In a scathing response to government’s new growth path (NGP), Cosatu this week stopped just short of rejecting it, but accused Jacob Zuma of sidelining the ANC’s Polokwane 2007 resolutions in favour of neoliberal policies similar to those of former president Thabo Mbeki.
The NGP is even worse than Mbeki’s economic policies, the labour federation implied, referring to Gear, Mbeki’s “growth, employment and redistribution” plan, and Asgisa, his “accelerated and shared growth initiative for South Africa”. The proposals need a total overhaul, Cosatu said. ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe on Thursday refused to comment saying: “Our understanding was that we would engage on this internally. If they [Cosatu] continue to engage in the media, I do not think we [ANC] should enter that space”.
Coming a week before Zuma’s State of the Nation address, the federation’s response is likely to deepen tensions with the ruling party by suggesting its growing frustration with Zuma, whom it assisted to topple Mbeki from the ANC presidency in Polokwane in 2007.
Cosatu’s leftist alliance partner, the SACP, whose leader, Blade Nzimande, is a confidant of Zuma’s, has thrown its weight behind the NGP, leaving the federation as a lone voice against it. In its 61-page response Cosatu argues that the NGP shows bias towards business and marginalises workers’ interests. Government, not business, should be the driver for job creation, Cosatu’s response takes as its starting point.
“One thing that stands out firmly … is that the NGP document fails to locate itself within the historical positions of the ANC on economic policy. The point of departure should be the Freedom Charter and the RDP [reconstruction and development programme], but none of these policies are mentioned,” Cosatu’s document says.
Development
It welcomes the NGP’s overall thrust on infrastructure development, but continues: “What [is] missing in the [NGP proposals] are the types of infrastructure that are required and the scale: roads, rail, ICT, social [such as schools, clinics, hospitals and police stations], water and energy.” On infrastructure development, even Mbeki’s Asgisa “provided more detail”, Cosatu says.
In key areas of government expenditure, Asgisa gave “details about specific projects and [said] public sector infrastructure spending has considerable potential spin-offs in terms of the generatin of domestic supply industries, small business development and empowerment,” says Cosatu.
The NGP’s emphasis on job creation, which Zuma insisted at last month’s lekgotla must be the focus instead of transformation of the economy, also comes in for flak from Cosatu. “Not only must the NGP increase employment opportunities, it must also be transformative in the sense of changing the class character of ownership and control.”
As expected, Cosatu’s document criticises the government’s call for trade-offs between business and labour to create jobs and cap wage increases. “These trade-offs are actually outcomes of the neoliberal conception of how the economy works,” the document reads.
“The NGP takes it as a law of nature that, for example, there is a trade-off between wages and employment, between current consumption and future growth.”