'War is upon us' - South African Civil Society Information Service

(Article from South African Civil Society Information Service)

War is Upon Us

by Richard Pithouse - 30 Oct 2012

to the fragrance of lemon blossoms
and then to the ultimatums of war
- Pablo Neruda, Right Comrade, Its the Hour of the Garden, Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973

When COSATU and the Communist Party have to rely on the police and their stun grenades, rubber bullets and, by some accounts, live ammunition to force their way into a stadium against the opposition of striking workers it is clear that their assumption of a permanent right to leadership is facing a serious challenge from below. 

It's equally clear that the ruling party and its allies intend to force obedience rather than to seek to renegotiate support or enable democratic engagement, that the police aren't even making a pretence of being loyal to the law rather than the ruling party and that this is the way that Blade Nzimande likes it.

The misuse of the police to defend the authority of the ruling party in Rustenburg is no exception to a broadly democratic consensus. In fact it has become a routine feature of political life. At the same time as the drama was unfolding in Rustenburg on Saturday a meeting with technical experts to discuss a plan to upgrade the Harry Gwala shack settlement on the East Rand was summarily banned by the police on the grounds that it was a 'security threat'. 

The settlement is in urgent need of services as basic as water and refuse removal but millions have been spent on a pavilion in memory of Oliver Tambo adjacent to the settlement. As the ANC's role in the struggles against apartheid is memorialised that memory is simultaneously desecrated as it is mobilised to legitimate the increasingly violent containment of popular dissent.

The collapse of the ruling party's hegemony on the mines in Rustenburg is not the first time that the ANC has lost control of a territory where it once took its right to rule for granted. In early 2006 the ANC was, despite a large police presence and a large contingent of supporters bussed in from elsewhere, unable to go ahead with a rally to be addressed by S'bu Ndebele, the then Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, in the Kennedy Road shack settlement in Durban. 

Some years later the ANC eventually took that space back with the open use of violence organised through party structures with the support of the police. But despite the announcement, made by a senior SACP member, that the state had decided to 'disband' the movement that had won popular support in Kennedy Road, and despite tremendous intimidation and the gross misuse of the police and the criminal justice system to try and effect this ban, that movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo endures. The rupture in Rustenburg may also cohere into an enduring force. And there will be more ruptures to come.

There are important respects in which the politics developed in and around Marikana is very different from that developed in and around Kennedy Road seven years earlier. But one of the things that these two points of rupture do have in common is a firm insistence on the right of people in struggle, people who have decided to take their future into their own hands, to speak for themselves. 

This shared suspicion of authorised forms of local representation, and the consequent desire of people to represent themselves where they live and work, could, along with other points of connection, ranging from familial links to a shared experience of repression, provide common ground for linking struggles in urban shack settlements and on the mines. It has, in itself, no predetermined political character but, amongst other potentials, some of which could well be marked by a dangerous counter-brutality, the rejection of the ruling party's local mechanisms for sustaining political control does carry the possibility for a renewal of democratic possibility.

The path that winds from Polokwane to Kennedy Road and on to Marikana and Nkandla and then up, past the reach of our gaze and over the horizon, is not taking us towards anything like the kinds of societies imagined in the Freedom Charter or the Constitution.
The only visible transition on offer is one in which liberal democracy is increasingly replaced with a system in which the political class is treated as if it is above the law, the state is openly used as an instrument for the political class to accumulate rather than to redistribute wealth and power and people engaged in certain kinds of popular dissent are treated as if they are beneath the law. Police violence, including torture and murder, as well as state sanction for political violence by ANC supporters and political assassination have all become familiar features of our political life.

And powerful figures and forces in the ruling alliance from Jacob Zuma to Sidumo Dlamini, the Communist Party, MK veterans, SADTU and others are openly speaking the language of war. They may say that the war is on the enemy within, enemy agents, neo-liberals, imperialists, criminals, enemies of the national-democratic revolution and counter-revolutionaries but what they really mean is that they do not intend to accept popular dissent as legitimate or to engage it through democratic institutions.

Instead it is proposed that dissent be dealt with by the police and on occasion the army, as well as counter-mobilisation that aims to destroy rather than to engage and which is already often armed, and, in Sidumo Dlamini's view, MK.
War, generally not the war of open manoeuvre that we saw in Marikana and which we've seen, although with nothing like the same degree of murderous intent, in shack settlements across the country in recent years but rather the scattered, often secretive and frequently highly territorialised violence of low intensity war, of counter-insurgency, is upon us. The Kennedy Road, eTwatwa, Makause and Zakheleni shack settlements have all experienced this since Polokwane.

The figures in the ANC that talk of a return to principled leadership have no material base from  which they could make a serious attempt to challenge the capture of the party and, thereby, the state by factions that are both predatory and authoritarian. For this reason their discourse functions, irrespective of their intentions, to legitimate the party rather than to organise or represent a last ditch attempt to save it.
And, with the exception of the metal worker's union, Marikana has marked the end of COSATU's claim to democratic credibility and moral authority. If there is to be a renewal of democratic possibilities it will have to be undertaken against the ruling party and its allies.

Popular struggle against a post-colonial state is a very different thing to a national liberation struggle against an internationally discredited form of domination. But the time has come when we have to, like the generations that confronted the end of the illusions in postcolonial states elsewhere, face a future in which defeat of democratic and progressive aspirations is the most likely outcome of the ruthless intersection between elite nationalism and capitalism. And while there are some examples of popular struggles in the postcolony that have attained some critical mass in recent years they have also, as in Haiti and Bolivia, had to confront serious limitations. There is no easy route out of this crisis.

