The African National Congress named its candidates for premiers in the nine provinces this week, after a national working committee meeting of the ruling party was held in Cape Town. It is the first time that candidates have only been named after the election, which the ANC won with a landslide victory. The ANC will take the premierships in all nine provinces for the first time since democracy in 1994.
Related Link:
* IFP claims rigged poll
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/zones/sundaytimes/basket3st/basket3st10826…
* Opposition left licking wounds
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/04/18/politics/politics02.asp
* Crippling blow for once mighty Nats
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/04/18/politics/politics03.asp

Political parties in the new Parliament should form an all-party group on HIV/Aids, the Treatment Action Campaign said. In a post-election electronic newsletter, the organisation said it had refused to go along with parties that wanted to make HIV/Aids a party political issue. However it welcomed the major opposition parties' common view that a comprehensive strategy was required for HIV/Aids.

Can South African schools be led away from apartheid's grim legacy? Are policy interventions ridding schools of injustice? Are schoolchildren learning values of democracy and equity? Or are classrooms still places where kids learn about the unjust divisions that exist between different groups of people?

The School of Public Health is a forerunner in the public health areas of health promotion, health equity, health information systems, nutrition, health programme development and human resource development. Two senior researchers are required for a new project, aimed at assisting development of health programmes such as HIV/AIDS and nutrition, at health district level. The senior researchers are expected to assist programme managers to develop information systems for their programmes.

Thabo Mbeki recently advocated unity with 'anti-globalisation' activists: 'They may act in ways you and I may not like and break windows in the street, but the message they communicate relates.' This raises two critical questions: is the South African government genuinely opposed to what Mbeki calls 'global apartheid'? And are the reforms advocated by Pretoria failing -- even on their own limited terms?

Mbeki's critics, from left and right alike, suggest that his AIDS policies, corrupt arms deal and support for Zimbabwe's repressive regime have damaged his credibility beyond repair. Others claim Mbeki's global ambition is his saving grace. But the content of Pretoria's broader reform strategy is rarely examined.

Between incomparable drawings by Zapiro, Patrick Bond considers the dynamics of international political economy and geopolitics.

He reviews a series of contemporary examples where Pretoria is frustrated by unfavourable power relations: US unilateralism and militarism, the UN's World Conference Against Racism and reparations for apartheid profits, soured trade deals, stingy debt relief and counterproductive international financial flows, unsuccessful reform of multilateral institutions, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development and the World Water Forum.

Bond poses alternatives and also assesses the progressive social movements, which may well be Mbeki's most persistent, unforgiving judges, both locally and globally. (back cover)

Members of the Landless People's Movement (LPM) arrested on election day in Thembelihle informal settlement near Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, were granted bail in the Protea magistrate's court last Thursday. LPM spokesperson Mangaliso Kubheka said 60 activists were granted R300 bail after spending a night in the holding cells. They were charged with contravening electoral laws. Kubheka said some LPM members were "subjected to interrogation, harassment and physical violence last night while in prison".

The availability of information on the impact of scientific developments - both positive and negative - is paramount to the effective functioning of democracy. But a recent survey of South Africa's leading newspapers and magazines shows that less than two per cent of editorial space in the country's leading publications is devoted to science and technology. The press is one of the most important vehicles through which science news can be distributed. Print media lends itself to investigative in-depth reporting, but unfortunately, this benefit is not being harnessed effectively, says the leader of the survey in this article.

CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organisations based in Johannesburg, South Africa, seeks to recruit a Project Manager for its Civil Society Index programme (CSI). The CSI is an international action-research initiative assessing the state of civil society in currently over 60 countries around the world. Reporting to the Director of Programs, the CSI Project Manager will be responsible for implementing and managing the CSI programme and overseeing the work of CSI staff members.

The third free election and the 10th anniversary of democracy in SouthAfrica this month together offer a chance to distinguish between celebratory and critical thinking.

Global and local mainstream media tend to the former, adding the obvious caveats about Pretoria's handling of AIDS and Zimbabwe, and remarking upon unemployment. Henning Melber's Pambazuka #151 article, 'What choices for South African voters', in the latter category, has already advanced a variety of other doubts about, especially, the regional and international weaknesses of president Thabo Mbeki's government, which we need not dwell on here.

