Inside South Africa's 'elite transition'

Review by Marina Carman

Elite transition: from Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa

By Patrick Bond

Pluto Press, London, 2000

318pp, $47.95

For anyone disappointed with the fruits of the post-apartheid period
in South Africa and the rightward shift of the African National Congress
in government, books like this one are a real reward — if only because
the first step to changing something is understanding it.

The flood of progressive leaders into government in 1994, and the failure
of much of the left to adequately criticise and combat the “elite transition”,
has meant that this sort of discussion has been limited to publications
such as the African Communist, Links and a small number of
others.

The speed of the transition in South Africa also surprised many — but
becomes clearer in hindsight.

Bond provides a useful contribution to understanding not only the political
shifts of the new government, but also the deeper economic forces at work
and the insidious influence of the World Bank. He asserts that it is through
“classical Marxian approaches to political economy [that] we can best understand
the elite character of South Africa's 1990 political transition”.

The problems the South African economy faced during apartheid, he argues,
were based on the generalised, long-term, structural problems of capitalism,
in particular overaccumulation (“excessive investment has occurred and
hence goods cannot be brought to market profitably, leaving capital to
pile up in sectoral bottlenecks or speculative outlets without being put
back into new productive investment”).

Bond's analysis of the relationship between these economic factors and
their political outcomes is a fascinating part of this book. The distorted
and ailing South African economy, economic sanctions and political instability
(which was not conducive to foreign investment) helped force the apartheid
era National Party (NP) into accepting change.

When the ANC inherited this economy, the policy choices it began to
make (under pressure from local and international capital) did not solve
the underlying problems. In fact, they served to continue them.

This continuation of neo-liberal policies was justified, excused or
covered over. Bond's exposition of the sort of “social contract” politics,
“talking left, acting right”, “coerced compromise” and “corporatist” projects
led by the ANC is thorough.

The book traces the shifts in neo-liberal policy through the Reconstruction
and Development Program adopted in 1994 to the Growth, Employment and Redistribution
policy adopted in 1996. While the RDP was initially seen as a battleground
between the left and right, by the time of GEAR it was clear which side
had control and where the process was heading. Bond's detailed documentation
of the failure of the ANC government to deliver on basic needs (housing
in particular) is an indictment of the policy direction it took.

Interestingly, the remaining strength of progressive forces and public
awareness of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's role in other
African countries meant that the first post-apartheid loan to South Africa
was not accepted until 1997 (and even then it was a small one). Debt was
also a vexed issue, due to the ANC's acceptance of the need to pay the
debt run up by the NP government.

However, Bond argues, “Conventional progressive critiques of the near-mythical
importance of the Bretton Woods Institutions requires amendment in South
Africa, where the World Bank barely established a loan portfolio during
the ANC's first term: instead, the damage done was in the ideological and
policy spheres, where Bank staff were prolific in their support for essentially
status quo arrangements even where clear, redistributive alternatives had
been mandated by the Democratic Movement.”

In the last chapter, Bond provides a good overview of the worldwide
efforts of imperialism to rebuild its legitimacy, and the chinks in its
armour which have appeared in the form of anti-Third World debt campaigns
and the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation in November.

Given the renewed spirit of international solidarity generated by the
new movements, Bond's assessment of the possibilities for a struggle for
real liberation in South Africa is optimistic. “In a previous epoch —
one recent enough in the collective memory and still bursting with the
pride of authentic struggle — not more than a few thousand South African
radical civil society activists took up a task of similar world-scale implications
... and they won!” Now the next step needs to be taken.

From GLW issue 409