Nonetheless it is clear that the only viable resolution is one that includes the majority of us. This could take the form of an authoritarian and even quasi-fascist response to the crisis. But it could also take the form of a democratic project that seeks to move beyond the liberal consensus that reduced democracy to voting, court action and NGO campaigns and to build the political power of the dispossessed from the ground up. 

But if an insurgent project of this nature is to have any enduring success it will have to understand that the line dividing the political from the economic has been drawn to sustain both privilege and exclusion and that wealth, power and the structures that sustain them need to be subject to serious critique. This would put such a project at odds with most of the media and civil society as well as the ruling party making it, to say the least, a risky endeavour. But if political empowerment doesn't translate into material empowerment – into land, housing, decent incomes and decent education – it will be little more than a detour on the road that has already taken us from Polokwane to Nkandla with our journey marked out in a steadily accumulating record of intimidation and blood.

The challenges that confront us are tremendous. But when war is announced there are only two real choices – to resist or to submit. The urgent questions that we have to confront are these:  What will be the nature of our resistance and how will we carry it forward?  

Institute for Security Studies: "SA in economic and political decline"

(Excerpts from Institute for Security Studies article)

                                        South Africa: 
          The economic and political decline of the country

Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis (CPRA) - Pretoria

CPRA Daily Briefings

Week   41

Thursday, 25 October 2012

On 20 October 2012 the influential international magazine The Economist led with an article titled ‘Sad South Africa: cry, the beloved country’.  In the article the author asserts that South Africa is on the decline both politically and economically and is at its worst point since the birth of democracy in 1994.

The article points out that the deterioration in the quality of education over the years has had devastating consequences. According to the World Economic Forum, South Africa ranks 132^nd out of 144 countries for primary education and 143^rd in science and maths. 

It is estimated that only 15% of children can read and write at the minimally prescribed levels by the age of 12. 
The South African education system is ranked as being among the worst performing in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. 
As a result, inequality and unemployment have worsened. 

The South African Gini Coefficient, which measures income inequality, was 0,59 in 1993 and increased to 0,63 in 2011. Poor education has limited the ability of the country to create jobs and the official unemployment rate has increased from 20% in 1994 to 25% in 2012. 
The real unemployment rate, which also includes those who have given up looking for work, is closer to 40%.

The consequence of this is that in the last decade the country’s economy has only been able to secure an annual GDP growth of 2%, while countries north of the Limpopo River record an annual average of 6%. 
According to current projections Nigeria should surpass South Africa as the largest economy in Africa within the next decade. The article further points out that the ‘[e]conomic malaise and the chronic failure of government services are an indictment of South Africa’s politicians. Under apartheid, a role in the ANC was about sacrifice and risk. Today it is a ticket for the gravy train. Jobs in national and local politics provide access to public funds and cash from firms eager to buy political influence.’ 

With the ANC dominating in the polls and the lack of a constituency-based parliamentary system, South Africa is de facto a one-party state. 

The primary source of accountability comes from the judiciary, the media and civil society. For example, civil society organisations acting on behalf of the poor frequently have to turn to the courts to get the government to deliver services such as the delivery of textbooks, or to prevent the government from acting illegally, for example when it evicts poor people from their homes without court orders. It is for this reason that the ruling elite is hostile to these important democratic institutions and attempts to weaken and undermine them where possible.

As with many cases of open criticism of the political leadership of South Africa, the messengers were attacked. As it is not possible to argue with the facts in the article, which are well known, President Jacob Zuma first attacked the media for negative reporting. 

Later, on 21 October, the Presidency issued a statement in which he outlined the positive achievements of the past 18 years. 

Despite these successes, the article does point out that leadership is a key factor in the performance of the country during this turbulent economic climate. 

Under the leadership of President Zuma, corruption and the subsequent looting of state resources have become more blatant. 

The projected stagnation of economic growth coupled with high levels of corruption could have a deteriorating effect on the country’s economic situation. 

Although the ANC’s national conference at Mangaung may signify hope for a change of leadership, it is still unclear who will run against President Zuma for the position of ANC president. The current political culture within the ANC does not encourage competition and as a result there is no debate on what each candidate will bring to the party in terms of leadership. 

The perception that if a person runs against the President it means he/she undermines the ANC, only encourages division within the party. Although Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has been nominated as a presidential candidate, he has to date not accepted the nomination and no one is sure of his intentions. COSATU president Sdumo Dlamini has said that he could lose everything if he dared to run against President Zuma at the elective conference, emphasising the lack of appreciation for democratic practices among the ruling elite. Therefore, it is expected that President Zuma will be elected to another term as ANC president.

Many are hoping that President Zuma’s second term will be similar to that of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Sliva, in which he focused on ensuring a positive legacy. In such a scenario President Zuma would be hard on corruption and crime and actively work to improve the situation in the country, rather than ensure the protection of politically connected cadres. 

However, unlike Lula, President Zuma faces pending corruption charges and his immediate family have become dramatically richer during his presidency. 

In addition, he used R238 million of taxpayers’ money to fund extravagant upgrades to his private homestead in Nkandla. 

This amount could have provided 3 600 families with low-cost housing, or paid the salaries of thousands of teachers, doctors and social workers. 

His complete lack of shame over such blatant extravagance suggests he is unlikely to act in the interest of the country any time soon.

It is undeniable that the country is currently in an economic and political decline.  

