President Nelson Mandela’s comments at the opening of the South African Communist Party conference that the growth, economic and redistribution (Gear) stratety is the fundamental policy of the African National Congress and that he will brook no opposition to it is just the latest sign of the ANC’s irritation at public criticism from its own allies.
This concerns us not because we see conflict within the alliance as a bloodsport, but because there are serious and valid reasons for questioning some of what the government is doing.
If the SACP can’t debate the government’s macro-economic policy, what is there to talk about? The fact is that Gear has met none of its goals – we have slow growth, high unemployment and some (but not nearly enough) redistribution.
We have not attracted foreign investors in meaningful numbers nor prevented the rand from being eaten alive in the ruthless jungle of the international markets.
High interest rates have crippled the economy and the high cost of money has meant there has been very little support to that end of the economy that even Deputy President Thabo Mbeki concedes is our most vital, energetic and job-creating – the informal sector.
To top it all, in the wake of the South- East Asian crash there has been thoughtful re-examination of the wisdom of global economic orthodoxies such as the International Monetary Fund – World Bank structural adjustment remedies that have done so much harm on our own continent.
The questionable presumptions about privatisation, high interest rates, low inflation and fiscal discipline to the detriment of social expenditure are precisely the underpinnings of Gear, the policy that Mandela insists his critics should remain silent about.
And what of Mbeki’s rebuke of activists within the alliance protesting against the government’s inaction at the treatment of a loyal comrade, Robert McBride, by a Mozambican justice system which appears to be based on the juridical principles of the Spanish Inquisition in a case that rests on the discredited evidence of old guard elements in the security forces with a dangerous agenda?
The McBride saga is just a further sign of a leadership that appears determined to crack down on democracy within the movement.
These are obviously hard times and the last thing the government needs is opposition on its left flank; opposition on the right can be more easily deflected by stigmatising it as anti-transformation or essentially white in complexion.
But the fact that the ANC is virtually assured of political power for decades to come means that the debates within the ANC and the alliance have great significance for everyone.
Snuffing out the critics should be of equal concern to us all.
Pigments of imagination
It is appropriate that in the midst of the World Cup finals the Dual Conference of Human Biology and Palaeontology should have been taking place in South Africa. From the halls of learning comes a calming answer to that competition of national hysterias being played out in Europe: “We’re all the same, guys!”
It is with a paternalistic eye that we view the children squabbling on the playing fields of France. As the scientists gathered at Sun City have kindly explained to us, we on the dark continent are the grand-daddies (or thereabouts) of them all.
Our hearts go out in particular to the Nordic teams such as the Danes, in the knowledge that the blonde good looks of such as Peter Schmeichel (damn him) is mere degeneration along the tree of human evolution. They all originated from Africa and migrated to the north, their milksop skins being attributable to their premature abandonment of protective colouring.
We are reassured by those at Sun City that this unfortunate short-coming will be remedied in time. In tandem with global warming (not to mention tourist excursions to sunnier climes), the judgments of natural selection will return the human population as a whole to a healthier patina.
There has been, we should acknowledge, an element of disagreement amid the weighty deliberations taking place at Sun City. A minor dispute has seemingly arisen as to whether the true font of civilisation is south of the Limpopo, or lies further north in such as the Great Rift Valley in East Africa
Where this issue is concerned we can only observe, judiciously and without prejudice, that the East Africans are a bunch of cheats, liars and crooks who wouldn’t hesitate for one moment to bribe the ref who needs his eyes tested anyway and if it hadn’t been for that degenerate French coach that some idiot foist upon us …
We are patriots, after all.