Number 27, November 2006
COVER THEME:
Creating a caring society
The challenge of managing capitalism
Ben Turok
Towards policies that promote a caring society
Khehla Shubane
Black economic empowerment and the vision of the Freedom Charter
Jerry Vilakazi
Striving for gender equality in the labour market
Andy Brown
From liberation to transformation
Spiritual revolution in secular society
A nation in the making
Macro-social trends in South Africa
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Of cats, factions and a revolution
Joel Netshitenzhe
Migration as a vehicle for development
Malusi Gigaba
Developing Gauteng as a global competitive city region
Mbazima Shilowa
HISTORY
A century of principled non-violent struggle against injustice
Ela Gandhi
INTERNATIONAL
David and Goliath
Who is who in the Middle East / Part 1
Ronnie Kasrils
A new type of partnership
The African Renaissance and the development of NEPAD / Part 1
Frank Chikane
Chinese socialism and the market economy
Supra Mahumapelo
READERS' FORUM
Building the intellectual backbone of the youth
Lufuno Marwala
BOOKS
As much about the present as the past
Kgalema Motlanthe
A broad canvass
A significant book that is essential reading, writes Ron Press.
Umrabulo was a word used to inspire political discussion and debate on Robben Island. This concept was revived in 1996 when the ANC published the first edition of Umrabulo. The journal's mission is to encourage debate and rigorous discussions at all levels of the movement.
Call for contributions
Umrabulo welcomes contributions from readers. Contributions may be in response to previous articles or may raise new issues. Contributions may be sent to the address below.
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To subscribe to Umrabulo, complete and return the subscription form www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pubs/umrabulo/. Subscribers receive Umrabulo quarterly by ordinary post. This service is available to both South African and international subscribers.
Editorial Collective
Joel Netshitenzhe, Pallo Jordan, Fébé Potgieter, Naph Manana, Mandla Nkomfe, Mduduzi Mbada, Michael Sachs, Donovan Cloete, Spongy Moodley, Steyn Speed
Contact Information
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The contents and views expressed in Umrabulo do not necessarily reflect the policies of the ANC or the views of the editorial collective.
When President Thabo Mbeki delivered the 4th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture on 29 July this year, he began with the statement: "I believe I know this as a matter of fact, that the great masses of our country everyday pray that the new South Africa that is being born will be a good, a moral, a humane and a caring South Africa which as it matures will progressively guarantee the happiness of all its citizens."
The lecture was widely welcomed as a valuable contribution to the development of our national discourse as we begin the Second Decade of our Freedom. Yet the lecture also poses a number of challenges, both to the democratic movement and broader South African society, not least of which is the challenge of forging a caring society in an environment where "personal pursuit of material gain, as the beginning and end of our life purpose, is already beginning to corrode our social and national cohesion".
In this edition of Umrabulo, a number of writers have sought to respond to some of the questions posed by the President. Some have answered Mbeki's challenge directly, others more obliquely. They have taken different approaches and emphasised different elements in the unfolding debate. Is a caring society most appropriately pursued in the terrain of economics, through the social policies of government, or by forging a new approach to matters of the soul?
As the democratic movement, we have historically identified a good, moral, humane and caring society as the antithesis of white minority domination.
Through the defeat of colonialism, the achievement of democracy and the eradication of the material legacy of apartheid, we would forge a new society that would uphold the rights and promote the well-being of all its people.
Yet, though we have defeated apartheid and made significant progress in addressing the social and economic devastation that it caused, we have inherited an economic system and a complementary set of values that give rise, in the words of Mbeki, to the "deification of personal wealth as the defining feature of the new citizen".
Some have seen this analysis as primarily intended as a challenge to the process of black economic empowerment. Certainly it says something about the tendency for people to use conspicuous displays of wealth to signal personal 'fulfilment'. But the deracialisation of the economy and the effort to redress the systematic denial of economic opportunities to black South Africans cannot, in itself, stand in the way of building a caring society.
Rather it is the unbridled pursuit of profit, regardless of the consequences -reinforcing the cry, "everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost" - which needs to be challenged. Any society held hostage to rampant market forces, to borrow the terminology of the ANC's Strategy and Tactics, would find it difficult, if not impossible, to adequately tend to the well-being of all its people. It would certainly be impossible for a society, like ours, that is struggling to overcome such severe inequalities.
The challenge to the democratic movement, and to all South Africans, is how then to order economic and social relations in a manner that builds a caring society. This question, on which we merely touch in this edition of Umrabulo, will undoubtedly feature prominently in the discussion that will accompany the review of Strategy and Tactics as the ANC prepares for its next National Conference.
In engaging in these discussions, it would be important to remember President Mbeki's assertion that "because of the infancy of our brand new society, we have the possibility to act in ways that would for the foreseeable future, infuse the values of ubuntu into our very being as a people".
Having inherited a system which prizes the individual acquisition of wealth, will the ANC be able to 'manage' capitalism in South Africa so as to remove the obscene inequalities, poverty and joblessness that are still so pervasive, asks Ben Turok.
President Thabo Mbeki has made many speeches since the advent of democracy.
Three stand out as landmarks: "I am an African", "Two Nations", and the recent 4th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, on "getting rich".
This recent speech is being discussed from three perspectives: as part of a manoeuvre around the so-called succession debate, as an exercise in political ethics, and as a contribution to an analysis of capitalism.
It is understandable that in the present climate of speculation around the future presidency, first of the ANC, and then, of the country, that almost every action by a political leader is ascribed to some positioning or other of various potential candidates for either position. The problem is that all this speculation remains just that. Was the President making a negative point about the newly rich to exclude them from the race? There are no real facts to go on and we are often left with just gossip and hot air. We need to be patient and allow the process to work itself out.
We are on firmer ground with respect to ethics. This was a powerful speech made in the presence of some of the black aspirant millionaires who have joined in the race for getting rich with enthusiasm and total commitment.
Mbeki condemned the values of designer clothing, conspicuous consumption and copycat behaviour of the rich and powerful. It was not only moralising however, for he attacked the foundation of this behaviour in the market fundamentalism with its philosophy of success through capitalist acquisitiveness and indifference to the rest. Coming from an intellectual in office who has repeatedly conceded that South Africa remains a capitalist country, this was a statement of the highest significance.
What is more, although he laid out the specific background of the ANC coming to power in the context of a capitalist system of oppression and exploitation, he criticised the fact the "individual acquisition of wealth" has become the "very centre of the value system of our society as a whole".
This has displaced "the values of human solidarity" which infused the oppressed people over the previous decades if not centuries. He used some very emotive phrases to condemn this displacement of values, such as the destruction of "kinship, neighbourhood, profession and creed", people who become "atomistic and individualistic", "Get rich! Get rich! Get rich!", "designer labels", "the value system of the capitalist market", and "the most theatrical and striking public display of wealth".
He argued that "we must never allow that the market should be the principal determinant of the nature of our society. We should firmly oppose market fundamentalism". He went on to ask "whether we are not ineluctably progressing towards the situation when the centre cannot hold", "where things fall apart", and we face "the phenomenon of social conflict".
Having experienced this bombshell of denunciation of capitalism, the movement has to pick itself up and say "what now?". We have inherited a highly distorted form of capitalism with its legacy of racial inequality and concentrated economic power in white hands, and we claim to be a "liberation movement of the exploited and oppressed", indeed "a disciplined force of the Left", engaged in a "revolutionary project".
Yet, after twelve years of the ANC in power, South Africa remains one of the most divided countries in the world, with perhaps one of the highest proportions of unemployment, poverty and inequality which seem to persist despite major efforts of government to provide relief to the underprivileged either in the form of welfare grants, social wage or direct interventions.
A great deal of effort is being put into black economic empowerment (BEE) and affirmative action, which are designed to deracialise the economy, especially the commanding heights. But all this is occurring within the framework of the market economy, which means the effective exclusion of the majority of the historically exploited and oppressed.
Even these measures seem to be mere palliatives since of the 70 top earners only four are black and of the 157 most wealthy only nine are black. No doubt this is changing quite rapidly, but there is a long way to go. In any case, this process is producing exactly the kind of values Mbeki was condemning. And, just as importantly, there are few indications that the beneficiaries of this process of enrichment, and possibly some empowerment, are willing to support an attack on capitalist fundamentalism let alone capitalism as a system.
Instead we find a great deal of manipulation of the relationship between state and capital to extract as much benefit from the huge pile of state resources through the complex systems of tendering and procurement. The nasty head of crony capitalism is becoming ever more deeply entrenched as the exposures of the Auditor General and the Public Service Commission reveal (New Agenda, Issue 21, 2006).
It would seem that the movement must now call on the new middle strata to stand up and support the President in his urgent call for better values in the world of business and integrity in the public sector. There is something called "the public good" which needs constant reinforcement if it is to become the dominant value in our society.
But enough about ethics. What are the implications of the speech for the fundamental structure of our society?
Apartheid was a system of internal colonialism, characterised by the domination and exploitation of black people by white capital and the state, and serving the interests of white capital and whites generally. The allegiance of the white working class was obtained by means of special privileges of income and status. This means that an analysis of the role of the ANC must be based on a political economy approach, which embraces race and class concepts, and not simply on the system of race discrimination and oppression. One very important dimension is that the negotiated settlement in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) left the economy in the control of the white minority.
Nevertheless, the establishment of the democratic state in which the ANC became the ruling party led to a total restructuring of political structures, including the steady increase of the presence and power of progressive forces in the diverse institutions of the state, as well as substantial shifts within the social order. Due to the opening of economic space, many blacks swelled the ranks of the middle strata and some rose into the ranks of the bourgeoisie and capitalist class.
A prospect has emerged of some unity in action of black and white workers on class issues, as in the miners strike in August 2005 where black and white unions struck jointly against the combined power of the gold mines. But the ANC has always had its base in the African working class and the poor masses and they remain the major component of the motive forces for change. The black middle strata also continue to be an important component of the national movement, as well as some elements of black business, although they are not equally articulate on the class interests of the poor.