South Africans across the board are increasingly aware of this and there are moves afoot to start new political formations. Hopefully, this will lead to healthy political competition in the future when South Africans band together to hold their leaders directly accountable through the ballot box. 

The 2014 elections may present the first signs of this. It will, however, be important to carefully monitor the appointments made to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). 

There will be those in the ruling elite who will not want to risk being voted out of power and will be more than willing to rig the elections to maintain their undeserved opulent lifestyles. 

The End

"ANC becomes the disease, not the cure"

(Article from Vancouver Sun)

Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress becomes the disease, not the cure

By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun columnist October 16, 2012

South Africa seems no longer able to contain the contradictions and frustrated expectations that have been swept under the carpet since the country’s first freely elected government came to power in 1994.

With new elections due in 2014, there is increasingly evident public anger at the governing African National Congress (ANC) — the party of liberation from apartheid and white minority rule — over its failure to meet its pledge to provide a better life for all.

Instead, the ANC has become a deeply corrupt party of cronyism and patronage. Indeed, holding ANC positions in governments at all levels has become such a sure route to wealth that aspirants will murder to get them.

Last week, Reuters news agency reported that an internal ANC report states that in KwaZulu Natal — the largest of South Africa’s nine provinces and the home base of President Jacob Zuma — 38 party members have been murdered since February last year in fights for lucrative positions.

There are similar murderous contests among ANC members all over the country.

The spoils are enormous.

A potent image of the benefits of power now enraging many South Africans is that the equivalent of $27 million of government money is being spent on renovations to President Zuma’s private KwaZulu Natal home.

An auditor’s report from another major province, the Eastern Cape, in 2009 found three quarters of all government contracts went to companies owned by government officials or their relatives.

A report by the national Auditor General last year found 95 per cent of all municipal governments could not account for their spending.

Yet while South Africa has acquired this hugely wealthy and arrogant black aristocracy — and one of the widest disparities between rich and poor anywhere in the world — most of the country’s 50 million people live in the conditions of extreme poverty that marked the era of apartheid.

Despite a lot of talk and some accomplishments involving improved housing and social services, most South Africans continue to live in tin shacks without running water or electricity.

The health care system is a nightmare, and the school system is incapable of producing talent. The unemployment rate among young people is over 50 per cent.

By some estimates, about 65 per cent of South Africans live at what the United Nations calls levels of extreme poverty, even though this is the largest and most sophisticated economy in Africa.

And as has been seen in the last two months, even those with jobs often cannot make ends meet.

The strike at Lonmin’s platinum mine at Marikana in August by miners demanding a living wage has spurred a wave of wildcat strikes involving at least 100,000 miners across South Africa’s essential ore extraction industry.

The grimly compelling images from the Marikana strike were straight out of the worst years of apartheid, with police lobbing volleys of rifle fire on the strikers, killing 34.

The violence has continued, and the strikes have spread to the trucking industry and among municipal workers.

Predictions that South Africa belongs with Brazil, Russia, India and China as a future economic power are being re-thought fast.

The lack of response to the Marikana massacre by President Zuma and his government has reinforced his image as an ineffectual leader of an administration concerned only with its own bank accounts and assets.

Zuma, who came to the ANC leadership and the presidency in 2009, has been under attack from within the party for some time.

Most evident has been his very public fight with the radical former leader of the ANC Youth, Julius Malema.

Since his expulsion from the party, Malema has set up his own youth league, and his brand of direct activism — such as the forced expropriation of the remaining white-owned farms — assures him a strong following among young ANC members.

But Malema — who at 31 has acquired a substantial real estate empire, wears lots of gold, drives opulent cars and likes to drink expensive Scotch — is hardly a poster boy for reform of the ANC.

Neither are the other challengers to Zuma’s leadership who are quietly but purposefully lining up ahead of the ANC’s national meeting early in December, when its presidential candidate for the 2014 national election will be chosen.

Chief among them is the current Deputy President, Kgalema Motlanthe, 63.

He has good credentials for an ANC leader. He spent 10 years in Robben Island prison with Nelson Mandela after being convicted of membership in the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.

But while Motlanthe is behaving like a man who is a candidate, he has not come out and said so.

Also, he is just as much a member of the ANC’s corrupt ruling class as is Zuma.

Already some of the ANC branches in the smaller provinces have chosen to back Motlanthe at the December conference to be held at Mangaung near Bloemfontein.

But it will be the brigades of delegates from the big provinces that decide the issue, and for the moment it is likely that Zuma will get a second term as president.

What seems unlikely is that South Africa will get a second crack at the promise of renewal made 20 years ago.

The Economist: "SA sliding downhill"

(Article from Times Live)

Articles in The Economist expressing the view that South Africa is sliding downhill might benefit the country, the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said.

The magazine's latest issue includes an editorial on South Africa entitled "Cry the beloved country", and a report entitled "Over the rainbow".

They both suggest a failure of leadership in South Africa had resulted in the country sliding backwards since democracy was introduced in 1994.

According to the editorial: "Since Mr Mandela retired in 1999, the country has been woefully led," referring to former president Nelson Mandela.

The SAIRR said it was in broad agreement with both articles.

"The institute has read both reports and can say that the data cited by The Economist is broadly accurate."

The institute's deputy CEO, Frans Cronje, said: "The Economist reports will obviously have an impact on investor sentiment. In the short term the impact will be negative and will cause damage to the economy."

However, he predicted the criticism could help South Africa in the long term.

"In the long term, however, it will alert people, in government, the business world, and outside, to the need for urgent policy reform.

