South Africa needs electoral reform, but president's powers need watching

Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa. There are renewed calls for citizens to directly elect their president and other representatives.
Reuters/Sumaya Hisham

Within a short time, the 4000 odd delegates to South Africa’s governing African National Congress’s 54th National Conference will elect a new party leader. In turn – save death, disaster or unlikely electoral defeat – a parliament stuffed with an ANC majority will at some point elect that leader as the new President of South Africa. The expectation is that this will be Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma or Cyril Ramaphosa. But, if the ANC elects a pig, the ANC parliamentary majority will vote for the pig.

Although it is by no means unusual for parliaments to elect countries’ political leaders, there is widespread complaint in South Africa that it is the small ANC elite which attends the conference that effectively selects the next president of the country. This, it is said by many, is undemocratic.

Two main reasons are cited. First, ANC electoral procedures are deeply corrupted by money changing hands, personal ambition and factionalism. Second, it should be the people, not the party, which should be charged with electing the country’s leader.

It is therefore of considerable interest that, rather than emanating from civil society or another political party, the proposal has been made by the ANC’s Gauteng provincial conference that consideration should be given to ordinary voters voting directly for presidents, premiers and mayors. This is of particular interest given that Gauteng is one of the ANC’s most powerful provinces, and at the same time, one which is often at odds with the party’s current leadership.

The proposal that the state president, provincial premiers and mayors be directly elected is a most welcome one, as there is much need to consider the quality of South Africa’s democracy, and to encourage public participation in decision-making. However, direct election of such offices simultaneously holds its risks.

The electoral reform debate

The debate about electoral reform in post-1994 South Africa has largely focused on the system used to elect MPs and their counterparts in the country’s nine provinces. The standard argument for a change was captured succinctly by ANC dissident and Umkhonto we Sizwe veteran Omry Makgoale:

When will we wake up and reform our crooked electoral system?

The argument is that the list proportional representation system results in the election of MPs who are accountable to party bosses rather than voters. Such an outcome is rendered more certain by the fact that South Africa’s constitution lays down that MPs or provincial legislature representatives who leave or are ejected from their parties lose their seat in the relevant legislature, plus the handy salary that goes with it. To continue with the animalistic referencing, parties’ elected representatives become sheep, devoid of any capacity for independence.

Presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini-ZumaChairperson.
Reuters/Francois Lenoir

Such critiques often suggest (very sensibly) that the electoral system should become a mixed one which combines proportionality of outcomes with the direct election of representatives from constituencies. This was recommended in 2002 by the Van Zyl Slabbert Commission on electoral reform. But there has been relatively little debate about whether the President and premiers should be directly elected.

The survey conducted on behalf of the Van Zyl Slabbert Commission indicated that 63% of respondents would have liked to vote for the president directly. This level of preference was pretty much the same across all racial groups. Given the disastrous nature of the Zuma presidency, it is very possible that the preference for direct election would be considerably higher if the issue was put to survey respondents today.

Virtue of direction election

The virtue of the direct election of key political leaders is said to be that it renders them directly accountable to voters rather than to their political parties. On the face of it, it is an attractive argument, and it is one which could usefully introduce more diversity into the South African political system.

If they wanted to maximise their vote, parties would have to look at the qualities of their candidates, and ask themselves whether they would appeal to the electorate as a whole. (On this reckoning, it is a dead cert that Cyril Ramaphosa would streak home and dry, rather than, as under the ANC’s present system, running neck and neck with his chief rival, whose popular appeal is that of a wet fish). This would mean that candidates would end up openly campaigning for the leadership, dispensing with the ANC’s absurd pretence that individuals should not demonstrate political ambition.

There is also the possibility that voters would elect a president from a party other than the one which enjoys a majority in the National Assembly.

Would direct election of the president, premiers and mayors be a good idea? And, if so, what system should be adopted?

The second question is easily answered. To avoid the election of a president who gains less than 50% of a popular vote but more than any other candidate, provision would wisely be made for a second round of a presidential election in which the top two candidates engage in a run off.

A good idea?

So would direction elections be a good idea?