Now that the dust is settling on the election results - with no surprises whatsoever - the polity can consider what trajectories might lead to a different future, and what socio-economic results of a ten-year neoliberal governing strategy must be reversed. The details of the government's domestic performance since 1994 should be subject to far more rigorous examination, now that the hot rhetoric of the campaigns is fading.

The results, after all, appear tediously similar to 1999. The ruling African National Congress won roughly 70%, as anticipated, and Mbeki's brilliant Machiavellian divide-and-conquer of the white-dominated opposition parties reduced their combined vote markedly, with Tony Leon's Democratic Alliance winning around 13%. At closer to 5%, half its 1994 percentage, the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party will need the DA to help it continue governing KwaZulu-Natal. The 2% won by Patricia de Lille's centrist Independent Democrats was in the same league as the conservative African Christian Democratic Party and the New National Party, which in 1994 had more than 20% and in 1999, 7%. The Afrikaner bitter-ender Freedom Front had 1%. Parties whose critique of ANC rule was mainly from the left did badly: the United Democratic Movement and Pan Africanist Congress appear to have each barely maintained a parliamentary seat; the black-consciousness Azanian Peoples Organisation and its breakaway Socialist Party of Azania do not seem to have even attained parliamentary standing.

But with its two-thirds of the vote, will the ANC use its power to pass constitutional amendments that could, in theory, revise the Constitution against residual property rights and patriarchy, in favour of the ANC's low-income, black, women constituents? Although ANC campaigners are talking left these days, the same people, when in government, persist in walking right.

One reason is that the progressive forces which did not run candidates for election have not shown sufficient strength and consistency, what with ANC-aligned trade unionists sending mixed signals, and independent leftists in the urban communities and rural landless movement working at cross-purposes. Leading Johannesburg township activists engaged in a spoiled-ballot exercise (they scrawled all over their voter card), in tactical conflict with the Landless People's Movement, which called for a simple boycott, in anticipation that the apathy factor would rise substantially. Early returns suggest that turnout was substantially lower than 1994 and 1999, but at more than 70% of registered voters, the LPM cannot claim victory for the boycott strategy.

What the landless activists can do, however, is honour the arrests of more than 50 of their members in the ghetto of Thembelihle, near Soweto, on election day. As their press release explained, 'The people have been arrested in terms of the Electoral Code of Conduct and the 1993 Prohibition of Illegal Gatherings Act. The charges are related to illegal gatherings on the day of elections. The LPM regards the charges as spurious. The LPM members were not permitted to gather even though they were prepared to observe regulations allowing only protests held at least 200m from any polling station. They were arrested as they disembarked from their transport, and so no gathering or meeting even took place.'

Judging by this sort of repressive - indeed, paranoid - security and the falling living standards experienced by the majority of black South Africans, the government should be subject to the kinds of insurgent protests witnessed recently in Bolivia and Argentina. To naysay these harsh realities, the ANC took to doctoring simple statistics during the campaign.

Some illustrations demonstrate why the government can make inspiring claims of delivery - but retain market-oriented policies ranging from macroeconomics to microdevelopment. It is no secret that Pretoria's homegrown structural adjustment policy, co-authored by the World Bank in 1996, codified the pro-corporate economic philosophy inherited from apartheid. The result was the doubling of the formal unemployment rate from 16% in 1994 to 32% in 2002. When one considers, in addition, those millions of people who have given up any hope of finding a job, the rate rises to 43%. Both the public and private sectors shed more than 10% of formal sector jobs since liberation in 1994.

Yet as the election neared, ANC politicians like trade and industry minister Alec Erwin began insisting that two million new jobs were created since 1994, based on an official Labour Force Survey. That survey defines 'employment' as including 'beg[ging] money or food in public' and 'catch[ing] any fish, prawns, shells, wild animals or other food for sale or family food.' Asked about this measure two months ago, the main trade union official, Zwelinzima Vavi, said simply, 'It is absurd to record such labour as jobs.' Nevertheless, last week Vavi's chief economist defended the statistics by way of justifying labour's endorsement of the ANC as the only party with, supposedly, 'the workers' interests at heart.'

