12 November 2009
Johannesburg — WHEN the African National Congress (ANC) and its leftist allies gather tomorrow for three days of talks on how to deliver on jobs, education, health, crime and rural development, the answers they craft will have to go beyond ideology.
The summit comes amid a war of words between the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) about the National Planning Commission, the role of state-owned entities in the economy, the debate on nationalisation, national health insurance, intra-alliance battles and their effect on governance especially in municipalities, job losses, corruption in the government, and who in the Cabinet decides economic policy.
If alliance leaders accept the judgment of British historian Eric Hobsbawm - that 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, market fundamentalism has crashed as spectacularly as Soviet-style command economies - they will have to convince their constituencies to put the national interest ahead of sectional interests if the government of President Jacob Zuma is to deliver on its election promises.
Already trade unions have taken flak from ANC figures who put part of the blame for tardy service delivery at the door of complacent public service unions.
On Tuesday, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said teachers' performance had to be assessed, which teacher unions oppose. At a recent meeting with principals, Zuma asked why teaching time in the average township school was still significantly less than schools in formerly white areas.
Cosatu will have to refashion the way teacher unions negotiate with a developmental state if quality education is to become a reality. This "paradigm shift" is likely to be extracted as a key concession .
But it i s not only Cosatu that will have to make concessions. The job- loss bloodbath and the slow response in implementing the f ramework a greement between the government, business and labour guiding SA's response to the global meltdown is likely to see Cosatu berating the government and business.
An alliance insider says the ANC will have to "really assess" the global meltdown and ask tough questions about the chosen macroeconomic growth path. "We need a shared understanding of what has gone wrong in the economy. Ours cannot be an ad hoc take. It's not just about the greed of the black middle class and the need to regulate. We are going to push for an alternative set of policy choices," the insider says.
This push for a departure from the old ways has resulted in a turf war over who makes economic policy and where in the Cabinet control resides on this matter.
Hence the public spats over the design and powers of the National Planning Commission. While the ANC national executive committee has said it will back Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel to chair the commission, which it wants to consist of experts, alliance leaders are likely to argue for a role for the economic cluster ministries, of which Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel is part.
Alliance insiders say the summit must also ramp up efforts around sectors shedding jobs. To date, the Industrial Development Corporation has made R6bn available to companies to stave off further job losses. Union leaders say the efforts remain patchy in the face of more than 1-million job losses this year.
Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini has said they will ask Zuma to "lash" ministers who are not using the expanded public works programme to create jobs. Unless jobs are protected and the tide of unemployment stemmed, no amount of growth will reduce structural inequalities.
In an article titled So What Is the Key Political Question of the 21st Century? Hobsbawm put it thus: "The purpose of an economy is not profit but the wellbeing of all people, just as the legitimation of the state is its people not its power.
"Economic growth is not an end but a means to good, human and just societies. It does not matter what we call regimes that pursue this aim. It does matter how, and with what priorities, we combine the public and private elements in our mixed economies. That is the key political question of the 21st century."
The alliance leaders face stark choices. They must develop a social compact on jobs, and ensure the state succeeds in education, health, local government and rooting out crime and corruption. Zuma's task is to go beyond merely balancing these interests. His job is to carry the political costs of the trade-offs each of the allies will have to make to put the national interest first.
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