"What has happened in the weeks since the Marikana shooting, both in terms of ratings agency downgrades and the latest report from The Economist, is a much-needed correction in opinion about South Africa."

Some 46 people were killed in strike-related violence at Lonmin's platinum mine in Marikana, near Rustenburg, in August and September.

A more realistic understanding of South Africa would lead to a more accurate assessment of its problems, Cronje said.

"Without dramatic shifts in policy it is no longer possible for the current government to meet the demands of actors within South African society," he said.

According to The Economist South Africa was "on the slide both economically and politically".

The editorial points out that the mining sector had been "battered by wildcat strikes, causing the biggest companies to shed thousands of jobs in the face of wage demands and spreading violence".

It said foreign investment was drying up, service delivery protests were "becoming angrier", education was "a disgrace", and inequality had grown.

It admitted the country had made some progress, such as in providing housing and welfare services.

"But the party's [African National Congress's] incompetence and outright corruption are the main causes of South Africa's sad decline."

According to The Economist it was problematic that: "Nearly two decades after apartheid ended, South Africa is becoming a de facto one-party state."

SA: Collapsing into a Failed State

(excerpts from an Intersearch article)

South Africa: Collapsing into a failed State

Contributing factors:

• The number of people who are poor, is just too high (25.7 million people from a population of 49.3 million);

• The number of people who depend on a state grant for their daily survival is not sustainable (13 million with the possibility of an additional 7 million);·

• The number of people who are illiterate has become unmanageable (24% of adults over 15 years);

• There is no solution for the number of jobless people. The most recent statistics indicate an official jobless rate of 25,3%. The real rate, according to the Bureau for Market Research at Unisa, has reached 41%. The figure used in the advertising industry for marketing stands on 63%.

• The number of people with HIV/AIDS is terrifying, as it sucks the human capital from the middle sector of society (5.7 million people);

• The large number of people who are going to die from HIV/AIDS may destabilize society eventually as it impacts on the productive middle sector of society (estimated deaths: 1 000 per day is the most recent figure available);

• The number of Aids orphans is beyond the reach of Government and society (by 2015 some 5.7 million or 32% of all children will have lost one or both parents) and this fact in itself has the potential to disrupt the educational process;

• The terrifying reality is that the number of people with the necessary human capital – the expertise and skills to support society and capability to pay taxes – is too few to carry the burden of the numbers in need. 5.3 million tax payers, with 1.2 million of them paying 75% of all personal and company tax.

• In January 2010 the  disclosed in a statement that only 32 of the 970 sewage plants in the country are still functioning properly.

• In a report to Parliament in February 2010 it was revealed that “when it comes to fresh water”, only 30 municipalities out of 283 have the capability to supply clean water to the inhabitants.

• Parliament’s water affairs portfolio committee was told in July 2010 that “millions of litres of highly acidic mine water is rising up under Johannesburg and, if left unchecked, could spill out into its streets some 18 months from now. The acid water is currently about 600m below the city’s surface, but is rising at a rate of between 0.6 and 0,9m a day.”

The reality that 5 million taxpayers are already supporting a nation of close to 50 million, plus an additional 9 million from neighbouring countries, does not go down well.

...it is clear that the ANC government has landed itself in a severe crisis. 
However, as a statement it is not enough to carry any weight. Some very important contextual information is necessary.

How has this come about?

 Dysfunctional trends can be identified in society at large on three various levels with:

Over the past decade, the essence of good governance – the relationship between Government and the governed – has been eroded. 
Four election victories have provided the ANC government with a solid majority in parliament.

ANC cadres were widely introduced into the public service and serving whites were scattered abroad, to retirement villages and into silence. 

The whites who left the public service took expertise and skills with them, which was never replaced. 
With cadre deployment came a new governing culture where stealing from the state (the taxpayer) has become an accepted way of conducting government business. Relocating tax money for the personal enrichment of government officials by tampering with contracts, tenders and pay-offs have become an all pervasive source of additional income.

The ANC won political control of the country, but it lost out on the governing capability. By 2010 the ANC just does not have the governing capital to attend to all the needs of society. 
As a result, large areas of society have become void of any governing capabilities – in technical terms society has become governmentally empty. T
he ANC commands a sound political majority, but signifies no governing presence within the key functions of Government.

With this, the broad outlines of the failed state have also come to South Africa as the structures for good governance have become destabilised. When Government is in crisis, the whole of society will reflect the nature of the crisis.

Context of the crisis

South Africa has a problem with a variety of issues such as law and order, potholes, sewage, bad education – the list is almost endless. 

The real problem is not the pothole or the burglar, but the internal functional collapse of Government and society.

What kind of Future?

In terms of planning and decision making it is easy to fill a pothole, but how do deal with functional decay is a completely different challenge. 
The reader has to accept that there is no proven remedy or fixed solutions – the way ahead will be one of trial and error. Existing political perceptions and beliefs will have to be shattered and altered and mindsets will have to change. There is, indeed, not a very easy road ahead.

The ANC’s political victory in 1994 enabled it to introduce a new democracy in South Africa, as embedded in the constitution of 1996. That provided the ideological and political base for the introduction of the process of transformation.

What emerged was a numbers driven society where race percentages became the norm for appointment and position.

The immediate result was the corruption of society, as the whites with expertise moved out and “cadre deployment” took over. 
Political control became the dominating factor in society and capabilities were very often excluded.

