Volume 13, No. 6, 13 February 2014

In this Issue: The DA`s "real jobs" Defend our revolution: But beware the enemy is not only that other side

Red Alert The DA`s "real jobs"

By Cde Jeremy Cronin

Searching for a pretext for yesterday`s gimmicky, deliberately provocative march on the ANC`s headquarters, the DA posters trumpeted "6 million real jobs". Helen Zille started this diversionary pretext two weeks ago. In a statement she labelled as "bogus" the ANC election manifesto`s commitment to creating 6-million work opportunities through the expanded public works programme (EPWP) over the next five years. Zille haughtily dismissed these as only short-term temporary work, not "real jobs".

Of course nowhere does the ANC manifesto claim that EPWP work opportunities are formal sector jobs. Moreover, these 6-million work opportunities are only one of dozens of ANC-alliance election commitments to address the crises of unemployment and poverty.

Unfortunately for Zille, as her colleagues had to quietly remind her, the commitment to a major up-scaling of the EPWP is not the ANC`s alone. It`s in chapter 3 of the National Development Plan (Zille likes to present herself as the world`s greatest champion of the NDP). It`s also in the budgets of all three spheres of government, including her own Western Cape administration. In November last year, when DA City of Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille tabled her mid-term report she said that the creation of 37,000 temporary EPWP work opportunities was "her proudest achievement". Clearly Zille and De Lille are at cross purposes on this - are these work opportunities just "bogus", or are they an important part of a wider set of interventions to address poverty and unemployment (as Mayor De Lille clearly and correctly believes)?

It was left to the DA`s Wilmot James to make a valiant clean-up effort. Not for the first time in the past few weeks, Dr James has been wheeled out to clear up behind the blunders of his boss. James argues that the DA march was not against EPWP jobs as such. But, he says, we must not conflate EPWP "work opportunities" with formal sector jobs -as if anyone in the ANC or government was making that conflation. Let`s at least welcome James`s reassurance that the DA is committed to up-scaling the EPWP.

Of course, this being the electoral season, his inclination to reduce collective national challenges to inter-provincial ABSA Currie Cup competitions is now on steroids. He boasts that the City of Cape Town recently won "two out of three Kamoso public works awards". Wait a minute Dr James, there were not three but 33 Kamoso awards bestowed by the Department of Public Works last year to acknowledge good performance in the EPWP. Cape Town got recognition by winning two. Well done Cape Town (I mean that sincerely) - but let`s keep perspective.

James claims that half of all training in public works programmes occurred in the Western Cape. I don`t know where he gets that from. In 2012/13 the WC did not report on training in the programme at all. In the current financial year there has only been very limited reporting on training in the province. As for work opportunities created in the province, over the five-year period 2009 to 2014, the WC has reported 109,000 work opportunities against a target of 204,700 - a mere 53% of the target, making it one of the worst performing provinces.

And, while we are still on the subject of inter-provincial "competition", the most recent StatsSA figures for employment change over the 10-year period 2003-2013 make for interesting reading. They indicate that the WC is sixth, that is, near the bottom of the nine-member table. Limpopo leads the way in percentage terms with a 3,7% positive employment change, followed by Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape, and KZN. In terms of actual increased numbers of employed, Gauteng is ahead with a net increase of 783,000 jobs, followed by KZN. Western Cape is at a lowly 0,8% and 141,000.

Considering that the WC has many advantages that Limpopo or the Eastern Cape do not have, perhaps the next DA march for "real jobs" should be against Zille`s own provincial administration! But let`s not get too sucked into a DA inter-provincial competition. There are many factors beyond the control of any provincial or national government that account for job creation and job losses. To blame President Zuma, as the DA does, for an unemployment crisis in SA when we are in the midst of a global capitalist crisis is simply stupid. Moreover, notwithstanding the global crisis and its dire impact on our own economy, we have done relatively well in regaining the 1 million jobs lost in the immediate aftermath of the 2008-9 global turbulence.

James wants to shift the debate from public works to "real jobs". He provides a list of DA policies for "real job" creation - mostly watered-down versions of what the ANC government is already implementing. "Promote redress by improving black economic empowerment", he tells us without a blush. Just a few months back, James was the leading DA voice opposing BEE! "Break up inefficient state monopolies to increase competition and bring down prices", he says. Significantly there`s not a word about the anti-competitive, collusive behaviour of private oligopolies in the food chain, in the construction sector, in telecoms, in banking - robbing the public purse and individual consumers of billions of rands.