The small number of blacks who managed to enter the ranks of the bourgeoisie proper can be divided into business people, top corporate managers, and public sector corporate managers. Their ascent has the effect of beginning to deracialise the exercise of economic power. But independent black capitalists are still relatively few.
There is clearly an effort by white capital to provide some space for black capital: a process which is encouraged by the policy of affirmative action and BEE, whereby the state provides substantial support to black business through tenders and procurement and the allocation of share capital in state-owned enterprises (New Agenda, Issue 22, 2006).
A major question arises as to whether this new black bourgeoisie and in particular its business components will advance the interests of the masses, or whether some components will become junior partners of white capital, which has become increasingly integrated into global capital. Alternatively, as it gains in strength, will black business develop its own identity as the core of a national bourgeoisie promoting progressive policies domestically and internationally?
The experience of decolonisation in most post-independence African countries is that colonial capital and the colonial state managed to create a comprador neocolonial class that abandoned the social and economic objectives of the national liberation movement. Will the same happen in South Africa? Or will the power of the ANC as a national movement continue to embrace all, or most, black people, irrespective of class location in the cause of overcoming white domination and establishing a non-racial democratic order which reduces the inherited inequalities and provides a decent life for all? That was at the heart of Mbeki's speech.
In other words, will the ANC be able to sustain its character as a "disciplined force of the Left" with the primary motive force "the working class and the poor generally"? (Resolution of the ANC National General Council, 30 June 2005) Can this position be sustained within a capitalist economy? Especially one that is integrated into the world capitalist economy and subject to the same polarisation effects.
Much depends on the conduct of the ANC itself. Mbeki made an unusually strong critical statement on this subject at the National General Council (NGC) on 3 July 2005: "Our historic victory has put our movement into a position of political power. Since 1994, the 82nd year of the existence of our movement, our people have mandated us to assume the position of a ruling party. To be a ruling party means that we have access to state resources. It means that those who want to do business with the state have to interact with those who control state power, the members of our movement who serve in government."
"It means that those of us who serve in the organs of state have the possibility to dispense patronage. It therefore means that we have the possibility to purchase adherents, with no regard to the principles that are fundamental to the very nature of the African National Congress. All this makes control of state power a valuable asset. It makes membership of the ANC an easy route of access to state power. It makes membership of the ANC an attractive commercial proposition. It makes financial support for the ANC an investment for some of those who want to generate profits for themselves by doing business with government."
But whatever the prospects of potential distortion within the state system, there are other important dynamics in the socioeconomic system as a whole.
The disturbing feature of the present scenario is that with a Gini coefficient at 0.70, income inequalities remain the same, or even higher, as under apartheid when the Gini coefficient was 0.6 (1993). This means that the same degree of surplus extraction and/or economic exploitation of the masses remains in place (Turok 2005a).
Over the past ten years directors' fees have increased at an average rate of 29%, non-executive directors (where many blacks are now appointed) by 49%, while workers increased their incomes by 6.5% (Labour Research Service annual report 2004). Also, the conspicuous consumption of the black bourgeoisie indicates a strong propinquity to enjoy the same fruits as their white counterparts. There has been an "increase in black affluence - 41% of the affluent are now Africans" (Burger) while 60% of the middle class is now black (Hirsch).
Blacks are clearly joining the white elite, which is one of the wealthiest in the world. South Africa had 690 "ultra-high-gross-worth individuals in 2002 with assets totalling $30 million each. There are 25,000 dollar millionaires living in South Africa with $300 billion in private wealth.
Interestingly, the super-rich, people worth more than R200 million, has grown fourfold since 1994." (World Wealth Report 2003 and VIP Forum quoted in the Sunday Times, 9 May 2004).
A PROGRESSIVE BLACK BUSINESS CLASS?
The case for encouraging the emergence of a black business class is compelling. Under apartheid, blacks were denied any scope for capital accumulation by a maze of restrictive legislation, a lack of skills and education, no access to loans and job reservation for skilled whites. It is therefore logical that a national liberation movement should insist that space be created for black capitalists in the interests of deracialising the economy. Also, many of the leading personalities in black business were leading figures in the ANC and retain those links. The problem is that they come empty handed onto the field, they are "capitalists without capital".
After eight years of effort, black business had only captured between 1 and 4% of the shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (Southall 2005, p 461).
Nevertheless, this data hardly accords with the indications that a group of business people have amassed very substantial assets through a vigorous drive to acquire shareholdings in large companies. If they were to realise these assets they would have substantial funds in their bank accounts. On the other hand, white capital has always held a dominant position in the economy - in the 1980s six corporations controlled 70% of the total assets of non-state corporations, and this has changed little. Except that these same corporations now have an external reach that was not possible under apartheid. Five major corporations, Billiton, South African Breweries, Anglo American, Old Mutual and Dimension Data have moved their primary listings from Johannesburg to the London Stock Exchange. This has rendered their domestic assets now wholly or partly-owned subsidiaries of foreign companies (Southall 2005, p 460).
The case against the emergence of a strong black business class within the present system is that the economic legacy of colonial capitalism, rooted internally, remains in place. This system enabled white capital to gain enormous wealth and power through the extra-economic super-exploitation of forced cheap labour. Although the forced aspect of the system has gone, it remains extremely difficult to transform this system, and the economic and social dualism of the past remains structurally intact. Black business is operating within these structures and clearly benefits from the inherited capital-labour distortions.
One of the inescapable consequences is that black managers are paid the same financial rewards as their white counterparts, and sometimes a premium above the market rate, thereby expanding the size of the highly privileged bourgeoisie considerably. They are clearly part of the bourgeoisie by virtue of their location in the system of ownership and control of the means of production and by their incomes and lifestyle. They are therefore indirect beneficiaries of the economic dimensions of the apartheid legacy.
We have used the term 'class' with some reservations. Classes are large groups of people distinguished by their location in a system of social production, and by their relation to the means of production. The evidence suggests that black business is still too small a group to be a class-in-itself or a class-for-itself, despite vigorous aspirations. Mbeki has actually criticised them for having become nothing more than rentier capitalists [who live off investment dividends but contribute little to productivity] (Southall 2003 p12).
Some argue that the present process is intrinsic to capitalism. On the other hand, others believe that it may be possible to continue with deracialising the economy without the creation of an affluent black business class distinguished by conspicuous consumption and wealth accumulation through non-productive means. Some measures suggested are: prevention of the abuse of state procurement, control of offloading shares in state enterprises, limits on funding by the National Empowerment Fund, and a requirement of commitments to social investment.
Black business has three options:
There are possibilities of some overlap on these options. Much depends on how black business sees its own role. Many articulate an entitlement ideology demanding the same opportunities as white capital: "If the whites can do it so can blacks." But this ignores the fact that white capital was based on super-exploitation and national oppression, and mimicking their status deprives the black bourgeoisie of legitimacy and any scope for a progressive role.
Although the private sector is large in South Africa, seemingly offering ample scope for entry by a dynamic group of black entrepreneurs, the leap to capitalist status is not easy. Most start by deal making to get a foot on the ladder of wealth accumulation. They are assisted by the openings offered by white business and by the black economic empowerment policies of the state. The latter is becoming an increasingly powerful weapon as many large firms fear that those who do not make the necessary transition to empowerment may endanger their own sustainability. They fear that they will not get their customary share of government procurement, and that even the private banks may decline lending. "Banks and other institutions will need to consider the risk of non-repayment when borrowers are not empowered."
(Business Day Survey, May 2005) A special report in Time magazine (6 June 2005) called 'The New Rand Lords -Capitalists or Cronies?' states that there are now 100,000 whites earning $60,000 annually, but only 5,000 blacks. However in the past three years 300,000 blacks became middle-income earners (between $13,000 and $23,000 annually). This is because blacks have been promoted vigorously in state institutions and because private companies must be seen to comply with training blacks and appointing them to management positions if they wish to benefit from government contracts. According to Time magazine "the biggest companies offered to sell or grant equity stakes on favourable terms, often financed by the companies themselves, in return for connections, expertise and links to the black marketplace". However some of the new black business people assert that "none of the new black elite control any independent capital". The problem with this strategy is that most of the individuals involved land up in heavy debt since they have no capital to enter into these deals. Also, some become non-executive directors to collect fees, but have no real power to influence the companies as they are excluded from the inner circle running the companies.
However, notwithstanding the obstacles to capital accumulation, the mindset of enrichment and profit-making is growing rapidly, as Mbeki said. Even in the parastatal system profit is sometimes primary. Telkom CEO Sizwe Nxasana was perhaps more brazen than most when he said, "We are not apologetic about our profits, I'm in the business of making money; after all, we live in a capitalist society... It used to be acceptable that the white population made money. Are you now suggesting that black companies should be socialist while the rest of the world is capitalist?" (Mail & Guardian, 10 June 2005)
In the present mood that making money is a good thing, many political personalities with impeccable political credentials have moved into the private sector, followed by top public servants. They naturally retain their former political and family connections and clearly benefit from these associations in their new business roles (for details see Southall 2005 p475). Roger Southall comments: "The point about these connections is not, that they indicate corruption. However, what they do suggest is the fluidity, overlapping and intimacy of South Africa's black elite, which is still relatively small, amongst whom linkages across political, state and business boundaries provide a constant flow of exchanges and illuminate a sense of community." (Ibid, p476)
Whether this constitutes a basis for the emergence of 'crony capitalism' is still a subject for speculation. Certainly there are many instances of the use of opportunities provided by the state for accumulation in the private sector. The more important issue is whether the emergent business class is capable of becoming a dynamic productive capitalist class or whether it will be more akin to the state-dependent and kleptocratic class of post-independence Africa driven more by conspicuous consumption than by a culture of hard work and productive effort. Mbeki recently warned that "independent Africa has provided some of the worst global examples of the gross abuse of state power to enrich elites that control the levers of state power". (Speech in Parliament, 25 May 2005)
The ANC's liberation strategy was based on an intersection of race and class forces that meant a combination of nationalist and class forces. It was argued that the working class was the most organised and determined with the most to gain and was therefore the leading force. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) now argues that the working class has lost representation in the decision-making institutions of the ANC and has therefore lost much space to remain the leading force in the movement.
