[MUSIC PLAYING]
But Ivor has been writing
on South Africa and issues
of democracy and citizenship
for many years now,
and is a very
prominent intellectual
in the South African
public sphere, which
is a very vibrant public
sphere, and you'll
hear about that today.
And Ivor is here with us for
the weekend, along with others--
Peter Evans and
[? Harsh Mundar. ?]
We're doing a public event
tomorrow from 3:30 to 5:30
on the theme of civil
society in peril.
We have human rights activists
from around the globe
coming to Brown to report
on the various ways in which
civil society activities are
being increasingly restricted,
constricted, by state actions.
So there'll be a series of talks
at the public event tomorrow.
And Ivor will be with
us through Saturday.
So thank you for being here.
Thank you for coming to
the Africa initiative.
Thanks to Dan Smith for
sponsoring this event.
And we have a full
hour and a half.
But hopefully we'll leave
a chunk of that time
for discussion and debate.
Thanks, Ivor.
[? Doctor, ?]
thank you, and Dan,
thank you very much
for arranging this.
It's a pleasure to be here.
It's always a pleasure
to be at Brown.
I really enjoy Providence.
It's a nice opportunity, again.
I'm going to talk to
a concept which we've
been developing, which
I'm going to talk
about as a form
of elite populism.
I'm going to argue
South Africa's
an instance of a growing
political development which
we can see playing itself
out in places like Venezuela,
in India, in Turkey.
I think even there are
signs of it even in the USA.
So I want to argue,
I want to try and put
South Africa in a
comparative perspective.
And what I want to suggest
is that essentially, we
have to understand the
developments in South
Africa, which I'll explain
to you, discuss with you,
in terms of a
political phenomenon.
So this is where I
think the work which
I've been doing,
especially in South Africa,
is regarded as theoretically and
politically very controversial.
But I stand by the argument.
And it's what I want to flesh
out and present to you here.
Perhaps in the US it
won't be so controversial.
So over the last 10
years, South Africa
has seen a situation
of what one might
call quite serious deterioration
in its institutional
environment, and certainly
with regard to its democracy.
And we can date that
periodization at some length.
For the purposes of
this conversation,
I want to pin
things around 2007,
which was the moment of the
national congress of the ANC,
where they elect
a new president.
It was held in a provincial town
in the north of the country,
in a province called
Limpopo, or Polokwane.
And on the 52nd annual
national conference of the ANC,
there was an
extraordinary development.
The incumbent president
lost his opportunity
to become president
again as a third term,
and a new man is elected.
Jacob Zuma becomes
president in a moment
that is widely regarded
as a massive revolt
within the African
National Congress.
And I'll talk about it.
What unfolds after that-- this
is what I want to spend some
time discussing-- is a
period which is increasingly
associated with the
notion of state capture,
essentially this idea being
that a morally compromised
president--
in the form of Jacob
Zuma, his family,
and a coterie of political
allies around him--
have insinuated themselves into
the fabric of South Africa's
administration and state
and used it, essentially,
for their own private gain.
So a process of massive looting
and generally corruption.
And this is the
growing narrative
about Africa,
increasingly reported
on those terms in South Africa,
but also around the world.
Interestingly enough,
I saw that the New York
Times ran a big feature
on South Africa,
and strangely, that wasn't
actually the narrative.
It was more a sense
of growing inequality.
But I think the sense of the
growing inequality in South
Africa is a profound crisis
and failure of the ruling party
to manage the economy
in a way that sustains
socially just practices.
At the core of this
argument, though,
is an argument
around corruption.
Essentially, what we're
dealing with in South Africa
is a phenomenon of corruption.
And the politics that follows
from it is the sense of--
is a kind of a law
and order response.
What is required,
what is needed,
is for Jacob Zuma and
the people around him
to be arrested, tried,
and hopefully convicted.
And this is the
sense that this is
what is going to redeem South
Africa from its current course.
So I think that I am sympathetic
to some of those arguments.
I'm sympathetic to the idea
that criminals should be caught
and prosecuted and jailed.
But I think that that analysis,
this fixation with corruption,
both in South Africa
and generally,
obscures what I think is a
profound political dynamic,
which we need to understand
and develop a response to.
So I'm calling it a
form of elite populism.
And here, I'm
drawing, if you like,
on the work of
Partha Chatterjee,
but in a critical manner,
to begin to understand it.
So Chatterjee, in his more
recent work-- and you'll
be very familiar with
this, the distinction which
he draws from Gramsci,
between political society
and civil society.
And his essential
argument is that when
the vast majority of
the world population
live in the former
colonial world,
the rules of civil
society, of the state,
are written in such
a way that they
are rigged to exclude ordinary
working people and the figure
of the subaltern.
And that under
those circumstances,
the subaltern--
ordinary, poor people--
have no option but to play
hard and fast with the rules,
slide through them,
break them, subvert them,
and in some cases,
even revert to violence
as a legitimate response
to that kind of situation.
So in Chatterjee's
terms, we have a world
which is very different
to, say, the world
associated with the
concept of exit and voice,
for example, a conception of
the politics in the third world,
the politics in the developing
world, which produces violence
and subversion as
its normal practice.
So I think there's a
growing anthropology,
ethnographic studies
which suggest
that Chatterjee's work is
quite flawed, in all sorts
of empirical senses.
I know the work of [INAUDIBLE],,
for example, in Argentina,
and there's a very interesting
Indian anthropologist exploring
those conceptions,
the sense being
that Chatterjee's conception is
very, very empirically narrow,
and that other dynamics
of the poor are going on,
other politics of the
poor are going on.
What I think is so
interesting, though,
is that that conception
has been, in many cases--
and South Africa is
a typical example,
and this is what I
want to show you--
has been appropriated
by political elites
making their own
claims on the state,
and are using this discourse
of Chatterjee's to justify,
sometimes in good faith, a
politics which sets themselves
up against the law
and the constitution.
In other words, it's
political elites
that are appropriating
the subaltern
politics to confront,
to break, and to violate
the constitution.
So this is the story I want to
tell you about South Africa.
And I think this places the
South African phenomenon
in the space of a
populist politics which
is unfolding in many locations.
So let me start with where
I think we should start,
and you can ask me questions,
for those of you who
are familiar with South Africa,
about whether my periodization
is right.
Some have questioned
it in relationship
to earlier phases of
corruption, especially
around the arms deal.
And I will justify
my periodization.
So as I mentioned, 2007, there
is a revolt within the African
National Congress.
It takes place in
this provincial town
in a northern province
called Limpopo.
It's associated with the
removal of Thabo Mbeki
as president of the ANC,
and a few days later, he's
removed as president
of the country.
The ANC asked him to step down.
Jacob Zuma becomes
president of the ANC,
and in the following
election in 2009,
he becomes president
of the country.
Now, what is so interesting
about the Polokwane moment,
I think it's associated with
a moment of profound critique.
It's not just a spasmodic
rejection of certain politics.
I think there's a very earnest
and a very important critique
which follows from Polokwane,
that is associated with quite
a devastating critique of South
Africa's political economy
as it was unfolding during the
Mandela and Thabo Mbeki years.
Essentially, the critique
goes something like this.
What you had under Mandela, and
especially under Thabo Mbeki,
was relatively fast economic
growth for at least 30,
40 years.
We've had 3.5%, almost
5% economic growth.
