ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 2, No. 35, 30 August - 5 September 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Letter from the President: Reports on economy tell us we are on course * People's Summit: Democratic movement joins global day of action * Women in Struggle V: Florence Mophosho: A stout-hearted and able fighter for women's rights --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Reports on economy tell us we are on course This week Statistics South Africa (SSA) issued figures reporting on our Gross Domestic Product. The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) published its 2002 "Annual Economic Report" (AER). Quite correctly, both these reports have attracted the appropriate attention of the mass media. The economy is one of the areas on which the ANC, our government and the country as a whole focus. The reason for this is obvious. The economy is about the standard of living and the quality of life of all our people. Economic questions are also at the heart of the discussions at the current Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD). The achievement of the goals of sustainable development requires the mobilisation of adequate material resources. For many decades, economic issues have featured prominently among the objectives of our national liberation movement. In many respects, our movement was ahead of other liberation movements in Africa in this regard. This emanated from the fact that the process of colonisation in our country made a decisive economic impact on the colonised, certainly more than in the majority of African countries. This made it necessary that our movement should formulate both the political and the economic goals of our struggle. We are all familiar with the brutal economic history of colonialism and apartheid in our country. This includes the massive land dispossession, which, in 1994, resulted in 87 per cent of the land being owned by the white minority. A less severe, but serious legacy of armed colonial occupation, is at the centre of the international controversy about Zimbabwe today. In our country, to ensure that the majority remained landless and propertyless, and therefore obliged to offer itself as labour for hire, a body of prohibitions evolved which denied the Africans the possibility to own and utilise productive property as entrepreneurs. The white owners of productive property used their dominant political position to reduce their production costs as much as possible, to increase their profits. A critical element of this was the depression of the cost of labour by implementing a cheap labour policy. To maintain and protect the system of white minority rule, it was necessary that the entire white population should be given a stake in the perpetuation of white minority domination. This included the white workers. Accordingly, the colonial and apartheid system divided the workers according to race and colour. Essentially, the skilled and higher paid jobs were reserved for the white workers. The black workers were restricted to the category of unskilled workers. To maintain this system, there was a racist state and racist governments, which used brutal state force and terrorism against all attempts to end this iniquity. This is the legacy that continues to explain and inform the most important socio-economic features of our country. Its eradication is the most pressing challenge we face to achieve the successful reconstruction and development of our country. Many of our visitors, delegates to the WSSD, will see, and might be surprised, at the contrast between Sandton and Alexandra Township, and between Soweto and the Wanderers Stadium, which hosts the Ubuntu Village, eight years after our liberation. Hopefully, by the time the Summit ends, they will have gained a better understanding of the challenges this country faces in its own necessarily protracted struggle to achieve the goals of sustainable development. Their experience should also give them a better understanding of what we mean when we speak of North-South global apartheid. The history we have recalled is directly relevant to the issue of the nature, structure and performance of our economy today. It has a direct impact on the economic policies of both the ANC and our government. The world of the economy is subject to different views and interpretations, based on different political and ideological schools of thought, and partisan interest. This contest is plainly visible both within the venues where the WSSD discussions and negotiations are taking place, and in the streets of the Metropolitan Municipality of Johannesburg. So great is the divide that even as many are battling in the WSSD negotiations for a meaningful outcome that will benefit the billions of poor people in our country, Africa and the rest of the world, there are others, who claim to represent the same masses, who say they have taken it upon themselves to act in a manner that will ensure the collapse of the Summit. These do not want any discussion and negotiations. For this reason, they have decided to oppose and defeat the UN, all the governments of the world, the inter-governmental organisations, the major organisations of civil society participating in the Summit and the world of business, all of which are engaged in processes not different from those that take place regularly in our statutory four-chamber NEDLAC, which includes government, business, labour and non-governmental organisations. Those who hold these views, which they