Social Movements, State Failure and Advancing Democracy

 

In this paper we will discuss the extent to which the ongoing growth in social movements and protests is a response to the failures of the state in addressing unequal development, and whether civil society organs can play a significant role in consolidating democracy in South Africa.

In order to consider these questions, we will briefly consider some of the political factors which have contributed to the rise in social movements and protests. We will also look at the growing economic pressures, such as high rate of unemployment and exclusion from economic opportunities which are likely to contribute to the growth of social movements and protests, using the mining sector as a prism through which to draw some conclusions. The essay will conclude with a consideration of the role of civil society in the form a radical challenge to the status quo and what it means for consolidating democracy in South Africa. An Elite Democracy and the Exclusion of the Masses.

Various studies, including research such as Rebellion of the Poor (Alexander, 2010)The Smoke that Calls (Van Holdt, et al,, 2011),South Africa: the transition to violent democracy (Van Holdt, 2013)) and Frequency and Turmoil, South Africa`s community protests 2005-2017 (Alexander,et al, 2018) have pointed to a correlation between the rise of disorderly and violent protests and the exercise and experience of democracy by vulnerable citizens. (Alexander,et al, 2018) note that in their comparative research between various databases which record protests in the country, that the notion of ‘community protest’ is broader than ‘service delivery protest’. They argue that the latter term, frequently used by journalists in South Africa, “tends to conceal the complexity of issues that communities raise, which often include criticisms of South Africa’s democracy.” (p. 28) Others have made even more explicit conclusions about the nature and intent of specific protests, where in certain cases Lodge and Mottiar (2016), conclude that in specific instances “protest was part of the routine of political participation” and in “their (community members participating in protests) expectations of the way democracy should function, residents evidently have expectations which are shaped by notions of active citizenry.” These correlations, which have been made by among others, (Van Holdt, et al,, 2011) (Alexander,et al, 2018), (Duncan, 2016), (Lodge & Mottiar, 2016), (Paret,M;Runcimn,C;Sinwell,L, 2017), (Matebesi, 2017), and confirm the view that “protest tactics – whether they are peaceful, disruptive or violent – are strategies utilised by certain groups in order to increase their bargaining ability with a specific institution(s)” (Bohler-Muller,et al, 2017)

Given that protest in South Africa can be equated with active citizenship and political agency, the rising tide of protest, whether they be “orderly, disruptive, or violent”, to use Alexander,et al`s (2018) characterisations, together with the steep decline in participation during the last 3 National and Provincial Elections NPE`s (IEC, 2019), points to a possible disjuncture between the current system of elite top down governance and expectations by citizens of active participation in their own governance. The increasing tendency towards protest against institutions of democracy (Alexander,et al, 2018) as a means to express active citizenry and to protest exclusion, and the declining participation in electoral processes, whether through practical limitation or design constraints within the system, not only presents considerable challenges for law and order considerations, but also starts to bring the legitimacy of the entire system into question (Pettit, 2012).

This concern is especially relevant in a situation where the majority of citizens who are eligible to vote, do not vote, and prefer instead to engage the state and its institutions through other means, such as through protests. While protests are integral to any plural liberal democracy, the challenge for South Africa and its rising tide of protests, is captured in the concerns raised by (BohlerMuller,et al, 2017) that “If, for example, the authorities ignore peaceful protest tactics, then such tactics will be seen as ineffective by the general population and public approval for peaceful protest action will decline…If more people see violent protest action as effective and approve of it, we would expect to see greater public participation in violent protest activities.”

The rise in violent and disruptive protests, as recorded by various monitoring institutions (Alexander,et al, 2018) would suggest a clear rise in the quantum and propensity towards violent protests. While there appears to be a growing awareness in government circles of the correlations between rising protests and the need to “improve public consultation and communication processes so that communities are engaged in their own development” (Steyn, 2015), this awareness is still mainly imbued and steeped in a deeply paternalistic form of “governmentality” (Foucault, 1978) inherited from our colonial past. In this schema, democracy is reduced to the way in which power is administered by government and in which democracy is reduced to shallow election exercises at regular intervals to elect a political elite, without the concomitant of meaningful participation by citizens in their own governance.

