BY T.J. FIGUEROA

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -Having buried the apartheid white minority regime in 1994 after decades of mass struggle, the black majority conquered broad democratic, social, and political rights that are today being written into law by the country's first nonracial parliament. This has opened the way for workers and peasants to tackle the harsh social and economic conditions imposed on the black majority by the racist regime and the white capitalist ruling class under apartheid.

Blacks - Africans, Indians, and so-called Coloreds - constitute 86 percent of the population. Their daily lives remain worlds apart from those of whites living in South Africa. The poorest 20 percent of the population, virtually all black, receives only 1.5 percent of national income; the richest 10 percent, nearly all white, takes fully half.

Since the 1994 elections, the African National Congress-led government, in addition to drafting a democratic constitution, has advanced measures to alter the conditions of life for blacks in city and countryside. The ANC government's economic policy aims to advance a capitalist economy while using a large percentage of the national income for programs that address the basic needs of workers and peasants. Within this framework factors hindering progress in transforming this country, ridden with apartheid's legacy, are the existence of the old civil service, army, and police.

For example, in just nine months last year, 534 people died in police custody. And as the Militant went to press, South African news agencies reported that a number of top army generals from the old order might be fired for their role in producing a recent "intelligence" report. The bogus report - in the smear-campaign tradition of the apartheid military apparatus - alleged that senior ANC members in the military were planning a "coup" against the government. The ANC's economic policies are summarized in the government's Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) program, which relies on many market-driven "solutions," puts sharp fiscal and political constraints on the government, and sometimes clashes with demands put forward by working people.

In a speech before an ANC Congress held at the end of 1997, ANC leader and South African president Nelson Mandela explained that although the parties that ran the government under apartheid are professing to support a course to build a nonracial South Africa and to address the legacy of apartheid rule, they have instead sought to impede every step made by the ANC government. He condemned these moves to retain the social relations and privilege of the white minority, and reaffirmed the ANC's determination to carry out its goal of uprooting what apartheid wrought on the country.

In his speech opening parliament February 6, Mandela highlighted a number of the government's initiatives to date, including:

Water. About 12 million people still do not have access to potable water. "Last year, we increased the [new] supply of clean and accessible water from 700,000 to 1.3 million South Africans," Mandela said. Kader Asmal, minister of water affairs, reports that by the end of the year, the number will increase to 2 million.

Telephone access and electricity. "From 250,000 in 1996, we are in line to make 421,000 [new] telephone connections this financial year," Mandela reported. There were 400,000 electricity connections in 1997, and today the country has reached a 58 percent electrification level. As recently as 1994, the Central Statistical Service said that almost 60 percent of Africans used either paraffin or candles as their main source of lighting.

Education. "Today, children starting their schooling can for the first time do so just as children - not as black piccanini or a white klein-baas [Afrikaans for `little boss']." However, Mandela added, "we have only scratched at the surface of the legacy of apartheid education." Tens of thousands of students have taken to the streets in protests this year alone. Among them were 8,000 high school students organized by the Congress of South African Students who marched in Johannesburg in early February to protest a lack of textbooks. Thousands of university students waged protests in January and February demanding enrollment. University administrations refused to admit them unless they pay their fees, which most cannot not afford.

Housing. Mandela reported that nearly 400,000 houses have either been finished or are under construction (approximately 236,000 have been completed), and that 700,000 subsidies have been granted. The government subsidy is granted to people earning less than 3,500 rands per month (R1=$0.20), and ranges from R5,000 to R17,500. It is combined with bank loans. An estimated 1.2 million people have gained housing since 1994, when it was estimated that 7 million people were living in squatter shacks. New squatter camps are growing up, however, as rural working people move to cities in search of work.

Health care. Five hundred new clinics were built or upgraded in 1997. Mandela said that by the end of this year, 90 percent of women with children would have access to free medical care. Some 43,000 deaths are reported annually from diarrhea alone, largely due to lack of access to clean water in rural areas and inadequate sanitation.

Basic services versus fiscal constraints
There are other visible changes in a country where for decades the majority of national income went to service the white minority and black areas were completely ignored. In Mamelodi township, outside Pretoria, many roads are being paved for the first time, clinics are being built, and sidewalks are being laid. The same is true in Soweto, the largest township in the country. Sanitation crews are picking up the garbage - sometimes. Metropolitan authorities complain that they don't have the funds to finance regular garbage collection, and as a result, heaps of trash still accumulate.

Measures such as these are crucial for drawing broader layers of workers and rural toilers into social and political life, who otherwise face economic conditions and social obstacles to employment, education, and housing that mean that simply scratching out an existence consumes the vast majority of one's life.

While the lion's share of government spending goes toward providing basic services to the black majority, the government operates under difficult constraints. The largest item in the government budget is spending on education. The second is servicing debt incurred by the apartheid regime - 95 percent of which is owed to domestic banks, insurance companies, individual capitalists, and pension funds - to the tune of R40 billion per year in interest payments.

