The ANC declares that it is winning
the war against poverty, thus fulfilling the promise it made in 1994 to
‘provide a better life for all’. It is on this issue that it will seek
re-election next year. Is this election rhetoric or does it reflect
reality? In his state of the nation address president Mbeki cited ten
consecutive years of economic growth and 5,4 per cent growth in the
manufacturing sector in 2002 as proof that the tide has turned. He also
listed a number of ANC initiatives that he believed were having a
positive impact, including tax reforms, hikes in social grants,
increased supplies of essential services to poor households, and
accelerated land redistribution. He announced future plans to expand
social services, extend unemployment insurance to domestic and
agricultural workers, and increase the number of households receiving
free quotas of water and electricity. DA leader Tony Leon responded
that for many people, life is not improving but getting worse. Black
incomes are 18 per cent lower than in 1995, nearly 20 per cent of
households don’t have enough to eat, 4,7 million South Africans are
HIV-positive, and crime in every category except murder has increased.
He added subsequently that overhasty transformation of the public
service has led to administrative incompetence which is hindering
service delivery to the poor. Professor Sampie Terreblanche agrees that
the poor have become poorer and that the weakening of the civil service
has contributed to ‘their further disempowerment’. (However,
Terreblanche blames capitalism for many post-apartheid ills, whereas
Leon sees it as the solution.) Tony Twine of Econometrix points out
that jobless growth is not unique to South Africa but occurs in many
modern economies, and that the benefits of GDP growth are not
distributed equally. Thus incomes have risen for those in the formal
economy but not necessarily for those in the informal sector. Lawrence
Schlemmer concurs, pointing out that while the proportion of black
households living below the breadline increased from about half to
nearly two-thirds between 1993 and 2001, the proportion of black
middle-class households also increased. Similarly, Statistics SA’s 2003
labour force survey shows that there are more employment opportunities
but also more people without jobs. Within the formal sector the reward
accruing to non-labour factors of production is increasing while that
of labour is decreasing. The poor may be feeling increasingly sceptical
about the ANC’s ability to deliver, and this could present an
opportunity for the DA.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has boldly declared its
conviction that it is winning the war against poverty, thereby
fulfilling its promise "to provide a better life for all" as proclaimed
in its 1994 election manifesto and reaffirmed during its 1999 general
election campaign. In declaring its belief, the ANC has defined the
issue on which it will seek re-election next year, a decade after it
first won the right to govern South Africa.
Battle has already been joined on whether the ANC's proud declaration
is one that reflects substantive reality or mere rhetorical
extravagance. The Democratic Alliance (DA), the largest of the dozen or
so opposition parties represented in parliament, has picked up the
gauntlet thrown down by president Thabo Mbeki, when he challenged those
who believe there is as much - or greater - poverty in South Africa
today, than there was in 1994, to substantiate their "false
conclusions".
Mbeki issued his challenge during his response to the debate on his
state of the nation address to parliament in February. But the scene
was set earlier, at the ANC's 51st national conference in Stellenbosch
last December and, subsequently, in the ANC's national executive
statement of January 8.
The 51st national conference defined its "strategic goal" for the
decade ahead as the "eradication of the legacy of colonialism and
apartheid", the sine qua non of which was the "realisation of the
objective of the eradication of poverty". The ANC hoped it would
celebrate its 100th anniversary on January 8, 2012, by winning its
final victory over poverty on or before that day. In the interim the
ANC national executive statement of January 8, 2003, committed itself
to focusing "particular attention on the struggle against poverty" in
the year ahead. Mbeki returned to the theme in his state of the nation
address, in which he twice declared the "tide has turned" in his
government's fight against poverty and its quest to change the "lives
of South Africans for the better".
Mbeki sought to buttress his assertion with statistical data. He noted
in particular that South Africa's gross domestic product growth had
held steady for 2002 at 3,1 per cent, having exceeded the 3,0 per cent
mark in 2000 for the first time since the ANC came to power in 1994.
"We have now had ten consecutive years of positive growth," he added
with pride. He cited further statistical pointers to economic progress
chalked up during 2002. They included 8 per cent growth in gross fixed
capital, 5,4 per cent growth in manufacturing ("the fastest since
1995") and the biggest gains by the rand against the dollar in 15
years.
