The South African state in the context of social transformation and globalisation
The South African state is a collective instrument captured in struggle, which must be wielded to serve the objective of creating a democratic society. This, writes Joel Netshitenzhe, should be the starting point for understanding and responding to the immediate challenges facing revolutionaries in constructing our nascent developmental state.
The issue of the character of South African state has been discussed extensively in the Tripartite Alliance with strategic agreement on critical issues and some differences on detail.
The most seminal work in this regard was the Alliance discussion document, 'State, Property Relations and Social Transformation', developed in 1998 by a joint team in preparation for an Alliance Summit. The document identifies a critical methodological approach that can be summarised as follows:
Firstly, the state is an overarching organism in the management of social relations, representing class interests. It is a concentrated expression of social relations; and to the extent that revolutions are about transformation of social relations, transfer of state power is the first, most visible and critical expression of revolution.
Secondly, and in the context of the above, the document defines the apartheid state as illegitimate, representing the interests of whites in general and, in class terms, monopoly capital, other white capital, white middle strata and white workers. Its mission was to defend a crime against humanity and it subverted rules of decency and sensible social mores to meet its objectives.
The document further asserts that the democratic state is an antithesis of the apartheid state, rising in the wake of the destruction of the apartheid state through a process of transformation. It represents motive forces of social change: workers and the rural poor, black middle strata and the real or aspirant black capitalist class.
However, compared to the apartheid state, it operates as a state of the people as a whole in terms of equality of citizens before the law. It is for this reason that the Freedom Charter asserted, among others, that all would be equal before the law, and that all would enjoy equal human rights. This raises two categories of critical questions that are of profound theoretical significance.
The first of these is about constitutionality and liberal democratic precepts. Are these so-called liberal freedoms associated with bourgeois democracy an anathema to a National Democratic Revolution: freedom of speech and of the media, equality before the law, majority rule through democratic elections, separation of powers, rule of law and so on? Would it be correct to characterise them as achievements of human civilisation critical to human freedom in general?
How do we relate these issues to the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat in the case of Socialist Revolution - was it correct for the working class to characterise the immediate state expression of its own revolution as a dictatorship of the proletariat? What about the bourgeoisie who, though in strict scientific terms set up a state that represented a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, presented theirs as being in the interest of all the people?
We raise this first set of questions because even the South African Communist Party (SACP) in its programme argues that socialism would be achieved through democratic elections, and that a socialist system would include these elements of "liberal democracy". So, in examining the evolution of human civilisation in terms of management of social relations, we need to ask ourselves whether there are positive things in bourgeois democracy that are universal and central to the expression of human freedom in general.
This is besides detailed questions about the content of our Constitution, in the context of the NDR, which includes second and third generation rights. The second category of questions is related but not integral to the first; and this is about the nature of our transition and the trajectory of our transformation of the state. Ours was a negotiated transition. As such we did not and do not have, in classical and physical terms, what manifested itself in other countries as "red terror" responding to "white terror". We had to transform and still have to continue transforming the state to reflect the interests of the majority and to operate in a manner that serves the interests of the motive forces of the NDR.
But, would it not be correct to argue that a critical element of the nature of our transition is that we made a choice to rely on openness and transparency, even during a transition, to consolidate the hold of the democratic movement on state power? In other words, are we in a unique manner using human rights as an instrument to attain human rights: with the end-state and the mechanism to achieve it both wrapped in one?
A good example of this is the multiplicity of objectives that were served by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process. On the one hand, it was aimed at establishing the truth and through that to encourage reconciliation among erstwhile contending socio-political forces.
However, on the other hand, consciously or sub-consciously, the TRC also had a critical outcome, which was to help expose the networks of apartheid repression that still burrowed in our midst. In this regard, it made a critical contribution in the battle against counter-revolution. Further, the processes under way on how to handle prosecutions in the post-TRC period should further help to expose any such networks and secure the democratic transition.