Mandela said the government would stick to GEAR's 4 percent deficit target, even though this "test(s) our capacity and will," but that "there is no other route to sustainable development." In order to do this, Mandela said that the central government would propose layoffs in the public service, the size of which under apartheid "had nothing to do with public service."

Despite earlier talk among some in the government about wholesale privatization of much of the heavily state-run economy -such as the steel industry, railroads, airlines, and petroleum refining - the government has of yet privatized only one company -Sun Air -and obtained private partners for South African Airways and the telephone company. A few other such measures are in the pipeline. "The issue of restructuring of state assets is not driven by ideology," said Mandela. "We shall privatize where necessary. But we shall also set up new state enterprises where market imperfections and failures...undermine social programs. Such is the case with elements of the liquid fuels industry and the servicing of housing construction, which has not received the optimum support from the banking industry."

The GEAR policy targets 6 percent growth and the annual creation of 400,000 jobs by year 2000. In the context of the current world economic crisis, deflationary pressures, and the unequal trade relations imposed by imperialist capital, these goals are proving difficult to achieve. Last year, for example, there was a net loss of 116,000 jobs and growth averaged only about 2 percent. While foreign investment in the stock and bond markets is growing, foreign direct investment is a different story. The Sept. 9, 1997, Sunday Times reported that "SA was a recipient of just $330 million of the $5.3 billion foreign direct investment that flowed into Africa last year."

Jobs and affirmative action
Mandela said a "jobs summit" later this year involving the government, unions, and employers would be a top priority. Latest figures put unemployment at 34 percent and rising.

At the initiative of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a "gold summit" was held February 26-27. The union demands action to prevent the mining houses' announced plans to lay off tens of thousands of miners by July. Last year, more than 50,000 miners were retrenched, and according to the NUM, 30,000 more were laid off in January 1998 alone.

The NUM called for, and won, a moratorium on retrenchments prior to the "gold summit." The union said it would initiate a national strike campaign if an agreement to protect jobs and provide retraining was not reached. The summit formed a "crisis committee" composed of the NUM, Chamber of Mines, and the government to regulate layoffs and a "social plan" to cushion the impact on mineworkers. A one- week moratorium on layoffs was agreed to. The ANC has introduced the Employment Equity bill into parliament, the first legislation aiming to enforce affirmative action on the job. The bill requires every company employing more than 49 people to meet with trade unions and/or employees to: prepare a profile of its workforce, lodge a summary affirmative action plan with the Labor Department, and report annually on the results. While the bill would not impose quotas, the meetings with the employers and workers are mandated to develop numerical targets and other measures for every workplace for employment of blacks, women, and disabled persons.

"Equitable representation" is required in all job categories and at all levels of employment, as are "measures to retain, train and develop" blacks, women, and disabled workers. The bill would impose fines on employers of up to R900,000 for contravention of the law.

Land reform
Land reform presents one of the greatest challenges to South Africa's democratic revolution. There are currently half a million subsistence farmers and 11 million landless working people in the countryside. More than 80 percent of agricultural land is owned by whites, much of this held in capitalist farming estates. The ANC's land reform plans fall broadly into three categories: strengthening of tenure rights for the rural populace; restitution of land (or compensation) to those who can prove their land was stolen under apartheid from 1913 on; and redistribution of 30 percent of agricultural land to landless peasants. These three goals were to be achieved by year 2000. It is widely acknowledged that progress on this has been slow.

Mandela reported that land tenure legislation passed in 1997 would help protect the rights of 6 million rural dwellers, many of them farm workers. The seventh restitution claim was only finalized in February. Seven hundred families whose Northern Cape land was expropriated under apartheid won their land back. Another 23,000 claims, most of them urban, still have not been processed. Meanwhile, Land Affairs and Agriculture Minister Derek Hanekom says the government will transfer about 500,000 hectares (1 ha = 2.47 acres) of agricultural land in 1998, benefiting about 50,000 households.

Current land redistribution policy, as distinct from land restitution, is based on a "willing-buyer, willing-seller" mechanism. The government provides peasants and other aspirant farmers a 20 percent subsidy for purchase of land from "willing" white farmers. But working people in rural areas find it very difficult to come up with the other 80 percent of the purchase price, as well as funds for seed, fertilizer and equipment.

An opinion column by Ray Goforth in the November/December 1997 issue of the ANC magazine Mayibuye drew attention to some of the failures of the land reform to date. "Currently, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights estimates it could take up to 15 years to complete the adjudication of pending land claims affecting more than 1 million people." The article said only 2 percent of government land of the 30 percent target slated for redistribution had changed hands.

"Those who bore the brunt of apartheid oppression say that things are a lot better," Mandela told parliament. "But they also say, and are justified to say so, that what has been done is not enough.... The most critical challenge is whether we are succeeding as leaders to mobilize the people in actual practice to be their own liberators."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home