{"id":78379,"date":"2016-08-29T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=78379"},"modified":"2016-08-26T13:33:08","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T12:33:08","slug":"south-african-elections-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/south-african-elections-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"South African Elections 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"howard<\/a>\u201cOur greatest political problem is lack of imagination.\u201d<\/em> –Michel Foucault<\/p>\n

The markets loved election results that left the party of Nelson Mandela quaking in its boots.\u00a0 The African National Congress (ANC) allied with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) have been continually in office since the beginning of democracy in 1994.\u00a0 In nationwide municipal elections held August 3, 2016, for the first time ever the ANC alliance won less than 60% of the vote.\u00a0 In nationwide totals the ANC scored 54%, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) 27%, and the self-styled \u201cLeninist\u201d Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) 8%, while numerous smaller parties shared the remaining 11%. \u00a0The DA took the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality including Port Elizabeth from the ANC.\u00a0 The Democratic Alliance added to the dominant position it has long held in Cape Town and in over a dozen smaller cities near Cape Town.\u00a0 In 26 cities, including the big ones Johannesburg and Pretoria, coalition government will be the name of the game.\u00a0 In those cities nobody won a majority of the council seats which means under South African rules that the smaller parties will tip the balance between an ANC mayor and a DA mayor.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Although the Economic Freedom Fighters did not win any municipalities, in some cities (like Joburg where they got 11%) they are on track to be kingmakers and sharers in the spoils of victory.\u00a0 For the first time EFF militants will hold executive offices in cities.\u00a0 \u00a0All signs point to the EFF forming pragmatic alliances with the free market liberals of the DA who are in theory their ideological enemies.<\/p>\n

The markets loved the elections.\u00a0 The South African rand strengthened against the US dollar rising to 13.8 rands per dollar, reversing a downward slide that had seen it fall from 7.5 per dollar in 2012 to nearly 15 per dollar in July of 2016.\u00a0\u00a0 Shares rose on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.\u00a0 The website of the United States Council on Foreign Relations echoed the markets with the headline \u201cIt\u2019s Morning in South Africa.\u201d\u00a0 Bloomberg News explained why:\u00a0 The election results are a sign that South Africa will enact the long overdue economic reforms needed to address the deep poverty of the majority and a staggering 27% rate of unemployment.\u00a0 The elections are a sign that President Jacob Zuma (who put a cheerful spin on his party\u2019s setbacks declaring them to be proof that \u201cSouth Africa is a thriving democracy\u201d) may be forced to resign before his term is up in 2019.\u00a0 If he resigns, he will probably be replaced by someone less corrupt and more investor-friendly like Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa or former president Thabo Mbeki.\u00a0 Zuma himself might see the light and change course.\u00a0 The ANC itself might unseat Zuma at its party convention in 2017.\u00a0 (Under South African rules the president of the party with the most seats in Parliament becomes the president of the country, which means that President Zuma could be voted out of office by his own party even before the next parliamentary elections.)\u00a0\u00a0 In a few years the Democratic Alliance with or without coalition partners may be the party electing the majority of the MPs and forming the government.\u00a0\u00a0 In short, all winds are blowing Bloomberg\u2019s way, blowing to the right.<\/p>\n

Blowing Bloomberg\u2019s way, the winds of change will bring what Bloomberg calls the long overdue economic reforms needed to make doing business more secure, easier, and more profitable.\u00a0\u00a0 Sensing the direction of the wind, the markets registered growing investor confidence after the election.<\/p>\n

One can agree that Bloomberg interpreted correctly the reaction of the markets to the election, and even agree that some of the DA\u2019s proposed neoliberal economic reforms would be on balance desirable, without agreeing with the overall philosophy that shapes its reporting.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bloomberg frames the expected reforms as the efficient causes that will generate prosperity and employment.\u00a0 That investors are already expecting higher profits is framed as good news for the poor.\u00a0\u00a0 The proposition that more investor-friendly reforms (on top of the many South Africa has already had) will serve the common good is treated as a given needing no proof; as if it were a joke that had already been told; as if those who did not understand the joke and did not know when to laugh, or did not know whether to laugh or cry, were not so much mistaken as left out of the conversation, deprived of voice.<\/p>\n

