Steven Friedman
WORM’S EYE VIEW
Our politics now is a little like a Hollywood western; if you want to be taken seriously, you have to talk tough.
The most obvious examples are Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete and his colleague in education, Kader Asmal.
Tshwete is given to denouncing criminals and human rights activists, declaring war against the former, urging new laws and constitutional changes to give police a freer hand against them.
Asmal has been giving his penchant for public moralising free reign, denouncing teachers, education officials, university methods and more; he may have used the word “appalling” more often than any other politician in our history. As University of Durban-Westville educationist Jonathan Jansen points out, he has developed a patentable strategy: he makes provocative statements about education actors, is rewarded with a host of headlines, and then qualifies the denunciation.
Like Tshwete, he has also been promising tough action: closing schools, firing principals and replacing university vice- chancellors with administrators. He told the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union that “we cannot subject everything to bargaining”.
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has been less bellicose. However, he, too, suggested that the time had come to press on with changes to labour law whether unions liked them or not. African National Congress representative Smuts Ngonyama said privatisation would go ahead even if it did not satisfy “the labour forces”.
And President Thabo Mbeki himself last week warned wildcat strikers and taxi operators who block public roads that the government would not tolerate their behaviour.
There is an irony in this: in every case, the government statements mirror those which have become staples at suburban dinner parties. So the new administration, widely expected to stamp the ANC agenda on society, seems devoted to expressing the worries and pursuing the favoured solutions of the (largely white) nervous middle classes. The issues are, to be fair, more complicated than that.
With the exception of Tshwete’s desire to change the Constitution, none of this threatens anyone’s freedom and much of the tough talk touches on issues of concern to most citizens, not just the privileged. Crime affects the poor more severely, terror campaigns are rejected by just about everyone – as are minorities who disrupt public order. Even Asmal’s critics agree that, whatever the merits of his remedies, the problems he denounces are real – and that the victims of education’s travails are, overwhelmingly, the black poor.
While his critics accuse of him of posturing to win media popularity, he does seem to have a serious purpose – to galvanise education actors into working to fix the system.
Nor are whingeing suburbanites the only ones who would agree that, having consolidated the new order since 1994, it is time that the government began some purposeful governing. If the result of the new John Wayne style is less crime, no more bombings, orderly settling of disputes, decent state schools and well-run universities, few will object. Economic policy is an exception, since the wisdom of the current government solutions are not as self-evident as it would have us believe. But even here, an elected government does have the right to pursue its chosen remedies.
The real question about the new governance style is whether it is likely to work. The evidence thus far suggests it will not.
Tshwete has not explained how a police service riddled with corruption, and in which detective skills are weak, is going to use greater powers to catch bombers and criminals. And his flagship vehicle for cracking down on crime, the Scorpions, seems to be raising the hackles of regular police, leading to rivalry which hobbles already weak law enforcement.
Asmal’s approach could not prevent the matric pass rate slipping slightly, forcing him to suspend denunciation and to suggest, lamely, that the slide of the past few years had at least been halted.
And, while he could argue that he had only six months to make an impact, his claim that the policies needed to sort out education are in place, and that all that is needed is dedication and firm leadership to make them work, are contradicted by signs that the policies continue to cause some of the problems he decries. In Gauteng, to name one example, grade one teacher morale is again under stress because an increase in the schools admission age has depleted classrooms, laying educators open to “redeployment”. A recent study suggests outcomes-based education may come unstuck because teachers have not been told adequately how to apply it.
There are many other examples which illustrate that, while more effective government is clearly needed, the problems we face are more complicated than the “talk loudly and carry a big stick” approach seems to suggest.
First, the need to examine and revise policies has not ended: teachers fearful for their jobs are unlikely to work hard and well, however many half-time changeroom diatribes they receive. Nor are elite units and changing the law self-evident remedies to crime.
While we do need to move away from a pattern in which policy is debated endlessly and its implementation prospects are ignored, the implied government view that we now know exactly what we need to do and must get on with doing it may mobilise us behind some costly failures.
Second, as on economic policy, in the government generally the claim that bargaining with those affected by policy is an expensive luxury is also likely to come unstuck.
If tensions between elite crime-fighters and the rest of the police are not resolved, the new FBI will be powerless; if teachers’ interests are ignored, they will not become more effective. And these two examples concern only the need to consult and bargain in the government service; outside it, even action on an issue on which there is consensus – the need to fight HIV/Aids – has run into conflict on whether AZT should be supplied to pregnant women and rape victims.
In all these cases, the point is not necessarily that the government approach is wrong, and that of those who resist it automatically right. It is that failure to take seriously those who can resist official plans is likely to frustrate the plans because the resisters have the power to block them.
Bargaining and consulting does not – as some in the government seem to have forgotten – mean agreeing with those on the other side of the table. It means listening to them and trying to meet them part of the way or persuading them.
Yes, our problems are urgent. But that has not abolished the need for policy debate and negotiation. Without it, ministers will be denouncing ills for years because the ills they denounce will still be with us.