"Remove red tape that is stifling small businesses", says James. We agree, and that is exactly what current legislation before parliament is intended to do. But what the DA means by "removing red tape" is free-market deregulation. This is a case where DA neo-liberal ideology clashes with actual DA administration practices. Ask any street vendor in Cape Town about the constant harassment they experience. Unnecessary red tape is one thing, but effective regulation of small businesses in the interests of job creation, or basic health and other considerations, is another. For instance, tens of thousands of South African jobs are being lost through the illegal importation and sale of fake goods, for instance. This requires, not red tape, but effective regulation.

The DA wants to champion so-called "real jobs" not just "work opportunities". Can they please explain, then, why last year they bitterly opposed raising the minimum wage for temporary seasonal farmworkers from R65 to the current R105? R65 was actually slightly less than the minimum daily stipend for public works participants! What makes the one a "real job" and the other bogus? The answer is obvious. EPWP work opportunities are about income relief for the poor, about creating public assets and services in poor communities. From a DA class perspective, however, farm-workers are simply labour power to be exploited for super-profits for the few. Now that`s a DA "real" job for you!

Cde Jeremy Cronin is SACP 1st Deputy General Secretary

Defend our revolution: But beware the enemy is not only that other side

By Takalani Mmbegeni and Lerumo Mogale

This is a year mounting over to the 20th anniversary of our 1994 democratic breakthrough. The next major breakthrough after the 1994 democratic breakthrough will be defined by the achievement of the goals of the Freedom Charter, which captures the vision of our national democratic revolution (NDR). This will lay an indispensable basis for an advance towards the next phase - socialism, not an end by itself, but a means to an end, i.e. the highest and most advanced phase of human development - communism.

The process does not take place in a vacuum. It is encumbered by the elements of the old society which we are eliminating but continue to co-exist with the elements of the new society which we are constructing. Also, there is contestation over the content and direction of development. Revolutionary forces are not alone. There are counter-revolutionary forces at play too in the opposite direction.

As can be seen in the case of several years of political alignments and realignments in South Africa, which are typified in terms of organised workers by the challenges facing the trade union movement, contestation is constant. The trade union movement is experiencing an outgrowth of an oppositionist tendency which is transforming into mainstream opposition. This and other alignments and realignments calls on our ANC-led movement to constantly review our theory of organisation and develop new angles from which we will be able to provide leadership.

In the mainstream political spectrum, there are new political organisations being conceived or formed. Some claim to be left, although their agenda is to mislead and divide the working class. This can only serve the interests of the exploiters, the opposition, etc., not the working class. In the right-wing is constantly engaging in an effort to consolidate the opposition. The one week marriage between the DA and Agang SA for example, which was driven, by their own admission, by funders, is one of the points in case. This represents a particle in the broader scheme of things relating to contest over our development path. In particular, one of the funders exposed in DAgang’s less than a week marriage is deeply entrenched in the circuits of global apartheid and capital accumulation, evident in reports of involvement in tendering in Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinian people.

The balance of forces between all these and others in the opposition spectrum on one hand and on the other our ANC-led revolutionary movement will determine the content, direction and pace of South Africa’s development. The question that our movement has to answer in the light of all these alignments and realignments was posed by Vladimir Lenin in the 1920s: What is to be done? One thing is certain, however, as defined by Joe Slovo in the ‘South African working class and the NDR’. The battle can only be won by democratic means in which the class conscious workers, and broadly revolutionary forces, have no option but to win the majority to their side.

As a movement that has ascended in government we have to use the levers of state by advancing transformation as part of the struggle to win the majority to our side. In the last 20 years since our 1994 democratic breakthrough we indeed made advances, but we also experienced some setbacks. This is a call to action as both have an impact in our capacity to win the majority to our side. In this sense, the content of our revolution going forward has now become three-fold, at least.

Our first task? We need to continue the task to undo the many years of damage caused by colonialism and apartheid, both of which super-structural systems were based on capitalism as the base structure. Therefore this task will not succeed without action taken against capitalism. The NDR cannot, in this sense, be limited to resolving the national and gender “grievances” of colonial and apartheid capitalism. It has to go deeper than that. How this is streamlined is a question of strategy and tactics. The articulation between the NDR and socialism as developed by the SACP in terms of which the former is the road to the latter must therefore be intensified.

