The current political situation and the tasks of the social movements

Jubilee SA occupies a special place in my heart, not only because of the issues it takes up, but because of my long associations with JSA, which go back to its conception and birth. It is therefore always a great opportunity to speak to gatherings of Jubilee, and I therefore thank you for inviting me to this meeting.

The present political situation

There are a number of strategic challenges that face the anti-neoliberal democratic movement today. In particular Jubilee, which is a component of that movement, stands in a special relationship to the current political situation. I hope that at the end of this NEC’s deliberations, a much needed political initiative to deepen the social justice movement’s response to the current political situation in South Africa and in the world today will emerge.

There are three key elements that define the present political situation in South Africa today. Firstly, there is the global economic crisis that is unfolding right before our eyes. This crisis is very close to Jubilee’s very existence as an organistion, and I would like to return to this issue below. Secondly, and intertwined with the first one, there is the crisis in the ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress. Thirdly, we now have a fluid political situation brought about by the global economic crisis on the one hand, and the crisis in the ruling party on the other. In particular, as we move towards the 2009 elections, we are faced with a political situation that is radically different to that which prevailed in the elections of 2004.

A global crisis of unprecedented depth and proportions

For close to three decades we have been repeatedly told that history was at an end; that we had arrived at the ultimate system of social production for humanity – neoliberal capitalism. Against the background of the complete dominance of the forces of neoliberal globalisation, we saw a whole policy paradigm unfold: privatisation of state enterprises and social services, budgets cuts, trade liberalisation, “independence” for Reserve Banks, and the deregulation of financial markets. The age of big capital and the small state had arrived. Indeed, socialism was at an end, and China went capitalist in a big way, with strong authoritarian overtones as a bonus.

This dominance was of course not restricted to economic policy. In politics and philosophy, the age of the individual had arrived. As Thatcher once put it, ‘there is no such a thing as society, there are only individuals’. All political parties, ‘left’ and right, worshipped at the shrine of neoliberalism. A modernising ANC became born-again neoliberals and embraced the new doctrine with a fervour that can only be found among the newly converted. Our daily lives were not left untouched. In our living rooms, the television adverts celebrated the new cult of the individual, and what better individuals to emulate than the banker? And so the bankers became our daily reference points and our role models.

We were told that if you could not find a job it was not because the new economy did not create jobs. It was because you did not have the ‘skills’ for the new economy. We were told that the road to prosperity was for everyone to be entrepreneurial and start a business. For those of us who wanted to do things in common, to act collectively, we were told that we were lazy and that we encouraged dependency.

Within the ANC, the party gave the president the power to appoint ministers, premiers, and mayors and centralised decision-making in the top bodies. The power of the banker and CEO in economy found its parallel in the power of the party chief in the ANC.

The consequence of this new age was a long period where poverty deepened, where inequality widened, and where we all joined the race to the bottom. In South Africa, we saw the empowerment of a few blacks, and the impoverishment of the majority. We were told that the poor must learn the spirit of volunteerism, that the poor must look after the sick, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. In this country we saw the return of the diseases of poverty like cholera, TB, and rising mortality rates for those younger than 5 years.

The other side of the dominance of neoliberalism was the weakness of the movements. This of course did not mean we did not have pockets of resistance to neoliberal globalisation, including Jubilee SA itself. But socialist and progressive forces had been on the retreat for a decade when the Berlin wall fell. Many began to doubt our right to demand that the state take responsibility for the people’s welfare, and when many governments moved to the right we were unable to halt or reverse this move. We tended to focus on ‘alternatives’ and forgot that we had developed alternatives to capitalism for decades. And so even amongst progressive forces we began to accept privatisation on a “case by case basis”.

Such then was the prelude to the current global economic crisis.

The last few months ushered in the age of crisis for the world capitalist economic system. When the crisis began to unfold a year or so ago, those at the head of the global economic system tried to play it down. We were told ‘its going to pass’, that the ‘fundamentals were sound’, and that it was just a ‘market correction’. It is clear now that the world is facing probably the deepest financial and economic crisis in history of capitalism. Now the leaders of the system, and the ideologues who celebrated it, are in the confession room: everyone agrees that a global financial and economic meltdown is underway, that the lord of the capitalist universe – Alan Greenspan – must be held responsible, and that no one knows where and when it will all end.