In reality, the ten-year liberation celebrations to be held around the day of Mbeki's re-inauguration, April 27, will be much more boisterous in the mansions and corporate headquarters of Johannesburg. 'The government is utterly seduced by big business, and cannot see beyond its immediate interests,' remarked the neoliberal editor of Business Day newspaper, Peter Bruce, last June.

Shortsighted ANC election propaganda bragged of having created 'a level of macroeconomic stability not seen in the country for 40 years.' Stability? In reality, there were three currency crashes witnessed over a period of a few weeks in February-March 1996, June-July 1998 and December 2001, ranging from 30 to 50% each. Each led to massive interest rate increases which sapped growth and rewarded the speculators. These moments of macroeconomic instability were as dramatic as any other incidents during the previous two centuries, including the September 1985 financial panic that split big business from the apartheid regime and paved the way for ANC rule.

It is here that the core concession made by the ANC during the early 1990s transition deal is apparent, namely in the desire by white businesses to escape the economic stagnation and declining profits born of a classical capitalist crisis, in the context of a sanctions-induced laager, and amplified by the 1970s-80s rise of black militancy in workplaces and communities.

The deal represented simply this: black nationalists got the state, while white people and corporations could remove their capital from the country, and simultaneously remain domiciled in South Africa with, thanks to economic liberalisation, still more privileges. Trade, credit, cultural and sports sanctions ended; exchange controls were lifted; luxury imports flooded in; white people's incomes rose by 15% during the late 1990s; taxes were cut dramatically; and the corporate pre-tax profit share soared during the late 1990s, back to 1960s-era levels associated with apartheid's heyday.

Hence inequality soared during ANC rule, state statistics show. Black 'African' South Africans suffered an income crash of 19% from 1995-2000, with every indication of further degeneration in subsequent years. The ANC rebuttal is that when state spending is accounted for, the inequality lessens. Yet notwithstanding deeper poverty, the state raised water and electricity prices, to the point that by 2002 they consumed 30% of the income of those households earning less than $70 per month. An estimated 10 million people had their water cut off, according to two national government surveys, and 10 million were also victims of electricity disconnections (see for the ongoing numbers controversy).

This is all crucial for the coming months, in the event policies can be altered by a more confident government, as claimed by leftists within the ANC and amongst its allies.

On an optimistic note, the debate over whether state services have been provided to low-income black customers in a sustainable manner - or instead are priced too high because of privatisation pressures -- was finally joined by Mbeki last week. As reported in Sunday's City Press newspaper (mainly read by blacks), 'After meeting pensioners like 92-year-old Mamelodi resident Johanna Mashigoane, whose electricity had been cut off as she could not afford to pay for it, and unemployed Macassar resident Zelna Hendricks, who had received an eviction letter from the council after failing to pay rates, Mbeki could not hide his outrage. Local government policy towards the poor, he declared, would have to change after the elections and central government would need to allocate more money to municipalities to deal with this problem.'

Although municipal policy on disconnections and evictions is in fact a national policy with World Bank fingerprints, approved by the Cabinet on several occasions, Mbeki's raised consciousness is a step forward to reality. The week before, his chief communications officer took a step backwards when he wrote insensitively in the Sunday Times (mainly read by whites) in defense of disconnections: '10 million people connected to water which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be compared with the few households occasionally cut off.'

The question is whether such zigzagging is merely a product of election rhetoric, or instead reflects the permanent contradictions between big-business advocates of essentially neoliberal development policies, and well-moblised activists. South Africa hosts some of the world's most militant social movements, who demand the decommodification of water, electricity, anti-retroviral medicines and healthcare, education, and even a Basic Income Grant.

Defenders of the elite transition deal may claim that leftward pressure on the ANC also emanates from the Constitution's celebrated socio-economic rights clauses. But the 1996 document appears a bit tattered these days, partly because the judges are too frightened to take a stand against the state's neoliberal policies, and partly because of an incident on March 21 at the opening of the Court's beautiful new building in central Johannesburg
at the site of the old Fort Prison next to Hillbrow.