We are also agreed that ours should be a developmental state, a state that should have, as its primary mission improvement in the quality of life of all, especially the poor. The core attributes of such a state in our own situation should include:
Further, a developmental state in our situation also has to be a strong state. Besides issues of legitimacy which relate to strategic capacity, such strength should also derive from technical and administrative capacity, which can be defined as: "the ability of the state to undertake collective actions at least cost to society... [which] encompasses the administrative or technical capacity of state officials... [and] also includes the deeper institutional mechanisms that give politicians and civil servants the flexibility, rules, and restraints to enable them to act in the collective interest". (World Bank 1997 World Development Report, quoted from Political Studies: 2004, Vol 52, Conceptualising State Capacity... Sally N. Cummings and Ole N¿rgaard) How far have we gone in achieving these objectives? The brief answer is that we have just started, and we still have a long way to go in transforming the state. The observation in 'State, Property Relations and Social Transformation' that ours is a state in transition is apt even today.
Besides tasks pertaining to capacity, there are still many challenges with regard to the composition of the state machinery, including such areas as forensic investigators in the police service, air traffic controllers and pilots in the SANDF and civil aviation, the judiciary and so on. This applies both to gender and race demographics. Further, much more still needs to be done in terms of ensuring that the new doctrines we have introduced, informed by our Constitution, are fully observed in all machineries of state.
A related issue that has arisen in stark form in the recent period is the question of the power of state organs over citizens, and the implications of any abuse of power by these organs. Can we legitimately call for rule of law when state organs are not sufficiently transformed?
This question speaks to the issue of the strategic choice that we made about an orderly transition in relation to the integrity of the state, even as we transformed it. Related to this are the structures and systems we progressively put in place, including the precepts of the Constitution itself, to ensure accountability of these institutions and afford citizens the mechanisms of recourse if in terms of administrative justice and other ways, they felt hard done by, by state institutions. These include the Human Rights Commission, the Public Protector, the Constitutional Court, the Judicial Services Commission, the Gender Commission and so on.
In this context, we sought to ensure universal legitimacy of the new state in gestation, to force even counter-revolution to play by the rules regarding the integrity of the state.
As revolutionaries we proceed from the premise that consistent adherence to the rule of law by citizens and state institutions alike is in the interest of transformation, in the interest of the success of the NDR. This is not merely a matter of democratic niceties. When all is said and done, if in a real sense, rule of law were to collapse, the working class would be the main loser. History is replete with instances where national liberation revolutions aborted with ensuing collapse of rule of law, and the first and main target as a result were the working class and the left.
MANAGING TENSIONS IN TRANSFORMATION
It is in this context that we have to manage a variety of tensions and challenges that attach to a nascent democratic state. I will identify only four of them, and draw the international dimension in this context.
Mass movements and state power
The first challenge is about combining the power of what Professor Manuel Castells refers to as three identities: the 'legitimising' identity, which is about the state as a representative of the majority at the service of all; the 'resistance' identity which is about mass organisation and mobilisation; and the 'project' identity which I would define as capacity to implement policies decided upon.
We have already referred to the first and third identities. What I wish to raise as a challenge is whether South African progressive mass movements have adequately adapted to the new strategic terrain in which we operate.
This strategic terrain is defined by the profound impact of our accession to political power in terms of the arsenal of instruments that we can use to promote change. In the past, underground work and armed struggle were tactical instruments that had profound strategic implications. Today, state power enjoys a similar status: a tactical instrument with profound strategic implications.
Along with this profound change in the strategic terrain, occasioned by the democratic breakthrough in 1994, are instruments of political and economic power that civil society and the trade unions in particular can use to promote their interests - in addition to the terrain of mass mobilisation.