Earlier on I said Jubilee has a special relationship to the crisis that is unfolding. Jubilee began as a movement of struggle against sovereign debt. It is now in the process of becoming a movement of struggle against capitalist debt in general. The crisis currently underway began, and continues to propel itself, as a debt crisis. Of course, this is besides the fact that when a financial crisis breaks out in the south it is called a “debt crisis’, and when it breaks out in the north it is called a ‘credit crisis’. One does not need to go to foreign lands to see the motive forces and the consequences of the global crisis that is now unfolding. Huge numbers just keep coming out of rising sections of the South African population that are sinking into debt. Thousands of houses are repossessed every month, thousands of cars are parked in the garages of the banks, and recently we were told that half of South Africa’s workforce is not meeting its monthly bills. Our civil servants go home with small change every month as their salaries are diverted to moneylenders. Further, the crisis is deepest among sections of the population who earn the most, the white section of South Africa’s population.

But like his brothers in finance all over the world, our Minister Manuel tells us that the ‘fundamentals are strong’ and we will be protected by the National Credit Act. There can be no sound fundamentals if people’s houses are being repossessed, and when entire communities are sinking into debt and poverty. After all, it was the inability of American consumers to service their debt that triggered a meltdown of the banks with the most ‘sound fundamentals’ in the world. Who would have imagined that ‘mighty Merill (Lynch)’ would fold within weeks?

Although propelled by finance, this crisis is a crisis of the world capitalist system itself – of its economy. On the other hand, the crisis also tells us how central finance has become the life of modern capitalism. We have seen the signs and the consequences already. The crisis tells us about how the bankers, the brokerage houses, the investment houses and the various people who deal in debt and credit have become the most powerful in South Africa and the world. The recent food and fuel crises were examples of how the power of finance had penetrated agriculture and the oil industry.

And so we have a food crisis in the midst of plenty of food, we have an energy crisis without a shortage of oil. We have seen how food and oil have become speculative assets. We see how thousands of houses are being repossessed and stand empty in the midst of a shortage of houses. This crisis challenges Jubilee because it is propelled by debt. How will Jubilee respond to this crisis? How will Jubilee reveal to the ordinary people the inner law of this crisis? How will it forge alliances with those struggling for houses, for food security and for cheap and clean energy?

Implications of this crisis

Notwithstanding the promises of a better life for all, what we will see is a deepening impoverishment of the masses, of rising unemployment in South

Africa and the world, of further indebtedness, of more houses and cars repossessed. More and more will not afford to pay university fees, will not afford school feels, and will not afford to feed their families. Inequalities will deepen, and those already poor will grow even poorer.

An equally important consequence of the crisis is that all the arrogance and certainties of neoliberalism will come crashing down with the banks and large corporations. Already, those who crusaded against nationalisation have nationalised the banks. The Swiss government poured $60 billion to rescue UBS, and trillions of dollars and Euros are

being lined up to nationalise the banks. Although capitalism is being nationalised in order to save it – just as they razed Vietnamese villages down

in order to save them – the effect of this exercise is that the ideological certainties of neoliberalism have come crashing down too, and a whole new set of political options are opening up.

The turbulence of our times will not be restricted to the economy. It has to, and will, trigger political turbulence. As people lose their livelihoods by the millions, the political elites who presided over the system, and who celebrated the system, will have to answer.

There is, however, the ever-present danger that the left, which had been forced to adapt to neoliberalism over the years and decades, will be confused and disorientated by the new wave of re-regulation of the international financial system, by the nationalisation of the banks, and by the confessions of yesteryear ’s economic assassins.

Political crisis in ruling party

Parallel to the unfolding global economic crisis has been a parallel crisis of the ruling party, the African National Congress. We’ve seen the defeat of ex- president Thabo Mbeki’s attempt to modernise the ANC at the National General Council in 2005, his defeat in Polokwane in 2007, and his dismissal by the kangaroo court in Esselen Park in September

of this year. We have since seen the break up of the ANC with the formation of Shikota or the Congress of the People, and with it the formation for the first time in decades of a group that can legitimately claim to represent a challenge to the ANC’s status as a governing party.