Parliamentary systems work well because they devolve the election of prime ministers to the legislature. On the continent, countries that inherited a parliamentary system from Britain subsequently opted for elective presidencies.

The results are not unambiguously encouraging.

South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
GCIS

In Kenya and Zambia, for instance, the direct election of presidents may have weakened the link between legislatures and executives. This has allowed executives to trample over legislatures, and for leaders to claim a legitimacy separate from that of their party. Presidents from Daniel Arap Moi through to Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya and from Frederick Chiluba through to Edgar Lungu in Zambia have all proved exceedingly authoritarian.

It follows that changing the South African system to allow for direct election would require the country to look carefully at how a directly elected president should be rendered accountable to parliament. Would the change enhance the accountability of the government by empowering MPs, or would it render them increasingly irrelevant?

Dangers of an all-powerful president

It is also worth recalling that there is now much greater awareness about how much power is concentrated in the Presidency, in a way, it would seem, that the makers of the country’s constitution did not intend. Under Zuma, the presidency has a direct say in far too much, such as the right to appoint the head of a National Prosecuting Authority which might have the responsibility of calling him to legal account.

South Africans need to be wary of any change in the system which ends up making the President less – rather than more – accountable.

In any case, while there can be very good reasons for reforming an electoral system, this will not automatically result in better governance. Form can rarely trump substance. Robert Mugabe only “won” the Zimbabwean presidency in 2008 through his army and police terrorising the opposition and effectively forcing his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, to withdraw.

It will take more than a piecemeal change to South Africa’s constitution to improve it’s democracy. South Africans should be careful what they wish for, as they can never be quite sure what they will get.

Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Why changes to South Africa's labour laws are an assault on workers' rights

South African public sector workers march for higher pay.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings

The biggest changes to South Africa’s labour laws since 1995, shortly after the country’s first democratic elections, are currently being considered by parliament. If passed into law, they will significantly limit the hard won rights of workers to strike. In addition, details about the country’s much-heralded national minimum wage set out in the enabling legislation show that, in practice, it may be unenforceable.

The three bills include amendments to the Labour Relations Act and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, as well as the new National Minimum Wage Bill.

If these proposed amendments become law it will be a significant defeat for workers. Taken together the legislation would roll back the hard won gains of the labour movement in South Africa and curtail the most powerful tool available to workers to improve their earnings.

The end result is likely to deepen South Africa’s vast inequalities.

The right to strike

Two of the proposed changes will affect workers’ right to strike, which is protected under South Africa’s Constitution.

First, the proposed amendments to the Labour Relations Act would introduce measures which, although designed to minimise violent strikes, would, in fact, discourage strikes in general. For example, the amendments would require trade unions to hold secret ballots to decide on strikes. By individualising the decision to strike, the secret ballot fundamentally undermines the collective nature of a strike.

Second, the proposed Labour Relations Act amendments will introduce a mechanism where strikes could be resolved through an advisory arbitration panel, which would be led by a senior commissioner of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).

The problems with this are that the circumstances under which an advisory arbitration panel can be convened are very broad and, crucially, employers will have the right to request it. Meaning employers will have an easy way to resolve strikes without necessarily having to engage their workers directly or agree to any of their demands. The decision of the advisory arbitration, unless appealed, will be binding on all parties.

On top of this, trade unions can be interdicted at any time during what would be a more onerous procedure.

If passed, the amendments would make protracted strikes, such as the 2014 platinum strike, highly unlikely.

Show us the money

Details of the bill reveal a different picture of the country’s much heralded national minimum wage of R3,500 (USD$256). There will be no monthly minimum wage, only an hourly minimum wage of R20 p/h. Those that work flexible hours or part time will be unlikely to earn the R3,500, if they work under 40 hours a week. For domestic and farm workers the news is worse: farm workers will earn R18 p/h, while domestic workers will receive only R15 p/h. Only in 2020 will these workers receive the full minimum wage.

Two problems loom large in the implementation of the national minimum wage. One is compliance, the other redress.

Some sectors, including domestic work and farm work, already have minimum wages prescribed in the sectoral determination. But, non-compliance can be as high as 50%, as is the case in the agricultural sector. Based on current experience, there is no reason to think that compliance with the national minimum wage will be any different.

