There was ”broad consensus” at the African National Congress’s (ANC) policy conference in Midrand on the need for a developmental state with more government intervention, but ratings agencies need not worry, the party said on Thursday.
”We’re not sending out a threatening message. That’s not what we intend to do,” ANC national executive member Jeremy Cronin told a media briefing at the conference.
Cronin, who is also deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party, and fellow national executive committee member Joel Netshitenzhe were reporting on the 1 500 delegates’ behind-closed-doors debates on the draft ANC strategy and tactics document.
”There is broad consensus that we need to construct a developmental state,” Netshitenzhe said, adding that the ANC is ”not satisfied with the current order of things”. Such a state should have the capacity to intervene in the economy in the interests of national development, higher rates of growth and social inclusion.
There was no resistance to this sort of leadership from the labour movement or capital, ”so the ratings agencies have got nothing to worry about”, he said. International ratings agencies issue assessments of countries’ risk, which affects how much their governments pay for loans.
South African character
Though the so-called Asian tigers are generally seen as models for a developmental state, Netshitenzhe said a local version would have a South African character informed by local realities such as the legacy of what the ANC termed colonialism ”of a special type”.
”It would need to look not only at issues pertaining to economic growth, but also how to restructure the economy to ensure participation by black people at all levels of the economy, to ensure that the kinds of industries we develop absorb labour, allow for higher rates of export and so on.”
He said a South African developmental state should be underpinned by ”popular democracy with a social content”.
Netshitenzhe said virtually all the commissions — the conference’s debating forums — believed that monopoly capital does things, such as constraining higher rates of growth and social inclusion, that have to be dealt with.
”These would be issues such as barriers to entry … undermining competition in the economy. There would also be resistance to some of them to policies of black economic empowerment,” he said.
There was agreement that the developmental state should be used to ensure they conduct themselves in a ”socially beneficial manner”, so that the benefits of growth are shared by all. This can be done through regulation, taxation for redistribution, and strengthening competition authorities.
Cronin said South Africa is not undeveloped in terms of an advanced capitalist sector. ”What we’re dealing with is a problem of underdevelopment, of growth inequalities, of a legacy of racial oppression and exclusion and marginalisation.”
The ANC understands that it cannot wish away capitalist forces, and that it has to ”manage that reality”. He said: ”We’re saying that it’s too simplistic to say monopoly capital equals the enemy.
”That monopoly capital by and large is not always going to be spontaneously sympathetic to what we’re trying to do, I think is a given, and is well appreciated across the board in the ANC.
”But the problem in South Africa is that you’ve got an extraordinarily concentrated, highly advanced capitalist sector, which has squashed out and squeezed out small and medium capital.”
Peculiar
Compared with other developed countries, South Africa is peculiar in that it has only four major banks and one brewer. ”An emerging black capitalist class or stratum, if they just form part of the existing monopoly capitalist setup, they’re liable to behave in a similar way. We’ll have similar challenges in dealing with them.
”But if one’s seeing a different form of organic emergence of small and medium-sized capital which is more rooted in national markets, creates more jobs, is more labour intensive — those are clearly progressive forces.”
The notion of a developmental state is less a U-turn by the ANC than an acknowledgement that it has to ”sharpen up, become clearer on a number of fronts”.
Cronin also said there was a strong feeling in commissions that the strategy and tactics document should reaffirm the Freedom Charter, not in a fundamentalist sense, but in understanding of the document’s spirit and ”popular resonance”.
Referring to an item in the strategy and tactics document dealing with the white community, Netshitenzhe said commissions agreed that the ANC needs to identify opponents in the context of constitutional democracy ”and not simply attach labels of counter-revolution simply because people might not agree with the ANC”.
”That we need to appreciate that we are operating in a democratic environment, and opponents who operate within the context of the Constitution are opponents, and we should not necessarily attach the label counter-revolution to them,” he said. — Sapa