What followed was a swift and dramatic decline of governing capabilities. 
Service delivery as envisaged in the constitution deteriorated rapidly, but it happened out of sight and was not immediately recognised. There was a sewage problem, but it was not linked to a decline of governing capabilities. For the sake of democracy, people looked the other way.

By 2010 the key functions of Government are all under severe pressure.

Then the electricity crisis of 2008 triggered a reaction. Every household was affected and the mismanagement and cover up of dwindling coal stock piles became common knowledge. 

This was followed by a flood of information about the status of dams and rivers that impacted on the supply of fresh water. 
Next to this, the sewage problem that had been building up for years suddenly showed its ugly head.

What paralysed the government of President Jacob Zuma was that it all happened at the same time.

What made this different? People were compelled to live with the situation. 
Being without electricity, using contaminated drinking water and physically living with sewage changed minds and attitudes.
As problems increased, government officials and services became more absent. The constitution promised a better quality of life, but Government left the people out in the sewage. A contradiction emerged in the political profile of Government: a clash between the political capital and the governing capital – a process of internal erosion. 

For decades people have been told that apartheid was to blame for everything and suddenly they discover the real culprit behind the council building – Government.

The country was still a major democracy, but Government’s inability to deliver was slowly penetrating society. A very large section of the population came to exist outside the confines and guarantees of the constitution. 
A small town where the sewage flows down Main Street is basically beyond or outside the protection of the constitution.

Similarly, the urban community that provides its own security and pays for it, is also beyond the protection of the constitution.

The result was the creation of alternative functioning structures. 
This was not motivated by a resistance against Parliament or an effort to push Government aside. The real reason was that a very specific need had to be addressed; otherwise a specific section of society could not survive.

As strange as it may seem, people started moving beyond the constitution for self-protection.

Farmers started repairing the national roads in their vicinity; otherwise goods to the market could not be transported. 
Parents invested in additional teachers in order to secure a future for their kids. 
In this process, a whole range of new functional structures in society have been created – with or without the consent or cooperation of Government. 

The eventual effect is that a large section of society is in the process of breaking away from government structures – and eventually from Government control. 

This is perhaps not so much anti-democratic as a-democratic, i.e. outside the democratic process, as it bypasses the formal structures and creates new ones when the need arises. 
The driving force at this stage is not the will of the people, but the need of the specific sector of society. In this process, the nature of democracy will eventually change.

Bypassing formal government will not occur if some disillusionment has not emerged in society. 
It is basically twenty years since formal discussions began to dismantle apartheid. 

Some form of resistance against the functional decay is inevitable. However, it is not expected in the form of a rebel movement or attempt to unseat Government by force.

Within the black community the present demonstrations and burning of council buildings may continue. Within the white community, resistance may take another form.

Amongst whites there is a complaint that they pay twice for everything. They pay tax for “security of person” (chapter 2 constitution), but they also pay for their own security. They pay for education and then directly pay for additional teachers; they pay for road maintenance and do the work themselves.

The bottom line is that this government is very expensive to keep around, with no benefits coming from it.

In reaction the next step may be a formal note to the minister of Finance and the Receiver of Revenue, demanding a tax discount for services promised but not delivered – and then delivered and paid for by the taxpayer himself. What could emanate from this is ground level emotion and indignation. 

The figures do not add up. 

This is one direction Government does not want to go. By 2010 the population has ended up in a total imbalance which the next election will not be able to rectify.

It is in the nature of governments, when things go badly for them, to start withholding information from the public.

The country must speak with “one voice”, with one government spokesperson and one official broadcaster. All this is supposedly, “good for nation building”. 

Any information that may threaten the position of Government may be questioned as “anti-democratic”. 

Very often, this is all lumped together under the nice, formal concept of “national security”. To the common citizen this may sound extremely dangerous and therefore needs his support.

Then the question emerges: what is secret and what not? 
There is much information that is freely available, not secret at all, that can directly threaten the position of Government, officials and ministers. 

Government is known to be sensitive to any photos of farm murders, statistics about crime and web pages that explain too much of what happens in the country.

Can Government prevent this flow of “dangerous” information, as the latest proposals of legislation from parliament attempted to do? The answer is short: No! It was possible during the Cold War. The Russians built a wall across central Europe to keep people and a free flow of information out.

In a technologically driven world every person with a cell phone (and camera), and computer on the desk has the immediate capability to send information all over the world. Every person with a cell phone has the capability to photograph potholes, schools without toilets, policemen asleep on the job and text messages about politicians who buy luxury cars and officials who are corrupt.

This implies that every citizen has the potential to send information, “dangerous” to the Government, abroad.

In this process, if this legislation is pushed for reasons that existed in the previous century, every citizen has the potential to become the enemy of Government. 
An effective withholding of information can only be done when all cell phones are confiscated and all computers smashed.

With its enormous political capital behind it, the ANC commands the voting power in parliament, but it does not have the doing power. 
The lack of governing capabilities may eventually result in the domino effect. 

Individual “problems” like sewage, clean water and education start interacting. The one affects the other and begin a self-driven process that leads to accelerated collapse. 

The most unthinkable result of the domino effect will appear when local government becomes so dysfunctional that citizens are compelled to take over services on a large scale and in this process government authority is pushed back to a few urban areas. This will signal the start of a new political system.

How will the decision maker finds his way through this complicated situation?

From 2010 and beyond the quality of expertise and skills of any company or organisation will determine its economic and social survival. 
What should be assessed here is the level of human capital.

Human capital in combination with other assets such as infrastructure provides the all important intellectual capital – the competitive advantage. Without intellectual capital very little value can be added to any business or society. A clear definition of intellectual capital is also imperative.