The tale is worth recounting. Johannesburg community activists in the Anti-Privatisation Forum called a march to protest the installation of pre-paid water meters in Soweto by the French company Suez, which is running the city's outsourced water company. City officials banned the march on absurd grounds (traffic disturbances - on a Sunday?). The police arrested 51 activists, some simply because they were wearing red shirts, and blocked travel of APF buses into Johannesburg. Neither the judges nor Mbeki – who attended the opening ceremony - uttered a word in the protesters' defense, so even first-generation civil/political rights now appear merely contingent.

That incident aside, the country's highest court has heard three major cases on socio-economic rights: one led to the death of a man denied kidney paralysis treatment because the judges deemed it too expensive; the next helped the Treatment Action Campaign acquire AIDS medicines for pregnant women because the judges agreed the state was needlessly killing tens of thousands of infants each year; and another allegedly enforced the right to emergency municipal services - but checking back on the successful plaintiff, Irene Grootboom, in her Cape Town ghetto, the Sunday Times found her community as destitute as in September 2000, at the time of her case.

To be sure, the status of women like Grootboom includes some improvements since 1994, especially in reproductive rights, albeit with extremely uneven access. But contemporary South Africa retains apartheid's patriarchal modes of surplus extraction, thanks to both residual sex discrimination and the migrant (rural-urban) labour system, which is still subsidised by women stuck in the former bantustan homelands.

Structured super-exploitation of women is accompanied by an apparent increase in domestic violence associated with rising male unemployment. Mbeki was quoted by the SA Press Association on March 22, the day after Human Rights Day: 'He said if ever his sister was to arrive home and tell him that she was in love with African Christian Democratic Party leader Kenneth Meshoe, he would have to beat her.' A spokesperson said the president was only joking.

Women are also the main caregivers in the home, and bear the highest burden associated with degraded health. Public-sector services continue declining due to underfunding and competition from private providers. Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, diarrhea, cholera, malaria and AIDS are rife, all far more prevalent than during apartheid. Most South Africans with HIV still have little prospect of receiving antiretroviral drugs to extend their lives. Only last week - in time for the election -- did the medicines finally begin to make their way to hospitals and a few clinics.

During his five years as president, Mbeki has taken various obstinate stands against the poor and the sick. He has also stood down human rights activists and arms-control groups opposed to his $6 billion purchase of sophisticated weaponry from European corporations. The widespread influence-peddling scandals associated with the arms deal threatened deputy president Jacob Zuma last year, after he allegedly solicited a bribe in a manner the justice minister deemed 'prima facie corruption', and it forced the resignation of several leading ANC politicians and officials caught in plots.

On the environmental front, the country's ecosystem as today in worse condition, in many crucial respects -- e.g., water and soil resources mismanagement, contributions to global warming, fisheries, industrial toxics, genetic modification -- than during apartheid. For example, in spite of water scarcity, major dam projects are generating destructive environmental consequences downriver, and the extremely high costs of water transfer deter consumption by poor people. The location of natural surface and groundwater remains skewed towards white farmers due to apartheid land dispossession. Because a World Bank-style neoliberal land reform policy was adopted just after liberation, less than 3% of arable land was redistributed, as against a 1994-99 target of 30%.

The systematically repressive side of Mbeki's regime was unveiled to the world during the August 2002 protests against the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development. Leading anti-privatisation activists in the black townships of Johannesburg and Cape Town are repeatedly harassed and detained by police -- mainly illegally (resulting in high-profile acquittals) – for resisting evictions and disconnections. Treatment Action Campaign members were savagely beaten in early 2003 during a non-violent civil disobedience campaign to acquire medicines.

In short, the record upon which the ANC campaigned was one of low-intensity democracy in which the ruling party regularly wins elections because US-style corporatist trade unions remain aligned to the ruling party, their leaders unwilling to risk establishing a broad-based progressive movement to fight neoliberalism from outside. But because the transition from racial to class apartheid will not go unpunished forever, this state of affairs is certainly not the last word. Certainly in another ten years, or before, a much more optimistic report will be filed: optimistic, that is, for genuine socio-economic transformation.