regularly express freely in our country, without any hindrance, also have their own economic views. As with all other ideas and views about the central question of the future of human society, we have to consider and respond to them rationally, whatever is happening in the streets of Johannesburg, for the benefit of the global mass media. At the 1999 OAU Summit Meeting of Heads of State and Government in Algiers, having been asked to address the topic, "The Challenge of Globalisation: The Establishment of the African Economic Community", among other things, we said: "As politicians, (we) must seek to gain a profound understanding of economics, so that we intervene in an informed manner and not as King Canute, striving to wish the waves away. "Here is what Fidel Castro had to say on this matter: 'Politicians must be politicians with a minimum of economic knowledge and if possible with a maximum of knowledge in that field; that today is really the basis on which the fate of humanity depends, the basis on which our struggles are being carried out. And the politicians who do not understand, or do not want to understand, or who do not strive to know economics, are not worthy of exercising the duty they exercise as such politicians.' "But clearly, we must also be politicians who pursue the objectives to which the World Development Report refers - ethics, equity, inclusion, human security, sustainability and development. Obviously this relates to issues concerning our collective security." For us to exercise our duty as politicians, we too must have a minimum of economic knowledge, and if possible, a maximum of knowledge in this field, the basis on which our struggles are being carried out. Our own leaders, activists and members have a responsibility to acquire this economic knowledge. They will learn many things from a study of the documents to which we referred at the beginning of this Letter. One of these is the positive news that, according to SSA, during the second quarter of this year, our economy grew at an annualised rate of 3,1 per cent, compared to 2,2 per cent during the first quarter. This confirms the resilience of our economy, which achieved this result despite the global economic slowdown as well as serious problems in some "emerging markets". Another thing they will learn is about the contribution of manufacturing to this outcome. Our government has worked to ensure the restructuring and modernisation of our economy, focusing on the strengthening of manufacturing and ensuring its international competitiveness, after decades of protection behind high apartheid tariff walls. An important part of our country's achievement in this regard has been the significant growth in labour productivity. Combined with the decline in the external value of the Rand, this has resulted in an increase in our market share in global trade with regard to value-added products. Of importance also is the fact that all the main sectors of the economy, including the government, contributed to the higher economic growth rate reported by SSA. This demonstrates the progress we have made to build a balanced economy that is no longer dependent on primary production, encompassing mining and agriculture, which is characteristic of underdeveloped colonial and neo-colonial economies. Nevertheless, we must also take into account the lower global commodity prices and the inflationary impact of food and crude oil increases. It is also important to focus on the positive impact of government economic activity. The AER points to the long expected elimination of government dissaving, higher government investment expenditure, improved expenditure on service delivery and social welfare, and increased earnings of public sector workers. This has been accompanied by tax cuts, which increased the real earnings of our people. All this has become possible because of fiscal discipline, responsible SARB monetary policy and the transformation of our system of governance, for which we called in our policy documents preceding the democratic change, "Ready to Govern" and the "Reconstruction and Development Programme". As SARS and SARB issued their reports, inspectors of the Department of Labour visited and closed down a shoe factory in Bronkhorstspruit. They took this action because, in their view, the owners of this establishment were violating various anti-apartheid laws affecting labour relations and employment equity, among others. The inspectors also indicated that the Department of Labour had not been informed of the workers employed at this factory. The significance of this is that, apart from its importance to the workers concerned, it drew attention, once again, to the incomplete information we have about our economy. This includes such issues as the numbers of employed people and the real size and rate of growth of our economy, used by our political opponents to communicate negative messages about the impact of democracy. As we improved the efficiency of the SA Revenue Service, we have experienced significant revenue collection overruns. One of the reasons for this is that the official statistics consistently underestimate the size and performance of our economy. Work is continuing to ensure that we have a more accurate picture of our economy and other social matters, among other things to overcome the apartheid legacy, which focused its statistical services on a minority of the population and allowed the growth of a "grey (unregulated and unrecorded) economy". A close study of the AER will show a number