South Africa:
The Liberation's Betrayal
In an article for the Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, John
Pilger describes the 'social and economic catastrophe' that
replaced the African National Congress's 'unbreakable'
promise' to end the poverty of the majority.
By John Pilger
04/10/08 "ICH"
- -- The political rupture in South Africa is being
presented in the outside world as the personal tragedy and
humiliation of one man, Thabo Mbeki. It is reminiscent of
the beatification of Nelson Mandela at the death of
apartheid. This is not to diminish the power of
personalities, but their importance is often as a
distraction from the historical forces they serve and
manage. Frantz Fanon had this in mind when, in The Wretched
of the Earth, he described the “historic mission” of much of
Africa’s post-colonial ruling class as “that of intermediary
[whose] mission has nothing to do with transforming the
nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission
line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though
camouflaged.”
Mbeki’s fall and the collapse of Wall Street are concurrent
and related events, as they were predictable. Glimpse back
to 1985 when the Johannesburg stock market crashed and the
apartheid regime defaulted on its mounting debt, and the
chieftains of South African capital took fright. In
September that year a group led by Gavin Relly, chairman of
the Anglo American Corporation, met Oliver Tambo, the ANC
president, and other resistance officials in Zambia. Their
urgent message was that a “transition” from apartheid to a
black-governed liberal democracy was possible only if
“order” and “stability” were guaranteed. These were
euphemisms for a “free market” state where social justice
would not be a priority.
Secret meetings between the ANC and prominent members of the
Afrikaner elite followed at a stately home, Mells Park
House, in England. The prime movers were those who had
underpinned and profited from apartheid – such as the
British mining giant, Consolidated Goldfields, which picked
up the bill for the vintage wines and malt whisky scoffed
around the fireplace at Mells Park House. Their aim was that
of the Pretoria regime - to split the ANC between the mostly
exiled “moderates” they could “do business with” (Tambo,
Mbeki and Mandela) and the majority who made up the those
resisting in the townships known as the UDF.
The matter was urgent. When FW De Klerk came to power in
1989, capital was haemorrhaging at such a rate that the
country’s foreign reserves would barely cover five weeks of
imports. Declassified files I have seen in Washington leave
little doubt that De Klerk was on notice to rescue
capitalism in South Africa. He could not achieve this
without a compliant ANC.
Nelson Mandela was critical to this. Having backed the ANC’s
pledge to take over the mines and other monopoly industries
- “a change or modification of our views in this regard is
inconceivable” - Mandela spoke with a different voice on his
first triumphant travels abroad. “The ANC,” he said in New
York, “will reintroduce the market to South Africa”. The
deal, in effect, was that whites would retain economic
control in exchange for black majority rule: the “crown of
political power” for the “jewel of the South African
economy”, as Ali Mazrui put it. When, in 1997, I told Mbeki
how a black businessmen had described himself as “the ham in
a white sandwich”, he laughed agreement, calling it the
“historic compromise”, which others were called it a
betrayal. However, it was De Klerk who was more to the
point. I put it to him that he and his fellow whites had got
what they wanted and that for the majority, the poverty had
not changed. “Isn’t that the continuation of apartheid by
other means?” I asked. Smiling through a cloud of cigarette
smoke, he replied, “You must understand, we’ve achieved a
broad consensus on many things now.”
Thabo Mbeki’s downfall is no more than the downfall of a
failed economic system that enriched the few and dumped the
poor. The ANC “neo liberals” seemed at times ashamed that
South Africa was, in so many ways, a third world country.
“We seek to establish,” said Trevor Manuel, “an environment
in which winners flourish.” Boasting of a deficit so low it
had fallen to the level of European economies, he and his
fellow “moderates” turned away from the public economy the
majority of South Africans desperately wanted and needed.
They inhaled the hot air of corporate-speak. They listened
to the World Bank and the IMF; and soon they were being
invited to the top table at the Davos Economic Forum and to
G-8 meetings, where their “macro-economic achievements” were
lauded as a model. In 2001, George Soros put it rather more
bluntly. “South Africa,” he said, “is now in the hands of
international capital.”
Public services fell in behind privatisation, and low
inflation presided over low wages and high unemployment,
known as “labour flexibility”. According to the ANC, the
wealth generated by a new black business class would
“trickle down”. The opposite happened. Known sardonically as
the wabenzi because their vehicle of choice was a silver
Mercedes Benz, black capitalists proved they could be every
bit as ruthless as their former white masters in labour
relations, cronyism and the pursuit of profit. Hundreds of
thousands of jobs were lost in mergers and “restructuring”
and ordinary people retreated to the “informal economy”.
Between 1995 and 2000, the majority of South Africans fell
deeper into poverty. When the gap between wealthy whites and
newly enriched blacks began to close, the gulf between the
black “middle class” and the majority widened as never
before.
In 1996, the office of the Reconstruction and Development
Programme (RDP) was quietly closed down, marking the end of
the ANC’s “solemn pledge” and “unbreakable promise” to put
the majority first. Two years later, the United Nations
Development Programme described the replacement, GEAR, as
basically “no different” from the economic strategy of the
apartheid regime in the 1980s.
This seemed surreal. Was South Africa a country of
Harvard-trained technocrats breaking open the bubbly at the
latest credit rating from Duff & Phelps in New York? Or was
it a country of deeply impoverished men, woman and children
without clean water and sanitation, whose infinite resource
was being repressed and wasted, yet again? The questions
were an embarrassment as the ANC government endorsed the
apartheid regime’s agreement to join the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which effectively surrendered
economic independence, repaid the $25 billion of
apartheid-era inherited foreign debt. Incredibly, Manuel
even allowed South Africa’s biggest companies to flee their
financial home and set up in London.
Certainly, Thabo Mbeki speeded his own political demise with
his strange strictures on HIV/Aids, his famous aloofness and
isolation and the corrupt arms deals that never seemed to go
away. It was the premeditated ANC economic and social
catastrophe that saw him off. For further proof, look to the
United States today and the smoking ruin of the “neo
liberalism” model so cherished by the ANC’s leaders. And
beware those successors of Mbeki now claiming that, unlike
him, they have the people’s interests at heart as they
continue the same divisive policies. South Africa deserves
better.
First published the Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg.
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