Patrick Bond - [email][email protected] - teaches at Wits University, Johannesburg and York University, Toronto while on sabbatical. His new book, out this month from University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, is Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms.

Bishop Desmond Tutu famously described South Africa as the “Rainbow Nation” after the 1994 election. Ten years later, skin colour still profoundly divides and defines South Africa. Race colours the views of the new South Africa and its future, a Washington Post, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University survey has found. Two-thirds of blacks say the country is going in the right direction while majorities of coloured, Indians and whites disagree. Three in four blacks are optimistic about South Africa’s future - a view shared by fewer than half of all whites.

During apartheid the mining industry was the biggest employer and the main generator of the country's wealth. It was also the central pillar for the structures of racial discrimination. Today a whole raft of progressive labour laws has given workers rights they could not have dreamt of before 1994. However now as before, in this dangerous occupation, miners continue to pay with their lives in order to multiply the profits of large multinational companies. Like in other sectors of the South African economy, workers in the mining industry are reeling from the hardship and suffering caused by the steady haemorrhaging of jobs and the toll of HIV/AIDS.

The government returned to three coloured communities on Monday a parcel of land confiscated under apartheid in the 1970s, but the families dismissed the move as an election ploy. Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza was in the Lohatlha area in the northwest of the country to return 2000 hectares of land to the Gatlhose, Maremane and Khosis communities, whose land was turned into a military school in the 1970s. But a spokesperson for the communities, Marcia Manong, said the apartheid government had confiscated 62 000 hectares of land from more than 500 families in the community between 1975 and 1978.

Mention disputes over party funding, and the image that might first come to mind is that of Republicans and Democrats in the United States, trading allegations about reliance on special interest groups. However, the matter has also sparked controversy in South Africa recently, as parties prepared for the third democratic election. In fact, eyebrows were raised last month when former apartheid-era foes Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk teamed up with hats in hand to seek campaign funds for their respective parties. South Africa's government began funding political parties in 1998 by way of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). But state resources have proved inadequate, prompting the parties to solicit additional money from corporate and private sources.

In May 1994, a month after being sworn in as the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) drew up a National Health Plan, with technical assistance from the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children's Fund. The plan dealt at length with HIV/AIDS, pointing out that, "In view of the devastating implications of the epidemic for South Africa, it is mandatory to define prevention and control interventions, plus comprehensive care for those already infected, within the context of the Bill of Rights." Only now, a decade later, is a comprehensive treatment plan being rolled out.

A former Edgemead High School pupil, her mother and her boyfriend, who were involved in a racist attack on a black pupil last year, on Wednesday apologised for their "hurtful" behaviour and agreed to an Equality Court settlement order that they pay R10 000 to a Khayelitsha charity as a gesture of goodwill. The respondents, who may not be named, made an "unconditional apology" as part of the settlement to a black pupil at the school and her parents for the incident at the school on November 6 last year, which prompted political demonstrations and widespread public outrage.

Thirteen people in the Eastern Cape have died from cholera and more than a hundred had to be treated in hospital for the disease after a recent outbreak. The provincial government has promised the affected communities emergency medical resources to stop the spreading of the disease. Monwabisi Goqwana, the health MEC, flew to Sebeni in Ntabankulu, one of three affected villages, to confirm the outbreak. Goqwana appealed to the community not to blame the deaths on witchcraft.

"Looking at South Africa 10 Years On" will celebrate a decade of democracy in South Africa but also constructively and critically reflect on its achievements. The conference will be hosted by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the School of Oriental and African Studies, in collaboration with the Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS), which is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (JCAS).

Ten percent of South African youth are infected with HIV and young women, often forced into unwanted sex, are the worst affected, according to a new survey. The survey of 12,000 youths aged between 15 and 25, who were interviewed by the reproduction health research unit of Johannesburg's respected Witswatersrand University, showed that one in 10 youths had contracted the virus that can lead to Aids, SAFM radio reported.

