Chilean peacekeepers prepare to depart Haiti, where hurricanes and unstable governance have become major threats to the peace and safety of the populace. United Nations Photo / flickr, CC BY-ND
Thus far, the 21st century is shaping up to be a killer. From Syria’s heartbreaking civil conflict to the virulent drug wars ripping apart Mexico and the Philippines, the global death toll of war is swelling – sometimes steadily and sometimes in spikes but always inexorably.
The Conversation Global is dedicated to covering the conflicts reshaping and destabilising this world. Our series Countries in combat brings together the past year’s most-read reporting on peace and security, written by the world’s top experts.
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North Korea’s increased nuclear sabre-rattling has the world on edge. Since sanctions and warnings have failed to stop Pyongyang’s belligerence, it’s time for something more drastic.
The people of the Philippines brought down a dictator without resorting to violence 30 years ago. But continuing disappointment with their democracy means they now support a populist president.
The heartbreaking photography we’ve seen coming out of Aleppo in recent years could play an important role in shaping the discourse about the world’s responsibility to protect.
‘Radical economic transformation’ in South Africa needs to move beyond rhetoric. Flickr/Ryan McFarland
While much froth and babble has accompanied the debate over “Radical Economic Transformation” in South Africa, the bottom line remains: the country urgently needs real economic transformation. Calling it “radical” is to invite politicking and point-scoring and take our eyes off the ball – the need for real economic transformation.
How far South Africa has moved in altering the economic landscape is open to debate. It certainly has moved, but how far, and at what point will monopolistic tendencies be challenged?
While much has been achieved in many areas – meeting basic needs for example – there’s still an enormous distance to travel, and impatience is growing.
For the democratic period, economic growth has been singularly anaemic. Unemployment has been rising consistently, and income inequality has worsened. This despite a plethora of policy documents, the most recent being the National Development Plan.
However, the real causes of the economic crisis are obscured by the current political crisis. It has allowed mainstream economists to reinforce the call for “fiscal discipline” as if that were the only factor stifling growth and development.
In business and government, economic policy is reduced to the maintenance of macroeconomic stability. Fiscal discipline is an important precondition for economic growth, but not a sufficient condition.
We must ask: who is in charge of economic policy?
Driving economic policy
Radical economic transformation suggests, at the bare minimum, that government must take charge of economic policy, including macroeconomic policy, so that the country’s real development needs can be addressed.
It’s correctly noted in the National Development Plan that the country’s economy needs to grow at a much faster rate, 6% at least, to begin to address its socioeconomic challenges, high unemployment, inequality and poverty. The current growth trajectory, measuring 2-3% over the past 20 years is just not enough. It will not deliver inclusive growth to address the challenges. Rather, it will merely accentuate inequalities in the country.
And, if sustained, the prevailing recession spells disaster. Serious transformation is required.
If radical economic transformation is to serve the needs of the bottom 60% of the population, it needs to move beyond the catchy political slogans of nationalising land, banks and mines, and “kicking out” whites. It requires a rigorous analysis of why economic and social policy have not delivered growth and development.
There seems to be consensus that the country needs industrial development. It is largely considered the solution to overcoming commodity dependence. However, there is no consensus on who must drive it - the private sector or a strong “developmental state”?
South Africa has to find the right balance between the power of market forces and private initiative on the one hand, and the obligation of governments to provide an enabling framework and to intervene in favour of the public interest on the other.
In spite of being a late starter on industrial policy, considerable progress has been made; but much more can be done with increased funding for growth in and greater diversification of manufacturing.
Combating monopolies
Almost everyone agrees that small business has to be a critical component of any development strategy. But the sector has been characterised by a singular lack of success. The country needs to ask why.
One reason is the domination of markets and exploitation of the small business sector by big business. The history of large supermarkets and their ruthless exploitation of small suppliers tell the story of the highly unequal and exploitative relationship that exists in virtually all sectors of the economy. What is government doing to ensure that small business can survive in the monopolistic environment which characterises contemporary South African capitalism?
