Download 110127 Neoliberal South Africa and the narrowing of

110127 Neoliberal South Africa and the narrowing of democratic space
Vishwas Satgar
In a speech given at the first national conference of the Democratic Left,
Vishwas Satgar sets out what it stands for, why it is needed and the role it
will play in ensuring ‘a collective wisdom frames a new South African
future.’
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 After this historical conference, South Africa will not be the same. Over the next few days we
will be broadening the horizons of our 17 year old democracy. We will be adding a new term to the
South African political lexicon: Democratic Left.
1.2 I want to talk about this new category but by trying to place into perspective where we are as a
country and the world. I am hoping through this contribution South Africa and the world would be
much clearer about what the Democratic Left stands for.
1.3 I want to start with a sharp and provocative question: How Did Afro-Neoliberalism Steal the
South African Dream?
2. HOW DID AFRO-NEOLIBERALISM STEAL THE SOUTH AFRICAN DREAM?
2.1 In South Africa the struggle against racial and capitalist oppressions spawned a dream of a
‘liberated South Africa’. Such a dream was not just the words in document called the Freedom
Charter it was also the everyday longing of the oppressed majority for a life better than the
irrationality of apartheid. It is these multiple yearnings for hope and for dignity that framed the
South African post-apartheid dream. This South African dream has not been realised but has been
stolen by an indigenised transnational neoliberalism, a neoliberalism with African characteristics.
Such an Afro-neoliberalism has remade the accumulation model, state form, state-civil society
relations and our international relations. It has imposed a re-imagined present on us. But how did
Afro-neoliberalism steal the South African dream?
2.2 The short answer to the preceding question, which is both opportunistic and misleading, is that
the glorious National Democratic Revolution was hijacked by a ‘1996 Class Project’. This
explanation, which has become common sense amongst the mainstream national liberation left, and
which has been used to propel a neo-Stalinist populism to the centre of South African politics, does
not tell us how the South African dream was stolen. It is inadequate to say the least. Neither was the
South African dream stolen by a conspiracy or by the parasitic and corrupt elements in our society.
2.3 The South African dream of hope realised and human dignity was stolen from the people
through a new form of class rule. It is a form of class rule that has globalised the South African
economy on the terms of transnational capital, has reduced the state to a technical manager of the
ubiquitous market and has reduced citizenship to a formal ritual of passive voting. This structural
shift had an agent, a champion or more precisely a bloc of popular and class forces. Central to this
has been the ANC-led alliance which has made the choices that have brought us to where we are. It
has done this as the ruling force in South Africa today. It has chose to rule South Africa in the
interests of transnational capital and not in the interests of the people and ecological web that
sustains life. This ANC-led Alliance must to take full responsibility for the fear, the despair and
deprivation still endured by the majority particularly the workers and the poor. When millions
remain unemployed, when inequality widens, when hunger stalks many households in the land, this
is the product of ANC-led Alliance rule. This cannot be blamed on apartheid! Changing one ANC
President with another, changing one ANC leader with another is not going to change this. Voting
for the ANC at every election is not going to change this.
2.4 This theft of the South African dream has merely plunged South Africa deeper into crisis, a
double conjunctural and structural crisis and a double squeeze on democracy.
3. SOUTH AFRICA’S DOUBLE CONJUNCTURAL AND STRUCTURAL CRISIS: AFRONEOLIBERAL DYSTOPIA AND THE GLOBAL CIVILISATIONAL CRISIS
3.1 Post-apartheid South Africa moved in a straight historical line from one of the most heinous,
unjust and offensive social systems in the world called apartheid into Afro- neoliberalism. This is
the big irony of national liberation. This great domestic conjunctural leap has been a great leap into
dystopia. The deepening of the South African economies immersion into global financial,
production and trade structures through macro-economic adjustment has produced a country with
one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, obscene inequality, a deepening ecological
crisis and growing hunger. Post-apartheid neoliberal South Africa is in a conjunctural crisis in
which a capitalist pattern of development is not able to meet the needs of the people and the
ecological web of life. It is a South Africa that is not viable.
3.2 South Africa is not exceptional. Despite the specificity of Afro-neoliberalism the world over has
been locked into a neoliberal trajectory of development over the past few decades. This globalised
expansion of capitalism on a global scale has placed finance capital in the driving seat of global
restructuring. The analogue for this is what happened in the 1920s and 1930s sometimes referred to
as the great depression.
