New South African Review 5

Beyond Marikana

Prishani Naidoo, Noor Nieftagodien, Marcel Paret, Devan Pillay, Samantha Ashman, Ross Harvey, Crispen Chinguno, Anthony Turton, Roger Southall, Pierre Vos, Samantha Waterhouse, Ivor Sarakinsky, Monique Marks, David Bruce, David Dickinson, Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Garth Pere, Karen Smith, Rod Alence, Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall, Gilbert M Khadiagala, Prishani Naidoo, Devan Pillay, Roger Southall, Prishani Naidoo

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781868148752
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This fifth volume in the New South African Review series takes as its starting point the shock wave emanating from the events at Marikana on 16 August 2012 and how it has reverberated throughout politics and society. Some of the chapters in the volume refer directly to Marikana. In others, the infl uence of that fateful day is pervasive if not direct. Marikana has, for instance, made us look differently at the police and at how order is imposed on society. Monique Marks and David Bruce write that the massacre 'has come to hold a central place in the analysis of policing, and broader political events since 2012'.The chapters highlight a range of current concerns – political, economic and social. David Dickinson's chapter looks at the life of the poor in a township from within. In contrast, the chapter on foreign policy by Garth le Pere analyses South Africa's approach to international relations in the Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma eras. Anthony Turton's account, 'When gold mining ends' is a chilling forecast of an impending environmental catastrophe. Both Devan Pillay and Noor Nieftagodien focus attention on the left and, in different ways, ascribe its rise to a new politics in the wake of Marikana.The essays in NSAR 5: Beyond Marikana present a range of topics and perspectives of interest to general readers, but the book will also be a useful work of reference for students and researchers.

1: NEW POLITICAL DIRECTIONS?

CHAPTER 1: Reconstituting and re-imagining the left after Marikana

Noor Nieftagodien

Since the Marikana massacre in August 2012 the character of what constitutes left politics in South Africa has been experiencing profound transformation. Until then the left was broadly defined in relationship to the Tripartite Alliance, and more specifically by either support for or opposition to the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) project of the African National Congress(ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Undergirded by the ANC’s political power, the left in the ruling Alliance placed their hopes in an ANC-led state to deliver ‘a better life for all’. The ANC’s hegemony has been constructed on the idea that, as the main party of liberation, it embodies the national aspirations of the black majority and is the ultimate guarantor of freedom. Its dominance was also entrenched by the subordination and institutionalisation of the independent movements of the working class, built from the 1970s, which led the struggle to overthrow apartheid. Unions, civics, youth organisations and women’s movements were marshalled behind a political consensus centred on the NDR. Left-wing critics, particularly from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), were tolerated as long they did not pose a fundamental challenge to this consensus – which has consigned them to the purgatory of the seemingly perpetual first phase of the revolution. Those who were deemed a threat have been silenced or purged, to ensure acquiescence to the party line. This has been made evident by, for instance, contestations related to the Marikana massacre, Nkandlagate and the government’s macroeconomic policies.

Although the ANC’s comfortable victory in the 2014 general elections seemed to confirm the authority of the ruling Alliance, beneath this veneer of ‘business as usual’ important tectonic shifts were already underway, the effects of which have opened the prospects for wide-ranging changes to the country’s political landscape. The Marikana massacre undoubtedly marked a moment of severe disruption to and subsequent fracturing of the Tripartite Alliance. However, the ideological fault lines that have since manifested themselves publicly have been present in the Alliance for many years. Centred on divisions between those who defend the status quo (cohering principally around the ANC/SACP leadership) and those who have found the subordination of the workers’ movement to the economic and political interests of the elite increasingly intolerable, the contestations between them have become increasingly intense.

The fracturing of the Tripartite Alliance has opened the space for the reconfiguration of left politics and, for the first time in the democratic era, the constitution of a mass-based and national movement of the left outside and independent of the ruling Alliance seems probable. The National Union of Mineworker’s (Numsa’s) decisions in December 2013 not to support the ANC in the elections and to launch the United Front have been instrumental in reinvigorating and redefining left politics. It is reminiscent of Numsa’s proposal in 1993 to establish a workers’ party, which was rejected by the majority of Cosatu members who baulked at the idea and tied the federation to the ANC. Twenty years later the metal union is again at the centre of a historic political realignment, the contours of which are likely to be shaped by various factors. In this chapter the focus is on five principal elements that have defined the nascent process of the reconstitution of the left since the Marikana massacre.

The five are: first, the ‘rebellion of the poor’ that has engulfed impoverished communities across the country for more than a decade; second, the strike wave on the platinum mines between 2012 and 2014 (punctuated by the Marikana massacre, which exposed not only the nexus of mutual interest between political and economic elites but also the crisis of established unions); third, Numsa’s crucial decision to withdraw its support for the ANC in the 2014 elections and to launch the United Front that has opened a political space that could become the focal point for a mass-based left movement; fourth, the birth of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and its rapid growth into an electoral force that has introduced an important dynamic into working-class politics, especially among young black people; and fifth, independent left activists who have rich histories of struggle in a variety of movements and campaigns and have kept alive multiple spaces of contentious politics. The character and evolution of these different elements and their articulation with one another are the crucial ingredients in this formative period of the reconstitution and potential re-imagining of the movements of the working class and poor.

