The DA’s part in the coalition stands to entrench the neoliberal programme advanced by the ANC, rather than inspire a very necessary redirection. (Alexander/Sowetan/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
In 2008, in the wake of that year’s xenophobic violence, professors Sampie Terreblanche and Mahmood Mamdani renewed their call for another reconciliation commission.
A decade prior, the two had argued the need for a commission to come to grips with the effects of centuries of racial capitalism.
Their 2008 article, which they wrote with American philosopher Drucilla Cornell, gave this assessment of the country’s predicament: “South Africa is in a state of emergency because of the failure to address desperate poverty and is in urgent need of a mechanism to begin public discussion on how to ensure dignity for all those who live here.”
Terreblanche had testified at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he gave evidence about the role of the corporate elite in propping up apartheid. It was then that he put forward the idea of levying a wealth tax, a proposal he said elicited robust disapproval.
He wrote about the experience in 2017 as part of a series of working papers contemplating South Africa’s inequality crisis. “Since then,” he wrote, “a further deterioration of the socio-economic problems, especially in the black community, has been a core feature of the economy.”
Terreblanche died in February 2018, just days after Cyril Ramaphosa was first sworn in as president.
Despite what some had hoped, like his forerunners the investor-friendly president would fail to rein in poverty, inequality and unemployment. Had Terreblanche been alive, he might have made another call for a reconciliation commission in 2021 after the July unrest — an episode which some linked to the effects of South Africa’s economic decline during the first half of Ramaphosa’s presidency.
Now, as Ramaphosa embarks on his second term — helped by the ANC’s partners in the government of national unity — there has been a lot of closed-door haggling for positions in his cabinet.
The Democratic Alliance (DA), the coalition’s second-biggest member, has thrown its weight around, insisting the former opposition party be given key portfolios in the economic cluster in return for its participation. The party also wants to have a say in the directors general of these departments.
There has been less talk about how the new government intends to steer South Africa’s economy in a new direction beyond vague assertions that it will prioritise inclusive growth and job creation.
Despite optimism from investors, others are sceptical about the government of national unity’s ability to make good on long-standing promises to vastly improve socio-economic conditions in South Africa.
This as the DA’s part in the coalition stands to entrench the neoliberal programme advanced by the ANC, rather than inspire a very necessary redirection. From the perspective of fiscal policy, the ANC and the DA appear to be aligned, suggesting austerity will continue to hammer public services.
Meanwhile, the post-election standoff over cabinet positions has given credence to the view that the government will be locked in petty disagreements for the next five years, in which case the economy will also regress without anyone even trying.
What politicians seem to have lost in the back-and-forth over what the new government will look like is the opportunity for the current political reorientation to inspire greater transparency about how the state shapes the economy. Instead, the fight for ministerial powers suggests that parties want to have their turn to ram through policies, as the ANC government has in the past — something that has only deepened distrust in government, tearing at South Africa’s social fabric.
Last September, the Social Policy Initiative called on Ramaphosa to host an inclusive debate on South Africa’s macroeconomic priorities. This was after it emerged that the treasury was surreptitiously imposing spending cuts ahead of the medium-term budget policy statement.
The Budget Justice Coalition also asked for greater transparency, recommending that the treasury take the public into its confidence and discuss the country’s fiscal dilemmas. The group also recommended that the treasury publish all available measures to raise revenue, including taxes on wealth.
In an article in which he contemplated how a post-1994 South Africa might break free from the neoliberal world order, Terreblanche wrote that a new power constellation will have to be established. He believed that as long as the skewed power relations nurtured by the ANC remained intact, it would be almost impossible for the government to shift policy to protect the poor.
A new power constellation will only come about if the ANC government chooses to revise its strictly-structured state-society relations and state-economy rules, he wrote. This would allow the party to regain “its original commitment to state sovereignty, participatory democracy and a people-centred society”.
Terreblanche was sceptical that such a power shift was even possible.
At least on the surface, the current political transition appears the ANC’s best opportunity to do this. How things are going it seems more likely that the status quo will be maintained — the public kept at arm’s length as the political elite battles it out for power.