The African National Congress (ANC) stands accused by its own creation, the Human Rights Commission (HRC), of reneging on its mandate to the people. In its report on Economic and Social Rights, of 22 April 2003, the Commission argues that the state has not met its full obligations to the masses. This indictment comes in the wake of mounting criticism of the government from both writers and civil society for allowing inequality and poverty to deepen since 1994.
For a government claiming to have liberated the masses from the shackles of apartheid, this indictment must hurt badly, particularly because it comes from within the government stable. It helps little that it was forewarned about the trap of well-nigh un-measurable and unenforceable socio-economic rights in the South African Bill of Rights.
It is a moot point as to whether any government within our present economy could satisfy the criteria for socio-economic rights, but the pressure on government is not likely to abate. Numerous surveys of attitudes show that around 60 per cent of black South Africans, and almost as many ANC supporters, are dissatisfied with the performance of government. It has now become popular wisdom that more is being done to promote a new black economic elite than to advance the interests of the poor and the unemployed. The labelling of government policies as "neo liberal" has swelled to a veritable chorus on the left. The controversy raises the vital question of what kind of democracy the ANC is shaping for the future. Before one can answer this question one has to consider the options.
Variants of
democracy
Notwithstanding the common criteria of a universal franchise and
regular elections, democracies differ fundamentally. In
"representative" democracies, the keynote features are mass needs,
popular sovereignty and the imperative of the "majority" - the people
rule. In "liberal" democracies, on the other hand, the sovereignty of
the people is curbed or counter-balanced by the inalienable rights of
individuals, singly or in groups with similar interests. Then one has
less effective "democracies" in which leaders with a particular mission
will override both majorities and individual rights in the interests of
some presumed greater good, like nationalism, religious values or
grandiose agendas for development - often called "guided"
democracies.
But the variations do not end there. Early sociologists noted that
ordinary voters tend to be sidelined by elite groups with superior
cultural and material capital, which manipulate political institutions
for their own ends. Later authors, however, noted that in some
democracies one particular elite would form an anti-democratic
oligarchy, while in others competition between opposing elites could
reflect and protect the interests of ordinary voters - "democratic
elitism".
Very recently, Fareed Zacharia, in a book called The Future of
Freedom, has argued that governments claiming to represent the
interests of majorities have regulated institutions and prescribed
behaviour to such an extent that individual liberty has been sacrificed
on the altar of the common good - a trend that can lead to bureaucratic
oligarchy beyond the reach of all but the most powerful lobbies and
special interests.
Where does the ANC government fit in?
Frustrated servant of the
people?
With its slogans like "a better life for all" and its emphasis on
"representivity", the ANC projects itself as standing for a progressive
representative democracy in which the people are sovereign. Some of its
critics will accept this. Their argument would be that the problems
concern capacity, efficiency and political will, not ideology.
A far-reaching critique comes from more radical observers. Unfazed by
both the eight decades of failure by socialist governments to achieve
social justice and by the manifest un-sustainability of the modern
welfare state, their argument is that the government has sold out the
people, aligning itself with socially and economically powerful
interests in society and swinging towards what is contemptuously
referred to as the "neo-liberal" agenda.
The narrower critique is healthy - part of the democratic process. The
second critique, however, is highly contrived, not only because of the
un-sustainability of mass welfare in a developing economy but because
it assumes that poorly-informed and poorly organised masses of people
can actually exercise power and hold their representatives to account.
Participatory democracy has seldom succeeded in a complex modern state.
As long as these critics cling to unrealistic aims, they will miss the
lessons of history and opportunities to make democracy more
accountable. Worse still, they will court authoritarian or
paternalistic rule - as long ago as 1693, William Penn observed:
"Let the people think they govern and they will be
governed".
In any event, the first criticism is much closer to observable facts.
It is an oversimplification to say that the government is impervious to
the linked problems of poverty and unemployment. There is a forest of
legislation in place providing for service delivery to the poor,
training, and capacity building. While the government has resisted a
basic income grant, it has gone out on a limb with child grants, taking
a huge risk by standards of best practice in rewarding the poor for
having children. By tolerating massive non-payment of local service
charges and rates, it is in fact making large transfer payments to the
poor in addition to its direct grants.
The problem is that it has a huge lack of programme management
capacity in the state administration. It has even greater delivery
capacity problems at the local level, the level it has chosen for its
development thrust, namely local government. Here again, however, it
has taken successive steps to boost local delivery capacity, financial
controls and infrastructure, and it is clearly deeply worried by the
failures of delivery.
Does the government therefore deserve sympathy in its struggle to
deliver? Not really, because in other aspects of its policies it has
knowingly weakened its capacities. After the lapsing of short-term
guarantees for old guard officials, it has been unyielding in its
racial transformation of the civil service despite warnings that its
delivery capacity would be crippled by a rapid loss of experience. In
this sense other priorities have taken precedence over effective
administration.