At this point in history, the major media, owned by investors and run by investors for investors, have been transmitting the pro-investor philosophies of political and economic liberalism for a little longer than two centuries.\u00a0\u00a0 In many minds, it is at this point in history not a conscious assumption \u2013it is more like a subconscious presupposition shared by the media sending the messages and the public receiving them– that the one thing the elected officials of any government must do, whatever else they do, and the one thing everyone else must do, is to please us, the investors.\u00a0 The voice of the investors has said so\u00a0 often that what it says passes for common sense, \u201cplease investors.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Attract us.\u00a0 Woo us.\u00a0 If we investors invest, then all is well.\u00a0 Then there is employment, then people rise out of poverty, then more tax money flows into public coffers.\u00a0 If we investors do not invest, then all is lost: then there is unemployment, in the extreme case of SA there is 27% unemployment; then there is poverty, in the extreme case of SA there is the world\u2019s highest Gini coefficient; then there is desperation, crime, insanity, social chaos and violence.<\/p>\n

Some see the whole problematique <\/em>differently.\u00a0 They see as a duck the same sketch the mass media see as a rabbit.\u00a0 The rabbit: the question, the first question, the question whose answer is the key to solving so many problems, is how to attract investment?\u00a0 \u00a0The duck: the question, the first question, the question whose answer is the key to solving so many problems, is how to make democracy real?\u00a0 In other words, how to make modern societies governable.\u00a0 In other words, how to liberate humanity (and the biosphere) from an overriding imperative that when push comes to shove trumps all other imperatives, that imperiously commands that money must continually and forever morph into more money.\u00a0\u00a0 The necessity of doing whatever it takes to attract investment is the problem, not the solution.<\/em><\/p>\n

Those who see the duck, those who feel deprived of voice in a culture saturated everywhere with messages endlessly repeating \u201crabbit-rabbit-rabbit-rabbit\u201d; those who are looking for guidance to help them to articulate what they would say if they had a voice;\u00a0 those\u00a0\u00a0 who seek an alternative to hyper-liberal public discourses like those in South Africa today that feature the ANC and the DA vying in a beauty contest to see who looks most business-friendly \u2013with the DA currently looking better and the ANC poised to improve its image by changing leaders\u2014 have for nearly two centuries been going to libraries \u2013and more recently to Websites– \u00a0to read the works of Karl Marx.\u00a0 It should not be overlooked, however, that in essence a mainstream liberal analysis of how capitalism works and Karl Marx\u2019s analysis of how capitalism works are almost exactly the same.<\/em><\/p>\n

Consider the analyses of Dani Rodrik and Ricardo Haussmann, two mainstream liberal economists who have been advisors to the government of South Africa, and whose views have influenced its National Development Plan.\u00a0 Although they acknowledge that development has other dimensions, their focus is on economic growth.\u00a0 What economic growth requires, they say, is getting entrepreneurs excited about investing.\u00a0 Exciting entrepreneurs in turn requires favourable (low) wages paid to a high quality work force, the availability of credit and infrastructure, favourable (low) taxes, no obstacles to taking profits out of the country after they have accrued, and in general doing whatever it takes to attract investors.\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing separates their analyses from Marx\u2019s view that where there is accumulation of capital there is capitalism, and where there is capitalism there is accumulation of capital; or Marx\u2019s view that the production process begins with investing money to buy means of production, continues with producing for the purpose of sale, and concludes a cycle by selling for the purpose of profit.\u00a0 Something does separate contemporary mainstream economists from Marx\u2019s (mistaken) thesis that capitalists can only make profits by exploiting labour, but nothing separates them from his thesis that the dynamic that drives capitalism is profit.<\/p>\n

There is a reason why liberals and Marxists have superficially different but essentially similar views.\u00a0 The reason is that it is true that capital accumulation drives capitalism.\u00a0 Both are correct.\u00a0 The liberals are more grateful to entrepreneurs who organize the factors of production and generate a surplus (\u201csurplus value\u201d) and rightly so, for a modern society cannot function without organizers who organize the accumulation of a social surplus.\u00a0 The Marxists are more worried that the path we are on (\u201cgrowth\u201d) is socially and ecologically unsustainable, again rightly so.\u00a0\u00a0 Both are correct.<\/p>\n

Michel Foucault is also correct.\u00a0\u00a0 There is proof that Foucault is correct in the responses of the leaders of the nations of the world to the global financial crisis of 2008 and its ongoing aftermaths.\u00a0\u00a0 Their lack of imagination has been cosmic, breath-taking.\u00a0\u00a0 When the capital accumulation machine broke down \u2013as sooner or later it always does– business and political leaders remained and still today remain in the grip of economic thinking confined to a production model that begins with investing money to buy means of production, continues with producing for the purpose of sale, and concludes a cycle by selling for the purpose of profit.\u00a0 Thousands of otherwise intelligent leaders have been unable to think of anything better to do when financial bubbles burst, debts become unpayable, workers are thrown out of work, and production slows down than to impose austerity on an innocent public that never did anything to cause the crisis, to bail out banks, and to try to shore up sagging investments and sales by inundating markets with more and more money at zero percent or even negative interest rates.\u00a0 \u00a0Political leaders and the citizens they represent fail to see realities in plain sight.\u00a0\u00a0 For example, the reality that buying and selling is only of the ways that human beings get the work of the world done and meet their needs.\u00a0\u00a0 For example, the reality that within the general category of buying and selling, only a subset of all the haggling and trading people do in marketplaces around the world is motivated by or leads to private capital accumulation.<\/p>\n

