Metal workers union Numsa has added its voice to rejection of government’s new growth path, saying it continues the neoliberal policy of former president Thabo Mbeki’s regime.
It also renewed calls from the left for Blade Nzimande, the minister of higher education and training, to return to the South African Communist Party fulltime.
Addressing a media briefing after Numsa’s central executive committee meeting on Thursday, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said the committee thought it is unlikely that the government would achieve its target of creating five million new jobs in the next 10 years “because of the conservative macroeconomic package that the [new growth path] policy adopts”.
“The fiscal, monetary and exchange-rate measures in the New Growth Path will choke many of the noble objectives outlined in the document,” Jim said. “Our experience with the growth, employment and redistribution [Gear] strategy is that any growth path must be judged not by the targets for job creation it sets but by the instruments of macroeconomic management it adopts.”
Jim said the macroeconomic package that underpinned the new growth path had “more in common with policies that led to jobless growth and later job shedding. The macroeconomic package in the new growth path represents continuity instead of a break with Gear”.
Jim quoted the document’s argument that “in a mixed economy, private business is a core driver of jobs and economic growth” and then commented:
“This it asserts when the evidence shows that since the early 1980s, private business has been a shedder of jobs.”
‘Government will’
The committee was struck by the document’s use of words such as “government will explore”, “government will consider” and “government will review”, Jim said.
“Instead of proposing price caps on administered prices [where the state has a determining role like water, electricity and toll-road fees], the new growth path proposes a review of administered prices. Instead of the establishment of a state-owned bank, the new growth path will explore the possibility of a state-owned bank.”
Numsa leaders were unhappy that the growth path document did not include proposals made by trade union federation Cosatu, Jim said.
In September Cosatu proposed raising secondary tax on companies, the institution of land tax, export taxes, investment tax credits and a tax on financial transactions.
It also proposed:
A 75% target for local procurement by the state;
The introduction of exchange and capital controls; and
The enforcement by the Reserve Bank of asset-based requirements on banks.
Jim criticised the absence of social needs from the growth path. “In a redistributive economic strategy, meeting basic needs — health, electricity, housing, education and social welfare — is a crucial mechanism to stimulate demand.
“The only social need dealt with extensively in new growth path is education and skills development. Even this is dealt with in a technicist manner: how to deliver a skilled workforce in production. Nothing about adult basic education and training, citizen empowerment or civic education.”
Pensioners can expect only inflation adjustment in the next couple of years because of government’s commitments to “maintain the real value of social grants”, Jim said. “What happened to the notion of an ‘expanding floor of socioeconomic rights’ enshrined in our Constitution?”
Numsa reiterated Cosatu’s call for Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande to return to his position as SACP general secretary fulltime. “We cannot build socialism if the SACP is in a weak state,” said Jim.
Cosatu and Numsa leaders had agreed to deploy Nzimande and other communist leaders in government, but the federation had since realised it was a mistake, Jim said.
Because the country is “in the middle of a crisis of deepening poverty, the SACP should be strengthened”, he said.