South Africa’s democratization was profoundly compromised by an intra-elite economic deal that, for most people, worsened poverty, unemployment, inequality and ecological degradation, while also exacerbating many racial, gender and geographical differences. most of the critical choices and outcomes from 1994-1999 confirmed the late-apartheid turn to neoliberal economic management, and amplified that turn in the context of world neoliberal hegemony until – and beyond – the 1998 East Asian crisis. To understand why requires combining analysis of the changing structure of capital – especially its worsening unevenness and financialisation – with study of divisions within the subordinate classes. This will in turn set the stage for considering a variety of public policies adopted immediately after formal apartheid ended, many of which reflected more continuity than change. Ending the apartheid regime was one of the greatest human achievements of the past century. However, to promote a peaceful transition, the agreement negotiated between the racist regime and Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) allowed whites to keep the best land, the mines, manufacturing plants, and financial institutions, and to export vast quantities of capital. For there had been only two basic paths that the ANC could have followed. One was to mobilize the people and all their enthusiasm, energy, and hard work, use a larger share of the economic surplus (through state-directed investments and higher taxes), and stop the flow of capital abroad, including the repayment of illegitimate apartheid-era debt. The other, which was ultimately the one chosen, was to trudge down the neoliberal capitalist path, with merely a small reform here or there to permit superficial claims to the sustaining of a “National Democratic Revolution.” Because the latter path was chosen, we start by consider the economic barriers to deepened democracy, before proceeding to the economic outcomes, followed by a discussion of social policy patterns, the commercialized state, environmental concerns and the reactions of civil society. In one of the last public photos released of Nelson Mandela (29 April 2013), he sits with successors in the African National Congress leadership, each disgraced by scandals linking SA politics to crony mining capitalism: Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa and Baleka Mbete.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 06:45:45 +0000
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