Reinforcing his point, Mbeki went on to emphasise a series of
ANC-initiated measures that he believed were impacting positively in
the campaign against the legacy of poverty inherited from successive
apartheid governments. His list of ANC initiatives incorporated tax
reforms (that cumulatively expanded the income of employed citizens by
over R38 billion), increases in social grants (that made a further R1,5
billion available to the "most vulnerable" citizens) and a
multiplication in the value of the "social wages" paid by government to
the general citizenry (that increased water and electricity connections
to poor households, accelerated the programme of land restitution and
redistribution and wrought improvements in teaching and learning in
schools).
Mbeki concluded with a summary of planned measures to reduce poverty
in the coming financial year, made possible by the accumulation of
funds from the government's policy of strict fiscal discipline. He
spoke of plans to expand social services (in the form of increased old
age and disability pensions and child support grants), extend the
unemployment insurance scheme to house servants and agricultural
workers, and increase the number of households receiving free quotas of
free water and electricity. He added two brief paragraphs - almost as
an afterthought his political opponents charged - on the health
service. He devoted less than 40 words to the HIV/Aids plague and
seemed to downgrade its threat to the promised "better life for all" by
rating tuberculosis as South Africa's "leading killer disease" (and
apparently not taking account of the near certainty that the deaths of
many tuberculosis patients are Aids-related deaths).
In his response in parliament the DA leader, Tony Leon, directly
rebutted Mbeki's scenario: "For millions of fellow citizens, life is no
better now than it was in 1994. For many people, in spite of political
freedom, life is actually worse".
To substantiate his assertion, Leon focused on three issues: the
HIV/Aids crisis, the high crime rate and the large - and growing -
problem of unemployment. Characterising the government's response to
HIV/Aids as one of "long denial", he said, "Hundreds of thousands of
South Africans are dying of Aids every year".
On crime, he said: "We are still at war - with ourselves. In just ten
years, murder in South Africa has claimed close to 200 000 victims.
These victims are not soldiers. They are civilians - at home, on their
way to work, coming back from school". On the failure of the economy to
reduce unemployment, he said, "One in every three South Africans is
unemployed. Seven million are out of work. Black unemployment has risen
from 46 per cent in 1995 to 55 per cent in 2001… Our nation's policies
are pro-market but anti-growth, pro-labour but anti-poor".
Since then the debate has largely simmered on the back burner as it
yielded to more urgent news coverage of the spectacular events leading
to the US-British invasion of Iraq and the war in that benighted
country, as well as the shifting political loyalties of elected
representatives in South Africa's national and provincial legislatures
during the "window of opportunity" for them to cross the floor without
forfeiting their seats. But the question of whether the ANC was winning
or losing the war against poverty has never been far from public
consciousness in South Africa, due in part to persistent questioning by
Leon of the ANC's portrayal of itself as the true and indefatigable
champion of the poor.
To the chagrin of the ANC Leon continues to insist, "South Africa is
in crisis". The horsemen of the threatened apocalypse that he sees on
the horizon are poverty, unemployment, HIV/Aids and crime. With the aid
of a competent team of researchers he regularly presents a series of
facts in speeches, replete with footnotes identifying the sources of
his information.
A sample of Leon's disturbing glimpses into the future in which an
apocalyptical spectre looms large includes:
- The average annual income of black Africans has decreased from R32
000 in 1995 to R26 000 (Statistics South Africa).
- Nearly a fifth of households in South Africa failed to find enough
to eat in 1999 (Taylor Commission).
- Official unemployment in South Africa is 25,8 per cent (SA Reserve
Bank). But when those who are unemployed but too disheartened to tramp
the streets in search of employment are incorporated the figure rises
to 37 per cent (or only a mite higher than the percentage computed
independently by the Business Trust).
- 4,7 million South Africans are HIV positive (SA Annual Antenatal
Clinics Survey), of whom 300 000 will die during 2003 (UN Aids).
- Aids-related deaths will outstrip births by 2016, when the
estimated number of births will be about one million a year (South
African Development Bank).
- Except for murder, there has been an increase in "every important
category" of crime since 1994. Murder is excepted because there has
been "a marginal decline". (No source is cited.)
