Lecture 6 (2009)
In trying to understand and describe the transition in SA from apartheid to electoral democracy, it is important not to fall into what Gillian Hart has described as ‘the impact model’ for discussing globalisation. While we may speak of the entry of neoliberal policies into SA, we also need to understand the process of neoliberalisation in SA as one that is shaped by the aspirations and desires of its citizens. Resistance, understood not just as a reaction to an effect of a neoliberal policy, but also as a continued fight for the realisation of a commitment or desire constituted in the struggle for liberation, is key in allowing us to attempt such an analysis.
A glimpse into different spheres of life in SA post-1996 and the adoption of GEAR allows us to understand the experience of neoliberalism in SA in this manner:
- Labour – Struggles that resulted in the Labour Relations Act (LRA) and Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) unfolded in the context of neoliberal policies coming to shape labour markets, labour relations, and the nature of work. The BCEA, for example, allows for individual agreements to be entered into between workers and employers that permit working conditions and wages below the minimal standards prescribed by the law. In this way, the legal framework has supported the growing flexibilisation of labour, characterised by a growth in casual, contract, part-time, and seasonal forms of work, that allow for lower wages to be paid and employers to take no responsibility for protections like medical aid and pensions. The article in your course pack by Roseline Nyman goes into this area in a lot more detail. She also shows how GEAR’s targets with regard to job creation have not been met. This aspect of neoliberalism will be explored in greater detail in the last theme of the course with Paul Stewart.
- Cuts in social spending – An example here would be the introduction of the Child Support Grant (CSG) – Until 1996, government paid out a State Maintenance Grant (SMG) to non-African mothers earning below a certain monthly income with children under the age of eighteen. The SMG was made up of R430 (for the parent) and R135 (for the child). After the introduction of GEAR, the SMG was scrapped, and the existing pot of money ‘redistributed’ to include African children through a CSG of R70 for every child under the age of 6 born to parents earning below a certain monthly income (with this amount being increased to R100 after civil society pressure). Today the CSG is R260 for socio-economically disadvantaged children under 15 years of age. This is still less than the SMG. This is also an example that refutes the claim that government has made in recent years that it has increased its social spending and thus moved away from a neoliberal approach. Rather, its small increases of spending can be shown to be far too low to make up for the cuts made in the first few years of GEAR’s implementation.
- Education – The higher education sector has suffered considerably, in particular since 1998 when national government cut its subsidies to institutions of higher learning, keeping within its neoliberal logic of maintaining a tight fiscus and prioritising national needs. This has resulted in universities having to reorganise (‘restructure’) themselves like businesses, generating their own income, and managing tight budgets. Examples – introduction of upfront student payments, increases in student fees, outsourcing of certain ‘non-core’ functions of the university e.g. catering and cleaning, cutting of academic support programmes, casualisation of academic labour.
- Health – the replacement of comprehensive primary health care with selective primary health care; introduction of notions of ‘partnership’ in which patients become ‘clients’ and health professionals become ‘service providers’.
- Basic Services – encouragement of payment for basic services like water, electricity and housing (‘commodification’); the management of the delivery of basic services by the private sector, in the case of Johannesburg, a French TNC, Suez Lyonnaise Des Eaux.
Resistance – to GEAR and to specific policies within the GEAR framework, in particular privatisation in different economic sectors – from within the Alliance – COSATU, SASCO – but these have largely been contained through the operations of the Alliance.
In the main, resistance has come from outside of the Alliance to specific effects of neoliberal policies, in the delivery of basic services, in land reform, and in health. After 1996, as payment for services began to be enforced in communities that could not afford to pay, whole communities started to be cut off from water and electricity. In 1997, communities in Eldorado Park began to protest against cut offs, followed by communities on the East Rand and all over the country. By 1999, people were coming together in the formation of new social movements – e.g. the Concerned Citizens Forum (CCF) in Durban, the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) in Cape Town, and the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) in Johannesburg. The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) was formed in struggles of people against forced removals, evictions, and for land, and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in struggles for improved treatment for HIV positive people. The significance and character of these struggles will be taken up in our last few lectures.