of shortcomings with regard to the scope of the Report. These include the disjuncture between available jobs and continuing unemployment, significant increases in the formation of companies and reported reductions in numbers of people employed, and the growth in the numbers of "contract workers", representing the worrying global process of the "casualisation" of labour. The SSA and SARB reports communicate the message that we are on course. The ANC and government economic policies are essentially correct, whatever our critics say to advance their political and ideological agendas. The Reports also indicate the problems we have to overcome. One of these is the critical challenge of unemployment and the need radically to increase our skills levels. Another is the need for us to increase our savings and investment levels, to increase our growth rate far beyond the reported 3 per cent. This draws attention to the importance of foreign direct investment to meet the domestic shortfalls. Yet another challenge is that we should improve our understanding of our economy, so that we are better able to estimate the effectiveness or otherwise of our policies. The Reports also communicate the need for us properly to understand the impact of globalisation on our economy and society, and to respond to this correctly and on time. Their publication and the necessary public attention they have attracted confirm what Fidel Castro said, that 'politicians must be politicians with a minimum of economic knowledge and if possible with a maximum of knowledge in that field'. Thus armed, we will be better able to discharge our responsibility to address the central issues of our continuing struggle, identified in the 1999 United Nations Development Programme "World Development Report" as ethics, equity, inclusion, human security, sustainability and development. These are the same issues on which the WSSD is focused, which have constituted the daily agenda of the ANC and our government since 1994. Properly to address them, requires that we should understand economics. Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- PEOPLE'S SUMMIT Democratic movement joins global day of action South Africa's mass democratic movement, led by the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance, is joining global civil society in Alexandra township on Saturday, 31 August in a day of action against global poverty and underdevelopment. Under the banner of global civil society, the 'Alex People's Summit' will be an opportunity for civil society, both in South Africa and globally, to express their demands and chart a path towards unity and solidarity in the struggle for social transformation. The summit at Alexandra Stadium will be followed by a mass march to the main WSSD venue in Sandton. The day of action will also be an opportunity for progressives in South Africa and across the world to demonstrate unity around a common agenda for change and a common sense of purpose. This comes in the context of calls at the WSSD Civil Society Forum for more effective global cooperation and solidarity among progressive forces. Speaking at an ANC-organised workshop, Indian activist Vandana Shiva, US activist Eric Mann and ANC National Executive Committee member Pallo Jordan called on progressives to work together to build the ideal of human solidarity. Speaking on the topic 'Towards a new internationalism in the era of globalisation', all three panellists said global poverty, racism and imperialism would only be defeated through efforts of a global progressive movement. Shiva said that the oppression and exploitation of people in the developing world has been achieved through strategies of divide-and-rule at a number of levels. False divisions have been created between environment and development, between people and their governments, and between people of different races, cultures and religions. "To stop this we need to stop being divided," she said. Pallo Jordan noted that the notion of internationalism based on human solidarity is an old one, which has taken a number of concrete forms since at least the mid 19th century: "This notion has won many victories, and suffered many defeats. The challenge is to create a movement that is built on what preceded it, which draws on the experiences of the late 20th century." Mann said nothing could be achieved in opposing imperialism without building a global progressive alliance. The workshop was one of several hosted by the ANC during the civil society forum to encourage debate around a number of key issues of sustainable development. Areas covered included urban change and development, the regeneration of Africa and NEPAD, the mainstreaming of gender, and the role of multi-lateral institutions like the WTO. The views from the workshop echo the ANC's statement to the WSSD Global Civil Society Forum, which says that the progressive transformation of global society requires the existence of a progressive movement to effect that change. "A progressive movement is one with answers. It is a democratic and popular movement that mobilises the poor and working people of the world toward the realisation of these answers. It is one that seeks to link individual struggles with multi-dimensional engagements at local, national, regional and international level. It is one that is not afraid of building principled alliances and tactical partnerships for change, between peoples, democratic governments and enterprises, in the interests of people-centred development," it says. The ANC will