These include Workplace Forums and the capacity of labour to influence production and other decisions on the factory floor; the labour relations regime and the capacity of unions to intervene strategically to determine enterprise decisions in case of threats of closures and mass retrenchments;
the Pension Fund Boards and the activism or lack of it on the part of representatives of labour; the Sector Education and Training Authorities and processes around economic sector strategies and whether the working class is playing its vanguard role in this regard.
In other words, besides mass action that will become necessary from time to time, are we also utilising the new instruments that we have laid hold of?
This is what Black Consciousness adherents used to refer to as "an attitude of mind and a way of life"; or what we now call, a question of paradigm. The same issue arises in relation to progressive trade unions within the state: do we merely relate with this revolutionary state as our employer, or do we also relate to it as a partner in transformation, in delivery, against arrogance, shoddiness and corruption?
Social cohesion and social coercion
The second area of tension starkly thrown up by recent developments is one about a revolutionary state as an instrument of social cohesion and social coercion.
A revolutionary state in a national democracy has to play an activist role as a leader in forging national identity, culture, pride and civic education including through educational curricula. While it is quite true that many of these things cannot be achieved by decree, and while it should be acknowledged that civil society also has a leading role to play in this regard, the state cannot confine its role merely to creating and protecting the environment in which these attributes are acquired and promoted: it has to be in the frontline of the ideological struggle.
On the other hand, the state commands the power of security and other agencies and institutions of justice precisely because it also has to act as an instrument of coercion. Such coercion would include deciding on and enforcing regulations that apply to the operation of various business sectors; setting the tax rate and ensuring that all who are eligible actually pay; defining parameters of legitimate and legal social behaviour, including in mass protests, and ensuring that these are observed.
As such, when train coaches are torched for whatever reason, and when property is destroyed in the name of senseless boundary disputes - when in Dante's words the people say 'death to our life and life to our death' -the state has to resort to these instruments of coercion.
State capacity and state limitations
The next area of tension and challenge is about the capacity and the limitations of the state. This matter was extensively canvassed in the Ten Year Review conducted by government at the end of the First Decade of Freedom.
In brief, the argument here is that, whatever the level of its legitimacy, the state is most effective in areas in which it can act directly: such as providing subsidised housing, water, electricity, sanitation and so on. Indeed, it is in these areas where, in the first ten years of democracy, we made maximum progress.
On the other hand, in areas such as investment by the private sector, which is in control of most of the national resources for such investment and job creation, the state can create an environment, put in place regulations and provide infrastructure, but this does not guarantee that the private sector will invest in productive activity.
This is one example of the state's limitations, which brings to the fore the critical question of a People's Contract and ultimately the question whether South Africa - especially the social partners - should actively be pursuing the notion of a social compact. In other words, with the state as lead campaigner, a vision and concrete means to achieve it should be identified, and each of the social partners should commit to specific actions to attain that vision.
State as manager of contradictions?
Another area of tension is the conceptualisation of the state as a representative of the motive forces of the revolution: we have argued, quite correctly, that a state that emerges in the NDR has to reflect, in its doctrines, accent, demography and so on, the preponderance of the motive forces of change.
Yet a profound challenge emerges from this: These motive forces include black workers and black capitalists. The NDR does not and is not meant to resolve class contradictions. Therefore it should be expected that contestation between these two contending classes will continue, in turn affecting the state and the leading organisation in the process of change, the ANC.
Beyond contestation among the motive forces themselves, there is a recognition that the ANC and the state have to relate to all of capital in a dynamic of unity and struggle, incentive and coercion, enticement and regulation.
In its Strategy and Tactics document, the ANC does recognise this; and though the formulation is somewhat obscure, it does capture this tension:
It is therefore unavoidable that the ANC and the state it has spawned have to manage the class contradictions thrown up by the realities of the capitalist system.
On the one hand, this requires pursuit of the people's contract and social compact referred to above - in other words identifying the common interest and winning over all the players to pursue these.
On the other hand, specific circumstances may call upon the ANC and the state to act in a kind of "collectivist, revolutionary Bonapartist manner" (as distinct from interpretations that attach Bonapartism to individuals).
