Lionel Faull wades through a pile of documents and policy positions as the ANC and its key allies prepare to slug it out at its forthcoming National General Council (NGC) meeting in Durban.
If size mattered, Cosatu would carry the day. Its well-endowed 120-page economic position paper makes the ANC’s 19-pager look miniscule.
Meanwhile, the ANC Youth League is hoping that the benefits of focussed technique over sheer girth will apply to its 23-pager dedicated solely to nationalisation.
And the South African Communist Party (SACP) kept theirs tucked away until last, whilst making fun of the others’.
With alliance relations strained as never before, all four organisations head to Durban next week for a four-day mid-term review of progress made on the policies adopted at the 2007 elective conference in Polokwane.
The key areas of disagreement on economic policy are likely to be nationalisation, taxing the rich, BEE, monetary policy, and the role of the state in creating jobs.
Nationalisation
In its discussion document on economic transformation, released in late July, the ANC has carried many of its Polokwane resolutions forward, including the creation of decent work, the need for economic redistribution, and the continuation of broad-based black economic empowerment.
But the Polokwane resolution on ”state custody of [natural] resources” has progressed to the stage where the ANC is now calling specifically for a debate on the ”vexed” question of ”nationalisation of the mines and of land”.
The ANC leaves its stance undeclared.
By contrast, the Youth League appears to be focussing its economic policy efforts on nationalisation, with its brief economic discussion document dedicated solely to mines and minerals.
”We will debate the other components [of economic policy] internally,” Youth League spokesperson Floyd Shivambu told the Mail & Guardian.
The Youth League has proposed state control and ownership of mines and minerals through a state-owned mining company supervised by the Department of Mineral Resources, and an amendment to existing legislation that would make it compulsory for mining companies to partner with the state-owned company as minority shareholders.
Nationalisation would ”increase fiscal capacity for developmental purposes, particularly the funding of education, healthcare, housing, and infrastructure development”, says the Youth League.
Cosatu broadens its focus beyond mines by calling for state ownership of other ”strategic inputs to industrial development”, such as steel production and petro-chemicals.
Meanwhile, SACP general secretary Jeremy Cronin told the M&G last week that the communist party was ”not necessarily” in favour of the Youth League’s ”top-down” redistributive nationalisation.
”What we are in favour of is downstream beneficiation, where we move away from exporting unprocessed minerals. We need to break the mould of top-down delivery. Structural changes are needed. Ours is a spatial economy that reproduces inequalities,” Cronin said.
The SACP released its policy document on Wednesday.
Tax policy
Cosatu advocates the introduction of a tax category for the ”super-rich”, as well as a ”solidarity tax” aimed at capping ”the growth of earnings of the top 10% and to accelerate the earnings of the bottom 10%”.
The ANC speaks in vague terms about limiting executive incomes and discouraging conspicuous consumption.
The SACP said it had not yet advanced a position on taxation.
BEE
The ANC has called for ”a revision of the broad-based BEE codes to favour local producers, even if white owned, over importers, and ultimately linking BEE to sector strategies geared to large-scale employment creation”.
Cosatu agrees with the ANC’s emphasis on local content, and proposes that 75% of state procurement be from local industries.
The SACP goes further than its alliance partners, however, and is ”strongly contemplating abolishing [BEE] equity targets,” according to Cronin.
”Equity targets are a subtraction from transformation and an alibi for narrow empowerment deals,” he added.
Monetary policy
A major battle looms at the NGC, particularly between the ANC and Cosatu, over monetary policy.
The ANC says that supporting sustained economic growth will depend on maintaining a counter-cyclical fiscal policy to target inflation and keep prices stable, at least in the short term.
But Cosatu says that ”the manipulation of the interest rate with the hope that financial markets will achieve the restructuring of the economy is grossly inappropriate and inadequate”. It believes that employment should be the primary target of monetary policy, whilst price stability plays a subordinate role.
Industrial policy
Both the SACP and Cosatu have expressed their concerns that the ANC discussion document treats the revised Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP2) as a subject for debate, rather than a policy that has already been agreed upon.
IPAP2 is supposed to create up to 2,5-million jobs in the next ten years by envisioning state development of strategic industrial sectors within the economy.
At issue is a perception among the ANC’s leftist allies that the ruling party shies away from focussed state intervention in job creation and economic growth.
Whether the broad scope of Cosatu’s economic policy document prevails, or the narrow focus of the Youth League’s, next week’s meeting cannot take new policy decisions, but can only propose measures to deal with matters that have arisen since Polokwane.
These proposals would then be tabled for adoption, amendment or rejection at an ANC policy conference next year.
Only then can we expect to learn whether size, or focussed technique, makes the difference.