be attending the Alex People's Summit to highlight: * The challenge to the WSSD of agreeing on clear programmes to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment, especially in Africa; * The need for an immediate end to Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, since global peace is a fundamental condition for sustainable development; * That sustainable development is not possible without a fairer world economy, especially for the countries of the South * The WSSD is an important forum to advance the cause of social justice and poverty eradication, especially in Africa. To achieve these goals we must fundamentally transform the inequitable relations between North and South, which characterise our world today. This challenge means that progressives, both within government and in civil society, should act in solidarity to ensure that the WSSD does indeed address the important issues of poverty and underdevelopment. The Summit needs to agree on binding targets and funded programmes to achieve these objectives. --------------------------------------------------------------------- WOMEN IN STRUGGLE V Florence Mophosho: A stout-hearted and able fighter for women's rights Florence Mophosho was a South African leader who effectively combined the struggle for women's rights with the national liberation struggle. Described as one of the ANC's "most stout-hearted and able fighters", Mophosho was a member of the ANC's National Executive Committee and head of it's Women's Section in exile. Mophosho was born in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, the first of three children, in 1921. Her father was ill, and her mother - who had trained as a teacher - worked as a domestic worker. Because of the need to help her mother bring up the younger children, Mophosho left school at Standard Six and went to work, first as a domestic worker and later in a factory. Inspired by the Defiance Campaign in 1952, Mophosho joined the ANC. She was inspired first by the leaders of Alexandra Township, and this included Alfred Nzo and T.T. Nkobi. As she became more involved in the ANC she met other leaders - Moses Kotane, Moretsele, J.B. Marks, O.R. Tambo, Nelson Mandela and others. She helped to organise the Congress of the People, which adopted the Freedom Charter. She took part in a house-to-house campaign in Alexandra, talking to people and listening to them. She contributed in eliciting the demands of the people, which were later incorporated in the Freedom Charter. Later, she became a full-time organiser for the ANC, and took part in many of the campaigns of that time. She was active in the women's movement. She organised in Alexandra for the Transvaal demonstrations against passes for African women, and was involved in the mobilisation for the great nation-wide anti-pass women's demonstration on 9 August 1956. She organised domestic workers, and later she organised in the rural areas, including Lichtenburg. In 1957, she was a member of the Alexandra Bus Boycott Committee. During the State of Emergency in 1960, Mophosho went underground and continued to work as an organiser for the ANC. In the course of her work as an ANC stalwart she was arrested a number of times. In 1964, she was banned. She was instructed by the ANC to leave South Africa, and she went to Lusaka and later to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. It was at this time that the ANC and its Women's Section decided to send her to Berlin in the German Democratic Republic to represent the Women's Section at the Women's International Democratic Federation. She remained at that post for four and a half years. She met many women from all over the world. She compared their lives with those of her black sisters right back home. She developed to be an internationalist - and of course she travelled to many countries on behalf of the Women's International Democratic Federation. She spoke at numerous public meetings in the German Democratic Republic, held radio and TV interviews, and helped to strengthen the relations between the GDR -especially the women's organisation - and the ANC. Mophosho was a delegate to the ANC's Morogoro Conference in 1969, where she discussed problems of our revolution and our strategy with both leaders and rank and file of the ANC. It was partly because of her experiences at the conference that she came to the conclusion that her role was in Africa. She returned in the early seventies. On her return she headed the Women's Section and, in appreciation of her commitment, sacrifice and fiery spirit, she was elected in 1975 to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. As a member of the NEC she did her best to upgrade the women cadres in our movement, and helped to promote the Women's Section. She combined in an excellent way the struggle for women's rights with the national liberation struggle. In recognition of her contribution to our struggle, the ANC Conference in June 1985 elected her to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. She was, however, ill at the time of the conference and died on 9 August 1985 -Women's Day. At the funeral hundreds of mourners converged and numerous messages of condolence from all over the world were read. The family came from home. And the ANC leaders - President O.R. Tambo, T.T. Nkobi, S. Dlamini, D. Tloome, Chris Hani, Ray Simons - paid tribute to this Iqhawe lama Qhawe, the hero of heroes. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2002/at35.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html