On 14th April, almost exactly ten years since the democratic transition, the citizens of South Africa will have for the third time a largely free and fair opportunity to cast their votes for another national parliament. The outcome is predictable: the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will remain in government with an absolute majority of votes. More of interest will be if the former liberation movement achieves a two-thirds majority, and if it also takes over the two provinces of KwaZulu/Natal and the Western Cape, so far governed by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the New National Party (NNP) respectively.

Even more interesting will be the degree of voter participation in the elections. After a decade of post-Apartheid South Africa, the support base of the ANC still continues to exist. This is not because of enthusiasm for the government's policy since being in political power, but more because of a lack of any meaningful alternative.

The Tripartite Alliance - of the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the umbrella trade union body Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) – has managed despite internal differences of opinion to maintain the coalition, even though discourses on developmental strategies have signalled rough times.

The ANC is increasingly criticised for what is labelled a neo-liberal paradigm in its socio-economic orientation. The society has shifted from racial segregation towards a similar discriminating and marginalizing class structure, with members of a new black elite joining the “haves”. Meanwhile, the living conditions of the “have-nots” (who remain mainly black) have shown little if any improvement.

Such a harsh and sobering but realistic conclusion is far from denouncing the ANC policy as a complete sell-out strategy or betrayal of the people (as tempting as it is to do so). It simply acknowledges the price at which negotiated transfer of political power came a decade ago.

While liberated from the racism of Apartheid as a political system of institutionalised discrimination, the controlled change towards a formally democratic society did not mean emancipation from or victory over the capitalist system. Instead, it signalled the beginning of a new partnership with the same capitalism managing to survive the onslaught.

The South African government's role in the international arena is similarly problematic and contradictory, and at times ambivalent and controversial in different ways. In its attempt to gain from the existing global market, South African policy is criticised on the one hand for a too collaborative approach to the G8 and the international financial institutions.

South Africa on the other hand continues to back the despotic regime of Robert Mugabe in neighbouring Zimbabwe to an extent, which provokes doubts about a proclaimed commitment to human rights and democracy. The degree of passivity is tantamount to complicity and even resulted in cautiously warning voices articulated from within the trade union alliance and the SACP.

Such seemingly contradictory dimensions indicate the problems for an emerging middle power to walk the tight rope between “African solidarity” (meaning solidarity with regime security for despotic cleptocracies of the Mugabe/ZANU-PF style) and own global interests (meaning to be the “good boy” in terms of “good governance” the IMF/World Bank/G8 way).

The disappointment among South African voters - more so over internal failures than the contradictory foreign policy - however, can at best result in them abstaining from the voting. The current parties competing with the ANC offer either no political alternatives or no convincing concept or power base.

Notwithstanding this current lack of options from the point of view of the majority, the question beyond the outcome of the elections will be if and to what extent the government will manage to overcome the structural legacy of Apartheid and the class society consolidated. Scepticism concerning the political determination among the office bearers to initiate fundamental socio-economic changes towards a redistribution of wealth beyond the limited cooptation of a new black elite (including themselves) is finding uncomforting evidence, as presented in many recent critical analyses by autonomous scholars and activists.

Growing (de facto) unemployment (despite questionable number crunching during the pre-election campaign), continued increase in absolute poverty, decline in the annual per capita and black household income, extreme social discrepancies as reflected in one of the highest Gini-coefficients the world over (an econometric indicator concerning the degree of income disparities), a continued crisis over the ownership of land and a lack of pro-active policy with regard to combating the deadly consequences of HIV/Aids are some of the contested issues offering reasons for growing disappointment with regard to the policy failures of the ANC government.

The slogan of a “national interest” replaced demands of the working class (not to mention the peasants) for more equality and less exploitation. The times changed and with them the trade unions. President Thabo Mbeki, angered by strikes in August 2001 and October 2002, blamed the organisers in his electronically circulated weekly “Letter from the President” (“ANC Today”, 4-10 October 2002) to “seek to defeat the ANC and the revolutionary masses”. He raised the question of whose interests they serve. This is a question that could be asked the other way round too.

The orthodox (in the sense of neo-liberal) economic policy orientation of the South African government was explicitly confirmed by Thabo Mbeki in an article on “Global Poverty and Progressive Politics” in “New Agenda” (4/2003). He maintains the view that “profit maximisation is a necessary condition for the existence of capital”, without which “capital dies and humanity perishes”.