In other words, the state led by the ANC would from time to time be called upon to abandon the trench of immediate class identity and act in the collective interest - which interest, it can be argued, should be to the long-term advantage of the working class and the poor.
State capacity, limitations and globalisation
The issue of capacity and limitations arises also in the context of globalisation, defined as narrowing of time and space in the production process combined with massive trade, communication, migration, travel and other manifestations of the global village. Note should be made here that globalisation is defined in this, its objective form, to differentiate it from the subjective expressions constructed or pursued by those who wield global economic and political power.
The one consequence of globalisation, for a state such as ours, is the growing tendency towards narrow identities, reflected in pursuit of narrow interests for instance in World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, and worsened in the past four years by the twin right-wing dogmas of Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. The one claims a clash of civilisations defined in religious but also racial terms; the other emerges and behaves as if in tow, to justify the former. This impacts global security and discourse on the critical questions of poverty and underdevelopment; and in the main it confounds the fundamental issues of the day.
The other consequence of globalisation, deriving from its more objective expressions, is the reality of the centripetal tendencies towards more interdependence among nations and regions of the world. It is in the context of the recognition of this reality that Africa has been arguing, quite successfully, that its development is in the interest of the whole of the global village. It is in this context that there are attempts and some progress, at creating a global consensus around matters of development such as the UN Millennium Development Goals. It is in this context that democracy and people-centred development should be pursued as common, universal human values.
In a sense, the consequences of underdevelopment, migration, marginalisation and alienation as shown in the recent violent demonstrations in France and Belgium, aptly capture the challenge of globalisation for all humanity. On the other hand, in the current global milieu a closed economy is not an option: while there may be limited room for manoeuvre, including speed humps for portfolio capital, leaning against the wind in exchange rate management, some trade barriers and so on, the general movement is towards openness.
Also attached to globalisation are novel ways of manifestation of interference in domestic polities of the weak. There may no longer be armadas and gun-boat diplomacy (as long as you are not part of the Axis of Evil), but other more subtle platforms are used. These include the media, aid, HIV/AIDS grants (some of which are disbursed so as to by-pass sovereignty of states), financial markets as means to beggar economies, and a variety of methods that are used to influence electoral processes within parties and nations.
IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES
In light of all of the above, what are the immediate challenges facing the South African nascent developmental state and the revolutionaries who are constructing this state?
In answering this question, one proceeds from the premise that the state is a collective instrument captured in struggle and which must be wielded to serve the objective of creating a united, non-sexist, non-racial and democratic society.
Conscious construct: swimming against the tide The first of the immediate challenges derives from the fact that the NDR is a conscious construct. Unlike with revolutions leading up to the emergence of the capitalist socio-economic formation, the NDR (and of course the Socialist Revolution) requires conscious activity to construct new political, economic and social relations.
In other words, to build our new people-centred and people-driven democracy, to reconfigure utilisation of the fiscus and state capital for the benefit mainly of the poor and to deracialise ownership of wealth and income, requires a strategy, a programme and institutions consciously developed and promoted by advanced members of society.
The task of building a cadreship to lead this process becomes even more critical when measured against the backdrop of the fact that the society we seek to create is a caring one, and yet the socio-economic formation we operate in encourages greed, conspicuous consumption and cut-throat competition.
Of course we need to encourage drive and initiative; but conspicuous consumption and greed do exert a very powerful pull effect, threatening to consign the very cadres required to build a caring society in the mire of corruption as they are tempted to live above their means.
State as captive of single motive force?
The second immediate challenge arises from the notion that the state has to mediate the very real class contradictions that exist among the motive forces, and across society. How in this situation do we avoid a situation in which the state becomes captive of a single section of the motive forces? In particular, questions have been raised, and the Strategy and Tactics document does pose this challenge, about the danger of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie reliant solely on state patronage. Such a bourgeoisie in turn will seek to transform state employees and public representatives into vassals at its beck and call.