Furthermore, the economy has remained capitalist with some of the main features of the past, namely the dual economy, and huge inherited inequalities. Many sections of the employed have improved their conditions and the social wage has increased substantially, but class contradictions and exploitation continue despite the removal of repressive labour legislation.
The dual economy structure is typical of colonial and post-colonial societies. In the "second economy" we find the poorest of the poor and marginalised people of such societies. Some of the workers in the formal economy are also among the poor.
However, to get a more balanced perspective, we have to compare the tasks facing the ANC during the struggle years to the many conflicting responsibilities facing it now:
A recent document states that "the ANC should aim to contribute to the restructuring of international relations in the interests of the poor" (Preface to Strategy and Tactics p25).
THE MOTIVE FORCES
The complexity of these tasks has led to a debate about the nature of the motive forces in the present period. This debate must be seen in the context of how the ANC sees the character of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR): "The strategic objective of the NDR is the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society. This, in essence, means the liberation of Africans in particular and Black people in general from political and economic bondage." (Strategy and Tactics, December 2002, p30)
It also refers to the "elimination of apartheid property relations", "the deracialisation of ownership and control of wealth, including land" and "the elimination of the legacy of apartheid super-exploitation and inequality, and the redistribution of wealth and income to benefit society as a whole, especially the poor."
To advance these objectives, the ANC has identified the motive forces as follows: "the black masses, those classes and strata that objectively and systematically stand to gain from the victory and consolidation of the NDR.
It identifies the working class and the poor - in both rural and urban areas - as the core of these forces... These motive forces include the black, emergent capitalist class whose interests are served not only by the formal democracy, but also by the programme to change apartheid property relations... At the same time, the ANC needs to win over...all other sections of South African society, including the white workers, the middle strata and the bourgeoisie."
At the same time it is acknowledged that these measures "will not eliminate the basic contradiction between capital and labour... Nor eradicate the disparate and sometimes contradictory interests that some of the motive forces of the NDR pursue. These secondary contradictions... must be properly managed." (The word secondary may be challenged.)
Finally, there is a stark warning about the new social forces: "[T]he rising black bourgeoisie and middle strata are objectively important motive forces of transformation whose interests coincide with at least the immediate interests of the majority." But some "are dictated to by foreign or local big capital on whom they rely for their advancement... without vigilance, elements of these new capitalist classes can become witting or unwitting tools of monopoly interests, or parasites who thrive on corruption in public office... Examples abound in many former colonies of massive disparities in the distribution of wealth and income between the new elite and the mass of the people."
This implies that we must distinguish between the primary motive forces, their social base, the expected allies, the neutralised forces and the enemy forces. The motive forces therefore consist of:
Perhaps the most elusive category at present is the black middle class. Many are located in the state apparatuses and steadily moving up the ladder with much blurring at the edges. Southall (2005) states that 29% of the middle class was African in 1994 while the figure for 2000 was around 50%. By 2005 the figure must be much higher. This category may be the primary beneficiaries of ANC rule.
Black personnel are now predominant throughout the top levels of the state system. This is most pronounced in government departments, with black women now also moving into top posts. But it is also highly visible in the parastatal system, which is now mostly in black control. Six of the nine directors on the development finance Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), 12 of 23 directors of defence industry Denel, 11 out of 15 directors of Eskom Holdings, and 9 out of 12 of electricity Eskom Enterprises are black. The same goes for Transnet, Telkom and SA Airways. These 15 state-owned enterprises deployed assets of R291bn in 2003. If we add the Public Investment Corporation (R450bn), this constitutes a massive presence in the economy. Interestingly, many of these directors have positions on the boards of private companies, creating an intricate web of cross influence (Southall 2005 p462).
However, a recent survey showed that black business has yet to enter the arena of manufacturing. There were 24 transactions in resources worth 58.3% of the total deal, while in manufacturing there were 13 deals worth 1.3% of the total deal. In basic industries there were two deals worth almost zero of the total (Ernst and Young).
The key issue is whether the black business class is capable of playing the kind of role that similar groups have played in other developing countries.
This includes promoting an economic strategy that boosts internal demand, promotes domestic industrial capacity and combines employment growth with redistribution (Southall 2005c). There are few indications that South Africa's black business class has lined up behind such policies.
To conclude, we return to a comparison of the role of the domestic bourgeoisie in post-independence Africa and the situation in post-apartheid South Africa. In both cases, a sizable local bourgeois class emerged within a decade of liberation. However, in the rest of Africa, this class was a creation of departing colonial powers that sought to maintain their economic power by indirect means in a system of neocolonialism. In other words, they were intrinsically comprador and parasitic. By contrast, in South Africa apartheid resisted the emergence of a black bourgeoisie till the very end.
Hence, apart from some artificial measures in the bantustans, no comprador class was in existence in 1994.
This is a vital difference, which enabled the ANC to mobilise across a broad front of actual and aspirant classes and maintain the unity of the oppressed. This was one of the major consequences of a system of internal colonialism compared to the more usual colonial rule.
But the situation is changing rapidly. Now that the mechanisms of internal colonialism have been broken by the removal of white political rule, the abolition of the pass laws and the many laws of discrimination, a more "normal" capitalist system is emerging, with all the contradictions of class becoming visible. However this "normal" capitalism still faces a social structure rooted in the previous system of colonialism and underdevelopment.
Our remedial measures are unlikely to be similar to those of developed "normal" capitalism. Can the ANC government regulate our capitalism so that all benefit? Will the ANC be able to "manage" the system so that we remove the obscene inequalities, poverty and joblessness that are still so pervasive? Mbeki's warning about the consequences of things falling apart is highly relevant.
* Ben Turok is an ANC Member of Parliament.
References
2005 African National Congress, "Strategy and Tactics", National General Council Resource Pack Volume One, 29 June-3 July 2005.
2004 Ernst & Young. Data supplied in answer to Parliamentary Question no 951, 2004.
2004 Alan Hirsch. Paper for Conference "Overcoming Underdevelopment in SA's Second Economy" Pretoria November 2004.
2004 R Burger, S van der Berg, "Emergent Black Affluence and Social Mobility in Post-Apartheid South Africa". Development Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
2004 Roger Southall "The ANC and Black Capitalism in South Africa". Review of Africa Political Economy No 100:313-328.
2005a Roger Southall "Black Empowerment and Corporate Capital" in J Daniel, R Southall, and J Lutchman, State of the Nation, South Africa 2004-5, HSRC Press.
2005b Roger Southall "Political Change and the Black Middle Class in Democratic South Africa". Mimeo.
2005c Roger Southall "Can South Africa be a Developmental State" Mimeo.
2006 New Agenda, S A Journal of Social and Economic Policy, Nos 21 and 22.
2005a Ben Turok "Promoting Production in the Second Economy" . New Agenda, SA Journal of Social and Economic Policy, No 18 2005.
2005b Turok. "The Congress of the People, 1955". New Agenda, SA Journal of Social and Economic Policy. No 18 2005.
1999 Ben Turok "Beyond the Miracle. Development and Economy in South Africa". University of Western Cape.
1993 Ben Turok "Development and Reconstruction in South Africa" Institute For African Alternatives. South Africa.
Values of cohesion, human solidarity and equity are widely found among South Africa's people. However, it will take deliberate measures by the state in both policy design and implementation to translate these into shared values that guide all aspects social behaviour, writes Khehla Shubane.
It is trite to observe that the ANC has concluded that ours will be a society organised around the pursuit of free enterprise.1 No one has objected to this strategic view, not even the South African Communist Party (SACP), which seeks to build a socialist future in South Africa. There have been what amounts to quibbles about calibrating the chosen economic system to benefit working and poor people. The idea of building socialism, even in the view of the SACP, is a task that should be left for the future.
In the view of the ANC, save for a few matters that require further attention, economic policies are broadly on track to achieve stated objectives. The party, together with its allies, is however troubled by the stubbornly high levels of, and enduring, unemployment. The ANC has not missed a moment to express its distress at the resulting poverty.
Various policy measures are at different stages of conceptualisation, debate and implementation to ease the burden on those affected by unemployment. An opinion shared by most about how this problem could be resolved focuses on a range of interventions including growing the economy, providing the requisite skills and increasing efficiencies in the economy.
In the 4th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture President Thabo Mbeki noted among numerous other things that greed has gripped South African society; the practice of pursuing accumulation above all else and at all costs is driving a section of the population to accumulate ever-increasing assets. This practice is born, he further argues, of assimilating capitalist values that characterised accumulation under apartheid. It is also a problem that has been identified elsewhere as market fundamentalism - reducing complex social, economic and political problems to the dictates of the market.
Everything has to be viewed by whether or not it has a market value.
The ascendancy of greed, Mbeki asserted, smothers social cohesion and blocks mutually beneficial human solidarity. Human relations are reduced to market relations. Values of the entire society suffer untold harm in an environment in which greed has been allowed to take a pole position.
It is difficult to quarrel with this conclusion. Instances of avaricious accumulation are everywhere to be seen. It is as if, as Mbeki argues, the demons are hard at work pushing people to accumulate even more. Incentives for this behaviour are embedded in policies that the government has crafted.
To blunt these incentives perhaps a question should be whether attention has been given to whether South Africa has defined values around which the entire society can cohere?
This exercise has yet to be deliberately undertaken. But there is no shortage of values in the society by which many live their lives and these can easily be woven into popular values. Many people and institutions have contributed greatly to the society and their contribution could be a starting point for constructing values that could guide the society.
CRAFTING SA VALUES
As the country grapples with the complex problem of building a new future for all, it has to contend with the values that are simultaneously being created to sustain the project of a future in which all have a stake.
Whatever future the population desires, it will have to be underpinned by values to which members of the society adhere. All societies have these; they are about the only thing about which generalisation about any society can correctly be made. It is for instance correct that private property is a value deeply embedded in the United States. The observation that the Swedes deeply dislike inequality is also correct.
Probably as a result of the divided past from which South Africa is emerging, the matter of values which are embraced by all has not received the attention it should. In the short time during which the country has moved away from racially defined access to power, clearly good values have emerged, some from the past, which form a basis of what might be built into a set of values capable of being embraced by all. South Africa has loads of values that are embraced by local people and the values they uphold are well known by even the least educated within the society.
