Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa’s Frustrated Global Reform
by Patrick Bond
(University of KwaZulu-Natal Press)
The spectre of new social movements is haunting South Africa. Small groups of poor people, disillusioned by the neoliberal policies of an African National Congress government, are organising around grassroots issues such as water, electricity, land, health care and education, but with the growing conviction that the fundamental issues are related to the government’s acceptance of the Washington Consensus. And, in their eyes, the state, the ANC, its partners in the tripartite alliance, parastatals and big business, together with the old and new middle class, have formed an “unholy alliance” against the “poors”.
Although Patrick Bond’s new book is not directly about these social movements, his subject — the ANC’s embrace of the Washington Consensus and its rightward social shift — is generating signs of a new left reaction. This is not altogether surprising since, as he points out, globalisation has produced five kinds of responses, ranging from what he calls a “resurgent right wing” against the Washington Consensus to “global justice movements”, which comprises a worldwide resistance community of mainly socialists that seeks to “deglobalise” capital. He places South Africa and the government of Thabo Mbeki within the Third World Nationalist camp, while pointing out that much of its policy lies within the Washington and post-Washington camps.
This, he suggests, is illustrated by shifts in domestic and foreign policy decisions, ranging from South Africa’s distancing itself from other African countries more critical of globalisation to South Africa’s handling of such matters as the World Conference Against Racism and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Accepting globalisation and neoliberalism started, of course, under Nelson Mandela in 1996: the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of 1994 was shelved after advisers from the World Bank pressured Pretoria to change its tune — allegedly because the RDP was not feasible in the global market. Since then the government has followed closely the World Bank mantras of privatisation and deregulation while bemoaning the gap between rich and poor nations. Despite criticism from many quarters, including our own NGO and social movement sector, as well as breaking ranks from other countries in the African Union that believed the new global policies would harm human development, South Africa embraced the September 2003 decisions of the World Trade Organisation in Cancun, Mexico. Mbeki and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel have accepted the new post-Washington Monterrey Consensus on finance, while Bond believes the much-vaunted New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) is a looming disaster.
Nepad, Bond argues, does not promote real human development, but will serve to enrich and entrench small political and economic elites through its adoption of neoliberal economics. Similarly, the evidence that Nepad will help to improve conditions of democracy and human rights on the continent seems flimsy, not least because the driving force behind Nepad — South Africa — seems unwilling to take a strong stand against tyranny and state violence in Zimbabwe.
Domestically, however, not all things are going the government’s way. The policy of cost recovery on services such as water and electricity through cut-offs, the installation of pre-paid meters and the threat of evictions of defaulters has generated a range of movements of protest, civil disobedience and illegal reconnection. These groups are also making connections with the anti-globalisation movements.
Similarly, the slew of high-powered international conferences held here in the past few years have highlighted new political tensions. Movements from civil society, deeply critical of economic and social policy, have used gatherings such as the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development to voice their dissent. Despite attempts to mute these voices these groups have managed, at least temporarily, to mobilise significant numbers for demonstrations and protest.
How has the state responded? Badly, argues Bond. Opposition to its policy and practice has generated fierce hostility on the part of both the government and the ruling party. There has been a tendency to label the anti-globalisers and social movements as anything from ultra-leftists, to witting or unwitting allies of racists and outright “criminals”. Particularly when the leaders of these new movements have been schismatics from the ANC and tripartite alliance (some of them still with friends and sympathisers within the fold), the ANC rhetoric has been a mixture, says Bond, of “[t]ired ANC nationalism in faux-Leninist mode”. More sinisterly, perhaps, he sees hints of a beginning of a state crackdown on the new left dissent.
Bond has written an unashamedly biased, at times coolly angry, account of what he perceives is the right- ward shift of the post-apartheid South African state, particularly under Mbeki. As with any work dealing with contemporary issues, new developments have emerged that seem to demand an “afterword”: the post-election promise of “delivery”, and the decision to halt certain privatisation processes. Is this a sign of policy shift … or window-dressing soon to be taken down so that the government can get on with “business as usual”? We shall see.
Combined with his presentation are a wealth of cartoons by Zapiro — which sometimes make Bond’s point with savage acuity. More than Bond’s systematic marshalling of evidence and theoretical argument, both of which can and will be disputed by defenders of state policy, Zapiro’s cartoons go for the heart — and the jugular: a cartoon of people in a squatter camp, where a man reading a newspaper tells his wife “Good news, the minister says the economic fundamentals are sound”, or one where an emaciated figure trying to deal with a pile of bills sees on television a grossly fat minister announce smugly “We must tighten our belts”, commands us to face the paradox of wealth and poverty and the human costs of public policy.
Some critics might object: all well and good, and certainly not a little manipulative on your parts Messrs Bond and Zapiro, but is there any other choice for the government to the policies it is following? Or indeed, would the socialism that Bond favours not make things even worse? These are certainly valid questions that Bond should answer in a public debate. As indeed the government needs to answer the disturbing questions Bond raises in this book, without playing the racism or ultra-leftism cards.