But, the ability of workers to get justice will become significantly more difficult.

Under the proposed amendments, the enforcement of the national minimum wage will move from the Department of Labour to the CCMA. This will make the process of seeking redress more arduous.

If a worker is being underpaid, she will have to refer her case to the CCMA. The average time for a case to reach arbitration is 60 days, but in the experience of the Casual Workers Advice Office it can take many more months.

Even if a worker eventually receives an arbitration award, many employers can simply ignore it. The next step is for the worker to have the award certified by the CCMA. If the employer still refuses to abide by the award the worker has to get a writ of execution, which is then served by a sheriff but often only after the demand for a deposit has been met. In 2016/2017, the CCMA had to assist 4,000 low-paid workers in getting a writ of execution. Many more workers often give up hope and never see through the enforcement of their arbitration award. Many more are not even aware of the CCMA remedy.

By making the CCMA the primary enforcer of the national minimum wage, the process is likely to become fraught with legal and practical difficulties, making the whole process unworkable.

What’s worse is that, to accommodate the national minimum wage, the amended Basic Conditions of Employment Act will actually roll back important rights for some workers.

Sectoral determinations do not only prescribe minimum wages but provide important protections for workers, such as provident funds. Amendments to the act will mean that the sectoral determinations will be phased out and replaced with the national minimum wage law. This could mean that workers could lose out on both the wage front as well as some important rights. This is particularly the case for farm workers who stand to lose important rights to housing.

How did it come to this?

You would have expected trade unions to have objected loudly to these fundamental changes to worker rights. Not so. The country’s leading trade union federations, including Cosatu, Fedusa and Nactu have all been involved in negotiations on the changes.

What this reflects is the balance of class forces in South Africa today. Trade union membership has been declining and now only about a quarter of the workforce is unionised. Of those that are unionised, the overwhelming majority are likely to be in full time, permanent, professional or skilled employment.

The simple truth is that unions largely do not organise workers who will benefit from the national minimum wage and are therefore indifferent to its practicalities.

What is less clear is why the major trade union federations have been involved in a process that has negotiated away important protections around the right to strike.

Carin Runciman, Senior Reseacher, Centre for Social Change, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

South Africa's communist party strips the ANC of its multi-class ruling party status

There is a fallout between alliance partners the South African Communist Party and the governing ANC.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook

The South African Communist Party (SACP) has broken with history and challenged the governing African National Congress (ANC) in an election. The SACP’s decision to go it alone in the Metsimaholo municipality by-election marks a new low in relations within the tripartite alliance forged during the struggle against apartheid. The other alliance partner is the trade union federation Cosatu. The contest ended in a hung council, with the ANC taking 16 seats, the Democratic Alliance 11, the Economic Freedom Fighters eight and the SACP three. Politics and Society Editor Thabo Leshilo asked political scientist Professor Dirk Kotze about the development.

What is the significance of this development?

The decision to contest an election on its own clearly represents a watershed event for the SACP. It is the first tangible step towards implementation of a resolution taken by the SACP in 2007. Then, unhappy with the ANC’s policies in government, the communists raised the issue of contesting elections themselves. It proposed doing this either within a “reconfigured alliance” or having its own candidates contest elections, after which it would come to an agreement with the ANC on how to cooperate in government.

The SACP’s decision to go it alone is the culmination of a fallout dating back to 1996. Then, the ANC government under President Thabo Mbeki announced a macro economic framework, known as Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear), without substantial consultations with the SACP and Cosatu. Both slammed the policy as being anti-communist and serving the interests of business at the expense of the poor working class.

The SACP, and Cosatu, thought that their fortunes had turned when, with their support, Jacob Zuma was elected president of the ANC in Polokwane in 2007. But it wasn’t to be. Both groups have subsequently fallen out with Zuma. The relationship has deteriorated so badly that SACP members in KwaZulu-Natal are being assassinated over municipal council positions.

Why is this so unusual?

The Tripartite Alliance can be traced back to the late 1940s and the Communist Party’s subsequent underground involvement in the ANC-led Congress of the People in 1955. The Congress Alliance adopted the Freedom Charter as its blueprint for a democratic and prosperous South Africa.