In the end, this can precipitate a situation in which battles in state institutions as well as in and among the ANC, COSATU, the SACP and SANCO could as well be skirmishes among proxies representing factions of the bourgeoisie. And some among the black sections of the capitalist class may in fact be acting as extensions of foreign or local big capital: a compradore bourgeoisie.
Attached to this is the very legitimate issue that has been raised about the class composition of leadership structures of the ANC. We have quite correctly intensified the efforts to address the gender question. But without a conscious effort on the part of the liberation movement, and activism by workers within structures of the ANC, this may end up as a marriage among male and female elites, with minimal impact on the fundamental questions of poverty and underdevelopment.
Are the motive forces corruptible?
The third immediate challenge is about the possibility of political office and general incumbency corrupting the very leading cadres among the motive forces of change.
The reality is a simple one: the working class and the poor are the core motive forces of the NDR, and many of them are unemployed. This means that positions in government as public representatives - councillors, MPLs and MPs - also serve as employment opportunities. By the stroke of a pen and taking an oath of public office, individuals previously mired in poverty join the ranks of the middle strata.
Thus objectively, but also as a consequence of low levels of political consciousness, bitter battles for selection into these positions become the order of the day. To quicken the benefits of such office, public resources are then plundered, directly or in partnership with the bureaucratic bourgeoisie.
The 'Operation Phuma Singene' Syndrome then becomes the stock-in-trade, with each nomination process for public representatives becoming a rat race to displace others so individuals can get "jobs" and even plunder the public purse.
This is not limited to the working class. Also ensconced within the state bureaucracy is the spectre of asset-starved new middle strata, with their backs bent by the weight of debt and in control of institutions taking decisions affecting billions of Rand.
Can incumbency corrupt revolutionary traditions?
The fourth immediate challenge is how to build the ANC and the Alliance in such a way that unity, internal democracy and theoretical engagement are not corrupted by access to state power.
In 'Through the Eye of a Needle' (Umrabulo 11), the ANC identifies two tendencies that do emerge in the context of incumbency: firstly, for those with power of patronage to reward only those who agree with them even on issues of detail; and secondly, for those who want to be noticed and rewarded to censor themselves and not state their genuine views during debates.
About this issue of the negative impact of incumbency, one is struck by the observations of Richard Gillespie of the University of Warwick in his analysis, 'Factionalism in the Spanish Socialist Party'. Some of these observations seem appropriate:
"Conflict within the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) is far more concerned with 'power, careers, spoils and rewards' than with 'strategy, policy or ideology', and what appears to be ideological confrontation is often little more than a faŤade for battles designed to redefine the internal distribution of power." (p3)
"...there is a strong element in both cases of internal democracy being campaigned for only when Socialist officials have suffered personally from a loss of patronage or have become victims of party disciplinary procedures." (p5)
"The standard means of securing party unity was to offer activists the alternative of rewards for loyalty or harsh penalties for dissidence. In a... party seeking to fill an expanding number of public positions, which formed the basis of political, administrative and managerial careers, activists who echoed the official line were rewarded with posts very quickly, even in the case of former Communist Party people. Those who dissented found only a small, hostile audience for their views within the party, while for them to seek external sympathy constituted grounds for exclusion under the party statutes." (pp13-14)
The answer for us is to build a strong ANC and a strong Alliance as a leader of the state, not the inverse, while leaving space for those in positions of authority within the state room to exercise creativity. We should encourage healthy ambition and drive, but these should be informed by the commitment to serve the people.
Above all, we should all strive to understand the tasks of the moment: in the immediate period in our situation, to implement the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (ASGISA), mobilising all of society to identify in the objectives of the NDR their own true self-interest.
Joel Netshitenzhe is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee.
This is an edited version of an input at the COSATU Summer School, November 2005.
[Contents]
