The radical social groups' confrontational solutions are no doubt bringing pressure to bear on government and may ameliorate its policies for many, but are unlikely to effect core changes. Critics of their radical line say that the problem is not State funding of social provision but lack of institutional capacity to disburse the funds and this is not going to be quickly resolved by militant action.
They may be a focuss for anti-globalization protest and a spearhead of international attack against the Washington Consensus. But the government hopes they will be a bust flush as the programme of social benefits kicks in ahead of next year's election. Their supporters say that poverty and unemployment is bound to increase and that a radical change is needed. Yet the government knows that its voter support base will not go away. Changes will have to come from inside the ANC. The question then is how successful the new social groups will be in securing this change.
Author: David Coetzee