These include values of perseverance, sticking to principle even in the face of overwhelming odds, magnanimity, inclusiveness, putting the collective interests ahead of personal interests, and treating your adversaries with respect. These values are not foreign to South Africa. They are the values by which Nelson Mandela, for example, has conducted his life.
Values of hard work are everywhere to be seen in this society and have marked the development of our society for long. Mamphele Ramphele beat formidable odds through sheer hard work. Charles van Onselen displayed determination and worked hard to emerge as arguably the best South African historian of our time. Both individuals were not brought up in families steeped in academia.
Many of our compatriots have displayed remarkable courage. Steve Biko dared to say no when opposition voices had been silenced. Braam Fischer, despite his comfortable upbringing and a relatively cosy future, stood up for his brothers and sisters even though he knew he was up against formidable power.
South African Breweries is a company that successfully took on the world.
Innovation abounds in South Africa. Chris Barnard's achievement must stand as a monument to what is possible even from this far flung corner of the world and that innovative thinking is not a monopoly of western society.
Collectively, the financial industry in South Africa is as good as any in the world. While South African financial markets may not be as deep as those of say the US, the ability to innovate is no less deep here than it is anywhere else. Companies in other sectors have shown too that geographical location is irrelevant to building strong companies that compete globally.
Trevor Manuel has given leadership to managing the fiscal affairs of the country that is second to none, showing in the process that state finances are not rocket science. Africans too can deal with these supposedly complex matters. He has applied himself diligently to the task at hand and has kept a fine balance between austere measures and expansive spending which has not left the poor behind.
The Sotho idiom 'lebetla la tlala ha leyo' expresses a deep commitment to others. Trade unions have rallied around a cry 'an injury to one is an injury to all'. Beyers Naude's commitment to other human beings must count as a high water mark in solidarity with other people. Yusuf Dadoo could not look the other way when his fellow human beings faced debilitating oppression.
The country's constitution embodies values which must surely represent the best humanity can aspire to. Those who drafted the constitution surely must have considered if the ideals they incorporated into the constitution reflected the values of the society and, with the agreement of a vast majority of the population, answered the question in the affirmative.
These are values that arise from diverse South Africans and are consistent with traditional practices of all communities. Why is it difficult to fashion the collective values of the society around these well-entrenched practices?
If it is historical antecedents that provide firm foundation for societal values, South Africa will not be found wanting. Nothing has to be imported to construct solid values that will define cohesion, human solidarity and equity in the society.
Government will have to play a leading role in leading society towards the definition and, more importantly, the embrace by all of these values. But government leaders at all tiers of government have been singularly lacking in imagination about charting a clear path to social values of solidarity and equity. At times, they have seemed far too concerned with the number of their bodyguards and how expensive the car they drive is. Waving from the comfort of their cars has at times seem far more important to them than identifying with the people they serve.
THREATS TO SOCIAL COHESION
Threats to social cohesion emanate not from greed alone; there are a number of other causes of it including a fair presence in society of vain individuals who wantonly pursue greed. There is no reason though why the country should have more of such individuals than other societies where greed has not derailed attempts to achieve objectives set by policymakers that are good for the entire society. Thus, with the greedy group in society the country should be able to succeed in creating values by which it wants to live.
Other sources that undermine social cohesion besides greed can be traced to many activities some of which are viewed as innocuous by those who practice them. Only a few are discussed below. The lifestyle the elite lead generally surely contributes to the lust for 'a good life' among many. This lifestyle appears comfortable and many desire it, but often without thinking about the means required to finance it.
Though there is less of this than in the wake of the elections in 1994, the phalanx of bodyguards around leading political figures is difficult to understand, let alone justify. Even when it is taken into consideration that political leaders have a generally higher level of awareness of security threats, there is no discernable threat in the environment that justifies a large number of guards who make their presence felt around people they guard. Perhaps if the guards were discreet without compromising the security of the person they are protecting they would not be such a visible part of the life of members of the political elite.
People in this category seem to go out of their way to use the most expensive and chauffer driven cars when less expensive but comfortable vehicles could just be as fine. The use of chauffeurs, though it too has declined, also appears to be out of proportion with what is reasonable. Some black people in the private sector have been seen in chauffer-driven vehicles too. This is definitely excessive and there is no explanation for it other than a desire to keep up with their counterparts in the public service who adhere to these practices because trappings of power are nice to pursue in and of themselves.
The definite purpose this lifestyle serves is to set the elite apart from the rest. This too serves no useful purpose other than to create a mystique around the elite. It is in the ensuing gap that social cohesion is undermined. The social distance created by guards and luxury cars kills human solidarity. A move to exclusive suburbs and, at times, gated communities completes the isolation the elite seek.
At least the political elite make the occasional appearance during election campaigns in poor areas. In contrast, the business elite is hardly ever seen in these areas except when they make an appearance at family gatherings in the townships where they grew up.
Aspects of black economic empowerment (BEE) also engender a gap between the elite and non-elite. While BEE is necessary to ensure a black business class is brought into being as swiftly as possible, there is no reason, to take one example related to this objective, that explains why BEE companies that have built strong balance sheets continue to benefit from the equity element of the scorecard. The purpose of BEE surely must be to create companies with an ability to participate in business. Once this is achieved no further reason exists for such companies to participate in transactions as if they did not have capital that could be used to further their commercial benefit.
Failure to curb this invites the criticism that BEE is concerned with benefiting only a handful of people who have already benefited manifold from BEE anyway.
The success of BEE must surely be measured, inter alia, by the ability of the empowered weaning themselves from state assistance. It cannot be that black business will forever require help from policymakers of the kind that the equity element affords them. If black business is unable to wean itself from government help that is so direct as the equity element, then the entire BEE exercise is reduced to a farce.
White business demonstrated that while they required state assistance to start off, on the whole they have proved their ability to compete without this help. It is not much to expect black business to do the same.
In some ways it cannot be helped if BEE companies benefit from the preferential procurement element. After all, policy is structured such that all companies should be able to benefit from this element. By concluding an empowerment transaction all companies should be equal in this regard and BEE should not privilege any company more than the rest. It would be imposing a huge burden on companies procuring goods from other companies to require of them to determine if the company they are procuring from has a strong balance sheet or not.
In some circles, BEE has been interpreted as open season for accumulation with little thought given to building sustainable businesses. This is not without sound reason. Some actively seek to use the BEE vehicle to accumulate as much as they can without any intention of assuming any risk beyond gaining assets. This is clearly not in line with the intentions of policymakers. Accumulation in the context of building new enterprises is a key objective of BEE. This is why the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) argues that BEE is, among other things, a part of the broader growth strategy government is pursuing. Limiting it to the equity element reduces it to a good retirement strategy for those who benefit from BEE transactions. It would be a huge improvement if the policy were tweaked to make this aspect clearer. It would shift the considerable focus on equity to the enterprise development element, and it would put the emphasis where it should be - building sustainable businesses by black entrepreneurs.
Emphasising one element, as has tended to happen in the last while, is limiting the vast possibilities BEE. In another ten years it will be sad if those who evaluate BEE conclude that it served merely to create a number of black shareholders. It would be a lot more exciting if the conclusion will be that it served to spur the creation of new businesses and a large black business class.
Strategists from BEE companies with strong balance sheets should also realise they are shooting themselves in the foot by placing their companies in line for more transactions when they could easily participate in corporate action that is not underpinned by the equity element of BEE. While no limits should be placed on the extent to which any company could grow, the population is entitled to place a limit on the extent to which a company relying on as explicit a policy as the equity element of BEE could grow using that policy. Policy makers and the public are well within their rights to demand that others benefit too from policy that seeks to create a black business class.
Failure to invest in entities that provide public consumption goods encourages a desire to accumulate wealth to privately provide for those needs that could easily be provided by facilities geared to serve the public. Good and well-managed public institutions have the advantage of being meeting places for both the poor and the well off; they work to destroy the walls created by unequal access to money with which to fund goods and services supplied by these entities.
South Africa has a poor record of investing in public facilities to serve the majority. The white population was well served by good public hospitals and other facilities. In the current period, these facilities have struggled to provide the same level of service to all who now are entitled to use them. Many institutions that were well looked after in the past are showing clear signs of decay, in part because they are ill-prepared to serve the many often poor people who seek the services of these institutions.
Public hospitals and schools are fast acquiring an image as bad providers of services. The growth of the private medical insurance industry is partly a result of the poor service provided at public health facilities. Schools of the quality of Healdtown, Inkamane, Mariazell and Pex do not exist anymore.
Constraints of Bantu education did not prevent these centres from providing a good education. The collapse of these schools has been especially hard on poor families who are without the means to enrol their children at private schools. But they have also put pressure on some to accumulate as quickly as possible to fund education at private schools.
Investing in public facilities should not be viewed as limited to a monetary investment, though this is important. More importantly, it should include investing in the people to manage institutions. What would be the point of building the best school if it does not have the teachers to go with it? The latter is often the most critical investment that far outstrips the look of the buildings. It is in this area in the main that the country is failing.
Neglecting investing in entities that supply public consumption goods also encourages the private sector to supply these goods to people who can afford the fees payable. This has a negative effect on social cohesion. Without discouraging private sector investment in any entity supplying whatever goods and services it wishes, the public, through the state, should make an effort to create public entities that can ensure people will not be denied any good or service for reasons to do with poverty.
An even scarier development is the wholesale scrapping of defined benefit funds for many beneficiaries in private employment. While the explanation is understandable, the consequences are devastating on the ability for people to fund what they require to live.
With many people living longer, available pension provisions are simply inadequate for the key needs to maintain health for many people. A meagre state pension is all many have and is demonstrably inadequate for its beneficiaries.
The left dabbles with fancy ideological positions that make those who make these arguments look very clever when there are practical achievable solutions to this problem. Social democracy in Sweden, operating as it does in the same global market place as any other country, has sustained a generous social support system for those who can no longer work. Instead of exploring such outcomes, left wing thinkers have practically abandoned the poor in favour of pure but meaningless theoretical posturing.
