ANC Youth League and economic transformation of South Africa

Has the South African national economic policy since 1994 been successful in transforming the South African economy? Has it enabled the South African state to effect structural economic transformation? Has it enabled it to decisively confront the dialectical and organic link between capitalism and racism within the socio-historical structural imperatives of the South African political economy? To what extent has the African National Congress attempted through its political administration of South African society since 1994 to change its socio-economic direction in the interests of its masses of the people? These are some of the key questions which inform the ANC Youth League in its economic transformation discussion document for its 24th National Congress.

Concerning structural or ‘real economic transformation’, the ANC Youth League in its economic transformation discussion document maintains that the state since 1994 ‘has not achieved anything substantial due to the fact that the economic policy direction taken in the dawn years was not about fundamental transformation, but empowerment/enrichment meant to empower what could inherently be a few black aspirant capitalists.’[1]

These few black capitalists are not ‘engaged in real industrial and manufacturing entrepreneurship and economic development, which could have rightfully empowered them and created job opportunities for the majority of the people of South Africa.’[2]

According to the ANC Youth League, despite ‘the ANC’s political leadership of society, the state and government, there is currently little or no effort’ on its part to ‘provide progressive and consistent leadership’ to the structural transformation of ‘the economy’.[3]

It is for these key reasons, among others, that the ANC Youth League is proposing expropriation of strategic sectors of the South African economy without compensation in its economic transformation discussion document for its 24th National Congress. These sectors include ‘minerals, metals, banks, energy production, and telecommunications’.[4] In calling for expropriation of strategic sectors of the South African economy, the ANC Youth League maintains that:

‘The state should expropriate strategic sectors of the economy without compensation because paying for all the key and strategic resources stolen from the black majority and Africans in particular, will take more than a lifetime to realise.’[5]

Is there an alternative to the expropriation of strategic sectors of the economy without compensation by the state? The ANC Youth League continues in its document that:

‘The state has no other option but to decisively transfer wealth, particularly natural resources from those who currently own [them] for public purposes and in the public interest’.[6]

Progressive proposals to structurally transform the South African economy have been harshly criticised in the name that they will either scare investors, particularly those who are foreigners, or if they become official policy existing investors will divest from the country or those who wish to invest will not because of this policy measure. Responding to this view in advance, the ANC Youth League points out that:

‘The myth that such a policy framework will scare foreign direct investment should be dismissed because investors are never discouraged by definite concrete policy and legislative provisions. Investors are mainly discouraged by uncertainty and unpredictability of the laws and regulations related to business in a country.[7]

The ANC Youth League justifies its call for the expropriation of strategic sectors of the economy without compensation by maintaining that expropriation should be the official policy measure for the state to construct and develop infrastructure such as roads and dams and provide services such as quality education, water, housing, electricity, healthcare, transport, sanitation, and telecommunications, and for it to have a greater level of economic and political sovereignty.[8]

Constitutional and legal measures should serve not as obstacles to the structural transformation. It is for this strategic reason that it proposes amendment to the property clause in the constitution to give the state power and authority to expropriate strategic sectors of the economy for ‘public purpose and public interest’.[9] Mindful of the reality that the South African society cannot be structurally transformed without the active participation of its majority, it calls upon the revolutionary movement to galvanise the masses of the South African people to be ready to defend the revolutionary programme of action the movement will take in its efforts to achieve socio-economic liberation.

The ANC Youth League is critical in its economic transformation document of the Black Economic Empowerment policy. It maintains that it has failed profoundly or dismally to empower the majority of South Africans. Referring to South Africa’s control, domination and exploitation by imperialism and the structural and fundamental need for socio-economic liberation, it points out that:

‘Whilst politically liberated, South Africa remains economically semi-colonised concerning the control, ownership and orientation of the economy…Ownership of the financial sector and services is still a reservoir of white people and this applies to other strategic sectors of the economy such as agriculture, retail and manufacturing. The economy continues to be controlled by those empowered by colonial-cum-apartheid circumstances and policies. The approach adopted by the democratic government in the first 17 years will never change these realities.’[10]

It is in this context that the ANC Youth League concludes that the state has failed to ‘transfer the economy to the majority’ of the South African people. In raising the question as to where are we, it maintains that the ‘majority of the political decisions taken in the past 17 years by the ANC government somewhat suggests that the ANC lost the liberation struggle to the semi-colonial/apartheid forces and their imperialist masters’[11] and that it is ‘quite apparent that the approach of the ANC government to strategic economic transformation issues somewhat suggests that the ANC lost the liberation struggle for political, social and economic emancipation of the black majority and Africans in particular.’[12]

Central to the ANC Youth League’s economic transformation document is the position that the ANC’s efforts to structurally transform South Africa economically and ideologically have been very limited. South Africa continues to be characterised by a high level of unequal socio-economic relations and distribution of human, natural, material and financial resources not only in terms of class, but also in terms of race. The integration of blacks into a capitalist social order in terms of ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, particularly through the Black Economic Empowerment policy measures, has been very limited in the sense that those integrated are extremely few. This minority of the black majority depends on the state for its further advancement.

