The Tragedy of South Africa’s “Democracy Born in Chains”
Klein quotes Nelson Mandela in January, 1990 (two weeks before he was freed) in a note to his supporters from prison saying: “The nationalization of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC (and changing) our views....is inconceivable. Black economic empowerment is a goal we fully support and encourage, but in our situation state control of certain sectors of the economy is unavoidable.” That belief became ANC policy in 1955 in its Freedom Charter. The liberation struggle wasn’t just about a political system but an economic one as well. White workers in mines earned 10 times more than blacks, and large industrialists worked with the military to enforce order and disappear dissenters.
Above photo, September 2, 2003: Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley speaking to the media at the re-opening of the Williams Elementary School on Chicago’s South Side as the “Williams Multiplex.” Although the closing of schools for “academic failure” under No Child Left Behind was still more than four years into the future in 2002 and 2003, Chicago began the process of scapegoating inner city schools early. In April 2002, the Chicago Board of Education, on the recommendation of the new CEO Arne Duncan (who had replaced Paul Vallas in July 2001), voted to close three elementary schools (all of them all-black and serving the poorest of Chicago’s children). The closings were done because, Duncan said, the schools had “failed.” With the closing of the three schools, Duncan began the manipulation of test data to provide the school board and mayor with a steady stream of public schools that could be flipped into unusual configurations (some “small schools”, some “military academies” and some by other names. One of the schools slated for closing in April 2002, Daniel Hale Williams Elementary, pleaded that its one-year drop in test scores was the result of a gang war that broke out in the adjacent Dearborn Homes public housing project at the time students were taking the 2001 Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) which at the time was Chicago’s high-stakes test. The gang war itself began when rivals gangs competed for dwindling turf as a result of Chicago’s destruction of public housing (see following page). Williams was proclaimed as part of a “renaissance” in public education through school closings more than a year before the official unveiling of “Renaissance 2010.” Standing with Daley during the Williams re-opening in September 2003 (above) were Michael Scott (above and to Daley’s right) and Arne Duncan (top right corner in the above photograph). Scott and Duncan presided over the greatest transfer of public schools to private operators outside of New Orleans between 2002 and the present. Scott has since left the Chicago Board of Education to become a real estate developer, while Duncan continues to eliminate public schools and replace them with charter schools and other entities (from “small schools” to “military academies”). Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Once apartheid ended, a new way was possible, and Mandela seemed poised to lead it. The ANC had “a unique opportunity to reject the free market orthodoxy of the day” and choose a “third path between Communism and capitalism.” ANC candidates swept the 1994 elections and Mandela became president at a time South Africa surpassed Brazil as the most unequal society in the world. Negotiations were held with the ruling National Party, and a peaceful hand over was achieved but not without “prevent(ing) South Africa’s apartheid-era rulers from wreaking havoc on their way out the door.”
Negotiations took place on two parallel tracks - political and economic. Mandela and his chief negotiator, Cyril Ramaphosa, “won on almost every count” politically. But along side it, economic negotiations were held with the country’s current president, Thabo Mbeki, in charge with the outcome in the end far different. With ANC leaders preoccupied with controlling Parliament, the former white supremacist government and industrialists were determined to safeguard their wealth, and they succeeded by assuring Washington Consensus policies would be instituted when political power changed hands.
ANC economists and lawyers were outfoxed or outgunned by the opposition, IMF, World Bank, GATT and power of big capital against inexperienced politicians and technocrats who ended up losers. Black officials controlled the government, but discovered the real power was elsewhere. As Klein put it: “The bottom line was that South Africa was free but simultaneously captured.” The leadership mistakenly thought once firmly in power they could undo earlier made transition compromises.
They couldn’t or didn’t for the same reasons other developing countries accept free market rules. Adopt them or be punished by the market as Mandela learned when he was freed. The South African stock market collapsed in panic, and the country’s currency (the rand) dropped by 10 percent. He acknowledged the problem later on saying it’s “impossible for countries....to decide economic policy without regard to the likely response of these markets.” It’s too bad he didn’t know how Hugo Chavez managed after 1999 (oil aside). He achieved what Mandela reneged on, and Venezuela’s economy is booming. Had he and ANC officials stood their ground early on, South Africa (with its mineral riches) might have done the same thing - had a growth economy in a socially democratic state and a model for its neighbors.
They didn’t, black South Africans lost out, Mandela’s legacy is tainted, and a key factor was current president Thabo Mbeki. He spent years studying in exile in England during the apartheid years during which time “he was breathing in the fumes of Thatcherism.” He became the ANC’s free market tutor, believed in market fundamentalism, and its prescription was “growth and more growth.” It meant neoliberal shock therapy with the full Friedman package Mbeki supported. He later professed: “Just call me a Thatcherite,” and Mandela told journalist John Pilger the same thing in retirement saying: “....you can call it Thatcherite but, for this country, privatization is the fundamental policy.”
After over a decade of that agenda (1994 - 06), Klein highlighted the toll showing conditions today much worse than under apartheid, and ANC’s leadership responsible:
• the number of people living on less than $1 a day doubled from two to four million;
• the unemployment rate more than doubled to 48 percent from 1991 - 2002;
• only 5000 of 35 million black South Africans earn over $60,000 a year;
• the ANC government build 1.8 million homes while two million South Africans lost theirs;
• nearly one million South Africans were evicted from farms in the first decade of democracy; as a result, the shack dweller population grew by 50 percent, and in 2006, 25 percent of South Africans lived in them with no running water or electricity. And there’s more:
• the HIV/AIDS infection rate is about 20 percent, and the Mbeki government shamefully denied the severity of the crisis and did little to alleviate it; it’s been a major reason why average life expectancy in the country declined by 13 years since 1990;
• 40 percent of schools have no electricity;
• 25 percent of people have no access to clean water and most who do can’t afford the cost; and
• 60 percent of people have inadequate sanitation, and 40 percent no telephones.
“Freedom” for these people and all black South Africans came at a high price, and no efforts are being made to ameliorate it. Political empowerment was traded for economic apartheid under Chicago School fundamentalist rules. Klein observed: “Never before had a government-in-waiting been so seduced by the international community.” If China, Vietnam and even Russia saw “the neoliberal light,” Mandela was told, how could South Africa resist it. The ANC leadership might have (and Mandela had the credentials to lead them) had they examined the wreckage around the world in Friedman-seduced countries. Instead, they took the easy way out and surrendered.