Predatory tendencies of conglomerates stifle township businesses. Flickr/Anne-Sophie Leens
“Black economic empowerment” needs to progress beyond an elite few who are closely linked to the ruling party. Sectors such as tourism - overwhelmingly white-owned - offer opportunities for creative thinking about new, broadly beneficial forms of ownership.
And real black economic empowerment is clearly linked to the question of land reform. The country needs to break up monopolistic ownership, but also to ensure that land is used productively.
Developmental state
Given the current political climate, there’s a great deal of scepticism about the potential of the developmental state. This comes on the back of the pervasive governance crises afflicting parastatals such as, among others, the power utility Eskom and South African Airways.
However, there is no alternative to the developmental state. The country cannot leave economic development to the private sector, whose immense wealth has been built on its version of the free market and exploitation of cheap labour.
But for the developmental state to be effective, it has to be competent. There are numerous global examples of success in this area that can be followed. But is South Africa learning from them?
Building the developmental state does not imply a return to “yesterday’s socialism” of state control of the means of production. Rather, the country should focus on an appropriate mix of roles, with the state as the driver of development coupled with truly competitive markets producing goods and services.
Driving fundamental economic change
Clearly, fundamental economic change is required, and soon. But saying so, and achieving it, are very different. South Africans must separate the current political noise around radical economic transformation from the basic fact that business as usual is not an option. A lot has to change, and fast.
Going back to the tenets of quasi-socialism of the 1950s – nationalisation of mines and banks, land seizures and so on – are not “radical” in the 21st century economy.
It follows to then ask if and how the country can jump from the current state of recession to radical economic transformation – ensuring that the “radical” equates with positive outcomes for the poor, not for existing or new elites? Which “radical” elements can help make that leap?
The global economy is going through its own radical transformation, as blue collar and white collar jobs are giving way to “new collar” jobs.
The world is looking at single digit economic growth, and the workplace is undergoing dramatic transformation. Those propagating radical economic transformation must explain how it fits into the broader global change.
It has been a hallmark of the ANC government – from the time of the Reconstruction and Development Programme - to see economic growth as the driving force for change across society. That programme suggested that by meeting basic needs – such as clean water, housing and sanitation – much of the damage of apartheid would be dealt with and dignity restored. Economic growth would harness the energies of the “healed” black population and a positive future would flow seamlessly.
This was wishful thinking. The damage done to all people by racist violence and apartheid will take far more than economic growth to repair. Radical social transformation is needed.
There are other key elements which must be dealt with to realise inclusive growth. Fixing the spatial landscape is one of them. Apartheid deliberately separated “races” into different spaces, divided by natural or man-made barriers. The economy - even a radically transformed one – won’t change this.
A truly “radical” vision would have to encompass all these aspects of change, and specify them in detail.
Article adapted from a position paper delivered at the OR Tambo Debate on radical economic transformation recently held at Wits School of Governance.
The prognosis that the South African economy is in dire straits is pretty obvious even to the untrained eye. The solution to the country’s present predicament is also pretty much understood. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently produced a comprehensive view which deserves to be considered.
The IMF identifies three key ailments as causes of the country’s anaemic economic growth. These are low consumer and investor confidence and policy uncertainty.
Continued slow growth should be a matter of grave concern and ought to be treated as an emergency.
Thus far the short and medium term outlook suggests that growth outcomes will continue to be pedestrian. What is even more worrying is that over the past four years global economic growth has gained momentum, suggesting that the solution to South Africa’s vanishing growth lies in the country.
The new minister of finance, Malusi Gigaba, recently hinted that South Africa may be compelled to seek assistance from the IMF. I think the conditions are right for serious consideration of the proposal even though IMF programmes are not very popular with politicians.