Inequalities resulting from high levels of unemployment, low pay for many people in employment and inadequate pension ensure that social cohesion is but a dream in South Africa. The gini coefficient (which is a measure of inequality) within the black community is said to have worsened since 1994; it is now higher than 0.6.2 Though this should not surprise anyone it points to a trend which should receive urgent attention from policy makers. What must have created this huge gap are the outliers at the top end of earners.
There were no blacks who participated in the higher reaches of management some ten years ago. Remuneration at these levels is in the millions. With the increasing numbers of blacks employed in managerial positions the high salaries they receive increase the average pay blacks receive and they should also explain the widening gap between the lowest and the highest paid.
It should be borne in mind that this has unfolded in circumstances in which social security expenditure has exploded. Many more individuals receive one or another social security payment than was the case in the past. Though this does not cover everyone without pay, it goes some way in reducing the numbers of indigent people. The effect this has on calculating average pay is to reduce the number of people without any pay and thus contributes to a higher average pay for blacks. What it does not do is obliterate the outliers on the low side of the pay scale. It is when these are compared with the highest that the gini coefficient is so appalling.
It is impossible for people earning the high salaries of executives to ever identify with people who earn very little or nothing at all. The two groups are as different as people drawn from different countries. Social cohesion has to rest on the basis that society gives some assurance that there is a floor below which no one will be allowed to fall. The monthly state pension of R820 does not do that. For very poor individuals it provides welcome relief but it is woefully inadequate.
South Africa does not have the resources to fund welfare on a scale disadvantage suggests it should. There are too many people in poverty in the country. The amount available is spread so thin that those who receive it must rely on other help, often from families, or starve. In addition, South Africa faces the challenges that have forced European countries to cut back on their welfare commitments.
Within existing constraints though the country should redouble its efforts to ensure that it defines a minimum below which no individual should be allowed to fall and work to find resources to keep to the commitment which will arise from this exercise.3 Once defined, this process will present problems of its own, which would have to be sorted out.
Greed is obviously present in the environment. There are indeed people in our midst who are driven by it. It is often present in programmes that are desirable, such as BEE. Not all accumulation though is reducible to greed.
Perhaps what this suggests is that policies must always be examined for their effect on society; inevitably many of them will have consequences that are not intended. It is not hard to imagine a policy that achieves what it was designed for and at the same time have negative consequences on social cohesion.
What evidence is available suggests the state has not taken existing values in South Africa and deliberately nurtured these into shared social values.
Indeed officers of the state have, by their behaviour, displayed the very traits that encourage greed and negative values. Good values are deliberately cultivated; they are just not embraced by the population out of the goodness of people's hearts. In other cases the state has displayed timidity in exploring policies that can promote a caring society which will require good values and will in turn advance them.
* Khehla Shubane is Chief Executive Officer of the BusinessMap Foundation.
Notes
While black economic empowerment seeks to influence change within a capitalist order associated with inequality and exploitation, it is nevertheless contributing to the realisation of the economic vision of the Freedom Charter, writes Jerry Vilakazi.
"The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people;
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well being of the people;
All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions."
Freedom Charter, 1955
Inspired and guided by the vision of economic emancipation of the Freedom Charter, the democratic government has inaugurated a host of policy and legislative measures, including broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE), to reduce the levels of economic deprivation and inherited disparities of wealth and income.
However, BEE has recently been subjected to numerous criticisms that have prompted some critics to question the effectiveness of BEE as a vehicle for effecting the deracialisation of economic ownership envisioned in the Freedom Charter. The criticism comes from both within our own movement and from forces that are opposed to our national democratic revolution. This latter criticism is characterised by the tendency to praise and celebrate white success while demonising the success of black entrepreneurs.
This article examines the interplay between BEE and the vision of economic emancipation articulated in the Freedom Charter. In particular, the article sheds light on some fundamental questions informing the ongoing dialogue and debate on whether or not BEE contributes to the kind of society envisaged in the Freedom Charter.
The ANC and its alliance partners have always held that for our political democracy and non-racialism to succeed, there must be economic empowerment and transformation that benefits the black majority. Against this background, debates on BEE have always been welcome and encouraged. Within the alliance partners the debate on BEE has assessed, and at times, challenged the effectiveness of BEE primarily on the basis of its impact on the poor and the working class.
There is broad consensus between the ANC and its alliance partners on the substance of BEE. There is also consensus that BEE must ultimately ensure that the black majority own the country's wealth in accordance with the Freedom Charter. However, what is at stake in the debate are the results that the BEE policy have yielded, which have tended to create economic prosperity for a few, instead of the black majority. While this may be a valid observation, the challenge is not how do we stop the success and prosperity of the few entrepreneurs, but how do we accelerate the process of creating a critical mass of empowered blacks.
The alternative society envisioned by the Freedom Charter is a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa. To facilitate this, the Freedom Charter comprises, among others, social, economic, political and legal goals. While the economic goals of the Charter must be seen in the context of the overall objective of the document, it is somewhat unrealistic to expect BEE, which primarily seeks to promote non-racial and non-sexist economic prosperity, to address the multiplicity of goals articulated in the Charter. Those who argue for the dilution of company ownership in the name of broad-based empowerment when they actually refer to broad-based ownership are doing a disservice to our cause. That is why in some sectors we are now seeing a tendency to form broad-based employee share schemes that even ignore employee investment companies to perpetuate white control at operational and board levels.
Our point of departure is that BEE is not a panacea to all the socials ills confronting our society. Rather, BEE is one of many policy instruments designed to restore, through its multifaceted approach to empowerment, the economic heritage of black people.
While the design of the current BEE policy does not resonate with the revolutionary underpinnings of economic change envisaged in the Freedom Charter (ie. nationalisation), its desired outcomes accord with the economic goals the Freedom Charter had intended to accomplish from the outset.
It is too simplistic to argue that BEE does not contribute to the kind of society envisaged by the Freedom Charter simply because of its strategic deviation from the revolutionary underpinnings of economic change originally envisaged in the Charter.
Black economic empowerment is contributing to the realisation of the economic vision of the Charter, though its implementation has been fraught with contradictions. We must accept the consequences of the policy choices we have made to reconstruct and develop our post-apartheid economy, and devise innovative means to deal with the unintended consequences generated by our policy choices.
Black economic empowerment constitutes an integral part of South Africa's economic growth and development strategy, which is capitalist in character.
While capitalist development has often lead to higher levels of economic growth, it has also been associated with inequalities, poverty and marginalisation of the majority.
Our discourse on the economic emancipation of the oppressed needs to take these realities into consideration and to explore effective means through which the benefits of BEE could be shared, within the constraints imposed by our economic order, among a broad base of enterprises and individuals.
This requires us, first and foremost, to understand the historical origins of economic dispossession and disempowerment of the indigenous people. This is so because the third clause of the Freedom Charter, and the BEE policy which gives effect to its contents, represents a specific response to a specific set of conditions engendered by the economic dispossession and disempowerment of the indigenous people.
HISTORICAL BASIS OF ECONOMIC DISEMPOWERMENT
Entrepreneurship and trade, the foundation of modern business, have always formed an integral part of black people's ways of life. Even before whites settled in South Africa, black people were engaged in a variety of successful entrepreneurial activities to accumulate wealth, which included, among other things, the cultivation of various crops, the rearing of cattle, sheep and other stock, the manufacture of some iron tools and pottery, and the tanning of animal hides for clothing.
However, the brutal dispossession and expropriation of black people's sources of productive wealth unleashed by colonialism ushered in the implementation of numerous repressive laws that militated against the development of viable and sustainable entrepreneurial activities among black people. These laws also relegated blacks to peripheral economic activities, what today constitute the bulk of 'second economy'.
These repressive laws were a direct response to the enthusiasm with which black entrepreneurs embraced the development of the market economy in South Africa, which was fuelled by the discovery of minerals. The development of the market economy created an insatiable demand for agricultural and other products in towns. This demand for agricultural products gave impetus to the rise of a very successful class of black peasants who supplied towns with agricultural products, wool and other commodities.
However, the success with which black peasants captured the agricultural product market posed a formidable competition to the nascent white farmers.
Moreover, the economic independence enjoyed by blacks due to their access to land and other forms of productive wealth made it difficult, if not impossible, for employers to induce blacks to consider taking up wage employment in mines, farms and other emerging sectors of the economy.
Therefore to help white farmers and miners to overcome the threat posed by black people's economic independence, the colonial governments made decisive legislative interventions to deal with black people's access to land and other sources of productive wealth.
These culminated in the passage of legislative measures that limited the amount of land that a black household could own, and the imposition of various taxes that could only be paid in cash. One major effect of these repressive interventions was to push blacks en masse to towns where they, besides being turned into a source of cheap labour, were subjected to various forms of racism within and beyond the workplace.
At the same time, the rapid urbanisation of blacks precipitated by the industrialisation of the economy provided new business opportunities for black entrepreneurs in towns. However, like the black working class, black entrepreneurs encountered numerous forms of racism that tended to both undermine and restrict their entrepreneurial activities in towns.
With the coming into power of the National Party with its apartheid programme, racial repressive laws against blacks were intensified. This not >only resulted in, among others, denying black workers the right to form or join trade unions but in stripping blacks of, and denying them an opportunity to accumulate, assets. It denied them access to skills, prevented them from playing any meaningful role in major companies and severely reduced the possibility of blacks starting their own enterprises.
The protracted struggles waged by the black people against these forms of economic injustice and all the other forms of deprivation endured by blacks provided a fertile ground for unity among the oppressed, which ultimately forced the apartheid government to enter into negotiations with the ANC.
These negotiations led to the ANC coming into power in 1994.
TRAJECTORY OF BEE
The ANC-led government inherited a society characterised by vast racial and gender inequalities in the distribution of and access to wealth, income, skills and employment. The economic conditions whose eradication the Freedom Charter had called for in 1955 had not simply disappeared.
Black economic empowerment became one of the main vehicles for transferring economic ownership to blacks. Empowerment is necessary because there was disempowerment in the past. This was a racially based process. Hence BEE takes on a racial character.