He therefore declares as “a universally accepted proposition that the necessary macro-conditions should exist to ensure that new capital formation takes place”. Hence “the possibility has to be created everywhere, for capital to make such profits as it would consider acceptable to itself”.

He concludes further, “'market economics' has acquired the character of a universal and self-evident truth”. Since “capital dictates the rules that human society sets itself, to ensure that capital is able to reproduce itself”, it follows that this “is the reason for the universal victory of the neo-liberal/conservative economic paradigm”. In other words: If you can't beat them, join them…

Bob Geldenhuys, parliamentary leader of the New National Party (NNP), comes to a similar conclusion from an opposite point of departure. He concedes that “the ANC adopted a market-oriented economy” and “no party to the right of the ANC will ever be able to unseat the ANC as government of the day”. His own party “therefore firmly believes that it is in the best interest of South Africa to strengthen the centre of the political spectrum” by cooperating with the government (quoted in “Africa Confidential”, 20 February 2004). Who needs enemies with such friends?

Indicative of the big consensus in current South Africa might also be the phenomenon that South African capital supports the major parties: According to “South Scan” (5 March 2004) the insurance giant Sanlam as the flagship of Afrikaans speaking finance capital donates one million Rand each to both the ANC and NNP, while Anglo American, the synonym for British-South African multinational mining capital, supports the big parties with six million Rand.

Meanwhile, President Mbeki assures business leaders at fundraising dinners (for example at the Grand West Casino in Cape Town) that the poor, hungry and unemployed masses will not rebel against the ANC. Instead, he philosophises: “the people who complain about the slow pace of change are those who drive Toyotas. They are complaining because they want to drive BMWs” (quoted from “City Press”, 23 February 2004).

As Ashwin Desai from the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Natal, under the impression of such and similar examples, concludes, “the ANC has made a quick conversion to crony capitalism. It has not unleashed communism on Houghton (the posh millionaires' residential area in Johannesburg, H.M.), it has gone to live there.” (http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs) For critical assessments of this kind he and others are brushed aside as “ultra-left” by those who execute the power of definition in the democratic South Africa of today. They are also labelled “demagogues” and accused - as by Michael Sachs (a researcher working at the national ANC office) in the “South African Labour Bulletin” (6/2003) - of not acknowledging that under the given circumstances “social movements must serve to augment, not undermine democratic power”, meaning with democratic power of course the power of the ANC.

The challenge for those who have managed to remain outside of the power centred, currently dominant alliances of the kind suggested above, must be to continue to not be bullied by such intimidation into compromise, silence, withdrawal or even compliance. By maintaining loyalty to the ideological and political values and norms for which they had supported the struggle against Apartheid in the first place, and by continuing to demand commitment to such goals, they document that there are indeed choices - even if not for the time being at the ballot boxes following this year's Easter weekend in South Africa.

* Henning Melber is Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden. He had joined SWAPO of Namibia in 1974 and was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit in Windhoek between 1992 and 2000.

* SEND COMMENTS ON THIS EDITORIAL – AND OTHER EVENTS IN AFRICA – TO [email][email protected]

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: We are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, but we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTION LINKS:

* A "greenies" guide to the General Election
http://www.emg.org.za/frame/frameset.htm
* Do the people have power yet?

* Electoral Institute of Southern Africa Election Update
http://www.eisa.org.za/PDF/eu_200404.pdf
* Double think in SA

* Housing battles in post-apartheid South Africa
http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com/feaSA.htm
* South Africa: Special report on a decade of democracy

* Battle for KZN hots up

Corruption watchdog Transparency International has warned that SA could be in breach of the African Union (AU) convention by allowing political parties to keep the sources of their private sector donations secret. Nongovernmental organisations have criticised government for not addressing this in the soon-to-be enacted Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Bill as it leaves the door open for business to buy political influence without anyone being aware of this relationship. SA's major political parties are set to clash with the Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa) in court later this year contesting Idasa's demand that they disclose the identity of private sector donors.