This is especially significant considering that the liberation struggle of the late 1980`s to early 1990`s was characterised by the promise of a new political future; envisioned as “Peoples Power”( the governance of society from the local level up, using street and area committees, described at the time by the UDF, as starting to create a new society based on the Freedom Charter) (Seekings, 2000). The turn to the conception of democracy as the prerogative of the nationalist elite, despite the popular democratic ethos of “Peoples Power”, which was framed as a direct challenge to apartheid state power, and seen as the intended goal of the struggle for liberation (Seekings, 2000, p. 169) , and which had blossomed in the immediate period preceding the turn to negotiations, marked the moment in which the elites conclusively adopted the Western Liberal Democratic framework which defined the majority of people outside of the governance paradigm.

The democratic transition was conveniently juxtaposed between the options of elites and negotiations versus the masses and violence and laid the foundation for a particular political rationality that took it as self-evident that the masses were under the control of the elite even if the emerging political subject had different ideas about the characteristic of the political change. (Reddy, 2016) An Elite economy and the Exclusion of the Masses. According to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) results released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), a decline in employment (down by 237 000) and an increase in unemployment (up by 62 000) in the 1st quarter of 2019, compared to the 4th quarter of 2018, led to a decline in the labour force participation rate, which is now standing at 59,3%. Unemployment in the first quarter of 2019 increased by 0,5 of a percentage points, bringing the rate to 27,6%. (STATS-SA, 2019)

The burden of unemployment is concentrated amongst the youth (aged 15–34 years) as they account for 63,4% of the total number of unemployed persons. Almost 4 in every 10 young people in the labour force did not have a job, with the unemployment rate within this group at 39,6% in the 1st quarter of 2019. Just under 30% of the youth have jobs and about half of them (48,8%) participate in the labour market. The unemployment rate among adults (aged 35–64 years) was 18,0% during this period, while the employment-to-population ratio and labour force participation rate were 57,4% and 70,0%, respectively, for this group. (Ibid) Just over 40% (15 million) of people of working age are employed with only 11 Million in the formal sector, leaving the vast majority of South Africans dependent on self-employment, state subsidies, grants, and crime to survive. Only 8 million formally employed individuals are employed on a permanent basis, indicating that approximately 7 million people are employed on an unspecified or limited basis. (Ibid)

Not only is this a recipe for disaster but it gets worse. Since 1994, South Africa`s working-age population has increased by 11 million. In the next 50 years, it will grow by another 9 million, peaking in 2065 at about 43.8 million. The next 20 years alone will see an average net increase in the working-age population of about 280,000 people per year. As a share of the working-age population, the ILO projects that the peak of unemployment will occur in 2045, when it will reach 68.3%. (ILO, 2015) South Africa is reported to have the 8th highest unemployment rate in the world in 2015, according to a new report issued by the International Labour Organisation (Ibid). South Africa, as a former colony that further endured the uneven and unequal development of a colonially structured Apartheid political economy, remains firmly stuck between ascending to developed world status and descending to deeper poverty and increasing popular pressure.

Government`s ambitious job creation projects and plans in the decades between the 1990`s and 2000 up to 2010 saw jobs growth percentages that was considerably less than the rate at which the economy was growing, pointing to jobless growth. Hein Marias notes that in the “first decade of the 2000`s while the economy grew heartily, only 1.7 million jobs were created, a large portion of these were casual temporary and low paid… (and that in any case) the recession later stripped almost 900 000 jobs out of the economy.” (Marias, 2010) By this time it was clear that earlier forecasts of gloom around the economy which emanated from the Macro Economic Research Group in the early 1990`s was coming to fruition and by 2010 Seeraj Mohamed warned that : “[t]he integration into financial markets has increased the risk of financial crisis and vulnerability to contagion from financial problems elsewhere.

The weak industrial structure and continued dependence on mining and minerals creates a balance of payments risk…and that unless there is a huge effort to address the industrial decline in South Africa and new economic policies implemented to support industrial growth and transformation, the majority of South Africans will face an increasingly bleak future.” (Ibid) The biggest challenge thus facing South Africa was whether and how the structural bias (towards the Minerals energy complex) in economic thinking could be overcome. The answer to this question according Hein Marias, which is evident today in the persistent inequality, unemployment and poverty, is that “[o]verall, The MEC has been consolidated and economic ownership is as concentrated as ever. Most sectors are dominated by a handful of vertically integrated corporations.”

