Business Day
*Malema may be the voice of reason rather than rhetoric * *Caroline Southey, Business Day, Johannesburg, 28 June 2011 *A GROUP of erudite intellectuals and a rabble-rousing politician with coruscating political ambition may, on the face of it, make strange bedfellows, b ut there is a great deal in common between the diagnostic reports delivered by Trevor Manuel 's National Planning Commission and Julius Malema's closing speech at the recent African National Congress (ANC) Youth League conference.
Stripped bare --- the reports of their academic elegance and the speech of its bombast --- both home in on the fact that race-based inequality threatens to push the economy and, indeed, the entire society over the precipice. Manuel and Malema are giving us the same message.
The reports have received far less attention than Malema's speech. This is unfortunate because they represent a watershed in South African politics. Dispassionate, in some places even bland, they nevertheless provide a vivid presentation of a grossly unequal society in which apartheid remains firmly in place in the distribution of wealth, employment, education, health and housing.
The extent of these distortions is very often ignored, or glossed over, in SA's political discourse. The preoccupation with political machinations often overshadows the fact that the vast majority of black South Africans are painfully poor and live in economically precarious circumstances.
The statistics are ugly. Only every other South African works (41%), compared with 66% in comparable economies such as Brazil and Malaysia. Fewer than half of those are formally employed and can produce a payslip. The rest work in the informal sector, mostly "self-employed". The only countries doing worse are in the Middle East, where women are largely excluded from the workforce.
Since the first democratic elections in 1994, the average monthly income for the poorest 10% of the population has increased from R783 to R1041 while for the richest 10% it has risen from R71055 a month to R97899. That's a ratio of 94:1.
It is young black people who bear the brunt of this . About two-thirds of all unemployed people are below 35. About 65% of black youth are unemployed. The proportion of school-leavers able to get a job has fallen from 50% in 2001 to less than 30% .
The social cost of long-term unemployment is staggering. In SA , if young people fail to get a job by 24, they are almost never likely to get full-time formal employment. "As a consequence, about 60% of an entire generation could live their lives without holding a formal job," says the report, concluding: "This time bomb is the greatest risk to social stability in SA ." This is the "time bomb" Malema is addressing when he says the league should be the "voice of the voiceless".
Both the intellectuals and Malema revisit the past 100 years to shed light on today's state of affairs. The diagnoses are similar. Would Malema disagree with any of the following from the diagnostic report?
"From the early 20th century, SA 's economy resembled that of a typical colony. Raw materials were extracted and exported, with the rents going to the colonisers. By the early part of the 20th century, while large colonial corporations continued to dominate the economic landscape, the local settler community began to keep a larger share of the rents. They continued to use cheap labour to extract natural resources, largely for export. They used the rents to build up a services sector to support their lifestyles."
In Malema's view the 21st century looks the same, and unless something changes, the 22nd century will look little different.
"In SA today, elements of colonial, racial and class oppression continue to define an absolute majority of our people, blacks in general, and Africans in particular," he said. "When we attained democracy and freedom in 1994, black people owned only 13% of the land and white people owned 87% of the land.... In 2011, less than 5% of SA 's land has been redistributed.... If we continue with this trend ... we would have redistributed only 25% of land in 100 years. In other words, in 100 years' time, the inequalities between black people and white people will still remain. "
The diagnostic reports similarly pinpoint that, 17 years after the first elections, inequality and poverty remain firmly entrenched.
Although the reports contain nothing startling ly new, they are refreshingly free of rhetoric and political posturing. They hold a depressingly accurate mirror up to a country that has yet to deal with its legacy .
The question is, who will win the battle for bandwidth in the circles that matter, the National Planning Commission or the ANC Youth League?
So far it is Malema who is winning hands down. Referring to the debate about nationalisation, he justifiably claims: "The nation is talking about the economy because the youth league speaks about the economy."
Malema is successfully attracting the interest of sections of the black middle class and the disaffected and marginalised youth. His populist calls for a change in "racialised capitalist relations" through nationalisation appeal to a sense of grievance fed by persistent and visible race-based inequalities felt by all black people, irrespective of their economic status. It is a powerful platform.
The diagnostic reports, on the other hand, are muted on the way forward, inviting instead dialogue and debate. As welcome as this cerebral approach might be to the white (and some in the black) middle class, it is unlikely to have the same effect on SA's politics as Malema's mobilisation drive.
Malema's call to arms is, "Political power without economic emancipation is meaningless!" He is, of course, right.
As the man who presents himself as wearing the mantle of the poor, he has taken on their cause and is, rhetorically at least, representing their interests. He believes the ANC Youth League "should be the voice of the petrol attendants, waiters and waitresses, and tellers in retail chain stores because they do not have a voice.... We should be the voice of all people in informal settlements and underdeveloped areas."
That he is gaining traction should surprise no one. He's seen the gap, and is taking it.
"In the absence of a vanguard of the working class politically, ideologically and organisationally, (the youth league) should assume the role of the vanguard of the working class. Nature does not allow a vacuum and once a vacuum is created, it will be occupied by something else, in this instance a more better positioned something else is the youth league," he says in his speech.
The vacuum Malema refers to is real. And the ANC Youth League is doing better than any other political group to fill it, principally by articulating the anger of those who feel hard done by, which includes well-heeled middle-class professionals. Herein lie the makings of a very powerful, and therefore dangerous, political force.
The mainstream --- that is the ANC, the unions and organised business --- is unable to offer a halfway descent counterattack, partly because they talk little, if at all, about inequality. Although the diagnostic reports are a rare and welcome departure, they are woefully inadequate. And they will have been a waste of time unless they are fleshed out into tangible deliverables, and popular support is mobilised, all as a matter of urgency. Otherwise we are headed down Malema's path because he is the only one who is asking this question: "What is reckless about calling for changing property relations to favour the working class and the poor?"
* /Southey is a former editor of the Financial Mail/ *From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=146981* ** ** * * -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
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