In the 1960s the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing formed by ANC and SACP members, was arguably the most concrete articulation of the ANC-SACP alliance.

In the decades that followed the SACP played a key role in facilitating the support of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc for the ANC and South African Congress of Trade Unions. The communists also shaped the ANC’s philosophy around national liberation as the “national democratic revolution” and view of apartheid as “colonialism of a special type”.

This influence on the ANC was personified by the likes of leading communists Moses Kotane, Moses Mabhida and Dr Yusuf Dadoo. The SACP viewed the alliance as a popular front uniting the working class and progressive forces in the struggle for freedom.

The SACP is unique in Africa because very few communist parties survived after independence. Most of them were either banned or integrated into nationalist liberation movement governments.

The party’s independent participation in the Metsimaholo by-election takes it back to the period before 1950 when communists such as Brian Bunting and Sam Kahn represented the then Communist Party of South Africa in Parliament.

But after that, and after the party was banned, the SACP’s revolutionary theory of armed struggle and insurrection excluded an electoral approach.

Once the first inclusive elections were planned in South Africa, the SACP deferred to the ANC as the leader of the national democratic revolution to pursue an electoral approach.

What is the significance for South Africa?

Firstly, no one can continue to argue that the Tripartite Alliance is still a coherent political front bringing together a working class union movement (Cosatu), working class party (SACP) and a multi-class governing party (ANC).

What this means is that the ANC’s social democratic character in terms of a partnership with working class organisations has come to an end. The ANC will now have to reconfigure its own identity as a social democratic party, similar to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s reconfiguration of “New Labour”.

Secondly, the SACP’s decision serves as an official recording of the radical changes the ANC’s identity has undergone in terms of how it defines its own interests or constituencies. It’s finally stating that its core interests and those of the ANC’s are in the process of parting ways. In socialist parlance, the ANC’s and SACP’s class interests have reached a crossroads.

This follows on the earlier decision by Cosatu’s largest affiliate the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa to part ways with the federation and to establish the United Front as its own political vehicle. It’s still unclear whether this this will result in a new left political movement. But, all the socio-economic conditions - such as high inequality, unemployment, poverty and social discontent - provide fertile ground for just such a movement.

What are the electoral prospects of the SACP?

The SACP is not in a position to mobilise substantial support in the near future. The left is contested terrain and prone to fragmentation. This is partly the result of personality clashes and ideological hair-splitting.

It could possibly join forces with the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa which, for the last 30 years, has debated the ideal of a workers’ party. This would only be viable if the SACP combined its party programme with the social democratic (social welfare) needs of a rural, non-socialist populace. This would imply making ideological compromises, which is not uncommon for the SACP. It would also require it to establish a real party political infrastructure.

Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South Africa

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Snags that could cast doubt on ANC's choice of new leaders

South Africa’s governing African National Congress has begun the process of choosing its leaders.
EPA-EFE/Kim Ludrick

South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) holds its highly contested national elective conference for its top six leaders, between December 16 – 20. The conference will, among other things, mark the end of Jacob Zuma’s controversial decade-long tenure as party president. It will also bring to an end a bruising contest to replace him. The top two contenders are Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. The Conversation Africa’s Politics and Society Editor, Thabo Leshilo, asked Keith Gottschalk about the process.

Why does the conference matter?

The elective conference is important for the party as well as the country. This is because the person chosen to lead the party has, since 1994, gone on to become president of the country – an outcome dictated by the fact that the parliament elects the next president and the ANC has a large majority in parliament. The outcome is therefore watched very closely by both South Africans who support the ANC and those who don’t.

How does the ANC choose its top leaders?

The ANC’s election process is full of extraordinary contradictions. It has built into it some of the most stringent checks and balances of any party in the world. On paper, the process could not be more fair. In practice either incompetence or manipulation causes much anger.

The party holds an elective conference every five years. According to the ANC rules, 90% of the delegates to the conference must be from party branches. Each branch in good standing is entitled to send one delegate, and if a branch has more than 250 delegates it is allowed to send one extra delegate per 250 extra members.