According to Bond and Mottiar, the Marikana Massacre of August 2012 exposed the most unstable configuration of forces in post-apartheid South Africa, forged through entrenched social and economic inequalities and presented a nascent challenge, by both labour and community movements, to the elite political economy. (Bond & Mottiar, 2013) Radical Challenges to the Status Quo One of the challenges to the monopolistic, corporate driven economic frameworks in the post-apartheid era, has been the rise of artisanal mining.

The primary objectives of the Minerals Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA), (SAGOV, 2002), which governs the mining Industry, are to: · Promote equitable access to the nations mineral and petroleum resources. · Substantially and meaningfully expand opportunities for Historically Disadvantaged Persons. · Promote employment and advance the social and economic welfare of all South Africans. With this in mind, one would assume that after 17 years of implementation that significant strides would have been made in bringing these objectives closer to realisation. Yet it appears that after all this time, access to the nations minerals are controlled with the intent and purpose, not of allowing greater access, but of protecting monopoly control of the sector.

Greater access in this sense appears to be for elite access in line with the thinking of Black Economic Empowerment which seeks to add some black faces to the historically white controlled economy without broad empowerment of Historically Disadvantaged individuals. Approximately 31 companies, with a combined market capitalisation of R578 Billion as at 31 August 2016, control almost 80% of the entire South African Mining Market (PWC, 2018).

While this is some improvement on the six mining houses which dominated the sector during the end of Apartheid, the overall thrust of the sector is still one of monopoly control, with a handful of executives able to dictate the general policy direction. According to these numbers, the vast majority of South Africans have not been afforded “equitable access to the nation’s mineral resources”. On balance, the policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has benefitted only the connected few while deepening the inherited class inequalities of our society. The mining sector, far from providing equitable access has been shedding jobs over the last 2 decades and has seen declines in employment levels from its peak of almost 1 million people employed, to under 450 000 direct jobs today (Minerals, 2018).

The mining sector continues to shrink in terms of its benefit to South Africans and increasingly the profits from its activities are leaving our shores either directly as dividends or indirectly as part of the global scourge of Base Erosion and Profit shifting. According to the African Monitor, South Africa has lost a cumulative R1,007 Billion to illicit outflows between 2002 and 2011 (Monitor, 2017). Thus, despite the noble objectives of the MPRDA, its mechanisms to achieve equitable access and its overall outcomes have not been consistent with its objectives.

Instead the overall trajectory of the industry has been to consolidate monopolistic control and to concentrate ownership and benefits in the hands of a few. In a research report undertaken by the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of Witwatersrand and ActionAid South Africa in which they track the long term impact of mining operations and the development of mining policy and legislation on the lived experiences of rural communities impacted by these polices, they found that mining affected communities are disproportionately negatively affected by mining, not only because of their proximity to the mines, but also because of the political, economic and social structural impediments they face in holding corporations and state parties to account. (ActionAid, 2016)

Among the structural political impediments faced by communities and identified in the report, are the lack of adequate legislative protection and a distinct lack of policy and legislation which foster and encourages active participation by communities in their own governance. The report argues that the reality of the mining legislative regime often runs counter to the constitutional imperative of active citizen participation in affairs of governance as well a distinct dissonance between the rhetoric used by government and politicians with regard to the constitutional and political imperative for communities to not only participate in their own governance but also their right to benefit from the activities on and around their land. (Ibid)

At the very least, this report highlights the deep divide between political, legislative and constitutional prescriptions and the lived reality of communities living in constant distress which they experience as a type of structural violence against their person. (Ibid) In its final analysis the report finds that despite the broad liberal constitutional protections offered towards a more equalitarian society, the structure of the polity, which in a neoliberal sense, favours free markets and elite minorities, leads literally, to greater poverty and food insecurity. (Ibid)

As a direct consequence of the historical trend of inequality, where more and more wealth is concentrated in fewer hands and with more and more people falling into poverty, unemployment and desperation, the turn to informal mining has become a livelihood option that hungry families can no longer ignore. In an research report, due to be published later in 2019, by the Pontsho Ledwaba of Wits University (to which this writer contributed) and entitled: Artisanal Mining In South Africa; An overlooked vehicle for Livelihood Sustenance in Local South Africa, she finds that the majority of people working at artisanal mining sites claim that artisanal mining has improved their lives, the lives of the families and the lives and economic conditions of the communities in which they live. (Ledwaba, 2019)

Yet the very same MPRDA, which nobly sets out to ensure equitable access to the nations minerals, while substantially and meaningfully expanding opportunities to promote employment and advance the social and economic welfare of all South Africans, is the very basis that government uses to criminalise the poor and marginalised who seek to access the opportunities promised to them in the constitution and the law.

