Will the True Tripartite Alliance Please Stand Up?


As NUMSA bravely steps out of the shadows and begins to once again light the flame of working class emancipatory hopes, it is perhaps an opportune time to consider the development of South African economic policy and the subsequent abandonment of all that had gone before.

 A rational starting point to analyse the trajectory of ANC economic policy should quite correctly be the Freedom Charter, which noted that " liberation would be meaningless without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole...to allow the existing forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the route of racial supremacy and does not represent even a shadow of liberation". And which called for the transfer of ownership of the mineral wealth, the banks and monopoly industry, for industry and trade to be controlled in the interests of the well being of the people. it also pledged that all restriction on land ownership on a racial basis would be ended and that the land would be redivided amongst those who work it. The second document against which it should be measured is the Green Book adopted by the NEC in August 1979 which committed the ANC to "embrace the goal of genuine social emancipation and to a fight to the  finish, not small adjustments". At the Morogoro conference the Strategy and Tactics document warned against an outcome of a victory unfavorable to the working class, which would merely be reformist. Joe Slovo subsequently warned that " there can be no halfway house unless the national struggle is stopped in its tracks and it is satisfied with the co-option of a small black elite into the the presently forbidden areas of economic and political power". 

The document prepared by Pallo Jordan, titled the Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa or the Harare Declaration of 1988 , urged that the widest sections of our population should discuss and reach agreement around it proposals and set the following objectives: " the entire economy must serve the interests and well being of all sections of the population, the state shall have the right to define and limit the rights and obligations attaching to the ownership and use of productive capacity." 

What subsequently happened during and after the negotiation of the transfer of power, is that the ANC apparently adopted a cosy relationship with the World Bank and the IMF based on the idea of Real Politik and the false notion of collaborating for change from within the sytem of the Bretton Woods Institutions.  These are the same institutions that instituted a process of  what Ben Turok calls a "recolonisation of Africa "
As early as 1992 , the ANC agreed to send six South Africans to the World Bank for " technical" training. As a member of the IMF , South Africa subscribed to the 1977 Articles of Agreement under which the Fund has a mandate to oversee all the financial policies and performance of the country.  In terms of this agreement the IMF visits annually to inspect records and accounts . Furthermore a confidential agreement was negotiated at the World Bank   In 1995. The government subsequently loan an amount of $302.8 million up to the period 2005 according to the Minister of Finance in a parliamentary reply in 2006. 

It was obvious that the ANC and the World BAnk and IMF  were involved in a very cosy relationship, prompting the Business Day to note that Trevor Manuel's speech at an international conference in 1993  " was a testament to the role the World Bank has played in preparing the ANC to run the South African economy".

ANC economic policy has mirrored World Bank and IMF policy almost to the letter and in many instances has gone beyond the minimum prescriptions of their policies. 

The South African economy remains steadfastly within the structural growth path designed and implemented during the colonial and apartheid periods and the failure to transform our economy into one which seeks the well being of the people has remained a feature of the capital intensive and minerals based policies of the government. 


So while the ANC has always had progressive rhetorical bias within its economic policy, the truth is that the World Bank policies have not resulted in a better life for all. The fact that the DA supports and advocates many of the same policies should be a clear indication of how far to the right the economic policy has moved despite its left rhetoric. 

All that remains to be asked is , will the true Tripartite Alliance please stand up?

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