The South African government of national unity marked its first 100 days in office on August 18. Green Left Weekly's Johannesburg correspondent, NORM DIXON, spoke to SACP Central Committee member JEREMY CRONIN about his assessment of the government's first few months and the tasks confronting the left and mass movements.
The starting point for assessing the government's performance, Jeremy Cronin stressed, is to understand the context in which it came into office. "It's a complicated period, part of a very difficult transition, so one shouldn't be easily critical," he said.
New ministers faced "huge learning curves"; not all are coping with the incumbent civil servants, a necessary compromise made during the negotiations to secure the April 27 elections. The second major limitation, he said, is that the current departmental budgets "are essentially inherited" from the apartheid regime.
To deal with this, the new government has opted "to cream off some surplus from all budgets and devote it to a Reconstruction and Development Program fund". The aim of the RDP fund is not to be the RDP, as that would sideline it into a few "do-good" projects, but "to wrench all the budgets into directions we want to pursue", Cronin explained.
As an example, he pointed to the Water Affairs Department which has no funds for the development of the rural water supply. This area was previously handled by the Development Bank of South Africa. In his speech marking the government's first 100 days, President Mandela announced that rural water infrastructure projects would now be funded by the RDP fund, but that ongoing responsibility for the projects would stay with the Department.
"But we are concerned about a number of things," Cronin told Green Left Weekly. "The prime concern is the fall back operation of our opponents — big business and the key individuals from the past who are still located within the government." These forces are paying lip service to RDP in an attempt to transform it into "a marginal, trickle-down operation" while ensuring that "the management, control and policy directions of the economy remain firmly in the grasp of those upon whom it was bestowed by decades of brutal capitalism and racial oppression".
There "are signs that the ANC-led government of national unity is falling into that trap", Cronin warned. "There are tendencies to present the RDP, as not being driven by macro-economic restructuring and wealth redistribution, but by 'win-win' arrangements like Japanese soft loans, lotteries and casinos, or by seeing the RDP as just plainly business-driven. Apart from being unjust, that is not going to work."
The SACP, the Council of South African Trade Unions and the ANC are "quite concerned" about these tendencies. Their concern has been heightened by the first draft of the government's version of the RDP. "There is a good half and another terrible other half which subsumes the good under a Thatcherite export-orientated and growth-led economic policy."
Cronin attributes these tendencies to "the balance of forces", to "inferiority complexes" among leaders of the liberation movement regarding their ability to handle economic policy, and also to the "revenge of the incumbent civil servants who remain very powerful".
To counter these trends, a mass-based RDP Council has been formed and is being convened jointly by the ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance, the National Education Coordinating Committee, and the South African National Civics Organisation. "It is emerging like the old United Democratic Front," he said.
The RDP Council will work to combat attempts by big business and former officials of the apartheid regime in the government to divert the RDP away from fundamental macro-economic restructuring and wealth redistribution. It will fight for "a major restructuring of the civil service" to minimise the influence of the past. Cronin said that the ANC in government has been "walking gingerly around that, but it has got to happen".
As far as the government's conservative economic policies are concerned, Cronin said that the "complex political transition" meant that the first objective was the democratic elections. This required the liberation movement to make a "principled commitment to building some kind of political consensus. But I think, in the process, some hard strategic choices, particularly in relation to the economy, were pushed under the rug. The left, both the SACP and large parts of the ANC, are becoming more vociferous and saying the hard choices have to be made."
Cronin agreed with criticisms, from sections of the left, that mass movement activists were not being adequately armed ideologically to face the new challenges. "We need to be more robust, we do need to equip people more effectively with an understanding of what's really at stake, beginning with the [ANC] leadership itself.
"I think that a lot of the problems that concern the left about the government at present are due to naivete rather than some hard-nosed choice, although that does exist. The bottom line is that it is the RDP versus the neo-liberal economic program. That's the clear line we have to draw more forcefully so that the top leadership down to the ordinary branch members understand [the issues] more clearly than they do at present. In any case, the struggles and the debates will force us to do that."
A sharp differentiation within the ANC can be expected as the class struggle impacts on the government, Cronin said. "The battles around the Cuba issue — which we won, Mandela and Mbeki have strongly committed themselves to supporting the vote against the US blockade in the United Nations — were a straw in the wind for a number of other issues. Some ANC leaders prefer these things not to be drawn too clearly. But by mounting a public campaign, that was then attacked by the National Party, the left forced the issue out in the open.
"Class pressures are going to be forced up and we have to give them some ideological coherence. It is in our interests to do that. It's not in the interests of those with right-wing tendencies in the ANC, or elsewhere who prefer to rely on populist calls for national unity and to turn the RDP into some soggy broad thing."
Cronin also agreed that there was "a real danger of left-wing personalities propping up old habits. We really have to fight against that which is it is very important for the left, outside government, not to just rely on the left in government. That is why the RDP Council is critical."
Asked if SACP members who are government ministers are accountable to the party, Cronin replied that it is "complex because they are under ANC discipline, they were elected on an ANC ticket. Those in the cabinet are not even under ANC discipline, as are the MPs who are also party members. They are under a kind of cabinet discipline of the government of national unity."
However, he continued, "we do have dynamic connections with communist personalities in government. We certainly use that access to express discontent and warnings about our concerns. The bottom line is that our people cannot endlessly make compromises which are detrimental to the left. Our ambition is not to have cabinet members for the sake of having them, but to have effective cabinet ministers who can begin to implement a program that is favourable to the left. We don't expect socialism to emanate from the present government but there is that clear understanding that party members who are ministers will have to pull out of the government if the going becomes untenable."
The most important task for socialists at the moment "is to defend the RDP", Cronin emphasised. The SACP and COSATU are convening a Conference of the Left for Reconstruction and Development in November. "The SACP and COSATU have every intention of using the 'S'-word frequently and loudly but we see the strategic objective of the process leading up to, and beyond that conference, as consolidating a very strong mass-based alliance around the implementation of the RDP."
Will real change come to South Africa? That will depend on the mass movement reasserting its role in the movement for transformation, Cronin said. "Given transformation of the budget, of the civil service and a little more time, one will see a much more energetic development of some projects. I think that will start to flow over the next 200 days or so."