But it's associated with
certain pathologies.
One is the emergence of a small
non-racial elite, a very, very
vulnerable black middle class,
heavily, heavily indebted--
and we can discuss that-- who
have come into the middle class
through access to
government jobs, access
to jobs in the private
sector, but also through--
but are massively indebted.
And then, for the vast majority
of South Africans, black South
Africans, massive
economic exclusion.
Essentially, what's happened is
the economy has grown in such
a way that if you're
English-speaking,
and if you're in the cities,
or you're English-speaking--
you speak English
without an accent,
there are opportunities for you,
if you're formally educated.
But for the rest
of South Africans,
especially black South
Africans, in rural areas,
in informal settlements,
massive, massive political
exclusion.
So I think Polokwane
is associated
with a very profound,
correct critique
of that political economy, and
the trajectory of the way South
Africa is growing.
And what there is,
beginning from Polokwane,
is the search for--
in the language
which is popular in
South Africa-- for more
radical models of economic
transformation, the sense
that this idea of economic
transformation which
has informed the Thabo Mbeki
years is fundamentally flawed,
and is a search
for something else.
The Thabo Mbeki years are
associated, if you like,
with two major
policy instruments.
One is through what's called
black economic empowerment,
which is encouraging, cajoling,
incentivizing white-owned
firms-- we can discuss that
term later, if you want--
to essentially give up
equity in the form of shares
in the company, and transfer
large, substantial portions
of equity to black shareholders.
Affirmative action
measures are put in place
to try and change
control patterns
within sovereign corporates,
by bringing black management,
by encouraging firms to bring
blacks into senior management
positions.
The sense is that this
model has produced
the situation I've described,
but basically is a failure.
So from 2007, 2008, you
start seeing a whole host
of sort of different conceptions
of what radical transformation
looked like.
Some of them are familiar.
Julius Malema, a character
you may well be familiar
with, he's now the leader
of Economic Freedom
Fighters in South Africa.
At the time, he was the head
of the ANC Youth League.
And he rejects the
Thabo Mbeki policies,
and he returns back to the
principles of the Freedom
Charter, which
essentially return
to kind of 1950 socialism,
about nationalizing
the commanding heights
of the economy,
nationalizing land, et cetera.
And that becomes the
political platform of the EFF
when it eventually
splits from the ANC.
But that's not the only model
of economic transformation
which is in circulation.
More powerful is
one that emerges
on the margins of the
ANC, but especially
within the government,
and in particular,
the Department of
Trade and Industry,
also heavily
influenced by organized
black business, in the form
of the Black Management Forum.
And they're looking at models
of economic transformation,
and they're especially
impressed with, I think,
a naive, a certain mythological
conception of Africana
economic empowerment
from an earlier period.
And here, the idea is
that we can no longer
rely on cajoling white
business, or the existing
capitalist economy,
to transform itself.
Rather, the project is to
create an entirely new economy--
black-owned, black-controlled,
new industrial economy.
How to do it?
From about 2010, 2011, we start
seeing a whole [? run of ?]
position papers emerging
from the Department of Trade
and Industry and other
parts of government.
It starts in the--
the first ideas emerge
from the a new department
of economic affairs
called Department
of Economic Development,
although they
don't like to be called DED.
They prefer to be called
EDD, for obvious reasons.
This idea of using
public procurement
to produce a new
kind of economy.
From around 2010, 2011, we start
seeing tremendous excitement
around the idea of using
the procurement budgets
of state-owned enterprises,
state-owned companies,
to displace existing established
white firms from their position
in the economy, and create
new-- incentivize the emergence
of new, large-scale, industrial,
black-owned, black-controlled
firms.
You can see this tremendous
excitement around this idea.
The ideas are compelling.
Here's an idea of
economic transformation
which is not about reforming
an existing economy,
but of creating a
whole new black-owned,
black-controlled
industrial economy.
There's tremendous
excitement around this idea.
The central player
in this regard
is our prime
minister of finance.
His name is Malusi Gigaba.
And at the time,
he was-- shortly
after, in 2011, he becomes the
minister of public enterprises,
responsible for the
state-owned enterprises.
There's a document
we find from 2011.
You can almost see the
writers are salivating.
There's a list of all the
state-owned enterprises
in South Africa.
And they come up with a figure
of 210 billion rand per annum,
which is potentially available
in procurement budgets
to undertake this kind of
economic transformation.
Two in particular make
up the lion's share
of these potential
funds, and that
is Transnet, which is the
state-owned enterprise which
owns and controls the freight
railway system, freight rail
network in South Africa.
And the other is Eskom, which
is the state-owned company which
is responsible for-- it's
a state monopoly which
generates electricity
and transmits
electricity nationally.
And within these two
companies alone, there's
tens of billions rands available
each year for this project.
The project starts
off quite early.
I mentioned Malusi
Gigaba becomes
the minister of
public enterprises,
and you see a
shuffling of the boards
of the state-owned enterprises.
A guy called Brian Molefe--
the video I have is of
Brian Molefe speaking
in January of this year--
he becomes the CEO of Transnet.
And immediately,
you start seeing
the commissioning of huge
new industrial projects.
So Transnet immediately
embarks on a huge project
of acquiring-- in rand
terms, it's a lot of money.
In dollar terms, I don't know.
50 billion rands
worth of new trains.
He then moves over to
Eskom, and it's same thing.
Huge new projects, especially
around coal and building
of new power stations.
Now, what is so
interesting-- and this
is where I think that there
takes an unexpected turn.
Around 2011, the project
of radical economic
transformation, it
self-radicalizes.
And it radicalizes
in an unexpected way.
I don't think this reading--
what follows was necessary.
And I think it emerges
from a particular political
conjuncture informed by
particular local conditions,
but also drawing from an
international political
vocabulary.
From around 2011, the project of
radical economic transformation
radicalizes in a
very interesting way.
The argument emerges that
the constitutional framework
in South Africa is an obstacle
to radical transformation
itself, that the South African
constitution and the transition
itself, the political
settlement that
produced the end of apartheid,
is the result of what's
called in South Africa an elite
pact, that it is fundamentally
hostile to black South Africans,
and to poor black South
Africans in particular, through,
for example, the protection
of property rights.
And what you
increasingly see emerging
is an argument that places the
constitution and the bodies
that the constitution gives
rise to as fundamental obstacles
to economic transformation.
And what I think it does is
it sets off in South Africa
a politics which starts moving
against those institutions.
There are also some
very particular reasons.
The South African
constitution, I think,
is unusual in several respects.
The first is that
the national treasury
in South Africa, the
national treasury
is a little bit like
the US treasury,
except it doesn't print money.
I think the US
treasury prints money.
That's the responsibility
of the reserve bank.
But it oversees all
spending in South Africa,
and it allocates
budgets to departments.
So its mandate is given
by the constitution.
In other words, its mandate
is not set by government,
and it's not set by legislation.
It's given by the constitution.
More surprisingly,
and I haven't seen
this in other constitutions,
public procurement
in South Africa is a
constitutional matter,
section 217 of the constitution.
So the way in which government
buys goods and services
is given--
the terms of it are given
by the constitution.
And the South
African constitution
requires that two
principles are reconciled.
The first is what we might
call a principle of fair value.
It says that the government
must procure goods and services
on the basis of price, on
the basis of the expertise
or the experience of
the service provider.