Without a clear assessment of human and intellectual capital, society will be unable to regenerate itself.

Dr. J.A. Du Plessis at Intersearch

Source Url: http://www.intersearch.co.za

SA Institute of Race Relations: "ANC is dying and will lose majority by 2024"

(excerpts from SA Institute of Race Relations article)

South Africa after the ANC

Research and Policy Brief: South Africa after the ANC - 2nd July 2012.

- Frans Cronje

Few analysts are prepared to make bold forecasts about South Africa’s future political landscape. This paper breaks from that pattern and argues that the ANC is dying and will lose its parliamentary majority at or before the 2024 national election. 

We do not make this forecast recklessly but rather because the evidence points overwhelmingly in this direction.

The first point is that ANC support among South Africans is falling very quickly. 

It is true that the ANC won 63% of the national vote in 1994 and increased that to 65.9% in 2009. However, this figure is misleading as it ignores the growing number of people who are choosing not to vote at all. For example in 1994 54% of South Africans who could have voted, voted for the ANC. By 2009 that percentage had fallen to just 39%. 

This means that while more than 5 out of 10 South Africans turned out to vote for the ANC in 1994 that figure had fallen to less than 4 out of 10 in the 2009 election. In a sense the ANC, for all its pretention as the ‘will of the people’, is now a minority government.

The decline in ANC support generally did not result from another opposition party drawing its supporters. The DA did very well in its own right, increasing its support from just 2 out of every 100 South Africans in 1994 to 1 out of every 10 in 2009. However, it achieved this growth more by cannibalising other opposition parties, and possibly by attracting new young voters, than by eating into the ANC support base.

The decline in ANC support rather occurred as a result of a growing number of people losing confidence in the ANC. The evidence for this lies in the fact that the same period saw the number of protests against the government take off. The research company Municipal IQ reports that the number of major service delivery protests in South Africa increased from 10 in 2004 to over 100 by 2010. Data from the police suggests that they are now responding to three protests every day.

The decline in ANC support has its origins in two other spheres. The first is the overall failure of the public school system. Only 1 out of every 2 black South Africans who enter grade one will ever reach matric and only 1 out of 10 will pass maths. Hence black South Africans are generally too badly educated to prosper in the formal economy. As a result, they have limited means to increase their own living standards outside of what the State, and by extension, the ANC can give them. It is quite logical therefore that when they are frustrated by their living standards they protest against the same State and ANC.

Related to the failure of education is the failure of the labour market to generate sufficient jobs. Today only 1 out of every 2 black South Africans entering the labour market will ever find a stable job. 

Part of the reason is their poor level of education. Another is government hostility to the private business sector, which has stunted South Africa’s economic growth. South Africa averages half the growth levels of its BRIC partners.

Take just two current examples. First the government has announced that it intends to place ownership restrictions on the private security industry. 

The message is that private foreign investment is not welcome, and must be strictly regulated. 

Secondly it has been announced that the government is considering further taxation on the mining industry. As Michael Spicer pointed out in a letter to Business Day it is simply foolish to think that you can add further burdens to a declining industry at a time of great international economic uncertainty.

These two examples are instructive because they are typical of the approach the ANC has taken to private business and investment since 1994. 

In the heady days after the 1994 transition such an approach could perhaps be understood from a communist-inspired liberation movement not well versed in the management of a modern economy. That this approach continues today, long after the ANC has identified the threat to itself in high levels of unemployment and low growth, is to suggest that it is not serious about addressing these threats.

How else must it be understood that ANC delegates apparently devoted much time at their recent policy conference debating whether to call their policy the ‘second transition’ or the ‘second phase’ while around them their Rome was literally burning in a number of townships around the country. 

Likewise the reform of agricultural land, which contributes just 3% of GDP and 5% of employment, apparently enjoyed extensive attention as a means to reduce national poverty and unemployment rates!

Rather than actually addressing South Africa’s problems, the ANC has tried to place the blame for its failures elsewhere. 

Jacob Zuma told delegates at the policy conference that the problem was that the structure of the South African economy had not changed sufficiently since 1994 and was largely in white hands. He is of course correct that whites are far more likely than blacks to hold professional positions or start and run successful businesses. 

However, that he even raises white ownership of the economy as a key problem suggests that at some level he believes that, despite failures in both growth and education, black South Africans could nonetheless have attained white standards of living and expertise in business. There is no content or logic to such arguments. 

That the ANC president makes them suggests that his party has run out of ideas.

The same is true when it comes to corruption. This is without doubt an issue that is important in any diagnosis of the ANC’s flagging support. 

There is much evidence that what the media likes to call ‘service delivery protests’ is often the angry response of communities to corruption perpetrated by their ANC representatives. 

A senior police general, who happens to be black, has communicated to us that he is sick and tired of deploying his members to stamp out protests that result from ANC councillors, often repeatedly in the same municipality, stealing money that is meant for community projects. 

Despite Jacob Zuma’s exhortations to the party to root out corruption in its ranks, the DA’s research head, Gareth van Onselen, points out that the party has in fact, under Zuma, placed a number of candidates convicted of fraud and corruption on its election lists. 

Even the head of its political school, who is responsible for guiding the ANC’s emerging leaders, is a convicted criminal. This is not a party that takes corruption seriously or believes it to be a problem.

What the above shows is that the ANC is not serious about addressing the failed education, low growth, unemployment, and corruption that underpins its flagging support.

If it is not addressing the reasons for its decline, it follows that the party must be in terminal decline. 