In Kimberly for example, where thousands of unemployed people have been in a long standing struggle to “expand their opportunities” to eke out a living from the “nations minerals” in order to “improve their social and economic welfare”, engaged government and private capital in a protracted struggle in which the artisanal miners were able to mobilise thousands onto the streets to press home their demands. (DFA, 2017) According to Mining Weekly, Ekapa Minerals( the main protagonist land owner involved in the artisanal miners struggle for land and access to mineral resources) expects to produce diamonds at a rate of 700 000 carats a year, generating revenue of R920-million per annum, while the thousands of miners desperate to put a plate of food on the table will hardly generate a thousand carrots from the waste and land that are peripheral to Ekapa`s economic well-being After many battles in which artisanal miners were shot, arrested and generally intimidated by the organs of state and private security, the Department of Mineral Resources was forced to negotiate a settlement with the artisanal miners and today they have been granted limited access to mine unused land. (DMR, 2017)

On the whole, the state, under the leadership of the Hawks ( police) and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, instead of finding ways to uphold their constitutional duty to provide equitable access to the nations minerals and potentially to broaden access to economic opportunities in the pursuance of the social and economic wellbeing of the population, have instead been preparing a security response (PMG, 2017) to a growing portion of society who are demanding their right to work and to access the mineral resources of the country.

The uprisings in Kimberly by artisanal miners which resulted in government backtracking on legislative frameworks which are generally designed to promote corporate large-scale mining, points to the growing possibility of further confrontations in the future as livelihood options become increasingly scarce and as poverty continues to grow in a jobless economy. Conclusion With a growing democratic deficit on the socio side of the governance equation, and an equally worrying escalation of inequality on the economic side, the scene and material conditions are for a further and more radical increase in the mobilisations of the excluded and poor. The material development of conditions for radical civil society mobilisations are further tempered by the apparent eroding of the historical hegemony of the ANC as it continues to struggle at the polls to convince voters that it has the centripetal force needed to rally the country towards prosperity. Recent developments across the globe in which established democracies have experienced notable reversals of their democratic standing (EIU, 2019), has highlighted the challenge for all democracies faced with a stagnating economic environment, but even more so for a country like South Africa that has the added challenge of overcoming historical inequalities within a stagnating economic environment.

Within such a scenario, various populist forces have emerged that has been able to play upon the vulnerabilities of the poor and marginalised, and the even the middle classes to promote broadly anti-establishment agenda. Oliver Treib argues that the dissatisfaction with mainstream politics lie at the heart of the turn away from established parties and politics in Europe (Treib, 2014) and similar outcomes can be suggested for South Africa as the rise of militant parties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters has captured the attention of a frustrated youth cohort.

There is no suggestion that the rise in social movement activity and civil society mobilisation will lead to greater democracy or more equitable and just outcomes. Sinwell argues that “the romanticisation of social movements only takes us so far … In fact, there is also no a priori reason to believe that these militant movements will necessarily evolve into class-conscious movements. Praxis, struggle, does not have to equal the development of class consciousness” (Sinwell, 2011).

Indeed, South African Civil society has not shown any propensity to evolve a counter hegemony to the existing regime and the rise of two strong factions contesting for power within the ANC, the one suggesting an anti-corruption stance and the other a radical economic transformation stance, while both seek to empower an elite along the lines of the current colonial trajectory of inequality, suggests that access to resources and power might yet prove the silver bullet that kills off our fledgling Democracy.

Whether civil society social movements will be able to coalesce sufficient forces around a pro-democracy and anti-corruption agenda which strengthens the state of democracy in South Africa, appears at this juncture to be highly unlikely, given its propensity to for myopic, provincial and sectarian approaches to struggles.

Despite this, there remains some hope that a country that has experienced authoritarian rule in its very recent past, will be able to muster sufficient forces and will, to mount some form of resistance should the democratic deficit become too authoritarian in nature.

However, the economic struggles and the desperation of so many people to put food on the table, presents a wild card that could turn progressive sentiment into an anti-establishment revolution that will have no guarantees as to its outcome.

In short, the role of civil society in finding closer working solidarity among the poor, excluded and vulnerable, and their ability to mobilise sufficient numbers in defence of their political, social and economic rights, might prove the only hope for a failing elite compact.