Commandeering business and
weakening macro-economic policy
The same can be said for the private sector. Government has adopted
very sound macro-economic policies as a basis for sustained investment
and growth - its longer-range answer to our crippling rates of
unemployment. It has met many important targets, such as inflation, but
failed to meet growth, investment and employment targets. Allowing for
the state of the international economy, should we sympathise with the
government on this score? Here again, not really.
Under pressure from influential black business and professional
organisations it has adopted very muscular black economic empowerment
policies that have contradicted commitments in its macro-economic
strategy to lowering the operating costs of business.
In fact, it has discovered the perfect solution to its problems of
lack of implementation capacity. It has commandeered private businesses
as the vehicle to deliver its empowerment and equity targets. First
with soft but unyielding political pressure on white business - mainly
based on subtle or not so subtle warnings of legislation and punitive
measures for non-compliance, and now with comprehensive Black Economic
Empowerment (BEE) charters, it is pushing white business to take over
the task of high-level private racial redistribution.
Government makes modest direct contributions by way of special
empowerment funds and the state Industrial Development Corporation
plays a role, but all the hidden costs are borne by the private sector.
There are often costs of securing loans for identified black equity
partners, costs of carrying people in senior positions while they learn
the ropes, costs of recruitment in a thinly skilled labour market and
costs in outsourcing where empowerment criteria can rule out the lowest
tenders. Government will contest this but to deny that there are large
efficiency penalties in employment equity is to deny the effects of
apartheid.
There are also costs in terms of losses of potential fixed foreign
investment - many investors baulk at the prospect of unpredictable
costs of meeting racial criteria. These costs are impossible to
quantify but they are hugely significant where the most urgent
developmental priority is job-creation.
The unemployment
malaise
Why has government been so limp in tackling the scourge of
unemployment? By comparison with the empowerment thrust, strategies to
encourage an increase in labour absorption through trainee wage
subsidies and other incentives have been flimsy. It is true that
subsidies and employment incentives frequently have undesirable effects
but the same can be said for forcing the pace of black economic
empowerment. Why has government not been more effective in confronting
unions and its own department of labour to lower costs of labour? Why
are rural subsistence farmers, who occupy some 25 per cent of
non-desert land, not being turned into productive farmers?
The government has very clearly defined its priorities. It does worry
about the poor and the unemployed but only after it has secured the
basis for success in high-level racial engineering. No one can doubt
the need for some form of reasonable affirmative action, but the
unremitting pressure for unrealistically rapid outcomes gives the game
away. As the Financial Mail (2 May 2003) illustrates, the
minister of labour writes off a 33 per cent increase over three years
in black high-level employment as "bleak" and unsatisfactory when he
knows that industry is scraping the barrel for skills. This is why so
many critics see government as primarily committed to elite
building.
What kind of
elites?
While one accepts that most democracies are manipulated by elites,
what kind of elite system will we have? A condition for the democratic
elitism referred to earlier is that there will be competing elites and
that they are substantially independent of government. The new elites
promoted by empowerment policies are tied hand and foot to government
patronage. Will older elites be able to compete with the new elites in
shaping policy or will the new elites consolidate to become an
oligarchy like the old apartheid Broederbond (Band of Brothers)?
Older elite opinion is still prominent in civil society but the
crucial platforms of influence tend to be set aside for the new elites.
How easily can a member of the "old guard" become the head of a state
corporation, of an English language university, of a state commission
or council, of a high profile cultural body and even of a private
newspaper? Are the centres of information and policy influence being
politically and racially segregated? How many members of the Human
Rights Commission with its critical role in the democracy are really
independent of the ANC or government? Is a new hegemony
unfolding?
Echoes of the past
The pre-1994 governments in South Africa were, for whites, normal
electoral democracies. They were fulsome in their rhetoric about
representing and serving the people and their welfare. Three factors
robbed those governments of democratic quality, even for whites. First
there was a mobilised ethnic (language group) imbalance, closely
correlated with party support that alienated English-speakers from 1948
to the mid eighties. Second, politically "incorrect" elites were
relatively powerless, sidelined by an ethnic oligarchy, except in the
private sector where they were powerful. Third, heads of state like HF
Verwoerd and PW Botha were so all powerful that they could impose
personal priorities on the nation.
Our new democracy has universal franchise, and much more professional
policy machinery, but at the same time there are some worrying
similarities to the old regime. It markets itself as a representative
democracy and it also has a concern with the poor, but more powerful
priorities are steering it towards an elite-driven racial oligarchy
very similar to the ethnic version that preceded it. Its head of state
is no less supreme than his predecessors. One large difference is that
the formerly influential white business sector will become captive of
government.
Our complex Bill of Rights notwithstanding, are we not compromising
the individual freedom and civic liberty to make our democracy and
economy a winning combination?