Ironically under conditions of the great depression the world witnessed the rise of fascism. Today
the world is in the grip neoliberal dogma and superpower imperialism. Actually, I would like to
contend that transnational neoliberalism is the face of a new global fascism in which the rule of
capital prevails on a planetary scale. Its own extremism is also engendering other extremes like
religious fundamentalism, xenophobia and racism for instance.
3.3 However, besides transnational neoliberalism driving a global restructuring process in the
interests of transnational capital it has also brought about a civilisational shift. It is about a
civilisation of endless capitalist accumulation at the expense of human life, the ecological web of
life and even democracy. In short, the crisis of transnational neoliberalism today due to the
unravelling of global financial markets, which is a conjunctural crisis, is also a civilisational crisis.
It is a civilisational crisis which could lead to the demise of planetary life in all its forms. This
conjunctural and civilisational crisis has also added to the crisis of a globalised South Africa. A
country which is tied into volatile global capitalist circuits of accumulation and which has made
itself a willing node of reproducing capital and its exclusions. As a result it has brought to our
shores the loss of one million jobs. Trevor Manuel’s macro-economic policy did not work!!! Afroneoliberalism has not worked. This is South Africa’s second crisis.
3.4 All indications globally suggest that through the G20, the Cancun Summit, the World Economic
Forum and even the crisis response of the United States that the global ruling class is not willing to
define a world beyond capitalism and its total crisis. The solutions that go to the root of the global
conjunctural and civilisational crisis are not on the agenda.
4. SOUTH AFRICA’S DOUBLE SQUEEZE ON DEMOCRACY
4.1 Historical democracy has never been part of capitalism. There is no organic or pre- given link
between democracy and capitalism. In fact modern democracy grew out of popular struggles
alongside the development of capitalism. This is the case in South Africa as well. Apartheid
capitalism never gave us democracy, instead the people (the workers and the poor) have struggled
for it. It is a product of sacrifice, of human will and a passion for liberation from oppression. It is
precious because it is essentially about rule by and for the people. It is not about rule by capital.
4.2 The neoliberalisation of South Africa over the past 17 years has not produced a democracy
responsive to the needs of the people and the ecological web. The internal re-engineering of
democracy has produced the first squeeze against democracy. First, the disembedding and
deterritorialisation of the market, has utopianised the market. It has made the market our present
and our future. The trap and cage of the market master narrative is profoundly undemocratic. It has
been propagated in our public sphere such that its values of greed, possessive individualism and
competition are hegemonic. It has become naturalised in everyday South African life. The values of
Afro-neoliberalism guide our everyday social choices and has produced a dog eat dog society. In
this way it closes and it ends history at the same time. There is no alternative. Now human beings in
South Africa and the world over love to fantasize, to dream and rearrange reality through hoping for
more and for something better. Without this disposition an intrinsic part of what makes us human is
killed. To dream of a better world and South Africa based on hope and dignity is a use value. It is
outside capitalism. But the undemocratic and authoritarian nature of neoliberalism wants to take this
away from us. It is narrowing democracy in a way that may not be visible but is actually terrifying.
4.3 Second, and part of the domestic squeeze against democracy has been a narrowing of the
boundaries of democracy and the meaning of citizenship. Our dream of a peoples democracy has
been shrunk from the triad of strong representative, associational and participatory democracy
dynamically working together, to a form of weak representational democracy. Our politicians have
become technocrats in this context merely to serve the market and ultimately the power of capital.
Politicians must manage ‘market democracy’ such that the juggernaut of accumulation is not
contrained and growth is realised at all costs. This means a shallow performance or semblance of
democracy is enough. The index of electoral voting is a measure of market democracy. A ‘free and
fair elections’ with a voter turnout is adequate to legitimate the rule of capital and give a formal
meaning to citizenship: I am a voter. Actually, in this context we are not citizens but still subjects of
capital!
4.4 The external squeeze on democracy emanates from the restructuring of the South African state.
Besides globalising the economy, a globalised state has also reduced democratic space. This has
happened through locking the South African state into a global power structure serving and
reproducing the rule of transnational capital. The WTO, IMF, World Bank, G20, World Economic
Forum, and the UN are all crucial tansnational policy making for a. These institutions are not there
to serve global citizenship but are there to ensure global capitalism thrives. South Africa is a key
player in all these institutions. Through its participation in this global power structure South Africa
transmits a global consensus on what capital wants back into the domestic context. A weak
representative democracy is literally a transmission belt of this global consensus.