In other words, on the
basis of the value--
that the citizen
and the fiscus are
going to get value for money.
And the second is a principle
of black economic empowerment,
of equity, that black-owned
and controlled companies should
be privileged or
given preference
in procurement matters.
So the constitution assumes that
these two principles can easily
be reconciled.
Perhaps not easily
reconciled, but none of these
are irreconcilable.
They're not in
fundamental contradiction.
From 2011, you start seeing,
from within the Black
Management Forum, but especially
within the Department of Trade
and Industry and in
parts of the ANC,
an argument begins to emerge
that these principles are-- not
only can they not be reconciled,
but actually, they're
in fundamental contradiction.
If government procures goods
on the basis of fair value,
it will always prejudice
black-owned firms.
It will always advantage
established white companies
that have great
experience in the market,
and that have established
supply chains.
What you start
seeing, therefore,
is that parts of government, and
parts of the Black Management
Forum, parts of the ANC, are
pushing very, very strongly
for a clause to be--
a new principle of preferential
procurement to be introduced,
which would, rather
technically, set aside
50% of all public procurement
going to black-owned firms,
irrespective of price, and
irrespective of experience.
It's national treasury that has
to implement those regulations.
And we see in that period
incredible contestation
around national treasury to
introduce those measures.
The problem is that
the measure would
run against the constitution.
And what you start
seeing, in the form
of Pravin Gordhan, who's
the minister of finance
at the time, he balks.
He won't do it.
He plays some games.
He introduces the
regulation, and then he
does something extraordinary.
He exempts all
state-owned enterprises
from that regulation.
And I think what it's
doing within the Jacob Zuma
administration, which is
pushing very strongly for this,
within parts of the
Black Management Forum,
within other parts
of government,
there's growing
opposition to what
is regarded as the conservatism
of the national treasury.
So you start seeing an
extraordinary politics emerging
from around 2011, 2012, of
attacks, growing attacks,
on the national treasury,
growing pressure to remove
the minister of finance.
Eventually, it comes to a head.
And in December 2015,
when the minister
of finances, Nhlanhla
Nene, is fired,
a backbencher is brought
into the position.
And it sets off, it
triggers a whole beginnings
of the downgrading
of South Africa
in international markets, and
the weakening of the rand,
and South Africa's economy
is perhaps not in tailspin,
but it's certainly struggling.
What is interesting,
though, is that, as I say,
I think parts of government,
especially within this Jacob
Zuma administration, come to
the conclusion that they cannot
prosecute radical economic
transformation within
the framework within
the constitution.
And what you start
seeing, therefore,
is a growing move to illegality,
a growing space of illegality
happening within government.
But it's politically sanctioned.
I don't believe that it's
just about self-enrichment,
or all-around corruption.
I think it's part of a sense
that the constitution is
an obstacle.
And you start seeing
it dramatically
happening within the
state-owned enterprises,
within Transnet
and within Eskom.
There are so many stories.
South Africa at the moment--
well, over the last year--
has been a place of one dramatic
scandal, week after week.
We have a remarkably-- we still
have a remarkably free press.
We still have parts
of the press which
are made up of
incredibly courageous
investigative journalists,
many of them associated
with a network
called [INAUDIBLE],,
of independent
investigative journalists.
And they've been breaking,
week after week, the most
extraordinary stories
of what is called,
in South Africa,
large-scale corruption.
I'll give you a typical example.
And you can see how it
fits into this pattern
of displacing white-owned firms
and bringing in new companies.
Eskom generates electricity,
overwhelmingly through coal.
As a matter of fact,
it's been quite
hostile to the renewables
program in South Africa, which
has not been unsuccessful.
From 2008, there's a massive
build project in South Africa
to establish new
coal-fired power stations,
huge build program.
At the center of
some of the politics,
therefore, is the supply of
coal to the various Eskom power
stations.
Many of these coal contracts are
long-established coal contracts
of various historically
white-owned mining companies.
One, for example, is owned
by a company called Glencore.
It's the Optimum coal mine.
But it's supplying
low-quality coal
to some of the Eskom
power stations.
It's been hedging the price
of the sale of its local coal
on the base of
international markets.
It sells the better stuff on
the international markets.
The international
market in coal declines.
It throws the coal mine
into economic crisis.
And the coal mine
appeals to Eskom
to renegotiate the
price of its coal.
Eskom absolutely refuses,
absolutely refuses.
And Eskom, under Brian Molefe,
drives Optimum coal mine
into bankruptcy.
It's forced into bankruptcy.
It then, in circumstances
which are so outrageously
illegal it's almost
incredible, it essentially
loans the money to a politically
connected family, the Guptas,
to buy the Optimum coal mine,
in circumstances which we're now
beginning to understand.
But what is extraordinary
is what happens
to the price of that same coal.
We know this contract,
but there are lots
of these sorts of contracts.
I'll give you an idea.
The contract, historically,
with Optimum coal mine,
was worth 325 million
rand per annum,
for the sale of its coal.
For the same pile of low-quality
coal, the value of the contract
goes from 325 million
rand per annum
to 7 billion rand per annum.
So massive, massive rents are
being charged on these goods.
When I presented the Betrayal
report to the South African
Communist Party, to its
annual congress, there was--
I mean, they'd invited me there,
so they were curious to hear.
There was complete,
stunned silence,
because what it's
doing is it's massively
driving up coal prices.
So this is the
situation which is
happening within the
state-owned enterprises
and within government.
But it's also having
dramatic consequences
within the rest of the state.
So as this project moves
to a space of illegality,
and increasingly the
space of illegality
is creating opportunities
for all sorts of criminality
to happen, there's a growing
criminalization of the state.
So there are moves
against other parts
of the South African state, in
particular those parts which
have capacity-- investigative,
criminal investigative capacity
and prosecutorial capacity.
The first to go is the
South African Revenue
Services-- which
we can discuss is
one of the great, remarkable
stories of post-apartheid South
Africa and ANC government--
build an incredibly effective
agency that collects taxation
in South Africa, really
one of the great, great, heroic
stories of post-apartheid South
Africa.
By 2014, the South African
Revenue Services is not just
collecting taxation,
it's also built up
quite a formidable
capacity to go
after errant or
non-compliant taxpayers, many
whom are increasingly
politically connected.
It's got a very, very effective
unit that goes after them.
In the end of 2014,
there's a purge at SARS.
Its entire leadership are
removed under the most
extraordinary circumstances,
and a new leadership
is brought in which
is politically
aligned to Jacob Zuma.
I'll tell you a little
about the circumstances,
because it gives you a
pattern of the increasing
securitization of the South
African state, and the role
of the intelligence agencies
in the way in which South
Africa works.
The story goes like this.
A dodgy intelligence
dossier emerges
around that period,
2014, alleging
that there is a conspiracy
by largely Indian leadership
within SARS to discriminate
and exclude black Africans
from the organization.
There are claims that
their organization
is acting illegally by
spying on the president
and doing all sorts of
extraordinary things,
like running a brothel,
quite amazing things.
The dossier is in circulation.
It's in circulation.
Eventually, it lands at the
large-circulation Sunday
newspaper in South Africa
called the Sunday Times.
Its editor, for reasons which--
not quite sure why, she
publishes the story.
And week after week, she's
publishing these claims
of a rogue unit within SARS.
The stories are
complete rubbish,
complete, complete
and utter rubbish.
