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Title: Fuelling the Fires Author: Shawn Hattingh Date: June 8, 2017 Language: en Topics: South Africa, class war Source: Retrieved on 4th August 2021 from https://www.pambazuka.org/human-security/fuelling-fires-south-africa-class-war
The hope that the end of apartheid would herald a better life for the
oppressed in South Africa has evaporated. Their conditions today are
materially as bad as under apartheid — and even worse in some cases. But
the upper classes are having the time of their lives. Working class
struggles should be intensified and linked, based on self-organising and
direct democracy to bring about real change.
Wave after wave of community protests have been taking place in South
Africa from Orange Farm in the Vaal, to Eldorado Park outside
Johannesburg, to Khayelitsha in Cape Town. People are angry that after
more than 20 years of so-called freedom they are still confined to
living in shacks, having to shit in communal plastic toilets, sharing a
standpipe for water with thousands of neighbours, and having essential
services terminated when they can’t afford to pay.
What fuels this anger further is that on the other side of the cities
and towns of South Africa, in the old white-only suburbs, the elite and
middle classes flaunt their wealth. In such suburbs people live in the
lap of luxury – well-manicured gardens, swimming pools, maid’s quarters
and luxury cars are the order of the day. Under such circumstances, it
is not hard to see why South Africa is ranked as one of the most unequal
societies in the world; it is literally in your face.
Yet the ruling class – white and now black capitalists, top state
officials and politicians – have waged an incessant war against the
working class, and the black section in particular, to deepen this
inequality. The reason they have done this is to increase their wealth –
this class war lies at the root of the protests we have seen.
Many of the people that have been involved in the recent waves of
protests – or their parents – had hoped for a better life with the fall
of apartheid. Under that vile and horrific system, the black working
class (workers and the unemployed) was subjected to a harsh racial
oppression and exploitation. It was cheap labour, in the form of the
black working class, which generated huge profits for corporations –
owned by foreign and local white capitalists. To ensure the lowest costs
of the reproduction of this exploited class, the apartheid state forced
people to live in homelands and townships in which the most threadbare
services were provided. The consequences were that the black working
class was deliberately mired in poverty and when they rose up they faced
the gun barrels of the apartheid state.
Fast forward to today. One can scarcely believe the reality in which the
black working class finds itself in today, which materially is as at
least as bad as under apartheid and in some cases even worse.
As part of this, since 1994, the portion of Gross Domestic Product which
goes towards wages has declined. The implications of this are that in
real terms the wages of the black working class have been in decline
since the fall of apartheid. With this too, unemployment has exploded as
capitalists in South Africa have reduced their labour force, mechanised,
and implemented flexible labour to boost profit rates.
The post-apartheid state has been central to the war on the black
working class. It has actively redirected wealth upwards towards the
ruling class. It has done this through various means, which have
included massive spending on infrastructure for corporations, the
introduction of laws that allow labour flexibility and tax breaks for
corporations. In fact, since 1994 the tax rate for corporations has been
driven down from 49% to 28%. This is money that could have been used to
improve the lives of the poor through providing, amongst other things,
decent services and housing. At the same time, however, Value Added Tax,
a tax that targets the working class, has contributed a larger and
larger part of the state’s revenue. Far from being an under resourced
and poor state, the South African state has actively been shifting
wealth from the working class to the ruling class at an increasing rate.
At the same time as assisting the rich, the state has also been very
active in attacking the poor. In real terms (inflation adjusted)
spending on services for the working class, and the black working class
in particular, has remained largely stagnant and in some cases even
declined since 1994. As a matter of fact, on average the state under the
ANC has allocated less than 2% of the budget to housing for the working
class. As such, services like water, electricity, housing, sanitation,
healthcare and education for black working class areas, including places
such as Eldorado Park, Ennerdale, and Orange Farm, are a shambles. The
national state under the stewardship of the ANC has also dramatically
reduced the amount of money that it transfers to local governments to
deliver services such as sanitation and refuse removal. This has been
done to please international capitalists in the form of speculators.
Speculators tend to target buying the bonds of states with low debt
levels. To keep debt levels as low as possible at a national level, the
South African state slashed transfers to local governments.
This means local municipalities have less in real terms for service
delivery. To try and generate income, local governments across South
Africa have aggressively adopted cost recovery for services to the
working class, such as electricity, water, sanitation and refuse
removal. The consequences are, if you can’t afford to pay you don’t get
the services. Linked to this, more cruelly, pre-paid metres have been
installed in working class areas across the country and cut people off
from the basics of life, such as water, if they can’t pay. This is a
form a systemic violence that degrades the everyday lives of people.
While doing this, however, most municipalities spend funds derived from
their cost recovery schemes to build and maintain infrastructure for
corporations. In cities like Cape Town, central business districts are
kept plush, while the townships remain in a state of degradation. Local
governments too continue to allocate far more resources per household to
formerly white suburbs than townships. This means, insanely, the
Johannesburg Municipality per household spends more on Sandton than it
does on Soweto.
Making matters worse is that at the level of local government,
municipalities have followed rabid outsourcing of basic services. For a
connected local elite, usually linked to the African National Congress
or in some areas the Democratic Alliance, this has been a godsend. This
has seen contracts for housing and service delivery at a local level
being handed out to those who have connections to politicians. Nepotism,
corruption and patronage have become rife; and so too has graft. The
consequences of these neoliberal policies at a local level is that
service delivery is abysmal.
The reality is that the state does this, at a local and national level,
because it is an instrument of the ruling class. States only exist to
enforce the rule of a minority elite over a majority. Even in a
parliamentary democracy, it is the elite that indirectly and directly
control the state and they use it to increase their wealth and bolster
and solidify their power. In the case of South Africa, politicians also
use the state directly for self-enrichment.
Of course states do provide some services to the poor. These are and
were, however, concessions that have been forced on the ruling class by
the working class through the history of struggle. Indeed, the black
working class only receives some support from the state – although
meagre – because of the history of struggle in the country. Under
neoliberalism though, these concessions are being rolled back, and it is
this that is once again fuelling protests.
The role that the state plays in protecting the ruling class can be seen
in how the police have reacted to the protests. Most people involved in
protests usually try to follow the state’s prescribed procedures to air
their grievances, for example engaging in Integrated Development Plans
and petitioning local councillors – and only embark on protest once
these proved to be dead-ends; which they inevitably do as the state and
politicians could not give a crap about the plight of people except at
election time. But once people protest, as we have seen, the police
react violently, firing rubber bullets, tear gas, stun-grenades and even
live bullets at protestors – protestors, who it must be remembered, are
merely asking to receive the basics of life.
The working class, however, has proved that it won’t lie down under the
fire from the ruling class. This is where hope lies. What is needed now
is for these struggles that we have been seeing across the country to
link, based on self-organisation and direct democracy. There are many
challenges to this, including toxic party politics, but if society is
too change it will have to be done. Indeed, the fire of resistance needs
to burn; and to do so struggles need to link and become a force capable
of blunting the attacks of the ruling class in South Africa. Through
this, hopefully, a basis can be set for a broader struggle against
exploitation and all forms of oppression; and for human liberation in
which no-one lacks the basics of life such as housing, water, and
sanitation.