Karima Brown
28 October 2008
column
Johannesburg — MUCH time has been devoted to trying to fathom whether the African National Congress (ANC) has shifted leftwards on economic policy issues in recent months, especially since Polokwane.
Commentators have been engaging in a robust debate about the issue, with some analysts arguing that leftward change on economic policy is all talk and no substance.
As a political writer who has tracked ANC policy formulation processes for more than three years, I am amazed that analysts continue to believe that the ANC is intent on keeping everything the same when its resolutions at its policy conference in June last year and at Polokwane point to something entirely different. This is true on education, health, the formation of a state-owned mining company, calls for a state-owned pharmaceutical entity to lower the costs of medicines, and a revamp of state-owed banks -- as pointed out by ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe at the press briefing following the alliance economic summit.
Some even buy into the ANC spin about "no change" while others -- including yours truly -- have been making the case that not only is policy change on the cards, it is essential if we are to address the challenges of unemployment, inequality, poverty and poor service delivery.
There are several reasons for the confusion. The first is linked to the ANC's chameleon-like approach to policy development -- especially during the Mbeki years -- and its insistence on speaking out of both sides of its mouth. Then it was fashionable for policy gurus to argue that morphing the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) into Gear, and later Asgi-SA, was somehow not only consistent in terms of its underlying understanding of macroeconomic fundamentals, but in terms of the ANC and the government's economic policy processes evolving in a straight line.
It took the ANC's leftist allies to point out that the RDP and Gear were premised on fundamentally different approaches to industrial policy, its relationship with trade policy and other key issues relating to the mandate of the Reserve Bank, the role of the treasury in the planning process of the government's spending priorities, questions of inflation targeting, the role of state-owned enterprises, and rural and agrarian reform, to name but a few.
Another reason why analysts often fail to appreciate breaks in continuity at the level of policy is the way in which many define the ANC. They view the party as a narrow nationalist movement devoid of any progressive and revolutionary elements, both in policy and organisational terms. However the ANC's development points to a dialectic between the class content of its national liberation struggle and the national character of the class contestation in a democracy.
In an interview on e.tv after his recent medium-term expenditure framework policy statement, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told Andrew Barnes that policy formulation was "not like religion" and that it could and does "change". To illustrate his point, he went on to say that the recent bail-out by the US government of private banks could not have been imaginable or "fashionable" in certain economic policy circles six months ago, yet it happened. Hence the need for change if and when required.
My point is this: what's the use of arguing whether policy has shifted leftwards if one is not answering the fundamental question: how are we to deal with poverty, growing inequality and jobless growth after 14 years of orthodoxy on economic policy? Surely that is the question that should be uppermost in the minds of the commentators, analysts and, dare I say, politicians?
But I guess it's easier to shadowbox and argue among ourselves while poor people get poorer and we continue to have a situation where we have so many people with nothing to lose, a situation that is clearly unsustainable in both political and social terms. We need policies that are in the best interests of the majority of our people and if they happen to lean leftward, so be it.
Brown is political editor.
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