At the end of last year the African National Congress relaunched its journal, Umrabulo, a word used to inspire political discussion and debate on Robben Island.
Significantly, the purpose was to provide a broader forum for rigorous and robust policy debate, inside and outside the ANC, which has to be welcomed. It took place against the background of growing economic policy differences within the ANC-led alliance.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) are strongly critical of the ANC-led government’s growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) policies, which they say have been largely responsible for increasing job losses and poverty.
Cosatu wants Gear to be scrapped and replaced with a new macroeconomic policy and strategic framework that are centred on the goals and scale of transformation envisaged in the Reconstruction and Development Programme, which the ruling party adopted in 1994. At the heart of the differences in the alliance is the fact that Gear centred on the market- driven imperatives of low government spending, tight fiscal constraints and strict monetary policy is not compatible with the state-driven Reconstruction and Development Programme.
But the question has to be posed: is it not very unlikely that Umrabulo and its planned quarterly meetings of a few people will make an impact in the most critical area of policy formulation when Cosatu, with a membership of 1,8-million, has failed to get the ruling party to change its economic policies? Can a tiny group succeed where a giant has failed in an area said to be non-negotiable?
These questions are reinforced by increasingly centralised policy-making in the government. Cosatu has already stated that the ANC is itself being marginalised in this process by the Cabinet and senior government officials. As a result the ANC plans “a move supported by Cosatu” to start its own policy institute, which it hopes will increase its impact on the process.
But what are the prospects of this happening? Can state power be relocated from the executive, headed by President Thabo Mbeki, who is also the president of the ANC, to an ANC policy institute? Is Mbeki supportive of the decision to launch a policy institute that formulates policy for the ruling party? It hardly seems likely.
For its part, Parliament is increasingly rubber stamping decisions already made by the government. That is why the decision by Parliament to involve itself in government decisions, following a preliminary report that suggested irregularities in the controversial multi-billion- rand arms deal, is long overdue.
The relationship between who formulates policy, which policies are adopted and what outcomes are secured lies at the heart of the difficulties. A yawning chasm currently exists between the ruling party’s emphasis on delivery and building a better life for the poor majority and its economic policies, which in effect severely constrain its capacity to deliver that outcome.
Second, though the Constitution empowers elected MPs to formulate policy, Gear was adopted by largely bypassing Parliament as well as the ANC itself and its alliance partners.
Third, how will an ANC policy institute manage to relocate policy-making from the executive to itself when Mbeki is, it appears, driving the very process of undermining the policy-making powers of Parliament and the ruling party itself? Quite clearly there are, to put it mildly, tensions between the democratic and accountable process proposed by the ANC alliance and the bureaucratic one currently under way.
Fourth, where does the electorate, directly affected by the consequences of policy decisions, come into the policy formulation and review process? That is why it is so critical that branches of the ANC, Cosatu, the SACP, NGOs and broad civil society begin to demand the right to participate directly in policy decisions which affect people’s lives. Any democracy that cannot do that, hiding behind abstract political and constitutional formalities, is not worthy of the name.
For Umrabulo and the proposed ANC policy institute the key question is: if the executive is subverting the parliamentary democratic process and sidelining the policy forums of the ruling party itself, like the National General Council, and its alliance partners, how will it, a small group, make a significant difference?
This question is all the more important in the light of the fact that, unless they have a decisive impact on defining and redefining policy at governmental level it will be nothing more than a talk shop where big things are said by a few people but which has no effect.