Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe made it clear this week that the government is to press ahead with privatisation — suggesting tumultuous times ahead for the ruling alliance.
A day later, the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Zwelinzima Vavi, voiced ”frustration” over speeches by government ministers which, he said, ignored agreements on basic social, political and economic strategies reached at the alliance summit in April.
Urging workers to remain prepared for Cosatu’s planned general strike in October, Vavi demanded ”an end to privatisation, which raises the cost of basic services to the poor and weakens the democratic state” and the redirection of state economic policies to create jobs.
The alliance summit patched together a shaky unity on the strength of a joint programme of action that Vavi said had gone nowhere.
”The circumstances have made it impossible for the federation to twist government’s arm on economic policies — hence the October strike,” he said, complaining of lack of commitment and capacity in the alliance to advance summit agreements.
Radebe, African National Congress head of policy, was among the ANC leaders who released the party’s discussion documents for its September national policy conference.
He said there was no shift in the government’s policies and plans to forge ahead with the restructuring of state assets.
A central focus of the ANC documents is an acknowledgement that black empowerment has been perceived as too narrowly focused on ”supporting black capital”. They confirm the Black Empowerment Commission’s call to the party’s economic transformation committee last year that empowerment must be broad-based.
The ANC insists that ”ensuring levels of ownership and control of the commanding heights of the economy” should form part of a national empowerment strategy. However, it must also include ”such broad-based redistributive strategies as land reform, reprioritisation of government services and job creation”.
The ANC gives a leftist spin to its definition of a developmental state, as using its ”resources to ensure the progressive redistribution of wealth in the interest of the poor and disadvantaged”.
It also asks how much state assets have been restructured for development that ”favours disadvantaged sectors of society and … that benefits workers, black entrepreneurs and society in general”, and acknowledges the negative impact of slow growth and industrial restructuring on workers.
However, it argues that growth and development require capital investment, which resides ”primarily in private hands. A developmental state has to define and regulate its interaction with private capital” for mutual benefit.
A paper entitled The Balance of Forces urges leaders who are communists or Cosatu members to educate ”workers about twists and turns in the practical conduct of struggle”.
The documents note the ”serious lack of cohesion” in the alliance, and that the relationship has ”often been marked more by conflict than by cooperation over the last few years”.
The South African Communist Party was trying to rebuild itself and define its approach after 40 years of illegality and the collapse of socialism, while. Cosatu faced changes in the organisation of production and work, and the impact of the restructuring of the economy and state on its members.
Interestingly, the ANC sticks up for its alliance partners in battles against the ”right” and ”ultra-left”. One document says the ANC has failed to engage civil society, often leaving Costau and the SACP ”to fight battles within a range of civil society forums to hold at bay anti-ANC and anti-statist sentiments”.
The ANC notes the emergence of issue-based organisations like the Treatment Action Campaign, Jubilee 2000, the Basic Income Grant Coalition and Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee. These mobilised around real grievances but tended to do so in opposition to the government and the ANC ”because of subjective weaknesses on our side or because we have left a vacuum”.