PART II: UNEQUAL, TRANSITIONAL CONTEXT
4. Introduction: Rendering trans-generational and lifespan inequality visible
4.6 Early transition period: Attempts to address inequality
4.6.6 Economic Policy implicated in cultural-structural-direct violence
violence, concealing and mystifying what happens when people produce, distribute, and consume.’ According to him, ‘[m]ost causes and effects are made invisible as
‘externalities’, outside mainstream theory and practice.’ He suggests that by making these externalities ‘explicit and internalizing them into theory and practice, less violent
127 economic structures may emerge’ (1996:viii). Marais (2001), Terreblanche (2002), Alexander (2002), Chua (2003), Gumede (2007), Gentle (2012) and Klein (2007) focus attention on the economic continuities of apartheid as well as the global plan to
democratise and marketise societies emerging from conflict. Terreblanche (2002:424) argues that ‘[t]he economic and social policy approach of the new government was formulated under strong pressure from the corporate sector and its global partners, and was based on several contentious premises’. According to Gumede (2007:84), the ANC entered the multiparty negotiations at a severe disadvantage against Nationalist party capacity, with its own members feuding over economic policy. In addition, he suggests, the ANC was under severe strain from the onslaught of local and international business, the media, the World Bank and the IMF. It is not clear if the ANC knew what the impact of their economic decisions would be on poor people on a day to day basis. Gumede argues that:
Like Britain’s Tony Blair, Mandela’s grasp of economics was somewhat rudimentary. He came from a generation of African Nationalists who used the rather vague Freedom Charter, which calls for public ownership, as their economic touchstone. However what finally convinced him were the
experiences of two avowed socialist states, China and Vietnam, whose leaders told him that the collapse of the Soviet Union had led them to embrace private enterprise. (Gumede, 2007:84).
The South African Communist Party (SACP) deputy general secretary and Deputy Minister of Transport Jeremy Cronin conceded that the liberation movement ‘were not well positioned, intellectually, theoretically in terms of policy formation, in terms of socio-economic transformation’ as they have been very focused on the ‘political tasks, democratisation, mobilisation, fighting a guerrilla struggle’(Gumede, 2007:84). A similar opinion was attributed to Winnie Mandela by journalist Nadira Naipaul who wrote an article based on an interview (which was later publicly disputed by Winnie Mandela), in the London Evening Standard of 8 March 2010:
You know, sometimes I think we had not thought it all out. There was no planning from our side. How could we? We were badly educated and the leadership does not acknowledge that. Maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and see where it all went wrong.
The country’s adoption of neoliberal economic orthodoxy has resulted in those who were already economically secure to maximise their benefits. It has been suggested that many
128 educated, skilled and/or politically connected black people, who have benefitted from affirmative action, black economic empowerment (BEE) deals and other advantages of societal transformation, have ‘deracialised’19 the middle class. The economic inequality in the country is thus seen to be between black and white (inter-group) and within the black group (intra-group). In a Mail & Guardian article titled ‘An apartheid beneficiary’s guide to the budget’, Meersman (2012) states that ‘the fall of apartheid became an
enormous boon for those best positioned to take advantage’. According to him these were mainly white South Africans who experienced a ‘surge in the value of their assets’ – both stocks and property. Meersman (2012) argues that ‘most prime property holders’
became millionaires. He suggests that ‘real estate may have been paid for, but whites were able to do this at artificially low prices because of the Group Areas Act …[which]
reserved prime locations for whites only’ (web reference 23). Many black middle class people who are deemed to have deracialised the propertied middle class had to obtain mortgages in line with the property boom and must earn exceptionally high salaries to pay mortgage bonds, and thus are not ‘equal’ to those with whom they are deemed to share a class. It is therefore a myth to believe that the middle class has been deracialised, if this argument is based on mortgaged property and monthly salaries in an unstable labour market. Uninterrupted inequality in South Africa is more complex than
stratification on the basis of mortgaged property and salaries would suggest. Race based inequality is still a feature which is being entrenched by the market democracy.
In the meantime, the inequality gap between the rich, ascribed rich and poor people has grown, crime/social harm remains at unacceptably high levels, and the criminal justice system is overburdened. Black people (diverse) are overrepresented in the criminal justice system both as victims and offenders (as discussed in chapter nine). On the one hand police have taken a tougher ‘shoot to kill’ stance in response to crime that is deemed to be ‘out of control’. On the other hand, the departments of Justice and Constitutional affairs, Correctional services and Social Development embrace restorative justice and continue with their main business of individualising ‘crime’ in line with the dispositional
19 According to the New History website, Mbeki saw the ‘formation of a black capitalist class as the key to a deracialised South African society and building a sustainable democracy’.
129 definition of crime/social harm. Many criminologists argue for situational aspects, and others argue that the interaction of dispositional and situational aspects should be taken into account. According to Galtung (1996:2) ‘the major causal direction for violence is from cultural via structural to direct violence.’ He argues that cultural violence is symbolic and that it legitimizes direct and structural violence (p.2). It has been suggested that direct violence is the most obvious form of violence ‘whereby an actor intending to cause physical or mental harm can be identified …the social structure itself is the medium through which the violence is conducted’ (Reitan, 2007:17).
The silence about the link between the economic path taken and visible, growing inequality and its wide effects appear to be related to a reluctance on the part of ‘the leadership’ to admit that they were deprived of a realistic frame of reference with which to comprehend the intricate workings of the global neoliberal project during and after the negotiation period. It has been suggested that neoliberalism ignores the distortions caused by economic and social inequalities, and that it ‘advocates the dominance of a
competition-driven market model’ in which ‘individuals in a society are viewed… as autonomous, rational producers and consumers whose decisions are motivated primarily by economic or material concerns’ (Farmer, 2006:5). On this view, the ANC’s assumed embarrassment arguably contributes to a ‘culture of denial’ (cf. Cohen 2001) about the wider impact of growing, nested inequality within South African society and the very real threat it poses to the Constitutional goals of equality, human rights and particularly social justice. On the other hand, it may well be that the ANC leadership have done a cost benefit analysis, that they knew exactly what the outcomes of embracing the neoliberal path would be, and that they have a plan to deal with increasing inequality which they are not sharing with the general citizenry.