There are a number of reasons for this. Requests for IMF assistance suggest that those who manage the domestic economy have failed. The fund’s programmes also come with clearly defined milestones, often described as “conditionalities”. But in most instances, these are well-intentioned and aimed at success.
It’s better to enter an IMF programme early before the situation becomes frantic. As medical doctors might argue, it is easier to deal with an ailment in the earlier stages before it reaches an advanced stage.
Desperate situation
The alternative to asking for help now would be continued poor growth outcomes which would have serious social and economic costs.
The country’s poor economic growth record spawned a number of problems.
A shrinking economy means tax revenue shortfalls. The fiscal policy response would be higher taxes or bigger budget deficits.
And then again, interest payments, the fastest growing government expenditure item, would grow even faster. Already, about 11 cents out of every rand goes into servicing public debt.
As the economy shrinks, more and more income would have to be spent on interest payments. Government’s ability to provide a social safety net in the form of social grants and other services, like education and health care, would be much more constrained. The service delivery protests that have become increasingly the norm would become even more widespread as the fiscus comes under serious strain.
Ultimately, the brigade of the unemployed would bear the brunt. Of course, the employed would also suffer because slow growth affects incomes.
Low and anaemic growth dries out consumer confidence. Job losses and subdued growth in incomes as a result of poor growth outcomes and prospects chips away at consumer confidence.
South Africa’s growth performance post 2008 has been very low. Over the past 10 years, the economy recorded an average of 2% growth per year. If this continues it will take more than 30 years to double average incomes in South Africa.
But if the country can increase growth to 5% as projected by the National Development Plan, it would take only 14 years to double average income. The higher the growth rate the shorter the time required to double incomes and bring people out of poverty.
Investor confidence deficit
The investor confidence deficit is largely as a result of ever increasing political risk, policy uncertainty and wrangling in the ruling party and lately revelations of alleged looting of public funds by the political elite.
But not everything’s broken. The performance of the country’s monetary authorities in the management of monetary policy is admirable.
Where there appear to be lapses is the asset and liability management of the National Treasury. And here, the massive losses of state owned enterprises readily come to the fore.
This is a blot on the canvas of fiscal policy management. And the much touted structural reforms that are required haven’t been forthcoming because the government lacks the capacity to formulate and implement the appropriate policies. In fact, even if it designed the correct ones, the investor community has little faith in its ability to carry them through.
Hence, the need for an IMF programme.
The IMF has the solution
An arrangement would achieve a number of objectives.
Firstly, the fund could help the country formulate policies that would unblock the problems that continue to inhibit economic growth and job creation. The mere adoption of an IMF programme would help address the question of policy uncertainty.
Secondly, the IMF is well placed to provide foreign exchange loans, bringing stability in the rand foreign exchange rate market. This in turn would improve investor confidence, leading to more investment in the country. Economic growth would pick up and there’d be an improvement in consumer confidence.
An IMF programme would send a clear and unassailable signal to investors that the country was committed to pursuing a given set of policy options. And it would make the commitment appear credible.
A typical community protest over the delivery of basic services in South Africa. A study shows protesters often resort to violence to attract attention. Reuters/Mike Hutchings
Poor communities in South Africa feel that their voices are not heard and their issues not taken seriously by the media.
This is clear in the findings of an international research project on the role of media in conflicts arising from transitions from authoritarian rule to democratic government. It focused on four countries – South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Serbia.
The study shows that in all four countries, citizenship conflicts are frequently reduced to judicial factors. The media’s approach to conflicts is to look at them from the perspective of rights rather than cultural factors.
In South Africa, rather than wilful distortion or neglect on the part of journalists, the findings expose systemic problems underpinning news agendas and coverage.
The project, now in its second year, has drawn on content analysis of print media and interviews with journalists and activists.
Understanding conflict in South Africa
South Africa’s formal transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994 is often heralded as peaceful and smooth when viewed in institutional and procedural terms.