But for week after week
after week, for a year,
she's running these
stories, claiming
the most astonishing things,
that the SARS unit are spying
on the president,
they're running brothels,
they're doing the most
amazing, amazing things.
The leadership of
SARS used that report
then to run their
own investigation.
KPMG are brought in.
KPMG, a large,
international audit firm,
do an investigation.
They confirm the
story of a rogue unit,
and it's used as
an alias to fire
the entire leadership of SARS.
It later emerges, of course,
which we knew at the time,
the stories are completely
bogus, utterly bogus.
They have no
substance whatsoever.
The Sunday Times eventually is
forced to retract the story.
KPMG is now in enormous,
enormous trouble
for writing a report which had
absolutely no standing, borders
on illegality, the
most extraordinary
unprofessionalism.
The point is, as the story of
these intelligence dossiers
are playing themselves out
right across the state,
so for example, there's
a special elite police
unit, a police unit in South
Africa, called the Hawks.
Supposed to be investigating
high-priority crime.
We see the exact same thing.
Its entire leadership are
purged in exactly the same way.
An intelligence report
emerges claiming
that the head of the Hawks
in Gauteng, a General Sibiya,
is involved in the illegal
rendition of Zimbabweans,
the idea being that
Zimbabweans were sent back to--
in South African law,
it's illegal to repatriate
people that face the death
penalty in their own country.
So Zimbabweans, prisoners,
are repatriated back
to Zimbabwe, where
they're murdered,
and it's illegal by
South African law,
and there's a claim
that General Sibiya was
part of the repatriation.
Again, it's nonsense.
The other one is
General Booysen.
He's head of the Hawks in KZN.
The claim is that he's
been running an illegal hit
squad, which has been
killing criminals in Cato
Manor, an area of Durban.
It's complete rubbish.
The same thing with
the head of the Hawks
nationally, the claim is also
he's involved in illegal stuff.
There are all
intelligence dossiers,
and they're used to remove them.
They're all complete nonsense.
The NPA, the prosecuting
authority, as well,
is purged in the same way.
They remove its
leadership, although it
has a longer history.
So what you start seeing
is, as the general move
to illegality and
criminality emerges,
so government, especially
the Zuma administration,
starts taking on
key [INAUDIBLE],,
key state institutions, so
there's a general weakening
of the state.
We see something else as well.
In the Betrayal report, we
argue that there's the emergence
of what we call a shadow state.
Essentially, decision-making
is shifting increasingly away
from constitutional bodies.
It's shifting out of government.
It's certainly not
happening in Parliament.
It's not even
happening in the ANC.
Into these informal
networks which
resemble what Jackson
and Rosberg might well
have discussed as networks
of personal power.
We call them, in our
report, kitchen cabinets,
which are loose affiliations.
They're constantly
changing their foreman
and their character.
But loose affiliations of people
bound by personal allegiances
and perhaps shared
participation in various deals.
But what's definitely
happening is
that power and key
decision-making
is shifting away from
the constitutional bodies
and away from democratic organs.
So in this sense,
what we've argued
in South Africa is a
growing fragility of--
weakening of democratic organs,
a weakening of the state
itself.
And then, of course, we see the
huge amounts of money, huge--
Pravin Gordhan, the former
minister of finance,
is now talking about a
figure of 200 billion.
I don't know where
he gets it from.
It sounds too high, in my mind.
But figures of tens
of billions of rands
are leaving the country.
So the project is not
developmental, as well.
In South Africa,
and more generally,
again, this is
analyzed fundamentally
as a story of corruption,
of a criminal network that
have seized power of the state,
and are milking institutions
for their own gain.
I think something much more
complicated is going on here.
I think there is some of that.
But I definitely
think it is informed
by a political
instinct, originally.
And the political
instinct is this,
that it is in the name
of serving poor people,
where the rules of
the game have been
rigged against poor
and ordinary people.
It is necessary and legitimate,
therefore, to break the rules.
I think what you have come
to power, after Polokwane
in 2009, is a government
that associates
or identifies itself as left,
and has identified itself
with ordinary South Africans.
Don't forget, Jacob Zuma himself
is an interesting figure.
He's not an educated man.
He speaks English
with great difficulty.
He's not especially numerate.
In other words,
it's people like him
that are essentially
discriminated
and have not benefited from
growth in South Africa.
It's people like him who the
new project wants to benefit.
And the sense is that the
only way of allowing people
like that into the economy is to
break the rules fundamentally.
So I think this is a
political instinct.
And I think it's what I'm
calling an elite populism.
It's the political elites
who are reading Fanon,
who are reading Chatterjee.
They are taking
onboard those ideas,
and they are pursuing
them in the name
of serving a popular agenda.
I think you're seeing this sort
of politics in India as well.
You're seeing it in Venezuela.
You're seeing it in Turkey,
with some differences.
I think this phenomenon of elite
populism, a sense you saw it
in Brexit, in the UK, a sense
that for ordinary people
to get ahead, the existing
system, the existing
rules of the game, need to be
fundamentally dislodged, even
shattered.
I think this is the
political conviction that
is informing the current
politics in South Africa.
So let me end here.
If that analysis is correct,
the prospect of democracy,
both in South
Africa, but I think
in the US, Turkey, et
cetera, means taking on board
this idea, this conviction.
It requires a rallying
behind a democratic politics,
but not just
discursively, but it
needs to demonstrate that
a democratic politics,
a democratic form, can also
have real benefits for ordinary,
for poor working people.
Because in the current
system, the association
with democracy with an elite
politics is too strong.
If you like, democracy itself
has been captured by elites.
In order for us to revive
the democratic project,
both in South Africa, but
I think around the world,
there needs to be
a radicalization
of the democratic
politics to make
real inroads and
real concessions
to the demands of ordinary,
poor, and working people.
Let me come to an end there.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Great.
Thanks, Ivor.
You've given us a
lot to think about.
I think we'll-- is
there a format, then?
You'll just open it up and
take questions yourself?
So you talked a little
bit about the radical kind
of economic
transformation model.
And I think, at
least from what I've
studied, it seems that it's been
perpetrated in other countries,
like in Zimbabwe, with the
very controversial land reform
project.
And I just wanted to know,
from your perspective,
how do you think that
the people, or a state,
can go about reforming these
systems that were created,
essentially, to disenfranchise
black people, poor people,
indigenous people,
within these states,
without seemingly
paralyzing an economy
or a political structure?
Do you want to take a couple?
You can go one at
a time for a while,
because we've got enough--
OK, I mean, that's
an enormous question.
I don't know-- let me answer
it in a perhaps unexpected way.
So I think--
I'm sure there are a
whole lot of economists
who will have a whole
lot of ideas of models
of the economy, et cetera.
I think that there's a
cultural issue at stake
here, as well, which
we don't confront it
in South Africa at all.
I'm not sure we confront
it well anywhere.
So there's a very,
very important essay
written by a guy that used
to be head of the policy
unit in the presidency under
Thabo Mbeki, a guy called
Joel Netshitenzhe.
He runs a think tank in South
Africa now called Mistra,
Mapungubwe Institute For
Strategic Reflection.
The paper's called "The
Sins of Incumbency."
And amongst other
things, he argues
that what is regarded as a
middle-class life in South
Africa actually is not
middle-class by any standards
anywhere else in the world,
that the conception of being
middle class in South Africa
is a colonial phenomenon.