5. REDEFINING THE CATEGORY ‘LEFT’: AUTHORITARIAN LEFT VERSUS
DEMOCRATIC LEFT
5.1 Today’s Conference of the Democratic Left has a profound historical significance. It is a
platform that is inaugurating the beginning of a left shift in South African politics. However, for the
character of this shift to be understood we have to provide a distinctiveness to our identity as a
Democratic Left. What is the differentia specifica or specific characteristics of who we are? What
makes us a democratic left? This is an important question for this conference and process. I want to
suggest that the best way to understand who we are is by distinguishing ourselves from the
authoritarian national liberation left.
5.2 So then what are the specific characteristics of an authoritarian national liberation left? Simply
there are three defining characteristics. First, the authoritarian national liberation left is implicated
directly and indirectly, consciously or consciously, intentionally or unintentionally, in engendering
the double crisis of South Africaand the double squeeze on South African democracy. It is a left not
transforming capitalism but trying to manage it even through sacrificing democracy. It is a left not
willing to go beyond it. This has and will express itself either as neoliberal variants of state
capitalism, social democracy or African capitalism. The Democratic Left on the other hand is
seeking transformative alternatives to the double crisis of South Africa and is seeking to renewing
democracy as a weapon against capitalism. The Democratic Left is anti-capitalist.
5.3 Second, the authoritarian national liberation left is locked in a state centric practice. Society
must be engineered from above and through the state. The coercive apparatus of the state, its
intervention capacity, must be harnessed to bring change to the people. The people are passive
recipients of what is deemed in their best interests. The Democratic Left on the other hand is
seeking to democratise and embed the state in civil society. It is about building the capacity of the
people, particularly the working class and the poor from below, to lead societal change. It is about a
relational understanding of the state in which the power of the people determines the power of the
state.
5.4 The third defining characteristic of the Democratic Left is about our vision of hope and dignity
for South Africa. Unlike the authoritarian national liberation left our vision is not technocratic or
defined by an ideological vanguard. Our vision is people driven. This then speaks to how we
construct a vision.
6. CAPITALISM THE ENEMY OF HOPE AND DIGNITY: GUIDELINES FOR RECLAIMING
AN ANTI- CAPITALIST VISION OF HOPE AND DIGNITY
6.1 The Freedom Charter once upon a time embodied a vision of hope and dignity for South Africa.
In the light of South Africa’s double crisis and double squeeze on democracy it is a hollow vision.
This calls forth the need for a new South African vision of hope and dignity, a genuine anticapitalist vision. For us as the Democratic Left it means a people driven South African vision of
hope and dignity that emerges from below. This implies a self conscious practice guided by the
following:
6.2 First, to develop a South African vision of hope and dignity necessitates an appreciation that
history does not have a predetermined outcome. There a no certainties that capitalism will end up in
a post-capitalist world. At the same time, this necessitates an appreciation of having a utopian
orientation in our practice. It means being conscious of the passions, dreams and aspirations
amongst the people that frame a vision of hope and dignity. It means taking seriously and being
attentive to the expressions of peoples utopian ambitions as expressed through various cultural
forms like music, art, poetry, architecture, essays, stories and so on for a life world beyond
capitalism.
6.3 Second, that a South African vision of hope and dignity, a utopian dimension to democratic left
practice is born out of struggles and is therefore concrete. It has to be a vision forged on the
frontlines and battlefronts against the multiple oppressions of capitalism. It is a vision that has to
anticipate the making of another South Africa possible and necessary by articulating a grass roots
appreciation of what it means to build a South Africa beyond and outside capitalism. It has be a
vision shaped and formed by the values, aspirations and alternative understandings that have
emergedin grass roots struggles. All we can do is create the conditions for these voices to emerge
from below to articulate this vision in a coherent way.
6.4 Third, and flowing from the preceding point is that, we do not have the answers and do not have
a blue print for the future. As a political process we will create the conditions for the social
character of knowledge to prevail. We will learn from and with the people about the way forward
beyond capitalism. The Mine-Line factory occupation is a clear example of this. Such a learning
process will ensure a collective intellectual endeavour of equals prevails inside the CDL process.
Workers, street traders, the unemployed, academics and so on will learn from each other and ensure
a collective wisdom frames a new South African future.
Amandla!
Long live the Democratic Left!
Another South Is Possible!
Forward to a People Driven Vision of Hope and Dignity for South Africa!
BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Vishwas Satgar is a member of the Conference of the Democratic Left (CDL) National
Convening Committee.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.