In essence, BEE is government's response to dispossession of black people over an extended period of time by successive white governments. The basis of white domination in South Africa was, among other things, the denial of capital accumulation by black people.
However, the early model of BEE that emerged in the 1990s was of limited economic benefit to the black majority due to its over-emphasis on equity ownership. As a result, the government has introduced legislation and regulations to accelerate and broaden the economic benefits accruing from BEE processes and transactions. The way the new legislation and regulations on empowerment are structured is intended to counter measures that underpinned colonial and apartheid processes of economic dispossession.
Concerns with the early model of BEE that emerged in the 1990s lead some critics, from both sides of the ideological divide, to a spurious conclusion that BEE had lost its strategic direction, as it had allegedly become an instrument for enriching "a small black elite with political connections with the ANC". This criticism has ushered in the 'enrichment vs empowerment' debate.
However, this debate about 'enrichment vs empowerment' is misleading. The debate fails to appreciate that empowerment is a multi-dimensional process that includes, among other things, promoting asset ownership among blacks, increasing the skills of blacks by a variety of means, and increasing control by blacks over significant assets.
The central question was recently raised by President Thabo Mbeki at the 4th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, which is whether there can be co-existence of the values of the capitalist market - almost always driven by individual profit maximisation and greed - and the values of human solidarity that bind us as a coherent society.
Colonialism, apartheid and other forms of racially based programmes, though specifically formulated to ensure racially exclusive privilege, were never able to create mass wealth among beneficiaries. These programmes succeeded in creating a relatively privileged group among whites. Only a few among them were able to accumulate wealth to the extent of being financially independent.
It is for this reason that BEE will not be able to achieve mass black wealth. In all likelihood, if successful it will create a handful -relative to the vast majority who are unlikely to gain huge benefits - of financially independent individuals. Our economy does need those individuals. We should collectively reject the attempts to demonise black success, especially when it is our struggle heroes who are the perpetual targets of vicious attacks from those who want us to believe that it is okay to have white billionaires but not morally right to have black billionaires.
The key fact is that white capital was built through the exploitation of our people and what we should avoid is the rise of black capital at the expense of the black majority through the greed and corruption against which Mbeki has consistently warned. Legitimate wealth creation, even within our own ranks, should be encouraged and supported, as it will strengthen our access to key resources needed to rebuild our country. We also need to recognise and support the key role that our new business elite and captains of industry, who emerged from the historical battles of our national democratic revolution, can play side by side with the poor and the working class of our country. The struggle for the realisation of the Freedom Charter has always been inclusive and cannot be fought within the terrain of exclusivity within our own social ranks. As much as we have rejected sexism, racism and ethnicity, we should reject the notion of separation by class if it seeks to divide us in the unified struggle for economic justice and transformation The economic vision set out in the Charter is yet to be fully realised. Our society is still characterised by poverty, economic marginalisation and vast racial and gender inequalities in the distribution of and access to wealth, income, skills and employment.
However, this does not mean that BEE does not contribute to the kind of society envisaged by the Freedom Charter. Black economic empowerment is contributing to the realisation of the economic vision of the Charter, though its implementation has been fraught with contradictions.
Black economic empowerment is not a panacea to all the social ills confronting our society. Centuries of exploitation cannot be reversed by just twelve years of empowerment initiatives. We must accept the consequences of the policy choices we have made to reconstruct and develop our post-apartheid economy, and devise innovative means to deal with the unintended consequences generated by our policy choices.
Black economic empowerment is capitalist in character and seeks to influence change within a capitalist order. We therefore have to be cognisant and supportive of the multitude of interventions by government to counter the negative effects of a capitalist economy which, while leading to higher levels of wealth, has also been associated with inequality, poverty and marginalisation of the majority.
* Jerry Vilakazi is the Chief Executive Officer of Business Unity SA and former Secretary of the ANC Rivonia Branch.
The struggle for gender equality and women's empowerment is central to our transformation. Despite the advances, significantly more progress is required, particularly in the classrooms and workplaces of South Africa, writes Andy Brown.
South African society continues to grapple with all forms of gender discrimination, sexism and patriarchy. This is mostly prevalent in households, in classrooms and in the workplace. While this impacts on all women, black women experience exclusion and discrimination based on their gender, race and class position. This is the case despite the ANC government's efforts to implement institutional and policy reforms to address these inequalities.
The struggle for gender equality and women's empowerment is central to our transformation. This principle is enshrined in Section 9 of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of South Africa, which not only protects women's rights, but also explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender.
South Africa has also committed itself to the third Millennium Development Goal: to achieve gender equality and women's empowerment.
Setting targets and changing the profile of classrooms and workplaces is critical. However, this in itself is not sufficient. True gender equality will only be achieved if we work towards eradicating patriarchy. To do so a gendered perspective should be applied to all policies and processes. A gendered perspective looks at fundamentally transforming unequal power relations and recognises that gender inequality manifests itself beyond access to opportunities. It is prevalent in the relationships, values, attitudes and in institutions and structures in the social, political and economic spheres.
In this article we consider progress in gender equality in certain aspects of the economic sphere, focusing on access to education and employment. We argue that while there is increasing opportunity and access, black women continue to be under-represented, under-employed and under-valued. This suggests that concerted efforts should be made to implement substantive change in the economic sphere, through quantitative and qualitative interventions aimed at eradicating patriarchy and gender bias. These efforts will have little success unless similar change occurs in the social and political sphere.
Addressing gender inequality is also an economic imperative. Research indicates that gender inequality in education and gender bias in employment has a direct impact on economic growth. Gender inequality in access to education and resources lowers the average quality of human capital and limits the income generating capability of a substantial portion of the population. Higher levels of education among women will thus impact positively on household incomes and result in higher productivity. One study demonstrated that in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa gender inequality may have reduced growth by 0.3% and, further, that gender differences between the poorest quartile and the richest quartile of countries by per capita income are evident. In the poorest countries, 5.4% of adult women have some secondary education, compared to 11.6% of adult males. In the richest countries, the comparable figures are 50.8% of women and 57.9% of men.1
The ANC government's commitment to the promotion of gender equality has been demonstrated by the establishment of institutions and the drafting of key policy and legislative measures, including:
GENDER EQUALITY IN EDUCATION
There are signs of increased access of black females to formal education.
All indicators show that there are improvements in black females graduating from secondary into tertiary education. However, the numbers are very low and it is not necessarily an indication of success in tertiary education, further education and training or in the labour market. While the participation of Africans in education has increased, African women have, on average, significantly lower levels of education compared to all other groups.
In primary and secondary education, enrolment and achievement rates of black females reflect much greater equity. Although, females are increasingly performing better than males at school, few continue to degree level.
With regard to matric qualifications, African females showed an increase of 5.9% from 1996 to 2001, though this was lower in the post-matric category (2.8%). Within the coloured community, the female percentage for matric increased by 10% compared with males at 8.3%.3 In 2004, more females than males wrote matric exams although the male pass rate was higher. There remain low numbers of black people passing maths and physical sciences at higher grade in matric and even lower for black females. This significantly limits options in higher education.4 Formerly white schools now have greater levels of attendance by black learners, but there are insignificant levels of attendance by white, coloured and Indian learners into formerly African schools.5 Inequities remain in the capacity and resources of formerly African schools and consequently in the quality of the education. Household and societal conditions also have an impact on the ability of students in under-developed areas to keep pace with schooling.
Research indicates that approximately 5% of the population aged 22 and above has higher education, with black women constituting the smallest percentage, despite some progress in the numbers of black women who are graduating. In 2001, 33.5% of university and technikon qualifications were awarded to black women and more than half to women.6 These findings are corroborated by research conducted by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE), which indicates an increase in black women graduates at almost 8% per annum, significantly boosting the overall increase of black graduates (in 2004 70% of graduates were black).
Despite the increase in the number of black women, choice of field of study and lower levels of progression into postgraduate level place black women at a disadvantage when seeking employment. Enrolment into certain fields remains predominantly white and male, especially engineering, sciences and technology.7 The Labour Force Survey (LFS) September 2006 reinforces these findings, demonstrating that among discouraged work-seekers two out of three women are considered discouraged work-seekers, compared to one in three males.
For those black women who are employed, the benefits of workplace training are limited. Many firms continue to view skills development requirements as merely a new tax. Levy paying participation rates are around 65.5%, with only 10.4% of levy paying firms participating in the levy grant system.
Training tends to be used for upgrading the skills base of existing employees in their current occupations and workplaces, or for routine or technical requirements.8 It is difficult to assess the impact of workplace training, as the recording of skills spend is inadequate in relation to type of training and on who it is spent, with companies only now beginning to record training spend in terms of gender and race. The emphasis in the BEE Codes that a portion of spend should be targeted towards black women should help. More importantly, learnerships and apprenticeships that are encouraged by the codes, if focused on black women, may provide the vital link between secondary or tertiary education and the labour market.
GENDER EQUALITY IN EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Across all aspects of the workplace and in the labour market black women continue to be under-represented. Black women are the most affected by unemployment and under-employment; black women dominate the least remunerative, less skilled jobs and find themselves more and more as casual workers. The following trends provide some indication of this situation9:
Agriculture, mining and construction sectors are the worst performers in terms of representation of black women in management categories, with an average representation of 2% black women in senior management. The overall representation of black people in senior management in these sectors averages at 14% for agriculture and mining and 35% for construction.
Table 1: Comparison of black representation in management levels and in selected occupational categories 2001 to 2005
Sources: CEE report 2002; CEE report 2004; EE Report 2005; CEE report 2005, LFS report 2005
The pace of addressing gender inequality in classrooms and in the workplace remains a major challenge. In short, the data suggests a lack of fundamental change in the ability of black women to participate in, benefit from and control economic resources. While empowerment is taking place, it is slow and not benefiting black women as much as it is black men.
In schooling a number of factors influence the success of black females, their ability to graduate and their choice of further study, if that happens at all. Gender inequality and bias in households, in the social sphere and in access to resources are of considerable influence.
Most changes in the racial profile of the workforce indicate that black men are benefiting more than black women, although compared to white males, black people generally lag far behind in representation of senior and middle management, professionals and in skilled positions.
