Edward Cottle
The African National Congress’s election manifesto appears to be an impressive document. It promises “five years of accelerated change” on the basis of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). What is completely absent from the document is its growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear). Does it mean that Gear has been abandoned?
The coming general election is being used to evoke memories of the RDP. Back in 1994, we were told that the ANC would be guided by the RDP. When Gear was unilaterally implemented in 1996 we were told it is a vehicle through which the RDP would be implemented. We were not fooled! Workers at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)congress in 1997 officially rejected Gear as it was a policy which supported the interests of the rich and not the poor.
It has been widely accepted within the mass movement that the ANC has abandoned the RDP and replaced it with the neo-liberal Gear. The toilets in the bushveld, exclusions of thousands of students from higher education, retrenchment of teachers, struggles around privatisation, accelerated collapse of health services and water projects, housing delivery to the private sector and reduced taxes for the rich were clear indications that the RDP had been abandoned. And the manifesto is dishonest as it pretends that government policy had not changed.
It was this policy (of misery) that prompted Cosatu militants to reject Gear outright at its conference in June 1998. This caused Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and President Nelson Mandela to lash out at militants during the proceedings. This was repeated at the South African Communist Party congress. The leadership of the ANC re-affirmed their commitment to Gear even though the largest organisations of the working class had made clear their rejection of Gear.
This showed the ANC that the working class was still in a combative mood and the militant programme of the Cosatu central committee (that was ditched by the Cosatu leadership) set out opposing plans for transformation. How then was the ANC to deal with this situation?
With the elections coming up, the alliance partners had to get their act together and start telling lies about the changing of Gear and the so-called “post-Gear consensus” emerging out of the Jobs Summit held in October last year. It is this post-Gear sentiment that has been used to divide militants on their attitude to the ANC and is therefore being used in the ANC manifesto.
The ANC manifesto appears to be departing from Gear precisely because of its vagueness and its refusal to raise contentious issues such as Gear or privatisation. There are no targets for housing, job creation, education and health services. How then is the ANC to be held accountable? The manner in which this (alliance) manifesto is written is precisely to deceive the ANC’s working- and middle-class electoral base. While the manifesto promises delivery on social services and job creation, this year’s budget is clearly in line with Gear.
According to Sally Timmel, director of Fair Share, every RDP ministry has had its budget cut in real terms. The government also intends to retrench between 50 000 and 100 000 civil servants and has put aside a measly 0,5% (R1-billion) for job creation. So much for new jobs.
Furthermore, the tax reduction of 5% for corporations shifts the tax burden to individuals. Individuals are paying 42% and corporations 15% of the tax revenue, whereas, in 1960, 17% came from individuals and 43% from corporations. To argue that there is a shift away from Gear and to pronounce a post- Gear consensus is treachery of the worst kind.
While it has not been enough to trumpet delivery by the ANC, the post-Gear consensus also includes the blurring of class differences. One of the startling differences between this manifesto and the RDP is its explicit attempt to make the interests of workers and business seem reconcilable. The manifesto calls for “a better life for workers” and “a better life for businesspeople”. This reconciliation works well in favour of business, who pay less taxes and receive more freedom to disinvest and keep their profits in speculative investment. While business has been let off the hook financially, there has been the shifting of responsibilities to communities.
Thus, the Masakhane campaign, with its emphasis on payment for services and a crackdown on non-payment, has seen cuts on electricity and water defaulters, eviction for rent defaulters and thousands of students excluded from universities. The new dark days of neo-liberalism have arrived to replace the old dark days of apartheid.
Not only are the poor being pressured to pay for the capitalist crisis, they must now also act in a social disciplinary manner. According to the manifesto, selfishness and irresponsibility are “threatening our hard- won freedom”. In other words, workers must police fellow workers to pay for services rendered or surrender services. Such are the new values and patriotism of the period.
The ANC as an organisation has undergone a rapid transformation. It has the support of the capitalist class as the ANC is implementing the neo-liberal Gear policy and not the RDP. This change of the ANC into a party of the bourgeoisie has had a detrimental effect on the working class. The working people have lost control over an organisation they loved deeply and hence a huge exodus from the ANC occurred from 1994 onwards. The ANC has become a bureaucratic shell. When have you last seen the ANC come out in struggle to support workers?
The talk about the RDP is not about delivery. It’s about connecting up with our memory of the ANC and what it represented in the past. The RDP is being used as a decoy so that we will give the ANC our vote. This, while the ANC prepares for an attack on the living standards of the working class.
Let us not allow ourselves to be trapped in a right-wing plot to disarm militants ideologically. The only way to ensure delivery is to call for the abandonment of Gear and ensure the “campaign against inequality and poverty” is taken up by the mass movement.
Edward Cottle is a former educator and researcher for the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union