They're produced by
a white politics, who
set a standard of living
for themselves, regarded
as middle-class, but
by anywhere else,
any standards in the world,
this is how the super-rich live.
Two cars in the garage, a
large house with a garden,
servants, a swimming
pool, an ability
to eat out on a regular
basis, a holiday at least once
a year, maybe
twice, that this is
regarded as a
normal middle-class
standard of living.
And his argument is
that that norm was never
critiqued or rejected in the
ANC or within the liberation
movement, but rather that norm
has been internalized broadly
within South African
society, so when
we think of reaching
and pursuing
a middle-class
standard of living,
this is what people
are pursuing.
But of course, it's
unattainable for anyone
but a handful of people in South
Africa, never mind the world.
And what it does is it produced
a political economy which
drives people into massive,
massive indebtedness.
So I would start--
I'm sure there
are all sorts of--
and there are brilliant
people in the room here,
and at this university,
who have all sorts of ideas
about economic structures
and institutions.
But I would think that there's
a cultural critique which
we need to start
with, in the sense of,
what constitutes
middle-class-ness?
What constitutes
a decent standard
of living in South Africa?
There's very interesting
work around public servants
in the post-colonial moment,
who, the civil servants having
a sense of their
norm of living must
be like that of the colonial
civil service as well,
and a kind of reproduction
of those conceptions of what
it means to live well.
I think [INAUDIBLE]
is getting to this
when he talks about the
post-colonial elites, drawing
on Fanon, as kind of
zombie-like, in the sense
that they're just repeating,
without life, without critique,
without sense of reflection,
the kinds of the norms
and standards of
the colonial moment.
So I think, if you
read that [INAUDIBLE]
stuff from Civilization
and-- what's it in English?
I don't know that
one in English.
But the sense of the German
bourgeoisie in relationship
to the German aristocracy,
of rejecting fundamentally
German aristocratic
values, and producing
a new kind of
bourgeois norms, which
are in relationship to
that, that kind of work,
that kind of work
of decolonization,
definitely hasn't even
started in South Africa.
Peter-- am I doing the--
Yes!
Oh, OK.
So, I know some people's
names, but not at once.
So--
I'd like to continue pursuing
this enormous question,
but in a sort of
more modest way,
and that is, obviously
you can't expect
to deliver this colonial
middle-class lifestyle.
On the other hand,
if the subaltern,
or the poor of South
Africa, are to get on board
with a critique of this
sort of corrupt version
of radical
transformation, you have
to be able to present a credible
possibility for some delivering
of the basic kinds
of things that they
would like to have-- some
education, some health,
some affordable
housing, et cetera.
And the question is,
can you see a way
of constructing a program,
or a paradigm, or a policy,
or whatever, that is likely to
be credible to those folks who
have been through,
after all, now,
20 years of a lot of promises
of exactly that, made
by well-meaning people, et
cetera, and it hasn't happened?
It hasn't happened for them,
despite considerable efforts,
because it does
seem to me that you
have to be able to make
that kind of promise
in a credible way, if you're
going to win politically.
And what would that
kind of promise entail?
And would it perhaps
entail some elements
of this radical
economic transformation
that has gone so badly awry?
So I mean, I think
what's so interesting
about South Africa at the
moment is that we're not
having these discussions,
partly because we're
so fixated on trying to
preserve our democracy,
stand up for civil servants
that are being persecuted
in the most astonishing
ways, and I'll
talk a little about it.
I mean, what is
exciting is that there
is a resurgence of civil society
movements in South Africa.
There are growing
social movements which
are taking up these issues.
But we are not
having these sorts
of policy debates about new
kinds of economic models.
There's a fallback,
a few years ago.
A South African-- it was called
the National Development Plan.
Actually went through a very
wide, consultative process
in developing a vision,
and then populating
that vision with quite
concrete proposals.
It's a very lengthy,
unwieldy document,
but it's got some
proposals in it
which lay out some kind of
social democratic vision,
welfare with instruments
to create growth.
There's lots of lip
service to that document.
And I think, in
many people, there's
a sense that it
lays the foundation
of some sort of alternative
to the current situation.
But can you present
a version of that
that's credible to the
average subaltern, that
is believable as deliverable?
So this is the dilemma.
So much of it depends on the
ability of state institutions
to work programmatically.
And the kind of
hemorrhaging that I've
discussed at the
national treasury,
but also within the police,
within the Revenue Services,
is happening right
across the state.
I don't think it's just
a politics of corruption.
I think there are--
you know, don't forget,
by the end of the
apartheid period--
most of the 20th
century in South Africa,
there's been a
government in power
which is trying to
break the country up
into separate countries.
By the end of the apartheid
period, there are 14.
None of them are independent
in any legitimate manner.
But you have 14
territories, which
have their own administrations.
Seven of them have been
given nominal independence.
Places like the
Transkei, for example,
have been running as
effectively independent states
for nearly 20 years.
They have their own
bureaucracies, et cetera.
Thrown together in 1994.
So very, very complex
histories of state integration,
which start from 1994.
So there are very
great, inherent
institutional
weaknesses in the state,
coupled by a politics which
has been quite devastating,
over the last 10 years, to
stability and leadership
within those states.
So the questions,
over and above vision,
ability of state administrations
to deliver on mandates,
is very, very highly uneven.
Having said that,
there have been
some extraordinary achievements,
enormous achievements.
I mean, the establishment
of the national treasury
is an enormous achievement.
The establishment of South
African Revenue Services
was an enormous achievement.
This ANC does build
well over-- there's
nearly 2 million houses.
I mean, there are
extraordinary achievements
amongst all of that
institutional weakness.
So I think yes, there's
a sense of vision.
But there's also a need
for state-building.
And this is really the kind
of work that I'm involved in.
At the back there?
So I think that, you know,
I was stimulated greatly
by what you said, your
comparison of divisive populism
in South Africa and India.
And I want to say
that they are similar.
I mean, there is a rise
of populist leadership.
Also, some of the
other similarities,
from what you spoke about,
a leader presenting himself
as an outsider to the elite
establishment of the past,
somebody who's had a
disadvantaged background,
and represents, therefore,
the disadvantaged.
And also the need to
change the constitutions.
I think these are similar.
But yet, there's some
very profound differences,
because in India,
the constitution
is presented not as a barrier
to social and economic equality,
in the way that you've
described in South Africa,
but really to advance a
resolution of the majority
community, the Hindu
community, feeling
that it needs to get
its due in a country
where it is in its majority.
So it's for a very
different reason
that the constitution
needs to be changed.
But the question that
I wanted to present
was, also there are
these differences
and there are
these similarities.
Perhaps what we are
witnessing across
the world is
actually the outcome
in the end of the crisis
of neoliberal capitalism
to produce jobs, and
to produce decent work,
to present a sustainable,
credible alternative
to large masses of young people
from disadvantaged backgrounds,
with their aspirations
for a better life.
And it is this crisis
that is manifesting itself
in different ways in
different countries.
But in the end, we have to
address the fact that this
pattern of economic growth
cannot deliver jobs and a good
life for millions
of young people.
And therefore, we are
having populist leaders
presenting themselves
in different formats.
So how would you suggest--
how would you react to that?
[INAUDIBLE],, I think
you've put your finger
on some profound dynamics.