All that remains to be done is to speculate which election will see the party’s national support levels dip below 50%, opening the door to a coalition of opposition parties to govern South Africa. 

On current trends we think that 2014 is too early, 2019 is plausible but uncertain, and 2024 is probable. 

To argue against this conclusion is to suggest that despite flat economic growth and failed education, ANC support will not just be sustained, but that the established trend of declining support will be reversed. This is not possible.

As in all things, once we have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. 

The truth for South Africa is that it is time to consider what the future may look like without the ANC. Who will lead the country and what will their policies be? 

That these questions are not being asked shows how unprepared many businesses and other organisations are for the changes that may grip South Africa over the next decade. 

Of course the party may fight a desperate rear-guard battle to try and save itself. 

There is already evidence that some in its ranks are considering radical policy changes including seizing land, property, investments, and assets without paying compensation. 

However, without a two-thirds or three-quarters parliamentary majority, the ANC cannot bring about the constitutional changes that would permit this. 

Even if it could, such polices would simply kill off any growth and investment and so hasten its now inevitable political demise.

SA Institute of Race Relations comments on the ANC National Democratic Revolution

(Excerpts from South African Institute of Race Relations article)

Address by the Institute's Head of Special Research, Dr Anthea Jeffery, to the conference on ‘the national democratic revolution, land ownership, and the Green Paper on land reform’ in Pretoria on 31st May 2012.

Research and Policy Brief: The National Democratic Revolution (NDR): Its Origins and Implications - 31st May 2012.

In the post-apartheid period, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has persisted in its determination to implement a National Democratic Revolution (NDR). 

The ANC makes no secret of this, regularly re-affirming this objective at its five-yearly national conferences. Its commitment to continuing revolution has enormous ramifications for the country and has already cost South Africa dearly. 

Yet neither the goals of the NDR nor the thinking which underpins it has ever been given much attention by the Media. 

The topic seems to be off-limits to the Press, which earlier generally ignored the first stage of the revolution – the people’s war strategy which gave the ANC its domination over the new South Africa – and now largely overlooks the NDR and its ramifications.

[The NDR theory] was endorsed by the South African Communist Party (SACP) in its 1962 programme, Road to South African Freedom. 
Here, the SACP urged a ‘national democratic revolution to destroy white domination’. 
The ANC, it said, must overthrow the ‘colonial state of white supremacy’, ‘democratise’ the new state by ‘making it fully representative of the population of South Africa’, use the new state to suppress the former ruling classes and transform society, and then defend the gains of the revolution through a ‘vigorous and vigilant dictatorship…by the people against the former dominating and exploiting classes’ and any attempt to ‘restore white colonialism’;

At the Morogoro Conference in 1969, the ANC endorsed this perspective and committed itself to a national democratic revolution (NDR) to correct ‘historical injustices’ by destroying existing economic and social relationships. This would give rise to a new society based on the core provisions of the Freedom Charter: a document adopted in 1955 with significant communist input.

At its national conferences at Mafikeng (in 1997), Stellenbosch (in 2002), and Polokwane (in 2007), the ANC repeatedly recommitted itself to the NDR via the Strategy and Tactics document it has adopted at each of these gatherings.

The Mafikeng document identified the key goal of the NDR as being ‘to liberate Africans in particular and black people in general from political and economic bondage’ by transforming the machinery of state, using a cadre policy to give the ANC control over ‘all centres of power’, ‘redistributing wealth and income’, and ‘de-racialising South African society’ through ‘a consistent programme of affirmative action’.

The Stellenbosch document mainly reaffirmed the 1997 one but included a short Preface which stressed the need to ‘eliminate apartheid property relations’ through ‘the deracialisation of…wealth, including land’ and the ‘redistribution of wealth and income’. This would involve a ‘continuing struggle’ which would intensify over time. ‘Because property relations are at the core of all social systems’, the tensions arising from redistribution would have to be managed via ‘dexterity in tact and firmness in principle’.

The Polokwane document (the current one) reaffirmed the need for affirmative action until such time ‘as all centres of power and influence become broadly representative of the country’s demographics’. It called for the ‘de-racialisation’ of wealth (including land), along with management and the professions. It also urged a strong state able to ‘direct national development’ and stressed the importance of cadre deployment to all centres of power.

A discussion document, prepared for the national general council of the ANC in September 2010 said the global financial crisis had demonstrated ‘the bankruptcy of neo-liberalism’ and opened up space for ‘progressive alternatives’. 

The discussion document identified the Freedom Charter as the ANC’s ‘lodestar’, and said the major current task of the NDR was to ‘build a national democratic society’ which would address the historical injustice via the redistribution of land and other resources, affirmative action, and ‘the eradication of apartheid production relations’.

In 2012 the ANC has released a new discussion document on ‘The Second Transition: Building a National Democratic Society and the Balance of Forces in 2012’. 

This, it says, requires ‘a second transition’ that moves beyond democratisation (the focus of the first transition) to ‘the social and economic transformation of South Africa over the next 30 to 50 years’.

The implication is that this framework will thus have to be changed. In addition, the document suggests that the ANC is no longer willing to stick to an earlier ‘implicit bargain’, in which the organisation ‘committed to macroeconomic stability and international openness’, while ‘white business agreed to participate in capital reform to modify the racial structures of asset ownership and invest in national priorities’. 