But there are lingering problems. Dissent over the unrealised dividends of democracy for the poor and widespread perceptions of government as corrupt have resulted in ongoing protests.
The protests are not only aimed at getting basic public services such as water, sanitation and electricity. They are also part of wider disillusionment at the failure of democracy to meet basic needs as well as an attempt by the poor to be heard and included in democratic discourse and policy-making.
This “rebellion of the poor” can thus be considered “democratisation conflicts”. They are similar to those in other transitional democracies where the struggle for equality and human rights did not end with the advent of formal democracy.
While it is widely acknowledged that violent protests are becoming more prevalent in South Africa, the role that the media plays in the cycle of protest and violence is not widely understood.
Our ongoing study indicates that South African community protests receive unfavourable coverage. The reporting also routinely fails to provide depth and context to explain the underlying issues that lead to the protests.
Frequently protests are reported only inasmuch as they inconvenience a middle-class audience, for instance to inform them where traffic may be disrupted.
While journalists are often sympathetic to protesters, they strive for “objective” coverage so as not to come across as supporting a particular side. The result is superficial and limited reporting. Underlying structural issues are not unpacked.
Journalists list time pressures and juniorisation of the newsrooms as some of the reasons for limited in-depth coverage.
And commercial pressures also result in media focusing on protests as drama in an attempt to attract the interest of middle-class audiences.
Fighting to be heard
Very few media articles about protests include interviews with protesters. It seems that protesters’ voices remain unheard, even as their actions are reported. Communities report that photographers are often sent to take photographs without being accompanied by reporters to interview them.
Activists from poor communities report that they only get media attention when they go to extremes, such as causing damage. Protesters told researchers that when they called the media to cover their issues, they were asked if “anything is burning”. If nothing is burning, journalists don’t come and don’t report.
Activists report that with the failure of government channels of communication, and poor media coverage of their plight, the only way to be seen is to create a violent spectacle.
They say that participating in government-created spaces for engagement, such as ward councils and municipal integrated development plans, does not lead to satisfactory responses.
This suggests that protest actions follow a calculated logic, despite activists’ impressions that they are often depicted in the media as being out of control.
While there is some coverage in the media that protests are related to structural economic circumstances, they do not reflect the frustrations experienced by communities over government’s empty promises.
Also, scant regard is given to the failure of participatory processes to address grievances. No attention is paid to the failures of capitalism to address inequality. The heavy-handed response from government to silence protest is also underplayed.
Media coverage differs noticeably depending on the respective outlets. In print, the Daily Sun provides the most coverage of protests. This bears out the tabloid’s claims to provide news from the perspective of the poor and the working class.
Compared to their upmarket print media counterparts like the Mail & Guardian and Business Day, the Daily Sun is also the most critical of most aspects of democracy. It is often the only newspaper where sources are ordinary citizens. For media serving the middle class, sources are mostly drawn from officials or the elite.
Improving reporting of community protests
The activists we interviewed believe that media could play a big role in boosting democracy in the country by highlighting the issues poor communities face before they spill over into violent conflicts.
A focus on community politics could shine a spotlight on the most marginalised and vulnerable citizens, and in turn could help focus government attention where it is most needed. Media coverage – favourable or unfavourable – added pressure on government to quickly resolve issues.
Activists felt that they would prefer not to have to go to extremes to get media attention. But they also recognised that their protests kept community issues on the agenda.
This article was co-authored with Rebecca Pointer, research assistant at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, UCT.
Research by the Centre for Social Change, University of Johannesburg seems to bear this out. Based on estimates from South African Police Service data, we found that between 1997 and 2013 there were an average of 900 community protests a year. In recent years the number has climbed to as high as 2,000 protests a year.
In a new book, my colleagues from the Centre for Social Change and I attempt to understand South Africa as part of the global protest wave.