The NDR and socialism are as distinct as they are interrelated. The task to address the fundamental problem of capitalism cannot therefore be absent in the NDR. Moreover, capitalism is not merely a national system. It is an international system. At present, it has reached its highest stage - imperialism with neo-liberal characteristics. This has to be challenged.

We have learned from the Political Report of the Third YCLSA Gauteng Provincial Congress (2011) that deepening, advancing and defending the anti-capitalist struggle, the struggle for socialism, must necessarily facilitate a forward energy in the NDR towards the right direction and logical conclusion. Correctly, the report also asserts that deepening, advancing and defending the NDR as defined by the three words - ‘national’, ‘democratic’ and ‘revolution’, must facilitate a forward march towards an advance to socialism. The SACP programme the ‘South African Road to Socialism’, adopted for the first time at the Party’s 12th Congress (2007) provides greater clarity on the latter. Intensifying this clarity both in thinking (theory) and action (practice) must seal our first task!

Our second task? It is important to conduct detailed alliance policy reviews on a constant basis. The last alliance summit has provided direction in this regard. What we need is to move forward and faster. The COSATU’s strategic theme ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ should guide this process in terms of what could happen to the alliance and its formations if the ANC-led government meets with serious problems involving no success in policy review.

The process should involve proper coordination between continuity and discontinuity. Those policies which were adopted since 1994 that did not help must be discarded. We have learned that the problem does not only lie in policy differences within our alliance. However, that if this is the problem then the fundamental cause lies in another problem: contradictory class interests between the working class and the capitalist class - and not only the capitalist class of South Africa but the imperialist ruling class that has a stake or interest in our or the world’s economy given the trans-national character of capitalism. This must be confronted decisively. In this regard, the debate on role of the finance department must be revived.

Where we are the department of finance is the neoliberal capital of South Africa. This has now proven to be beyond the individual ministers. How this has come about has to be analysed. The interests and role of the bureaucratic personnel in this department also has to be looked at, their education and training, ideological alignments, etc., and the impact these have on policy and finance decisions. There must also be structural and systemic reviews, including legislative changes.

The creation of the departments of economic development and planning should have assisted address the problem. This did not happen to our expectations. In fact, there has occurred a phenomenon of continuity between the finance and planning commission departments. Contradictory philosophies to policy emerged, e.g. between the departments of economic development and finance. While the finance department had its continuity in the planning commission, the economic development department seemed to me marching in one step with the trade and industry department. The latter two appear to be progressive. But final policy directions, in our view, have tended to favour the axis between the finance department and the planning commission.

This is evidenced in the National Development Plan (NDP). The plan has a lacklustre approach to the micro-economic policy measures identified in the New Growth Path (NGP), particularly jobs drivers. The NDP also repudiates the philosophy of ‘New’ in the NGP. In its stead it reinstates the growth school of thought. In trade and industry, the NDP has no regard to the Industry Policy Action Plan (IPAP).

Thanks to the alliance formations COSATU and the SACP, the ANC in Mangaung and its 2014 elections manifesto in asserting the NGP, IPAP and Infrastructure development programme as part of our development policy plan. This must be enforced, but there still needs to be reviews of the weaknesses in each of these and other policies in order to strengthen them.

As part of taking forward our second task, we must combat the lies manufactured among others by oppositionist cum opposition elements. One of these, who is not worth naming, during this week suggested that the SACP, along with the ANC introduced the policies that did not work post-1994, mentioning, among others GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), trade, finance and capital markets liberalisations as well as privatisation. The truth is, the SACP engaged in a sustained struggle against these policies. To this day the Party has not abandoned its principled positions. About recent policy - the NDP, the Party’s document is crystal clear. The economic epicentre of the NDP must be reviewed along with other assumptions thereby arising.

The same element compiled negative statistics of what actually are capitalist levers of accumulation, such as inequality, poverty, unemployment, etc., and attributed these to have been caused by the ANC. The truth is, such problems were created on a racist and sexist basis by colonial and apartheid capitalism and imperialism. De-industrialisation, likewise, was not invented by the ANC. The truth is, South Africa as a semi-peripheral economy has never industrialised to the level of the core’s economies.

The unhistorical approach by such elements must, similarly, be combated. In South Africa it is reactionary elements that call on us to abandon history analytically when we look at our challenges. This is not innocent. It is aimed at exonerating colonialism, apartheid and imperialism, and then squarely placing the blame of our problems at the door steps of the ANC, as this element was doing in the so-called alternative state of the nation address.