The additional 10% of delegates is made up of representatives from each provincial executive, delegates representing the women, youth and veterans leagues as well as members of the party’s National Executive Committee who attend in an ex officio capacity.

Before the conference ANC members are required to take part in a specially convened annual general meeting of their branch. There are over 2 000 branches in good standing. To be able to vote at this special AGM members have to have their ANC membership card as well as their South African national identity document.

What checks and balances are in place to make sure the process is fair?

Voting at the branch AGMs is monitored by trusted veterans chosen by the Provincial Executive Committee who are deployed to monitor the process.

Voting usually takes place by show of hands, but may be done by secret ballot. The team monitoring the process must take a picture of results of voting recorded on paper using their cellphones and send the image to the party’s national headquarters at Luthuli House, in Johannesburg. This is to prevent ballot results being tampered with.

What are the flaws in the system?

I believe the process is fair. But it would be fairer if there was a direct one-member-one-vote system instead of branch totals.

The flaws in the system relate to the extent to which rigging can take place. This can happen by wealthy politicians setting up ghost branches. Provincial executive committees also sometimes try to manipulate the outcome of the branch AGMs. This can happen through manipulating who gets chosen to represent the branch as a delegate to the national conference.

But the biggest opening to possible fraud is through using the issuing of ANC membership cards to “gatekeep” – stopping people from being able to vote in branches, or even from attending the conference. Membership cards, and being included on the membership list compiled by Luthuli House, national HQ (as opposed to lists kept by one’s own branch and provincial office) matter because they give individuals the right to vote at their branches, as well as at the conference if they’re chosen to go as a delegate.

During the last few conferences there were accusations that the Zuma faction of the ANC deliberately used the fact that renewals and new cards can take a very long time to issue to keep certain people from attending (and voting).

The issuing of cards is a mess. New members complain bitterly about waiting inordinately long periods - sometimes up to 21 months - to get their membership cards. Renewals can also take forever. The renewal of the late ANC former cabinet minister Kader Asmal’s membership card reached his widow five years after he died.

Sometimes, some members in good standing suddenly discover that their names have been removed from the membership register. The most high profile of these cases was Zweli Mkhize, the party’s treasurer and one of its top six leaders.

Five years ago an example of gatekeeping hit one branch’s delegate when he arrived at the national conference at Mangaung. He was told he was not a member in good standing. He was in fact an ANC Member of the Provincial Legislature. Only after votes were cast which saw Jacob Zuma re-emerge as party president was it conceded that he was actually a member in good standing.

Another potential flaw is that delegates who are mandated by their branch to vote for one particular candidate are persuaded – for example by being bribed when they get to the conference – to vote for someone else.

Voting at the conference is by secret ballot. The assumption is that branch delegates will behave with integrity and vote for the person their branch mandated them to vote for.

But even if they do accept a bribe, those reportedly offering the bribe have no way of knowing if the delegate actually did change his or her vote.

South Africans, especially ANC voters, will be watching closely for any signs of rigging, bribing branch delegates to switch their votes, and other manipulations. If all is free and fair the process certainly equals, for example, the degree of democracy in UK and US parties choosing their leaders.

Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

History explains why South Africans on the left argue for free passes for the rich

Students from Wits University, in Johannesburg, during a protest for free education.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook

In a society like South Africa in which one racial group has dominated another, poor people are ignored in economic debates by those who claim to speak for them.

Take the calls for free higher education which featured prominently in student protests over the past two to three years. They are back in the limelight because President Jacob Zuma’s desire to spend billions on providing free tertiary education has prompted a public controversy in which he was accused of wanting to bankrupt the Treasury for political gain. Although it later became clear that Zuma only wanted to pay for students whose household incomes were below R350 000 a year, the reports revived interest in the free education demand.

Outsiders might find something curious about the higher education fees debate in South Africa. The demand that no-one should pay is an article of faith among people who occupy the left in the country. The view that the well-off should continue to pay so that the poor are funded is seen as a sign of conservatism. Elsewhere in the world, it is the left which wants the rich to pay for services to the poor.