In an interview with Focus Leon draws attention to another factor that
he thinks is hindering the government in its quest for a better life
for all South Africans. By pressing ahead too quickly (or too
recklessly) in pursuit of its aims of "completely transforming" the
public service, the ANC is "disestablishing" the machinery of state on
which it relies for the delivery of social services and the
implementation of its policies. While demographic representivity and
affirmative action may be laudable in themselves, they should not be
implemented at the expense of merit, experience and appropriate
qualifications and skills, Leon reckons. He argues that the
administrative incompetence that afflicts the public service ranges
from under spending and over spending to negligence and even
dereliction of duty, hence post-apartheid South Africa's record of poor
delivery.
In pressing his contention that the ANC has failed - and is failing -
to improve the quality of life of many of South Africa's poor people,
Leon finds himself in the company of those whose political outlook is
decidedly further to the left than his own. While Leon and these South
Africans on his political left, foremost among them Sampie Terreblanche
of the University of Stellenbosch, might disagree on many issues
pertinent to South Africa's political economy, their views converge on
the question of whether life has improved for the poor, particularly
those in the black community.
Terreblanche writes in his A History of Inequality in South Africa of
the continued "pauperisation" of half of the South African population
since 1994. Under a graph showing that the poorest half of the South
African population (23 million out of 45 million) possessed a mere 3,2
per cent of the income in 2001, he states of the post 1994 period:
"From a socio-economic point of view, the poor became more
marginalised, powerless and pauperised".
In an assessment that converges largely with Leon's on the
malfunctioning public service, Terreblanche adds: "The weakening in the
public sector, especially that of departments directly responsible for
the poor, has made a disturbing contribution to the neglect of the poor
and towards their further disempowerment and pauperisation". Describing
post-apartheid South Africa as a "highly stratified class society"
Terreblanche says in a footnote on the new pattern of inequality: "The
rich have become much richer and the poor considerably poorer over the
past eight years".
Leon and Terreblanche are unlikely to concur in their analyses of the
causes of the "further pauperisation" of the poor under the ANC-led
government and in their prescriptions for its rectification. Leon
inclines strongly to liberal-capitalism and a market economy (though
his party has championed the idea of a basic income grant).
Terreblanche blames much of post-apartheid South Africa's ills on the
success of the Anglo American Corporation (AAC) and its corporate
brethren in persuading the ANC to abandon its socialist-orientated
ideology and its Reconstruction and Development Programme for
liberal-capitalism and "neo-liberal" macro-economic policies.
But, in the context of Leon's present dispute with the ANC,
Terreblanche has provided Leon with powerful arguments that buttress
his case that, on balance, a large proportion of South Africa's poor
are worse off socio-economically today than they were in 1994.
Terreblanche's arguments have the potential to resonate profoundly
among voters in the political manoeuvring that precedes next year's
scheduled election. So, too, does the Human Rights Commission report on
socio-economic rights for the period 2000-2002. The report, released in
April 2003, records the failure of the government to fulfil its social
welfare and "social income" delivery targets across a wide front, from
the "real decline" on per capita spending on health to the continued
existence in South Africa of "marginalized groups" for whom constant
hunger is a concrete reality rather than an abstract threat. DA
spokesperson for finance Raenette Taljaard labels the report
"invaluable" for highlighting the chasm between promise and
fulfilment.
The ANC-led government, however, has not abandoned the field to its
political foes. It still insists that it is making progress in the
fight against poverty. It adduces in response to the Human Rights
Commission report official figures pointing to an expansion in the
proportion of households gaining access to clean water and electricity
supplies (up between 1995 and 2000 from 3 million to 8,4 million in the
case of water and from 2,3 million to 3,8 million in that of
electricity). It cites similar figures for the proportion of households
with access to formal housing and chemical or flush lavatories. The
increases between 1995 and 2000 are from 65,8 per cent to 72,6 per cent
for formal housing (the increase being due in large measure to an
increase in the availability of subsidised housing since the ANC came
to power) and from 56,9 per cent to 58,3 per cent for the sanitary
disposal of household sewage.
Mbeki continues to hold imbizos or discussions with people at
gatherings throughout South Africa. People from informal settlements
and remote villages, as well as urban townships, are invited to air
their feelings directly to him on the efficacy of government's fight
against poverty. The ANC contends that the imbizos enable Mbeki to
ensure that deficiencies that may exist in its campaign are addressed
and that it is not simply a top-down crusade in which the politicians
know best and the people are expected to be passive and grateful
recipients.