This chapter proceeds from the premise that attempts at left reconstitution are not new, and, in the democratic era, commenced with some earnestness in the late 1990s when struggles against privatisation and other neoliberal policies erupted across the country. Although Cosatu mobilised against privatisation, these struggles were mostly community-based and as a result the emerging left politics remained divided between workplaces and communities. This division overlapped to a large degree with the separation between those inside and outside the Tripartite Alliance. With the launch of the United Front there are renewed prospects of overcoming the divisions between these spheres of working-class politics, which could become a distinctive feature of the new left politics. Thus, how will Numsa and its union allies transcend their particular focus on worker-based issues to incorporate the struggles, politics and new practices of contestation in informal settlements and rural areas, in the domestic sphere and by outsourced workers? To put it differently, how can the newly created United Front become the political home of, and be shaped by, the unemployed, casualised workers, youth and women? What is arguably important is not merely a realignment of the left (of bringing together existing organisations) but crucially a reconstitution of the left (of a collective re-imagining of its practices and politics).

There are no blueprints to prescribe how this process should unfold, although there are lessons to be learned from international experiences, as well as our own history. In this light, the chapter suggests that it might be useful to cast our eyes back to our own recent history of struggle: the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then, as now, there was considerable fluidity in left politics and various initiatives were undertaken, at local and national levels, to establish unity of working-class movements and specifically of the left. Activists in numerous formations debated how to build a national movement based on the emerging struggles in black communities and workplaces. It was a time of experimentation, plurality, learning and – above all else – of imagining a different future. Similar processes are currently evident in different parts of the world.

GLOBAL DISCONTENT AND NEW HOPE

Movements of contentious politics and left reconfiguration in South Africa echo events unfolding in different parts of the world, especially in the last decade. Global capitalism has for years been experiencing multiple and systemic crises, brought into sharp relief by the meltdown of 2008. Profit rates continue to slide and investment in the real economy is at a historic low, while global debt increased by a phenomenal US$57 trillion since the crisis (New York Times, 5 February 2015). Unemployment has remained stubbornly high across the world. In the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries unemployment figures breached the 50 million mark in 2012, with young people the most severely affected by chronic joblessness. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), youth unemployment in the advanced economies increased by 24.9 per cent between 2008 and 2012. In Greece and Spain, the countries of the global North worst affected by the economic crisis, youth unemployment in 2013 stood at 62 per cent and 56 per cent respectively (The Guardian, 30 August 2013). The crisis has not been confined to the economic sphere: environmental destruction is continuing at a pace that could soon become irreversible, threatening our survival. Food insecurity is now endemic in large parts of the world, even though enough is produced to feed everyone. Ever-widening global inequality has become the most potent indicator of the inherent iniquities of the system: the eighty-five wealthiest people on the planet have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion. Global economic and political elites have amassed enormous wealth and power over the past generation, while the number of people eking out a daily existence continues to rise.

These conditions have produced widespread enmity towards those who hold economic and political power, witnessed in the unprecedented number of uprisings since 2008 against the establishments in several countries. The powerful slogan ‘we are the 99 per cent’ has encapsulated the mood of the global protests, and reflects the crystallisation of awareness about how a small and powerful global elite has been responsible for the immiseration of large sections of the world’s population. While international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and multinational companies protect the interests of the super-wealthy one per cent, states have either facilitated or have been too weak to curb their profiteering. Social democratic parties in the North and former liberation parties in the South have similarly been complicit, including being overzealous in implementing austerity policies. Consequently, they have in varying degrees lost their historic support among the working classes and poor, thus opening opportunities for the emergence of new movements and parties to represent the interests of the 99 per cent.

A salient feature of these movements has been the prominent role played by young people, who have felt the brunt of the economic crisis perhaps more than any other sector of society. In the Middle East and North African (MENA) region where nearly two-thirds of the population is under thirty, youth unemployment is estimated to be as high as 40 per cent. Increasingly excluded and marginalised, with limited possibilities of enjoying meaningful lives, young people have led rebellions against austerity policies and undemocratic regimes. By far the most significant of these movements was the Arab rebellion of 2011. Triggered by events in Tunisia, millions of people across the MENA region rose up against dictatorships. Cairo quickly emerged as the epicentre of the rebellion and over a period of weeks millions of Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square and other public spaces to demand the removal of the United States-supported Mubarak dictatorship. Elsewhere in the region comparable protests occurred, although with varying outcomes.