Its advancement is limited by its being beneficiary of the reallocation of rights in the mining sector of the South African economy. Black capital has not yet articulated a clear, coherent and strong ideological commitment to capitalism. It is not active in the strategic manufacturing and agricultural sectors of the South African economy. Despite the strategic importance of land reform in the South African political economy and unequal control, ownership and distribution along racial lines and the consequent structural need for their transformation, the new black capitalists are not practically active in terms of engagement in land. They are also not theoretically active in terms of being vocal in demanding the transformation of control, ownership and distribution of land. They are also not vocal in ensuring that the South African state political power and authority and public capital be used in directing South Africa’s external economic and trade interests in conjunction with foreign policy in their interests. Their ownership of companies controlling South Africa’s leading newspapers has had no impact on content. Briefly, they are not active in the productive activities of the South African economy and social life, including on matters relating to black South Africans.

This brutal reality is supportive of the fact that the control, ownership and domination of the South African economy by white South African capitalists in alliance with imperialism has not been negatively affected by the end of the apartheid rule. The constitutional security of the property rights and the transformation process, incorrectly viewed as the task to widen the boundaries of privilege, have helped to protect and entrench the control, ownership and domination of the South African economy by white South African capitalists. Related to their intensified internal expansion, is their intensified external expansion through the internationalisation of their corporate operations. Their corporate presence has become more pronounced not only in Southern Africa and Africa, but also in the rest of the world in general and the advanced capitalist countries in particular.

South Africa continues to be the most unequal social formation in the world. It has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. The misfortunes and benefits of capitalism are in the form of mass poverty for the majority of its people and increasing material conditions for a minority.

One of the profound contradictions of the post-apartheid South Africa is that wealth and privileges of the beneficiaries of apartheid have been protected through the end of apartheid rule. This is supported by the ANC Youth League when it points out in its economic transformation document: ‘vestiges of apartheid and colonial economic patterns, ownership and control remain intact despite the attainment of political freedom by the ANC led liberation movement’[13] or that the ‘colonial feature of the South African economy remains intact 17 years after the democratic breakthrough.’[14] The fact that the end of apartheid rule has so far been protecting wealth and privileges of the beneficiaries of apartheid raises the fundamental question as to how the post-apartheid state can effectively de-racialise capitalism and make qualitative achievements in the material conditions or living standards of the majority of the South African people.

The beneficiaries of apartheid have been promoting legal, moral and constitutional imperatives at the expanse of socio-economic issues such as socio-economic justice. Political issues are raised in such a way that state political power should not be exercised as a social organ to promote equitable redistribution of human, natural, material and financial resources. The obsession with legal, moral and constitutional issues and political issues as a means to defend the socio-economic status quo has become a political culture even among some blacks who are beneficiaries of the incomplete project for socio-economic liberation in the country.

This struggle is supported by the fact that the advancement of material and financial interests through access to the country’s natural resources, particularly those of the mining sector of the economy, has become more important than the structural socio-political and economic transformation for a considerable number of South Africans who used to regard themselves and were regarded as revolutionaries. This struggle confirms the political, economic and ideological importance of Bob Marley’s statement in one of his songs that ‘soon we would find out who are true revolutionaries’ upon the achievement of political independence. Central to this statement is that revolution is not the task of widening the boundaries of privilege, but of eliminating socio-political and economic inequalities.

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* Dr Sehlare Makgetlaneng is a chief research specialist and the head of the Governance and Democracy research unit at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES:

[1] African National Congress Youth League, A Clarion Call to Economic Freedom Fighters: Programme of Action for Economic Freedom in our Lifetime, Johannesburg: African National Congress Youth League, April 2011, p. 3.
[2] Ibid., p. 6.
[3] Ibid., p. 2.
[4] Ibid., p. 11
[5] Ibid., p. 9.
[6] Ibid., p. 9.
[7] Ibid., p. 10.
[8] Ibid., p. 9, p. 12 and p. 14,
[9] Ibid., p. 10.
[10] Ibid., p. 3 and pp. 3-4.
[11] Ibid., pp. 1-2.
[12] Ibid., p. 2.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., p. 3.