Just to go back a bit, South Africa was under-developed with a mix of characteristics comprising of some industrial activity while in the main, like other semi-peripheral and peripheral economies, it was inserted in the trans-national capitalist system as a supplier of raw materials. Very recently, an economic crisis that erupted in the USA to become a global capitalist crisis liquidated many firms in South Africa, especially in manufacturing. This de-industrialisation trend was not caused by the ANC and the SACP, but by the crisis of capitalism. Similarly, inequality, unemployment and poverty persisted and not only in South Africa but in many other parts of the world. This was not caused by the ANC and the SACP. In South Africa, it was in fact official colonial and apartheid policy to produce inequality, poverty and unemployment on a racist and sexist basis. Was this done by the ANC and SACP? Not at all!

The ANC seeks to achieve economic transformation to alter this colonial and semi-peripheral under-development path, not to perpetuate it. Beneficiation of our mineral and marine resources as well as primary goods has firmly been placed at the centre of our ANC-led alliance. We seek to achieve the expansion of our productive base, particularly but not exclusively manufacturing, and produce high value added products. There are many challenges facing this strategic objective, such as capital, skills and knowledge. This too are not immune from the dynamics of ownership and control in our and the world economy. Thus well-calculated strategies rather than populist sloganeering in the name of the so-called alternative state of the nation is required.

This brings us to our third task. In the so-called alternative state of the nation presented by this one element to the liberal media (this relationship is part of the line-up of forces against our ANC-led movement) this week in Cape Town, and I maintain this empty element does not worth a drop of ink to name, not only are negative statistics mobilised to de-campaign the ANC-SACP and our alliance. The advances achieved by our revolution since 1994 are absolutely not acknowledged. This is consistent with an opposition agenda characterised by cowardice from the truth. The intention is to avoid recognising any truth that will make people appreciate progress made by the ANC-led government.

Our third task is therefore to go straight against all forms of opposition regardless who is involved in such. We need to popularise and celebrate the achievements of our revolution. This are given no space in the liberal media, which is negatively if not appositionally charged.

The ANC-led alliance has achieved a lot since ascendency to government in 1994. South Africa is a better place than it was since 1994. These are some of the statistics, which are available in the ANC elections manifesto. The opposition elements both in the ultra-left and the right-wing alike would not present these statistics and qualitative change.

• We secured a democratic breakthrough, demolished apartheid institutions and set the stage for democracy. We put in place human and labour rights which were never guaranteed before. The right to organise enables workers and trade unions to use mechanisms such as collective bargaining to fight against income inequality at the workplace rather than shove off blames of inequality to the ANC or the government.
• Since 1994, five million more people are in work, with total employment at 14 million. In fact the latest Stats SA Quarterly Labour Force Survey (11 February) shows there were gains in employment, and the number of the employed has since increased to 15.177 million.
• Twice as many young people attend university and twice as many graduated in 2012 than in 1994. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has been the single most contributor in this change. More than 1.4 million students have benefited from the NSFAS. Previously the scheme did not cover colleges, it never provided meals, and transport for students who commute daily to and from campuses, and outside campus accommodation was not covered. All these are now covered in the march to free education. The problem with ultra-leftists is that they want to start at the end, not at the beginning, and they would not recognise this as an achievement.
• Nearly 5,000 farms have been transferred to black people, benefiting over 200,000 families. Nearly 80,000 land claims have been settled and 1.8 million people have benefited.
• The number of people receiving social grants increased from 3 million to 16 million.
• Over 3.3 million free houses have been built, benefiting more than 16 million people. About 12 million households have access to electricity, 7 million more than in 1994. Around 92% of South Africans have access to potable water, compared to 60% in 1996.

Lastly, some populist elements that are devoid of any content have made it their modus operandi to blame our leaders for every problem they come across. This must not be left unchallenged because it is an attack not only on the targeted leaders but at our organisations. The intention by these elements is to vilify our leaders and organisations as a strategy to build their new organisations. This agenda to mislead the workers to withdraw into opposition will fail, with distinction!

Takalani Mmbegeni is YCLSA Gauteng Deputy Provincial Secretary, ANC and SACP member based in Tshiawelo, Soweto and Lerumo Mogale is YCLSA, ANC and SACP member from Elias Motsoaledi in Limpopo Province and a final year BA student based in Johannesburg, majoring in International Relations and Politics. They are writing in their personal capacity.