A tsunami of popular protests swept across the world around the same time. In the United States, the Occupy Movement saw tens of thousands of young people rejecting corporate greed, embodied by the financiers of Wall Street. In mid-October 2011, demonstrations occurred in hundreds of cities across the world. The Spanish Indignados involved hundreds of thousands, while in Greece millions participated in general strikes. Two years later, young people in Turkey picked up the baton in mass demonstrations against the regime. In India, rape and other forms of violence against women have also triggered large demonstrations, led by women. In Chile students have been protesting against cuts in education funding since at least 2006. Between 2011 and 2013 hundreds of thousands of high school and university students took to the streets and occupied educational institutions to demand an increase in state funding for public education. The movement has sustained regular mass mobilisations in Santiago for months now, and has set off massive unrest across the country, and student movements in Colombia and Argentina have been inspired to follow their example (Honwana 2013). Apart from the rebellion in the MENA region, there have been youth protests against austerity policies and undemocratic regimes in other parts of Africa such as Angola, Senegal, Uganda and Mozambique.

These struggles and those preceding them gave birth to new movements. A new generation of social movements emanated from struggles in Latin America, followed by other parts of the global South. At the same time the massive anti-war movements, climate justice campaigns and global protests against IMF and World Bank-driven austerity measures also produced alliances across old political divides. Such mass working-class mobilisation created conditions in which new left-wing parties could emerge and flourish. In countries such as France, Britain and Spain socialist alliances and fronts are being built more effectively to oppose austerity programmes of right-wing governments. This renewed shift to forge left unity, led by experiences from Latin America, has often been driven from below. Importantly, most of these contentious movements have bypassed established parties and have given birth to new political practices and organisations. Young people, who have limited attachments to older organisations and their political traditions, have been in the forefront of creating new bottom-up democratic practices. Public spaces across the world, such as Tahrir Square, were simultaneously points of convergence for protests involving millions of people and spaces of hope where new futures were imagined and practised. In Greece, mass discontent over a debilitating austerity programme caused the spectacular growth of the explicitly left party, Syriza: in 2004 the party, comprising various left groups and with a largely youthful membership, received a mere 3.3 per cent of votes but its strong anti-austerity politics transformed Syriza into the party of hope for millions of Greeks and saw it winning the elections in 2015. Inspired by events in Greece, the new left-wing party in Spain, Podemos, is mobilising tens of thousands behind its anti-austerity campaign. However, as has become evident, the advances made by these struggles are not guaranteed – for example, the uprising in Egypt has been set back by what is effectively a military regime and in Europe neofascist organisations and other right-wing parties have also mobilised support on racist and anti-immigrant programmes. In Greece, the neofascist party Golden Dawn could gain from any failures by the left-wing Syriza government. The current conjuncture clearly holds potential for the creation of mass-based left movements, but simultaneously also for the flourishing of various forms of right-wing politics such as anti-immigrant/xenophobic and racist movements. Both these trends are also present in contemporary South Africa.

CONTENTIOUS COMMUNITIES

Two decades of democracy have undoubtedly brought about improvements in the lives of the black majority, including the rollout of housing, essential services, basic education and the provision of social grants. And yet serious problems persist, reflected in South Africa’s status as arguably the most unequal country in the world. Figures from 2008 showed how the wealthiest 5 per cent of South Africans accounted for 43 per cent of total income whereas the poorest 50 per cent accounted for a mere 7.79 per cent (Isaacs 2014). More recently, Oxfam reported that the two richest men in the country, Nicky Oppenheimer and Johann Rupert, have an estimated combined wealth of R165 billion, which is equal to what the poorest 27 million people own. Moreover, and despite complaints from employers about a rigid labour market, nearly a third of the workforce has been informalised. Large-scale outsourcing, casualisation and the growth in labour brokering mean that a growing number of workers now enjoy only limited rights. Over the last twenty years the wage share of national income has consistently decreased, indicating stagnation in real wages. According to official statistics, in 2008 two-thirds of workers earned R2 500 or less, and one-third R800 or less.

Poor black communities in urban and rural areas have been disproportionately affected by these adverse economic conditions. For example, while official unemployment remains at record levels of approximately 25 per cent, among black youth in townships and informal settlements the figure ranges between 40 and 50 per cent. Furthermore, poor communities also suffer from either the absence or the poor quality of basic services. Although the state has built more than 3 million Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses, there remains a backlog of about 2 million and with the slowdown in housing provision those on waiting-lists will probably have to wait for many years before they can enjoy the relative comfort and security of a home. RDP housing complexes have been established in or close to existing townships, thereby reinforcing apartheid’s spatial segregation. Informal settlements follow a similar pattern. Effectively, the majority of black people remain trapped in spaces of marginalisation and of absence: of high unemployment, undeveloped local economies, lack of or inadequate service delivery, limited public spaces, poor public education and so forth. Cronyism, corruption and maladministration have also contributed enormously to the deepening of the ...