Like a vengeful young man waiting for his rival to make a mistake, the African National Congress has pounced on the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) for its “failed” anti-privatisation strike. Cabinet heavy-weights claim that the relatively low number of workers who showed up on the streets last week reveal Cosatu leadership to be “ultra-leftists” who are “out of touch with workers” and “tell lies” in order to “claim easy victories”.
The rhetoric is alarming, particularly when coupled with a communique released recently by the ANC’s political education unit about ultra-leftists being “enemies of the state”. But even more alarming is the singular lack of analysis that has gone into the government’s counter-attack.
For one, there is no acknowledgement of the fact that workers had to give up two days of pay to participate in the strike. For people living hand-to-mouth and supporting large, extended families, striking means a significant sacrifice.
Moreover, for most workers privatisation is still a new concept. Although it is occurring throughout the South African economy, it is being done in an ad hoc, creeping manner, and therefore remains relatively abstract for many.
The Cosatu strike was fundamentally about fighting the Goliath on the horizon. And what a Goliath it is. Backed by teams of World Bank advisers, mountains of donor funding, World Trade Organisation trade agreements, and multi-national giants like Suez and Vivendi, privatisation is a storm waiting to break in South Africa.
For countries that have experienced this storm the results have been anything but encouraging, with rising prices, increased unemployment, and the red-lining of communities too poor to pay for services. In Bolivia and Argentina, for example, workers have taken to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, along with their counterparts in civil society, protesting the very real impacts of privatisation and liberalisation.
The government’s analysis of privatisation has been limited to sweetheart consultancy reports by firms and organisations that have a vested interest in privatisation. The municipal infrastructure investment unit, for example, conducts research on privatisation “success stories” that fail to raise even the most basic of concerns. This is not research, per se, but rather an ordination of what the government (and big business) has decided it wants to hear.
And what of public opinion? Here, the ANC appears to have nothing to back itself up, relying merely on the low turnouts at the Cosatu strike to forge ahead with its privatisation agenda.
In reality, public opinion in South Africa would appear to be very much opposed to privatisation. In a national, statistically representative survey of 2 530 people conducted for the Municipal Services Project by the Human Sciences Research Council in the middle of last year, close to two-thirds (62%) of respondents were opposed to having municipal services provided by a private company (17% were in favour and 21% were “uncertain”).
It should be noted that these statistics are only for municipal services such as water and electricity, but they are the only nationally representative statistics on attitudes to privatisation that have ever been collected in South Africa. Attitudes may differ on the privatisation of telecommunications and other sectors, but until the government can provide some kind of evidence to the contrary these are the only data we have to evaluate where public opinion stands.
When asked what could be done to improve the delivery of municipal services in the country, 44% said “more public consultation”, 21% said “more money being spent on services by the government” and 19% said “more powers for local government”. Only 6% said “privatise services”.
When asked why they preferred having services provided by the public sector, 35% said “this is council’s job”, 24% said “council can improve the quality of services if given the necessary resources” and 21% said that “council is more accountable to the public”. (These responses were unprompted.)
Concerns with privatisation were also notable. The vast majority of South Africans are concerned that privatisation will increase costs, make access to services for the poor more difficult and lead to job losses.
But attitudes to privatisation are not evenly spread demographically. Opposition to privatisation is strongest among black respondents, those living in metropolitan areas, those with low household incomes and those who have experienced service cutoffs in the past.
Support for privatisation (although it never totals more than one-third of any particular sub-group) comes from upper-income, white households and from self-employed entrepreneurs. Support is also more likely to come from people with university degrees, although this is likely a reflection of the race/class composition of people who have been to university.
Those who fall into the “uncertain” category tend to be rural dwellers, those with little formal education, and those who do not have access to services at all.
These are hardly the kinds of statistics needed to justify an aggressive privatisation agenda. On what basis, then, is the government staking its plans to privatise 30% of Eskom next year? Certainly not on consultation with the public or an analysis of public opinion. Nor have they done studies to understand what Eskom’s privatisation might do to jobs, electricity costs, or environmental pollution. After the Enron scandal one might at least expect some concern and hesitancy on this front.
South Africans are not the only people in the world opposed to the privatisation of core services. All of the public opinion survey data that I have seen from Europe and North America shows strong opposition in this regard. In the city of Hamilton, Canada, for example, two-thirds of residents in a representative survey were opposed to the privatisation of water, sewerage and waste management (despite plans by municipal managers to outsource all of them).
Cosatu may have made some strategic errors in calling its anti-privatisation strike last week, but it is hardly “out of touch” with the workers and citizens of the country on this issue. The honours on this account must go to the ANC.
David McDonald is co-director of the Municipal Services Project