In South Africa, there's been
a lot of critique of the ANC
as neoliberal, and as
having adopted a whole range
of neoliberal policies.
I would want to
speak a little bit
careful around that
analysis, because it
tends towards caricature.
So for example, the national
treasury in South Africa
is often dismissed, as a way of
legitimizing the attack on it,
as it's the vanguard of
neoliberalism in South
Africa, vanguard of austerity.
I think this is myth-making.
What you definitely see
is an extraordinarily,
from the point of view of the
budget, redistributive fiscus.
So massive, massive
movement of state resources
into social development, and
into-- massive, but massive.
So we go from a situation,
massive increases,
to social grants, to pensions.
So I think the latest
figures are 17 million people
in South Africa, with a
population of 50 million,
are on some form of welfare.
Huge increases.
But municipal services
are overwhelmingly
subsidized for the poor,
electricity, water.
So a huge redistributive fiscus.
So the question
of neoliberalism,
I think under Mbeki, I think
that critique is correct,
to some extent.
I think what you're also
[INAUDIBLE] with, though,
is the profound legacy of the
apartheid political economy.
There's a fantastic--
there was a,
I think, very, very important
Marxist scholar in South Africa
called Martin
Legassick, and he writes
an article for the 1970s which
is extraordinarily prescient.
And he basically anticipates--
this is the 1970s.
And he anticipates that
the big major problem
of post-apartheid South Africa
is going to be unemployment.
And his argument is
essentially, which
I think is absolutely
great, that South African
capitalism develops
in such a way
that essentially, it bifurcates
the economy into two zones--
a colonial zone, and
a metropolitan zone.
And in the metropolitan
zone, companies
are designed to
employ as few people
as possible, not
needing black labor,
so there's a huge move
to the use of technology
in production.
Manual production is happening
in the colonial territories,
and in the Bantustans
and the reserves.
The colonial economy
is a failure.
Those areas require
huge subsidization.
Most of those economies
are closed down
in the post-apartheid period,
leaving an economy which
largely is not
dependent on labor,
large parts of the economy.
So you have a
structural constraint
in the South African economy,
that even when it grows,
it produces particular
kinds of jobs,
high-skilled jobs requiring
a formal education,
at least at secondary level.
And it grows in
such a way that it
produces jobs for which
most South Africans can't
participate in.
So there's an element
of neoliberalism,
but I also think there are these
very large, very substantive
structural constraints
of employment
in the South African economy.
And no government-- the ANC--
no one has dared, or known
how to begin to tackle that.
And that seems to be the
major economic challenge
in South Africa going forward.
Yes?
Yes?
So I have two questions.
The first is, so
you say that there's
been a political project
involved behind this,
about the necessity for
economic transformation.
So has this lead to
any redistributive
policies, anything new?
Have they used this
new political leverage
to do anything economically new?
Second is that, so
you said you are not
having these policy
discussions about what
have to have happen next.
But it seems like there
is a lot of conversation
about preservation of
democracy in South Africa.
So could you tell
us a little bit more
about who is involved
in this movement, who
are the organizations, and
what is the discussion that you
are having?
OK.
Yeah.
Great question.
So I think in the first
place, the project
of radical economic
transformation
is a project of disruption.
And I think it's a project
of disruption in the sense
to break historical patterns
of ownership and control,
by changing the procurement
practices of government.
So it's essentially a product
of breaking the whole of what's
called in South Africa white
monopoly capital, a term that's
very generic, breaking
its hold on the economy
by moving them aside, weakening
those sorts of corporations,
and creating space for new
kinds of black-owned and
black-controlled companies.
So if you ask [INAUDIBLE] new,
that, I think, is the instinct.
Does it start?
It does start.
The fact that the black-owned
and controlled companies that
largely benefit happen to be
linked to a coterie of people
around Jacob Zuma,
around the president,
including his family-- his son
is an enormous beneficiary--
where the intermediation
is taking place
through a family
of Indian origin,
who moved to South Africa--
I mean, naturalized
as South Africans--
called the Guptas,
who qualify, in terms
of their naturalization,
as black South Africans.
We can be very, very alarmed,
and laugh about the way
in which it's played out.
But we're going to have
to take it seriously,
that there has been very,
very major disruption
in certain areas.
And I suppose the idea is that
if the project was given time
to mature, it would create
this new kind of economy.
There's huge pressure,
which one could
argue has got to do
with the deals made
between the president
and Putin in Russia
of a massive nuclear deal.
Massive, massive,
and the way that it's
completely unaffordable to the
South African economy, and yet
would generate electricity
which we couldn't possibly use.
But there's a sense that
those sorts of projects
would engender massive new
economic-- require new economic
enterprises, which
would give birth
to a new black industrial class
that would own and control
the economy transformation.
So that would be the
measure, I suppose.
So there are very interesting
developments in South Africa.
And I could talk a little bit
personally, in this regard.
So as Patrick mentioned,
the institute that I run
works on government.
And for a long, long time,
we were about as unsexy
as you can possibly imagine.
There's not a great tradition
of public administration
scholarship in
Africa, to the extent
that [INAUDIBLE] that was
associated with the apartheid
universities, South African
administration, historically
was a discipline which arose
in the service of the apartheid
project.
So it suffers from
very low credibility.
Within the African
National Congress,
within the broad
anti-apartheid movement,
generally, very,
very little history
of thinking in public
administration terms, thinking
institutionally.
There's a very, very strong,
very proud, quite remarkable
tradition of political
economy within the ANC,
but very little thinking
around the concrete dynamics
and the concrete structures
of how government works,
et cetera.
So there was very little
attention to our work.
So we started doing work, for
example, on public procurement.
We showed, for example,
that in South Africa,
government essentially
works by outsourcing.
Massive, massive outsourcing
of government functions.
So the annual spend for goods
and services in South Africa
is about 500 billion.
Essentially, government
works by outsourcing its work
to third-party service
providers, largely
private companies.
There was some interest
in specialist circles,
but not much interest.
Then the purge happens at SARS,
and there's a huge assault
on public servants.
Very, very little
political response.
I tried to develop a legal
aid fund for public servants,
to try and get
people on the street.
Zero, zero interest.
Then the minister of
finance was fired,
Nhlanhla Nene, in December
2015, and people got a fright.
And there started to be a
little bit of mobilization.
Within civil society
organizations,
for example, people that would--
you know, Ivor
Chipkin, nice guy,
but boy, that's
kind of weird stuff.
There was then growing interest.
Today, we are in a
quite different world.
There is quite a
re-emergence of very, very
active social movements
in South Africa,
caricatured in some parts as a
kind of a liberal opposition.
There's definitely been a
reorganization within business,
which has funded all
sorts of social movements,
beginning to fund
social movements.
On the left, as
well, there are sort
of more left social movements
beginning to emerge,
and are able to put
people in the street.
What I think is very,
very encouraging--
it goes back to
Peter's question--
and I think it's historically
unprecedented in South Africa,
you have, embryonically,
a movement
emerging which is standing
up for public servants,
and which understands that going
forward, building the state
is a worthwhile and
noble challenge.
And you have more and
more organizations
and social movements talking
the language of solidarity
with public servants,
talking about depoliticizing
the administrations.
So that's very exciting to me.
At the same time, we've
got independent press.
The courts in South
Africa have held up.
So these political networks
which I've described
are under tremendous
political strain, more strain
than they've ever been under.