The array of facts and figures, arguments and counter-arguments,
theses and antitheses, has the capacity to obfuscate rather than
clarify. One response is to endorse Mark Twain's aphorism that there
are statistics, damned statistics and lies and to conclude that
politicians use them interchangeably as the propaganda tools of their
trade. Tony Twine, of Econometrix, has a less cynical interpretation of
what it might mean, however.
He notes that jobless growth, though one of the identifying economic
traits of post-apartheid South Africa, is not unique to South Africa,
adding that it is a feature in "many" emerging economies and in "almost
all" industrial economies of the world. In mixed economies, such as
South Africa's, there is always going to be a section of economically
active people who are not major beneficiaries of even accelerating GDP
growth, Twine states.
Citing an average annual GDP growth of 2,7 per cent and a population
growth rate of 1,8 per cent since the ANC came to power, he concludes
that per capita income has certainly risen in real terms. He adds an
important corollary however: it has risen for those in the formal and
semi-formal economies but not necessarily for those in the informal
sector. Extrapolation from that leads to the conclusion that life may
have got appreciably better for some South Africans but become worse
for their less fortunate compatriots.
Terreblanche comes to a similar conclusion in his tome on the history
of inequality in South Africa. But he blames the machinations of the
AAC, and the susceptibility of the ANC to its sweet talk about the
virtues of market-driven capitalism, for the continued exclusion of
half the South African population from the formal economy and for their
"pauperisation" under a government that constantly portrays itself as
the champions of the poor, the insulted and the injured.
Independent sociologist Lawrence Schlemmer who is the director of The
Helen Suzman Foundation, concurs that some South Africans are
benefiting from, and some ailing under, the ANC-led government since
1994. In an analysis of All Media and Products Surveys (AMPS),
published in Focus 26, 2002, he concludes that between 1993 and late
2001 the proportion of black African households living below the
breadline (i.e. earning R400 or less a month or equivalent amounts
adjusted for inflation) rose from about half to close to two-thirds.
That conclusion has, however, to be juxtaposed with another: the
proportion of black African households in the relatively prosperous
middle class category has increased simultaneously. The same patterns
apply in the coloured population. Thus, as Schlemmer observes in his
article, "African and coloured households have become both poorer and
more prosperous at the same time".
As Twine points out, the same kind of ambiguity pervades much of the
official statistical data. Thus the sixth labour force survey by
Statistics SA, released to the media in March 2003, contains two
apparently contradictory trends: the generation of employment
opportunities in 2002 for the first time in five years in the formal
sector of the economy amid a general increase in the number of
unemployed. The Janus-headed nature of the unemployment problem is
beyond dispute. The explanation for it is simple. As Anne Bernstein, of
the Centre for Development and Enterprise, has noted, "Unless we're
able to achieve 5 to 6 per cent growth per year, sustained over a long
period, we're not going to be able to reduce the backlog of
unemployment and poverty in South Africa".
Even within the formal sector there are incipient ambiguities. The
economic data in the Reserve Bank Quarterly Bulletin for March 2003
points to interesting and probably significant development. It shows
that reward accruing to the non-labour factors of production -
particularly capital and entrepreneurship - is increasing while that of
labour is decreasing. The figures show that the share of reward
garnered by the non-labour factors of production increased from about
44 per cent to nearly 49 per cent between 1988 and 2002 while that
channelled to labour fell from 56 per cent to nearly 50 per cent. Taken
as a whole the pattern reflects a growing economy, in which the rewards
accumulating to labour are declining. Further extrapolation leads to a
tentative hypothesis. For at least some working class men and women
life is becoming harder as its gets better for the select few who
possess either capital or connections to the ANC that they can convert,
through entrepreneurial skill, into an asset valued by the established
white corporations anxious to attain a higher degree of demographic
representivity.
In conclusion, it would seem that life is indeed getting better for
sections of the historically disadvantaged black community but worse
for their compatriots either on the fringe of the formal economy or
outside it altogether. The degree of alienation is hard to quantify.
There is no evidence of mass desertion by the poor from the ANC. There
may, however, be diminishing enthusiasm for its causes and concomitant
scepticism over its ability to deliver on its promises. There is thus a
theoretical opportunity for Leon or a rival opposition leader to
exploit in the pending election, though the history of Zimbabwe and, to
a lesser extent, Namibia suggests that they may have to wait a while
longer yet.