On the face of it, protests in South Africa look quite different. They tend to be fragmented and happen mostly in black townships and informal settlements. The occupation of central public spaces in towns and cities, as we are seeing in Venezuela, happens seldom.
While there are important differences there are also commonalities. Whether protests focus around the “1%” as they did during the Occupy movement or around the lack of service provision in townships, protesters around the world are critiquing the failure of a representative democracy to provide socio-economic equality.
Broken promises
South Africa’s governing ANC came into power in 1994 on the promise of a “better life for all”. There have been important gains, such as increasing access to electricity from 51% of the population in 1994 to 85% in 2012, but inequality remains endemic. Recent data from the World Bank confirms that South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world.
As part of research by the Centre for Social Change we spoke to protesters all over the country. A new book from the centre highlights the extent to which protesters are raising not just concerns about the quality of service delivery but also about the quality of post-apartheid democracy. As Shirley Zwane, from Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, explains:
We don’t have democracy!… We [are] still struggling… you see if we are in democracy there’s no more shacks here… No more bucket system… we supposed to have roads, everything! A better education… There is a democracy?…. No, this is not a democracy! They have, these people in Constantia, Tableview, Parklands, they have a democracy, not for us!
For Shirley the quality of post-apartheid democracy is linked to the provision of basic services. She is not alone in this view.
Research by Afrobarometer has found that compared to other countries in the region South Africans are much more likely to emphasise the realisation of socio-economic outcomes as crucial to democracy. That South Africans should view housing and services as central to post-apartheid democracy is unsurprising given that apartheid systemically denied the majority of people these rights.
Crisis of affordability
Community protests are fundamentally about the exclusion from democracy experienced by many black working class citizens since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Although the provision of services to the previously marginalised black majority has increased substantially, black working class households face an increasing crisis of affordability.
In sectors covered by a minimum wage, the real median wage increased by 7.5% between 2011 and 2015. But last year inflation on an average working class food basket was 15% and certain staple foods, such as maize meal, increased by as much as 32%. This has put a real squeeze on working class households especially when, due to high levels unemployment, each black South African wage earner supports four people.
Structural challenges
The crisis of affordability facing black working class households also compounds the structural crisis within local government.
In South Africa local governments are responsible for delivering services. Over the past 15 years local municipalities have increasingly had to find ways to fund these services through their own tax base. Many have resorted to cost recovery measures, for example by introducing prepaid meters. Their introduction has been behind many protests.
The financial difficulties for local and provincial governments looks set to get worse. In the country’s latest budget the National Treasury cut their funding as part of R25 billion budget cuts. In the case of Gauteng, the scene of the most recent protests, this amounted to a R2.9 billion rand cut over three years.
To fill the gap, municipalities and provinces are going to have to look increasingly to their own tax base to fund service provision. A difficult prospect when slightly more than half the population survives on R779 or less a person a month.
A global crisis
As Professor Michael Burawoy argues in our new book, the nature of the crisis varies from country to country. In South Africa the crisis represents the forcible exclusion of many black working class households from democratic institutions, largely because of their inability to afford socio-economic goods. For instance, while access to electricity has increased, access is increasingly mediated by prepaid meters, therefore the ability to access service is inextricably linked to the ability to afford them.
It’s this exclusion that leads many to say that democracy is only for the rich. Globally, people are beginning to search for new solutions to these problems with many being drawn to left-wing movements and political parties, such as Podemos in Spain. Whether such a comparable movement can emerge in South Africa remains to be seen.
The heartbreaking photography we’ve seen coming out of Aleppo in recent years could play an important role in shaping the discourse about the world’s responsibility to protect.
Article adapted from a position paper delivered at the OR Tambo Debate on radical economic transformation recently held at Wits School of Governance.
An IMF programme would send a clear and unassailable signal to investors that the country was committed to pursuing a given set of policy options. And it would make the commitment appear credible.
This article was co-authored with Rebecca Pointer, research assistant at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, UCT.
It’s this exclusion that leads many to say that