I think it makes them
incredibly brazen.
It makes them very,
very dangerous.
But it's not obvious anymore
that they're winning.
And how this plays itself out
going forward, I don't know.
It's very, very scary
times in South Africa.
Personally, I feel a little
bit-- we'll see after December.
This year's been very tough.
There was a-- people
opened fire on my car.
There were break-ins in
offices, with very high--
things are feeling a bit
easier at the moment.
But very, very-- very, very
dynamic political environment.
Very, very exciting
political environment.
Scary.
It's scary in South
Africa at the moment.
Patrick, can you--
I want to push on the
political project part,
because it doesn't
totally add up for me.
So on the one hand,
you know, if you're
using the state
to be disruptive,
and privileging of black firms
at the expense of white firms,
I would imagine you
get a lot of capital--
I mean, a lot of this
is-- you know, Glencore,
these are all highly
mobile forms of capital.
And this is why Mbeki didn't
do it in the first place,
because there was
this tremendous fear
of white capital flight.
So is that not happening?
And second, this
disruptive vision, I mean,
this is just creating
a rentier class.
I mean, it's not creating
a black bourgeoisie.
It's creating a black--
you know, non-dynamic-- we're
not going to get China out
of this, right?
So there doesn't seem to be
any internal competition.
As you said, it's a
coterie of friends
of the president, et cetera.
And then the third part, because
I agree that the South African
state's been a lot more
redistributive than it's been
given credit for, [INAUDIBLE]
and [INAUDIBLE] have all
the numbers, and it's pretty--
I think South Africa has
the highest post-income tax
transfer of any mid-income
country in the world, right?
It's quite astonishing.
But isn't that becoming
harder and harder to fund?
I mean, if they're blowing $7
billion on some rentier deal
with the Guptas?
I mean, isn't that undermining
revenues for the housing
programs and service delivery?
And then the third and
final related question
is, politically, it just
seems to be failing.
I mean, the service
delivery protests
that have been happening
in South African cities
are unending.
I mean, it's just
thousands a year,
and they just keep on going.
And then politically,
for the first time ever,
the ANC has lost elections.
And by all accounts, it lost
in the municipal elections,
what was it, a year ago?
And the big-- in
Joburg, it lost Joburg.
It lost--
Pretoria.
Pretoria.
And it lost the black
middle class vote,
which is now voting for the--
well, we're not sure.
We don't know.
But, so it's lost the
black middle class vote.
The urban poor are pissed
off and protesting.
The political project is
generating a lot of rents
and a lot of controversy.
I mean, this sounds
like a really
failed political project.
Or am I missing something?
No, I think you've described
it really, really well.
So the day before
yesterday was the--
so the real thorn in the
side was the minister
of finance, Pravin Gordhan.
So in May this year,
he's fired, decisively.
And the engineer of radical
economic transformation,
Malusi Gigaba, is brought in
as the minister of finance,
promising all new kind
of economic policy.
So he gave his budget
speech yesterday-- the day
before yesterday,
completely conventional.
He described-- he said he
needed to be clean and be
transparent about the state
of the economy, et cetera.
The economy, we're in such
dire-- it's such dire straits.
There's a sense that the
project is in collapse.
Economically, it's in collapse.
They've revised our
growth prospects
from below 1% to 0.7%.
Now, this is unstable.
Our population growth is
much higher than that.
There is now-- the
last budget, there
was a 0.3 billion gap
between the budget
and what was collected in taxes.
This year, there's
50 billion gap.
50 billion.
So there's just a whole lot
of things which just are not
affordable anymore.
So the project is
definitely coming apart.
It's definitely coming apart.
The political
consequences, well, this
is where things are so unstable.
And this is why, to
think of this just
as a country of people
involved in theft,
it becomes impossible
to sustain this.
And yet, the networks are
sustainable at certain levels.
Yes, they're under
huge, huge pressure.
But the point is that Jacob
Zuma, this coterie of people,
he's able to bring out
majorities in the ANC itself
almost every time.
So the opposition within
the ANC is growing.
There's no doubt about it.
There was a no-confidence
vote in his presidency
earlier this year.
And he got an overwhelming
majority, but a good 35 to 40
MPs voted with the opposition
in favor of the no-confidence
vote.
So that says something.
But it's still a tiny minority.
I think that there is
a strong conviction,
and I don't think
it's an ideology.
I think we have to distinguish
between a conviction
and an ideology here.
The conviction is this, that you
need to let the economy break,
and a new kind of
economy will emerge.
It's a bit like
Zimbabwe, you know,
where you need to-- that
the more things break,
is a sign of--
it's progressive.
There's this kind of
idea of a phoenix rising
from the ashes of kind
of a transformed economy.
Not just that it
breaks, it's broken.
There's a sense that
breaking is in and of itself,
it's progressive.
So I think from a
[? patterns ?] point of view,
it's unsustainable.
As a political project,
it's unsustainable.
But in the end, where
we go is dependent
on the electoral
fortune of the ANC.
So my reading, there's
a big national congress
in December for the election
of a new leader of the ANC.
There's massive
contestation going on.
Jacob Zuma is
unable to run again,
so he's got his wife running.
There's a campaign
[INAUDIBLE] with his ex-wife.
But she's running
very much on the lines
of a project of radical
economic transformation.
My reading is that she can't--
if she wins December,
which is a possibility,
the ANC can't win
2019 as an election.
I've been watching
ANC's electoral fortunes
since Polokwane, since 2009,
and it's quite unambiguous
that there's a
gradual uneven decline
of the ANC across the
country, between 8% to 10%
across the country.
What has kept the ANC
majorities fairly high,
though, is what's
bucked the trend,
is a province called
KwaZulu-Natal.
So whereas ANC support has
been declining everywhere
across the country,
in KwaZulu-Natal,
they've seen a
quite meteoric rise.
They've displaced-- they've
basically-- opposition
has collapsed in that
province, and the ANC
has taken up all those votes.
So it's offset the declines in
the other parts of the country.
But the KZN story is finished.
They've definitely reached
the maximum they could ever
reach in KZN, and their support
is beginning to decline.
So I put the ANC vote at about
45%, if Nkosazana Zuma wins.
And then the question
is, well, then,
do we survive as a democracy?
Will they go for--
will they try and
rig the election?
And that's pretty much where
the debate is in South Africa.
So taking off from
that last question
we had, so at least the
way it looks right now,
let's say it's not ANC
in the future, 2019.
We have an option
right now, someone
like Julius Malema from the
EFF, someone like [INAUDIBLE]..
How much of a difference
could they make?
What would you-- like, I
have a fear, a little bit,
about the things
you're describing.
It sounds like this
kind of Zuma-fication
is kind of an institutional
erosion coming
about through Jacob Zuma,
almost laid the groundwork
for something like
EFF to come about,
at least in their discourse,
in the way I've heard it.
It sounds like it's in line
with a lot of the things you're
describing, the idea of
breaking the economy,
or even more radical
transformation.
And I don't know what your take
on that is, what you would see.
More specifically, I'm
interested in Malema.
What would you see from
Malema, and what would you
expect to see, in regards to the
kind of institutional erosion
that you're talking
about right now?
If he was to, let's
say, [INAUDIBLE]..
OK.
Quite frankly, I mean, I think
the EFF is like sort of a--
what do they describe
themselves as,
a kind of
Fanonian-Marxist-Leninist
party.