The BEE codes attempt to address this slow progress and also give impetus to the EE Act, by setting targets against which companies will be measured. In management control, employment equity and in skills development, these targets have effectively been set for black women at 50% of the overall black target. Similarly, although not discussed here, there is a target for the participation of black women in ownership of enterprises. It is also expected that the codes will incentivise procurement from and enterprise development of companies owned by black women. These targets may produce a faster rate of change than the voluntary target setting of the EE Act, which has not been an unqualified success.
Critics of the proposed targets suggest that employment equity is only achievable through significant investment in skills development. They charge that to be realistic, targets must reflect current levels of equity and graduation trends from secondary and tertiary education.
There are gradual improvements in schooling and at tertiary level, especially for black females. However, black females are not entering the labour market at the same pace or at the same position as other groups.
While the mismatch between output of schooling, the possibilities of entering further and higher education and employment opportunities is experienced by black people, it is far worse for black women. There is therefore an urgent need to gain a deeper understanding of this problem and to develop targeted mechanisms to bridge the education and labour market space for black females in particular.
In the workplace, the reality is that availability of skills is but one of several factors impacting on attaining employment equity and gender equality. Other factors include corporate culture, top management commitment to transformation, gender-sensitive workplaces, retention and promotion policies and sector growth.
The weakness of the codes is that they do not address representation at other levels of the workforce. In the context where black women are predominantly located in elementary and semi-skilled positions, targets for black women below junior management or skilled levels would have been helpful.
Moreover, little is said of qualitative measures to eradicate sexism or gender bias in the workplace. Despite the targets for black women, the focus in most enterprises appears to be on addressing racial integration, with little effort being given to gender and non-sexism.
The impact of the BEE Act and the EE Act should be evaluated with a gendered perspective in mind to improve our knowledge of the benefit of the legislation for black women and to make recommendations that will enhance the ability of the legislation to address gender transformation in enterprises. For now, enterprises should at least be required to report on what they are doing to address these qualitative commitments.
Gender equality and economic development are mutually reinforcing and therefore gender equality is critical for growth. The income differentials for black women and the location of black women predominantly into elementary and semi-skilled categories does not assist in building a competitive economy, in the same way that equity in income and greater levels of inclusion could.
The assumption that a greater number of women in management positions or in the classroom suggests a more gender-sensitive climate is obviously not always the case, the data at hand demonstrates as much. Legislation and targets can only resolve part of the problem. Gender equality in the economic sphere requires a holistic approach with business, government and communities demonstrating the will and making the effort to bring about this transformation.
* Andy Brown is a consultant specialising in economic empowerment policy and strategy.
Notes
South Africa has a role to play in advancing a theology of transformation, which recognises the spirituality of all people and unites humanity in a struggle against conflict, inequality and oppression.
We have messed up. The end of the Cold War, colonialism and apartheid should have enabled the world to enter an era of peace and prosperity. But right wing fundamentalists claiming to be Christians, Muslims, Jews and others are locked in conflict over earth's resources and seeking to drag Africa into the fray. Instead of transformation, oppressive religious, political and economic forces have brought humanity to the worst crisis in its history.
Can South Africa, with its motto of unity through diversity, help find an answer? Spiritual power in the secular world can lead us to transformation.
In his address at the 4th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, President Thabo Mbeki said: "The question must therefore arise - for those of us who believe that we represent the good - what must we do to succeed in our purposes...
We must strive to understand the social conditions that would help to determine whether we succeed or fail. What I have said relates directly to what needs to be done to achieve the objective that Nelson Mandela set the nation, to accomplish the RDP of the Soul."
Humanity faces decimation, extinction, or transformation. Decimation occurs when our planet is attacked by asteroids, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, or diseases that cannot be forecast or prevented. They just happen any time.
The problem is how can survivors handle them? Extinction is self-afflicted through greed, economic dictatorship, warfare, and environmental destruction supported by heretical beliefs. The problem is how can survivors handle it?
Africa knows we need vision and power beyond the bloodshed, poverty, heresy and obliteration of the northern world.
The third scenario is transformation. We liberated ourselves from apartheid and the world can liberate itself from the destructive course of the developed countries today.
We are not all religious, but we are all spiritual human beings alert to compassion, cooperation and vision. A spiritual renaissance is emerging in the secular world of politics, economics and culture - a spiritual unity in our religious diversity.
As Mbeki said: "Because of the infancy of our brand new society, we have the possibility to act in ways that would, for the foreseeable future, infuse the values of Ubuntu into our very being as a people."
LIBERATION FROM COLONIAL RELIGIONS
Africa liberated herself from the political and economic oppression of apartheid but not from the limitations of colonial religions. Imported religious structures often divide us, impose colonial conflicts on us, and denigrate our own spiritual integrity.
Millions of 21st century citizens still cling to the ideas of the Roman Empire, the Crusades, reformed Germany and the Netherlands, Huguenot France, Charles Wesley's hymns, Victorian Britain, 19th century America, medieval Islam or oppressed Judaism.
We need to explore the spiritual unity in our own human experience. We need to reposition ourselves in the spiritual arena, following the vision of our political, academic, economic and religious prophets.
Former ANC President and Nobel Laureate Chief Albert Luthuli said: "Somewhere ahead there beckons a civilisation which will take its place in God's history with other great human syntheses: Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish, European. It will not necessarily be all black: but it will be African."
It is not our concern as the ANC to become a religious body, or interfere with people's personal spiritual interests in this life, or after death. It is our concern when our cadres are enticed to support religious movements promoting the agenda of foreign forces manipulating Africa for their own purposes. It is our concern when people use religion to undermine the national democratic revolution. It is our concern when people use religion to destroy South Africa's soul.
Human fulfilment consists of more than "access to modern and effective services like electricity, water, telecommunications, transport, health, education and training for our people."
"As distinct from other species of the animal world, human beings also have spiritual needs. Thus all of us, and not merely the religious leaders, speak of the intangible element that is immanent in all human beings - the soul! Acceptance of this proposition as a fact must necessarily mean that we have to accept the related assertion that consequently, all human societies also have a soul," Mbeki said.
'Spiritual' is the drive of a vital force inside us. It does not mean weird, spooky, superstitious, fear-laden, religious or heavenly. Some lives exhibit a proud, greedy, lustful, jealous, angry, self-centred or lazy spirit. Others have a spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, loyalty, humility or self-control. Human communities can move from a negative to a positive spirit.
That is the focus of the revolution we need in today's secular world of politics, economics, culture, and human relations.
When our homo sapiens ancestors emerged in Africa about 140,000 years ago, the challenge was to make human communities work. Darwin saw that species evolved by the survival of the fittest, but communities required the survival of the weakest. Human communities had to care for one another; they had to work together to conquer the perils and challenges of earth, and they had to think beyond their next meal.
Those essential requirements of compassion, cooperation and vision are crucial in the secular world of politics, culture and religion today.
THE SPIRITUAL APPROACH TO SECULAR SOCIETY
Secular and spiritual are two side of the same coin, the currency of human communities. Compassion, cooperation, and vision are as vital as oxygen and hydrogen; delivering peace and joy is as relevant as chemistry and physics; generosity and humility are as crucial as the balance of payments.
Spirituality is a crucial, techno-scientific truth about how secular humanity operates. Spirituality concerns politicians, economists, social scientists and families - not just those wearing religious labels.
Early homo sapiens set off from Africa and walked round the world. It took them quite a while, forming a sub-race here, a nation there, a bleaching over the horizon, until earth was populated. All these communities sought compassion, cooperation and vision that, like eating and drinking, copulating and dying, were simply part of being human.
About 5,000 years ago people began to develop religions. Four thousand years ago the focus moved from rituals to ethics. Writing documented the evolution as scriptures. World religions grew institutions, temples, priests and traditions, except in Africa, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand.
Primal spirituality saw no need for religious institutions. It still survives from Inuits to Aborigines, American 'Indians' to Siberian shamans, the myths of early Europe to African traditional spirituality.
Our ancestors hunted together, ate from trees and roots without thought of ownership: land belonged to all. Then humanity went astray. Cultivating animals and plants in settled places enabled them to invent villages and towns. Powerful people took possession of land, forcing others to work on it. Humanity became possessors and workers, landowners and land workers, aristocrats and peasants, masters and slaves.
Compassion was replaced by greed, cooperation by competition, vision focused on 'me', not 'us', and oppression became real. It was a spiritual challenge between those who saw human progress as the pursuit of wealth, and those who saw progress in the pursuit of compassion, cooperation and vision.
Religious institutions divided clergy from laity, and favoured wealth, power and men. Prophets in every religion preached the values of compassion, cooperation and vision; differentiated between ritual and ethics, and criticised the separation of the market from morals. Divisive denominations developed.
Bosses and priests usually united against working people and prophets.
Religio-political dictators took power by violence and claimed to be civilised. It is still so.
Religions invented theologies to satisfy their political and economic allies. Many leaders, from the Roman Emperor Constantine to US President Bush, claimed that a special relationship with God justified their oppressive actions.
These religious institutions flooded Africa as colonial imports:
Portuguese (1488), Dutch (1652), French (1688), German (1737), British (1795,1806,1820), Americans (1908,1914,1920), Reformed (1665), Lutheran (1779), Anglican (1806), Methodist (1806), Congregational (1806), Presbyterian (1813), Catholic (1688,1804), Pentecostal (1908,1914), Muslim (1658,1694,1780), Jewish (1834), and Hindu (1860).
The missionary package brought many benefits, plus the barbarism of colonialism. Sincerely mistaken figures hijacked God as a racist sexist oppressive religious figure. They produced the inherited diversity that our spiritual unity has to transform. Religion became a site of struggle because colonialism worshipped Greed.
Mbeki set out the relevance of this continuing conflict: "The capitalist class, to whom everything has a cash value, has never considered moral incentives as very dependable... Within the context of the development of capitalism in our country, individual acquisition of material wealth, produced through the oppression and exploitation of the black majority, became the defining social value in the organisation of white society.
Because the white minority was the dominant social force in our country, it entrenched in our society as a whole, including among the oppressed, the deep-seated understanding that personal wealth constituted the only true measure of individual and social success...