The Strategy and Tactics documents, along with the 2010 and 2012 discussion documents outlined above, are public documents which are carefully phrased and often express worthy aims (to heighten state efficiency, increase economic growth, expand infrastructure, and improve education). However, they also make it clear that the ANC’s key objective is not to reduce inequality by growing the economic pie but rather by taking existing wealth from whites and transferring it to blacks. Though progress in the redistribution of wealth has thus far been slow, the ANC expects its pace to quicken as the balance of forces shifts further in favour of this.

According to the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the NDR provides the foundation for a shift to a socialist and then communist society.

...from 1984 to 1994, the people’s war strategy was used to give the ANC the degree of domination needed to drive the NDR forward in the post-apartheid era. This required, in particular, the weakening or elimination of black opposition – and the people’s war was singularly successful in achieving this.

...the ANC sees itself not as an ordinary political party bound by the ordinary rules of the political game but as a national liberation movement responsible for implementing the NDR and thus as uniquely entitled to rule. 

This makes it contemptuous of Parliament, opposition parties, a free press, an autonomous SABC, independent civil society, and adverse electoral outcomes, as in the Western Cape. 

Hence, contrary to what many journalists have said, there is nothing ‘baffling’ about its recent initiatives to clamp down on the Press or weaken the Democratic Alliance in a variety of ways.

...the ANC does not regard itself as bound by the Constitution.

It sees this not as a solemn pact but simply as a tactical compromise which can readily be changed as the balance of power shifts in the ANC’s favour. This stance has long been hinted at by ANC leaders, but is now being more openly expressed. 

The NDR also means, of course, that the ANC has no principled commitment to key constitutional safeguards, including press freedom, property rights, and an independent Judiciary.

Fourth, cadre deployment has been used to give the ANC control over all the ‘levers of state power’, including parastatals and the public broadcaster. The aim is to use cadre deployment to extend ANC control to the Judiciary, the Press, business, universities, and influential organisations in civil society.

In the economic sphere:

...the goal of demographic representivity in all spheres means that targets for redistribution that fall short of this are likely to be increased in due course. Thus, for example, in revising the Mining Charter in 2010, the minister – along with many journalists – implied it was a big ‘concession’ that the ownership target was being kept at 26% by 2014; and this target may well be raised in time.

...implementation of the NDR requires a strong ‘developmental’ state and provides a continual impetus towards ever more state intervention.

In the social sphere:

First, the NDR promotes an increasing dependence on the Government. The aim is seemingly not to encourage self-reliance and economic independence but rather to ensure that people rely on the State for money, goods, and services given to them via social grants, free housing, free basic electricity and water, free education, free health care for many, and subsidised transport.

Second, key additional aims (at least for Cosatu and the SACP) are to ‘roll back’ market provision in areas such as health and education. In the context of National Health Insurance proposals, for instance, Cosatu would like to ‘get rid’ of private health care and bring all health care services under state control, which will further reinforce dependency on the Government.

Third, similar thinking seems to underpin current proposals on land reform and rural development. As the Land Tenure Security Bill of 2010 shows – and the green paper on land reform of 2011 demonstrates even further – the aim is no longer to build up a new generation of independent black farmers owning their own land. 

Instead, land reform beneficiaries are to be confined to leasehold ownership, while communal land tenure in former homeland areas will be retained. 

In addition, those who move to the proposed new agri-villages will have nothing but temporary permits to live and farm in these settlements and will be subject to eviction by state officials if they don’t farm well enough. 

Far from extending land ownership to many more black South Africans, the 2010 bill and the green paper will bring about incremental land nationalisation. There will be no big-bang approach, but the Government will gradually assume ownership of ever more land while more and more South Africans find themselves without individual ownership and dependent on the State’s permission for their occupation of the land on which they live or work.

Important countervailing factors

From within the ANC:

First, the ANC recognises that the ‘balance of forces’ must be correct before progress can be made with the NDR. 
As with other revolutionary movements, it accepts that it may be necessary to take one step back – though its ultimate aim is then to take two steps forward.

Second, the ANC understands that the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about a fundamental shift in the global environment. This has inhibited the rapid post-apartheid implementation of the NDR which it had earlier anticipated. 

...the ANC recognised at Polokwane, affirmative action and BEE have ‘opened up enticing opportunities’ for its cadres, including ‘unprecedented opportunities for individual material gain’. 

The ANC’s discussion documents in 2010 and 2012 also recognise that its cadres are increasingly involved in factional strife, that state resources are being used to fight internal battles within the organisation, and that the votes of ANC members are being ‘bought’ to influence electoral outcomes. 

This is all part of the ‘challenge of incumbency’, it says. It is thus (once again) seeking to develop ‘new’ cadres with strong self-discipline and revolutionary morality, but these attempts are no more likely to succeed than earlier efforts have done.

Conclusion:

The ANC’s commitment to the NDR means that the emphasis since 1994 has not been on stimulating growth but rather on bringing about the redistribution of existing wealth from whites to blacks. 

This is particularly evident in BEE rules, in mining and water laws, in land reform policies, and in recurrent calls for nationalisation (which could be used to prepare the way for confiscatory taxes or other interventions, as in the mining sector). 

Full implementation of the NDR will deter investment, stall economic growth, worsen poverty, and increase dependency on the State. It will undermine the Constitution, give the ANC totalitarian control, and betray the bright hopes of the 1994 transition.

 Fortunately, there are many countervailing factors that militate against the success of the NDR. However, there is also no room for complacency. 

Instead, it is vital to alert South Africans to the threats implicit in the NDR and to do very much more to expose its false premises and damaging outcomes.

(Full article can be found here )