In the public, in the newsrooms, and in the living rooms of South Africa the unfolding crisis of the ruling party has brought its own ideological confusion. Firstly, we were told that Jacob Zuma was a no-go area for progressive people – he was anti-women, a thief, a fake unionist, and was deeply authoritarian in his outlook. Maybe we did not like Mbeki and his neoliberalism, but he is our only salvation. Even the left embraced this politics of the ‘lesser evil’.

And then Zuma won, and we were told that maybe there was political space in the ANC. Zuma and his new leadership were ‘down to earth’, were ‘accessible’, and represented new possibilities for the left. And so Zuma now became the lesser evil! Then Shikota arrived, and we are as yet left wondering who will be – for the left – the lesser evil?

The faction that ruled the ANC and the country till Polokwane was very committed to the project of neoliberal globalisation. They brought down tariffs, deregulated the financial sytem, cut state budgets, and created a group of very rich but few blacks. Like in Russia, Thabo Mbeki sought to create a congress of large black capitalists, of a black oligarchy.

The policies that Mbeki followed in creating the black oligarchs, however, impoverished not only the black working class, but the lower middle class

as well. The traditional middle classes, the teachers, the nurses, those in the lower levels of the civil service, the small traders in the townships, the small taxi owners – all these groups were impoverished by the policy of high interest rates, by the policies of trade liberalisation, and by the deregulation of financial markets. It is these groups that were adversely affected by the policies of the wage freeze adopted by the Mbeki regime.

The most vocal and organised formation that represents the interests of these groups is COSATU. Within the ANC itself, the middle classes – both the lower professionals and the traders – have become a major political force. In Gauteng, the ANC classified 48% of its membership as middle class. It was this group, led by COSATU, that defeated Mbeki and his modernisers first at the NGC in 2005, and finally at Polokwane two years later. Jacob Zuma therefore stands as a representative of this group in society, and therefore stands oppose to the Mbeki-led congress of the oligarchs.

This group, however, does not challenge capital but seeks a new deal in which they are incorporated in a subordinate position under the leadership of capital. Thus Zuma and his group have to assure capital of their loyalty to the system, of their loyalty to even a neoliberal paradigm. It is important for us to realise that this new group does not have the courage or indeed the political vision to confront big capital. It will off-load any problems it encounters onto the working class. Its base of petty-traders will furiously oppose any effective minimum wage legislation, for example.

At a certain stage of the development of the class differentiation within the ANC, when the black oligarchs had developed a self-conscious class interest, and the lower middle classes had found it unbearable to live under the leadership of the oligarchy, a split in the ANC became inevitable. It was a matter of how and when such a split would occur, not of whether it would occur.

The crisis in the ANC matured faster than many could have imagined. But the speed with which the crisis developed was due to the nature of the group that was victorious in Polokwane. The desperate economic situation of this group makes it impatient and it has to seize the state as an instrument of economic survival now, not later. This group cannot live for one more day without access to the state, in much the same way they could not live for one more day with Mbeki. The need to feed off the state at all levels gives this group a frenzied character, and invests its project with violent overtones. It is for this reason that this group represents such a threat to democratic spaces, and it is for this reason that this group threatens to unleash petty corruption throughout society.

The threat to democracy must not be taken lightly. In its haste to unseat Mbeki, this group took the constitution of the ANC and threw it into the dustbin. If it has its way, nothing will stand in its way of self-enrichment and economic survival. Not the constitution, not the courts, not morality of whatever kind, and certainly not political opponents.

In the light of the global and national economic crisis currently unfolding, and against the background of the crisis in the ruling party, the social movements face a number of key strategic challenges:

1. How do the social movements understand the current political situation, how does this situa- tion differ from the situation around the 2004 or even the 1999 elections?

2. How should the movements relate to other (new) forces who may be critical of the exist- ing political establishment (for example Bishop Tutu or Alan Boesak), who may be critical of the neoliberal project promoted by both the ANC and Shikota? Can we construct a united, even if purely tactical front, with these forces?

3. Can the movements themselves, after years of weakness and divisions among themselves, build a united front that allows them to inter- vene in the political spaces now emerging?

4. What steps do we need to take to bring such unity – within the movements and with those not currently inside – effectively and quickly?

The social movements must realise that the political spaces now opening up cannot be guaranteed forever. Indeed, political spaces exist, and continue to exist, only to the extent that new political forces seize them.