"The new order, born of victory in 1994, inherited a well-entrenched value system that placed individual acquisition of wealth at the very centre of the value system of our society as a whole... Get rich! Get rich! Get rich!" Opposition to apartheid rediscovered the soul of South Africa. Ignoring their scriptures on race and wealth, most religions succumbed to apartheid.
Despite marginal opposition, liberation was demonised as a tool of Communism.
Conscience was stirred by the Freedom Charter in 1955. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 and the banning of the liberation movements, anti-apartheid concern grew in all sectors. The Christian Institute, the South African Council of Churches (SACC), the Message to the people of South Africa of 1968, Black Consciousness, Call of Islam, Jews for Justice, the United Democratic Front (UDF), the Kairos Document, Liberation Theology, and the South African Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, demonstrated together, struggled together, prayed together, went to jail together, experiencing a unity which bridged race, sex, class, religions and politics. They discovered, in the words of Aziz Pahad in his address on 'Building a Global Progressive Movement', "the galvanising effect of articulating a vision of a non-racist non-sexist democratic society".
In the struggle people from different races, spiritualities, classes and skills came together and experienced a new humanity. South Africa discovered its spiritual power. This vision of united humanity was as full of portent for the world community as the emergence of Homo sapiens on the highveld centuries before. Apartheid was not defeated by violence: it was supplanted by the self-discovery of South Africa's soul.
Many warmed to Nelson Mandela's call: "The transformation of our country requires the greatest possible cooperation between religious and political bodies, critically and wisely serving our people together."
In the words of Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs: "We had in this country an amalgam of cultural and spiritual ingredients that provided a profound philosophical setting for peaceful change. It was a case of ubuntu meeting Satyagraha meeting an international tradition of struggle for revolutionary change. The result was something that has evolved and become deeply rooted in the temper of our people. As Gandhi showed through his life, idealism is sustainable in the real world. It needs only to be backed up by real commitment by millions of ordinary people." South Africa had discovered its soul: the unity in its diversity. And then we lost the plot again. After liberation we dilly-dallied. No strong united religious commitment towards transformation emerged. Many sectors lost the vision of doing transformation together and reverted to colonial competition.
We love our inherited colonial separations too much to unite as spiritual South Africans. Inhuman priorities remain unchallenged in our economic systems and political attitudes. Many have been seduced and manipulated by the dictators of wealth. According to Pahad: "The world as a direct result of globalisation has been cast as a vast ocean of poverty in which a few islands of prosperity are to be found."
As Mbeki says, we are fixated on "the dominance of the capitalist motive of private profit maximisation, which has evolved into the central objective that informs the construction of modern human society in all its elements.
Nothing can come out of this except the destruction of human society... We share a fundamental objective to defeat the tendency in our society towards the deification of personal wealth as the distinguishing feature of the new citizen of the new South Africa".
THE VISIONLESS AGE
Major changes in world affairs have affected liberated South Africa, including:
In this soulless state - at the point of disillusion, discord and despair -a secular spiritual unity arises to bring compassion to our economics, cooperation to our politics, and a transforming vision to South Africa's soul.
All spirituality shares a common ground of being, a commitment to the common good, is threatened by right wing fundamentalism and believes that good overcomes evil.
Throughout history people have sensed a more-than-just-me spirit, a supra-human influence - from ancestors stones to cathedrals, from Buddha to Jesus, from Krishna to Umvelinqangi, from Yahweh to Allah.
Creation stories in every folklore related the motive forces of compassion, cooperation and the vision of peace and prosperity to the sense of a greater power operating in the human community whether in terms of Jesus, Muhammad or Marx. Albert Einstein wrote: "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary form - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; and in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."
There is a spiritual unity in our religious diversity. All spirituality believes in the common good. Nearly all people describe religion as a Way of Life. Many passages in the scriptures of the world might have been written by the same hand, speaking the same language, singing the same songs, reflecting the same personal and communal spiritual inputs to the secular world.
The spiritual unity within this diversity is the great strength of humanity.
The post-colonial, post-globalisation quest for transformation needs to review the primal spirituality of humanity, which for us is through African Traditional Spirituality. It too is a way of life, more comprehensive than a religion, a secular spirituality in pursuit of the common good, a holistic communal concern that needed no structures, buildings or priests.
Canon Luke Pato explains: "The African has a sense of the wholeness of life.
In traditional African religion there is no separate community of religious people, because everyone who participates in the life of the community also participates in its religion."
Dr Nokuzola Mdende says: "Religion among Africans is not treated as an isolated entity: it is dealt with in a broader context since it permeates all sections of life of both the individual and the society."
Ubuntu is a way of life not a way of being religious. It reveals the common primal truths of all communities. It includes all people, not a privileged group. There is no capitalist concept of a small group dictating to the masses on economic grounds: the poor are part of the community. Primal spirituality is compassionate, cooperative, and envisions a Vital Force within us - a secular spirituality.
This quest for the common good is deeply economic. Prof Ulrich Duchrow from the University of Heidelberg says: "The perspective of the common good fundamentally starts with the weakest, most threatened members of the community. If they can live, all can live." The focus of the common good is on earth not in heaven, and personal commitment is to an agenda for the transformation of the community.
All spirituality is threatened by right wing fundamentalism. The globalisation of undemocratic capitalist dictatorship records a history of commitment to violence not compassion, to domination not cooperation, and has no vision but its own material gain. This barbarian empire, led by the US, supervises the rise of right wing religious-political-economic fundamentalism that is destroying the world.
The current flash point is in the Christian-Jewish-Muslim conflict of the Middle East. The Middle East war is not between these religions. It is a conflict of right wing fundamentalisms that misuse their religions. They have no basis in the teaching of Judaism, Jesus of Nazareth, or the prophet Muhammad. They are distortions of scripture dedicated to death, giving fraudulent theological backing to political and economic oppression.
Fanatics are fanatics. Christians, Jews and Muslims embrace 'mistaken enthusiasm'. They turn anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism; they corrupt Christian theology with an anti-God, anti-Jesus, anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-war image; they see all Muslims as suicide bombers.
Religions often encouraged it by their failure to embrace modern scientific and ecumenical realities, and their cold cerebral presentation of God. This precipitated agnosticism on the one hand and right wing fundamentalism on the other, both aligned to the worship of money.
The violent warring history of Christianity, totally opposed to its founder, began with its catastrophic adoption as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Its subservience to political and economic objectives, the Crusades, the wars of the rise of Protestantism and national states in Europe, the pursuit of slavery and colonialism, all contributed to the false concept of Church.
Into this superior imperialist background Christian Fundamentalism emerged in 1910 with the publication in California of 'The Fundamentals'.
Fundamentalists emphasised their interpretation of the Bible, engaged in major controversies over theories of evolution and politics. They pursued ecstatic forms of evangelicalism, witness, prophecy, and later gained major impetus by funding through television programmes.
Right wing fundamentalists in America, Europe and Africa, with strong capitalist backing, promoting the 'gospel of Prosperity', have moved into the 'Christo-Fascism' of the Bush Empire. It says the conflict between Christians and Muslims indicates Armageddon is approaching. The US is God's instrument for Christ to come again and destroy its terrorist enemies, thus Christians worldwide should support Bush. Opinion polls reveal that millions of Americans accept this heresy as truth.
Zionism is in a similar position, claiming Israel as God's promise to the Jews of antiquity. Zionism was actually established in August 1897 by Theodor Herzl at the founding of the World Zionist Organisation, supported by Britain's Balfour Declaration in 1917, and formally established as the state of Israel in May 1948.
It is a political and economic state, having marginal spiritual identity with the Tenakh and the Talmud. The United States' adoption of Israel as its ally in the pursuit of Middle East oil deeply distresses Jews who are not Israeli Zionist fundamentalists.
Muslim right wing 'fundamentalism' also arose only recently, and has nothing to do with the ways of Muhammad in the 7th century. The Prophet saw his task as spreading the way of peace, mercy and spirituality. He recognised the common roots with Jews and Christians, and had no basic conflicts with either (except with the claim that Jesus was God, on which the Church also was divided). Because the Prophet left no clear successor, different religious and political factions have sought precedence ever since, invariably claiming support from the Qu'ran.
The US has manipulated this disunity in its quest for control of the Middle East, switching from side to side with its political analysis. Many accuse US aggression for instigating the right wing fundamentalism developed in Islam.
There is also a major deliberate activity to spread right wing fundamentalisms in our country and continent. After the Middle East oil is consumed, the search for oil and platinum in Africa is next on the agenda.
Many see the current infusion of right wing fundamentalism as preparation for the armies that will come next.
THE MEDIA Because humans now feed their thinking with reading and watching, the media is a crucial area. Today, it often loses its commitment to truth and democracy and becomes a tool of commercial enterprise and fundamentalist assertions.
It is difficult to obtain the truth from a media influenced to indoctrinate people through advertisements, scandal, greed and fear, instead of mediating information enabling people to stand on their own spiritual feet. Right wing fundamentalists try to scare the hell into people to put their minds to sleep. The media love it - it sells.
Oppressive empires are not destroyed by other empires: they collapse from within, starting at the edges. That was the story from ancient empires to the British empire, and it is happening to the globalised US empire now. The poor, the slaves, women, and apartheid survivors know that good does overcome evil, evolution does move forward, and we can expect a transformation embracing the rebirth of society and spirituality.
Africa has a major role to play in going for the good. Our Constitution has an inclusive approach to religious diversity that only disbars hatred, coercion, and violence. Liberating themselves from colonial and economic subservience, both agnostics and believers in diverse religions can discover the spiritual unity of the modern world.
The common spirituality of our human community in the secular world brings richness both to those from different religious backgrounds, and to those who find an institutional religious component unnecessary. The transformation of Africa means rediscovering compassion, cooperation and vision in the secular world, together.
"We should all agree that to achieve the social cohesion and human solidarity we seek, we must vigorously confront the legacy of poverty, racism and sexism,... and... persist in our efforts to achieve national reconciliation," according to Mbeki.
Compassion is a concern for others that is more tha