The ANC’s alliance partners want to draw up a new economic strategy
Jaspreet Kindra
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has asked the South African Communist Party to develop a viable alternative to the government’s economic strategies.
This, the union federation argues, would prevent the handing over of the African National Congress to “the bourgeoisie on a silver platter”.
Five years ago the ANC’s socialist economic reform agenda, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), was abandoned in favour of the conservative growth, economic and redistribution (Gear) strategy as its economic policy. Since then Gear has been the main source of tension among the tripartite alliance partners.
The SACP and Cosatu have been walking a tightrope since 1996, criticising Gear while endorsing the ANC’s leadership of the alliance.
However, the unions and the communists have never proposed an alternative policy until now. Cosatu’s plea comes during preparations for the first alliance summit in more than three years on August 17 and 18.
This week SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande expressed the possibility of the ANC being assimilated into the SACP, as speculation mounted that the alliance was heading for a split following their differences over the privatisation and the restructuring of state-owned assets.
In a discussion document prepared for a meeting of its central executive committee this week, Cosatu reasons that under the circumstances where capitalist forces seem to be taking hold of the ANC, it will have to build additional alliances.
“We will have to strengthen our ties with the SACP and the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) and force them out of stagnation,” the Cosatu document reads.
“The SACP is beginning to assert itself and flex its muscles and build an independent profile. Its challenge is to define its role more clearly. It cannot be merely an education desk for the ANC and Cosatu; campaign only around short-term popular demands; or, worst of all, become a structure to rein in organised workers.”
Cosatu urges the SACP and the left in the ANC “to win the ANC back to the ideals of the mass democratic movement” and to ensure that the government implements the commitments made in the RDP.
The summit is expected to clear the air among the partners, particularly on issues related to economic policy and the state’s industrial strategy.
Cosatu and the SACP have expressed concern that if the government loses strategic control over state-owned assets particularly electricity, communications and transport it would be a blow to its development agenda.
An SACP discussion document, presented at an alliance meeting held last week to resolve issues related to privatisation and the restructuring of state-owned assets, noted that President Thabo Mbeki’s opening of Parliament speech contained some new thinking on Gear.
Mbeki announced a shift of focus from the macro-economic to the micro-economic or the “real” economy, as the SACP views it.
Mbeki also focused on infrastructure development embracing both economic and social infrastructure. He said the government would focus on urban renewal and integrated rural development and would lower input costs in the economy without attacking workers’ wages.
But since then, the SACP notes, there has been a continued absence of an elaborated industrial strategic policy.
The ANC maintains that it has never given up on the RDP. Peter Mokaba, an ANC member of a task team put together to resolve differences, argues that the RDP is government policy, while Gear is the guiding principle for its monetary and fiscal policy.
Gear, he says, “is the means to an end, of achieving the objectives laid down by the RDP of water, electricity, housing all the basic services for the poorest of the poor”.
He says the differences between the partners is “in the detail” about how restructuring should unfold.
Mokaba supports the vision of Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe, an SACP member with the task of restructuring public entities such as Telkom, the electricity utility Eskom and the transport entity Transnet.
Some Cabinet members do not support Radebe’s belief that restructuring.
requires a complementary role for the state and markets in a mixed economy.
A Public Enterprises policy document says government needs to restructure corporations to get rid of their unsustainable debt burdens, attract foreign direct investment and upgrade technology. But at the same time it underlines the social benefits expected from the restructuring plan.
The government has failed provide clear direction on industrial policy, the SACP believes.
But now the SACP has been challenged by Cosatu to provide an alternative plan.