Thinking more broadly:\u00a0 \u00a0If \u201cAfrican Renaissance\u201d means anything it must mean remembering that in the territory now occupied by the Republic of South Africa people lived and raised children and carried out all the normal human functions for thousands of years without unemployment or inflation.\u00a0\u00a0 As Julius Nyerere often pointed out, the historical conditions of the possibility of unemployment did not exist until Africa was conquered by Europeans. \u00a0Nyerere liked to quote a Swahili proverb:\u00a0 Feed your guest for two days, on the third day give him a hoe.\u00a0 The Argentine economist Jos\u00e9 Luis Coraggio has demonstrated that in most Latin American and African countries today far more people make their livings in what Coraggio calls the \u201cpeople\u2019s economy,\u201d i.e. in economic activities where little or no capital is accumulated, than in the capitalist firms that get so much more than their fair share of academic and political attention.\u00a0\u00a0 As Karl Polanyi and many others have documented the principle of reciprocity and the principle of sharing the surplus typical of many indigenous knowledge systems have organized labour to meet human needs for many centuries.\u00a0\u00a0 They have stood the test of time. \u00a0\u00a0And these are only three samples suggesting the infinite number of non-capitalist and mixed (i.e. part capitalist) solutions to the challenges of life that are practiced today and have been practiced in the past.\u00a0 They do not even begin to imagine the unbounded organizing humans will do in the future.<\/p>\n

If it is indeed \u201cmorning in South Africa\u201d let us hope morning will bring light with its heat.\u00a0 If the DA and the EFF form pragmatic alliances to govern cities, let us hope they also talk to each other about their deepest beliefs.\u00a0 If they share ideas as well as power, they will learn from each other.\u00a0 Let us also hope that the inevitable repositioning of the ANC will be an occasion for necessary conversations about how to build a fully nurturant society. \u00a0\u00a0Let us hope that the people of good will who are willing to live and die for the cause of justice will also like be willing to read and think for the cause of justice.<\/p>\n

Recommended Readings:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gavin Andersson and Howard Richards (2015), Unbounded Organizing in Community.\u00a0 Lake Oswego:\u00a0 Dignity Press.<\/p>\n

Roy Bhaskar (1986), Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation.\u00a0 London: Verso.<\/p>\n

Hein Marais (2013), South Africa Pushed to the Limit.\u00a0 London: Zed Books.<\/p>\n

Karl Polanyi (1944), The Great Transformation.\u00a0 Boston: Beacon Press.<\/p>\n

Howard Richards (2016),\u00a0 The Impossibility of Politics and How to Make Politics Possible<\/a> (search under this title on Google)<\/p>\n

Dani Rodrik (with Ricardo Haussmann and Andres Velasco) (2007), One Economics, Many Recipes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Prof. Howard Richards is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a>. He was born in Pasadena, California but since 1966 has lived in Chile when not teaching in other places. Professor of Peace and Global Studies Emeritus, Earlham College, a school in Richmond Indiana affiliated with the Society of Friends (Quakers) known for its peace and social justice commitments. Stanford Law School, MA and PhD in Philosophy from UC Santa Barbara, Advanced Certificate in Education-Oxford,\u00a0 PhD in Educational Planning from University of Toronto. Books:\u00a0 <\/em>Dilemmas of Social Democracies with Joanna Swanger,\u00a0<\/em>Gandhi and the Future of Economics with Joanna Swanger, <\/em>The Nurturing of Time Future, Understanding the Global Economy (available as e-books),\u00a0<\/em>The Evaluation of Cultural Action (not an e book).\u00a0 <\/em>Hacia otras Economias with Raul Gonzalez, free download available at www.repensar.cl<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Solidaridad, Participacion, Transparencia: conversaciones sobre el socialismo en Rosario, Argentina. <\/em>Available free on the blogspot lahoradelaetica.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloomberg frames the expected reforms as the efficient causes that will generate prosperity and employment. That investors are already expecting higher profits is framed as good news for the poor. The proposition that more investor-friendly reforms (on top of the many South Africa has already had) will serve the common good is treated as a given needing no proof; as if it were a joke that had already been told; as if those who did not understand the joke and did not know when to laugh, or did not know whether to laugh or cry, were not so much mistaken as left out of the conversation, deprived of voice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}