If “radical” means to “uproot”, then we need to uproot the capitalist mode of production for "radical economic transformation" to be effectively implemented, writes Nelvis Qekema.
The term “transformation” has found frequent expression in the advent of democracy. The understanding has always been that “transformation” is no ordinary change. This term was employed and deployed to demonstrate that it would not be business as usual in the dispensation of democracy.
Accordingly, the term “transformation” generally assumed a meaning of fundamental change in the sense of uprooting the apartheid socio-economic dispensation, which privileged the white minority, while condemning the black majority to perpetual slavery in the modern sense.
For the past 22 years, the term “economic transformation” was understood to be sufficient until President Jacob Zuma dramatically introduced in his February 2017 State of the Nation address (Sona) a wordy phrase he called “radical economic transformation” (RET).
There is indeed a grave need to “move beyond rhetoric”, because what makes any “economic transformation” radical is not the word “radical”, but the radicalism of the content.
To bring about the promised “economic transformation” of a “radical” type, in his first term in office, former president Nelson Mandela unleashed the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which introduced itself as being based on reconstruction and development being parts of an integrated process.
This is in contrast to a commonly held view that growth and development, or growth and redistribution, are processes that contradict each other.
Growth - the measurable increase in the output of the modern industrial economy - is commonly seen as the priority that must precede development. Development is portrayed as a marginal effort of redistribution to areas of urban and rural poverty. In this view, development is a deduction from growth.
The RDP breaks decisively with this approach. If growth is defined as an increase in output, then it is of course a basic goal The RDP integrates growth, development, reconstruction and redistribution into a unified programme. The RDP did not really take off the ground in any tangible way. Corruption played a huge role in undermining the success of the RDP.
As a result, in opening Parliament in 1999, Mandela declared that there was in fact a need for the “RDP of the soul”.
“The values of human solidarity that once drove our quest for a humane society seem to have been replaced, or are threatened, by crass materialism and the pursuit of social goals of instant gratifications,” he lamented.
That “RDP of the soul” never went beyond its mention by Mandela. And corruption has grown to be a gigantic monster that has undermined every attempt to grow the economy and develop the people. There has been no shortage of “economic transformation” blueprints. After the RDP there was the neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution policy, which stabilised the economy within the context of a jobless growth. In quick succession, the IPAP (Industrial Policy Action Plan), New Growth Plan (NGP) and the National Development Plan (NDP) followed.
In his 2017 Sona, Zuma explained “radical socio-economic transformation” as a fundamental change in the structure, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership, management and control of the economy in favour of all South Africans, especially the poor, the majority of whom are African and female, as defined by the governing party, which makes policy for the democratic government.
A careful look at Zuma’s description of the RET will reveal that it amounts to exactly the same Problem Statement of the RDP and Mandela’s description above. The Problem Statement has remained constant over the decades, while implementation has virtually been stillborn. Phrase-mongering has assumed ascendancy over implementation.
Zuma himself agrees that “22 years into our freedom and democracy, the majority of black people are still economically disempowered” (Sona 2017).
He tells us what we already know that “only 10% of the top 100 companies on the JSE are owned by black South Africans, directly achieved principally, through the black empowerment codes ”
As if boasting about the lack of change, he reminds us without doing anything to change the situation that “the representation of whites at top management level amounted to 72% while African representation was at 10%”.
The Oxfam 2017 Report tells us that 42% of South Africa’s wealth is owned by the richest 1%; and that the total net wealth of three white male billionaires is equivalent to that of the bottom 50% of the country’s population, which is primarily black.
In its Mangaung and the Second Phase of the Transition, Cosatu is critical of the NDP and it makes it clear that the NDP is not capable of bringing about any RET. Correctly so, Cosatu is worried about what it sees as the lack of emphasis on industrialisation and manufacturing in the NDP, which has now eclipsed the other two documents. In this regard, it notes on page 23 that: The NGP and IPAP place the reindustrialisation of the South African economy, and the region, at the heart of the new growth path. And central to this vision is the vital role of a radically expanded manufacturing sector as the engine of the economy. This lies at the heart of the growth path, not just because of its multipliers, which are critical to alter the character and trajectory of growth, and to build a more equitable economy.
Cosatu views this discarded planned building of these productive sectors of the economy as critical in employment creation. Linked to this employment creation strategy is a “coherent programme aimed at beneficiation of the whole spectrum of the raw materials” (p23). The state is earmarked as the one that should be the leading driver of this industrialisation programme using instruments like the fiscus, direct foreign investment and infrastructure development.
However, Cosatu accuses the NDP of giving beneficiation no serious regard, while the NDP acknowledges “that mining, minerals and secondary beneficiation products account for 60% of export revenue” (p26). Where the NDP downplays beneficiation for “contributing little to overall job creation”, Cosatu points out that there are other forms and stages of “less capital intensive” beneficiation that the NDP chooses to turn a blind eye to (p26).
Any talk about mineral beneficiation that sidesteps the land question and the property clause (constitution, p25) is meaningless idle talk. To back up its promise of RET, the ANC points to its Expropriation Bill that was first tabled in 2007 without any signs of urgency for its passing.
It purports to amend the apartheid Expropriation Act of 1975, which was anchored on the policy of expropriation with compensation based on the open market value of the affected property. The present Expropriation Bill that was again trimmed in 2015 to further appease the markets and investors is not materially different from the apartheid Act of 1975. It still pursues the policy of expropriation with compensation; and goes further to stipulate that such expropriation must be in the “public interest” and for “public purpose”.
The EFF recently burst the ANC’s RET bubble in Parliament by offering the ANC its 6% to make the two-thirds threshold required to vote for the Expropriation of Land Without Compensation. As expected, the ANC chickened out.
The present bourgeois Parliamentary dispensation and constitutional democracy were never designed for the execution of the liberation Struggle to its logical conclusion of land repossession as perceived by the BCM. We should bear in mind that there is no RET that could take place within the existing limiting and limb-binding Property Clause.
If “radical” means to “uproot”, then we must accept that the uprooting of the capitalist mode of production is a condition without which the RET could not be effectively implemented. A radically new order is needed; and that is a socialist order, of which the agents of transformation are the black workers and the poor majority.
* Qekema is the national chairperson of Azapo.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.