This is no isolated case in South Africa. Another example is electronic tolling (e tolls) in the country’s economic heartland, Gauteng. Vehicle owners, including companies, pay the toll. People who use busses and minibus taxis, the vehicles of the poor, don’t. Anyone suggesting that it’s fair to expect people who own trucks and busses to pay for roads on which poor people can ride for free is likely to be dismissed as a right-wing zealot.

How did the interests of wealthy students and their families, or the owners of vehicles, become those of the left and social justice campaigners? Around the world, the views of well-off groups are often presented as those of everyone. The South African oddity is that those who in other societies would be arguing against free passes for the affluent, argue for them.

To see why, we must look at the history of the campaign against minority rule, which I discussed in a book on radical thought.

Economic inequality versus race

The first campaigners for economic change in South Africa were socialists and trade unionists who immigrated from Britain. They took the standard left view of the time – racial divisions were created by bosses and other fat cats who hoped to hang onto their privilege by dividing the workers. Because both black and white workers were exploited, they argued, they could and should unite against their common enemy, economic exploitation.

Within a few years, the view that economic inequality mattered more than race was killed by striking white miners who, in 1922, added to a banner reading “Workers of the World Unite” the words and fight for a white South Africa’.

Competition for jobs from black workers was one reason the miners gave for the strike. For the next seven decades, white workers made it clear that the privileges which their whiteness offered were more important to them than their supposed common interest with black workers.

The view that race was more important than economic inequality was shared by those who fought against apartheid. Although left-wing activists, particularly in the South African Communist Party, were active in the African National Congress, they gave up early on the idea that race could take a back seat to the fight for economic change.

Racial equality versus private ownership

In the late 1920s, the Communist International, to which the communist party belonged, adopted the theory of “national democratic revolution”. It committed communists to fight against colonialism and racial domination in colonised countries – the battle against capitalism could wait.

In South Africa, this “revolution” which even today is seen by some on the right as a call to destroy the market economy, was always about fighting for racial equality, not abolishing private ownership. Those who complain that the ANC has not delivered on this “revolution” are saying it has not done enough to end white control of the economy, not control by private owners.

While the ANC often used left rhetoric, black intellectuals and activists, including those in the South African Communist Party, reminded white colleagues who wanted to emphasise economic inequalities that racial inequality was more important.

This view was shared by movements to the ANC’s left. Instead of denouncing it for fixating on race rather than economic divisions, they argued that apartheid was a form of “racial capitalism” in which racial and economic exploitation was so intertwined that one could not survive without the other. While this meant that they could fight against racism while claiming they were fighting for socialism, it made race the central issue.

The enemy was white minority rule

The South African left may have read different books and chanted different slogans, but it endorsed the mainstream view that the key issue was racial inequality. Left-wingers earned their credentials by fighting harder against racial minority rule, not by fighting for economic equality – and they found no shortage of left-wing theories and slogans to justify this.

This history has shaped thinking, ensuring that there has never been a strong lobby, or an influential body of opinion, stressing the interests of the poor. If the problem is racial domination, it follows that economic differences within racial groups matter less, if at all. And so, it seems natural to demand changes which would benefit the rich by lumping them with the poor.

Since this prompts people to endorse policies which are biased against the poor, this analysis might seem to be a warning against racial thinking on the economy. It is not. The reason why race has always mattered more than economic inequality is that it is more important: black scholars and activists who emphasise race do so because this squares with their experience not only under apartheid, but now.

The point is illustrated, again, by the student protests demanding free higher education. A careful look shows that they are essentially about race – the protesters are rebelling against what they see as a failure of higher education institutions to take them seriously.

Two decades ago, the left-wing scholar Harold Wolpe– who started his academic career trying to convince the ANC and South African Communist Party that apartheid was simply a product of capitalism but who changed his position when he recognised how important race is in South Africa – wrote a paper on higher education change. He argued that historically white universities were expecting black students to change to fit into their culture rather than changing to meet the needs of new students as the racial make-up of their student bodies changed. It’s this failure to accommodate black student needs which prompted the student slogan “Fees Must Fall”.

The history described here shows why it seems almost automatic to present this demand for racial change in an economic slogan which would again send the poor to the end of the line.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.