There are all sorts of
intellectual attempts
to reconcile
Marxism and Leninism
with Fanon, which I think
have some intellectual value
to them.
I think it's a small party.
It's never going
to be a big party.
I mean, the idea of
Julius Malema as president
and winning an election I
think is completely farfetched.
My sense is that as a
party, it'll hit 8% to 10%
of the vote.
So, and I'll tell you why
that's not just a hunch.
If you look at the
ANC's electoral support,
it's something very interesting.
So the Thabo Mbeki days,
and what's Thabo Mbeki?
Thabo Mbeki is the
kind of-- if you like,
he's the kind of neoliberalism,
the reform of the economy.
There's fairly high
economic growth.
It has these
pathological features.
But it's also the ANC, and it's
South Africa, as the vanguard
of an African modernity.
South Africa as a
major industrial power,
black country.
Major industrial power.
A huge presence on
the African continent.
A renaissance on the
African continent,
in the direction of
democracy, industrialization,
urbanization, and of course,
a major player in the world.
I mean, I think this vision--
so this vision is compelling,
not just among a small coterie.
Thabo Mbeki's
electoral results are
just-- they're off the charts.
You know, he's
getting majorities
which are just unprecedented.
He gets-- and before Polokwane,
he gets 67% of the vote.
You know, they can rewrite that
constitution tomorrow morning
if they want to.
He's easily got
two-thirds of the vote.
I think that politics
is hugely popular,
and I think it's that
idea of modernity,
of a kind of a black African
modernity which he represents,
is enormously popular.
Polokwane is associated
with this populism.
It's associated with the
beginning of the decline
of the ANC electorally.
And it's not just the
black middle classes
that are [INAUDIBLE] the ANC.
It's uneven.
So some of the most precipitous,
dramatic declines of the ANC
were in rural areas,
northwest, solid--
within the ANC's own politics,
solidly within the Zuma camp.
But in the 2016 local
government election, a largely
rural province,
there's a 15% decline
in its electoral support.
I mean, that's a
dramatic decline.
So I think this kind of populism
is not popular within the ANC.
The idea with going to the
EFF, I am deeply skeptical.
I have another scenario
which I'm involved in,
and I'd be very happy
if it came about,
and that would be that the
ANC splits in 2015, now,
2017, that a kind of social
democratic [? rump ?] leaves,
forms a new party,
and the DA opposition
merges into this
new party, and you
have a basis of a kind of
left-centrist social democratic
party emerging in South
Africa, which could maybe
win an election.
But that's my fantasy.
Sorry, yes?
So I'm not sure which
question to ask.
A lot of this is
fascinating stuff,
troubling but fascinating stuff.
I mean, I guess one question
I have is about, again,
probing this relationship
between the political project
and the corruption, and the
relationship between what
you might call kind of
political moral discourses
and real political
economic interests,
and the ways in which they
kind of align and not align.
And it seems to me like
part of your story here,
but also part of
the story that we're
seeing in other parts of the
world that you're comparing to,
is that they can misalign, that
people can tell themselves,
elites can tell
themselves a story,
people can tell themselves these
political moral stories that
don't actually align with
political economic interests.
So maybe just a little
more on that, is part one.
But then the other
one is to ask--
and this is maybe a
more concrete question--
to ask you to say something
more about race and class.
And particularly,
the question as to
whether this disruptive radical
economic transformation project
is a project that can continue
to appeal only to the extent
that it's addressing the
question of racial inequality.
And then, as it become
clear that the real problem,
or another real problem--
not the real problem,
another real problem--
is class inequality
becomes unsustainable.
Yeah, it's a marvelous question.
Can I answer it by stepping
back [INAUDIBLE] historical
[INAUDIBLE]?
Historically, within the
ANC, the ANC in particular,
there is a very long history
of debating this kind
of race-class relationship.
It produces an analysis from
the late '60s and early '70s,
informed by the
South American models
of articulation and
modes of production,
which produces a particular
understanding of how apartheid
works in its relation
to capitalism.
Within the ANC, though,
what is debated vigorously,
and leads to some moments
of quite profound crisis
in the ANC, as to who
is the leading, what
are called in the ANC's
language the motor
forces of the revolution.
Who are the vanguard
of the revolution?
Now, through this one
particular reading
of the political
economy of the apartheid
as a system of
capitalism, the sense
is that the revolution must
be led by the working class.
What's called the national
democratic revolution,
that its leadership falls to
the working class to lead,
that the working class will
both liberate themselves
from exploitation, but
in liberating themselves
from exploitation, they
will also liberate blacks
from racial domination.
And the analysis is informed
by the way in which race
domination and class
exploitation work
in South Africa, as
working hand in glove.
So if you liberate the working
class from class exploitation,
you will simultaneously
liberate blacks
from national oppression.
So that is the
argument which wins out
at a very famous,
incredibly heavily
contested national congress in
Morogoro, in Tanzania, in 1969.
But that conception is
heavily contested right along.
And by the mid 1980s,
that understanding that
the leadership of the
anti-apartheid struggle must
fall to the working class--
which is why, by the way, the
ANC is always in coalition,
in partnership, with
the Communist Party
and with trade unions--
is informed by that analysis.
By 1985, the
[INAUDIBLE] conference,
which is in Zambia,
that conception
of working-class leadership
has been heavily, heavily
[? downgraded. ?]
And instead, there's
a formulation which
emerges, which is very, very
tricky politically.
And the argument is
that the leadership
of the anti-apartheid struggle
must fall to blacks in general,
and Africans in particular.
So there's a growing racial
conception of the leadership
of the anti-apartheid struggle.
So if the working class
is a sociological concept,
who are blacks in general?
Who are Africans?
And what you start seeing under
Thabo Mbeki after liberation
is that Africans in
particular refers
to the emergence of
a black bourgeoisie,
that essentially the vanguard
of transformation and liberation
in South Africa will not
be the working class,
but will essentially
be the emergence
of a black capitalist class.
And that is one of the great
theoretical and political
innovations of Thabo Mbeki,
in the 1990s and early 2000s.
And it's that
tradition which I think
is now taken up very, very
aggressively within Jacob
Zuma's administration,
and in particular,
within the reading of radical
economic transformation,
that the way to
transform South Africa
socially, that leadership must
pass to a black bourgeoisie,
and in particular, an
industrial bourgeoisie.
So that's a long way--
Ultimately, do you
think that that--
I mean, is that--
I mean, going back
to Patrick's, it
seems like a failed
political project,
or a likely-to-fail
political project.
I mean, it's-- given that the
interests of the overwhelming
majority of blacks in South
Africa is not a bourgeoisie
interest--
You see, it's
complicated by the facts.
I mean, there's an
old Leninist tradition
in South Africa, which
is very deeply ingrained.
I think it's deeply ingrained
in all national liberation
movements, which conflate
the party with people.
And what it makes very
difficult to countenance
is the idea of electoral
loss, because there's a sense,
therefore, that if
the ANC is weakened,
or even if it loses
electorally, the people itself
are being displaced from power.
So even though the project
is in fundamental crisis--
there's no doubt about it--
the idea that that translates
into a political loss
for the ANC is almost
impossible for many
in the ANC
[? to contemplate. ?] And this
is why it informs the kind
of a sense the project is
collapsing, but tremendous,
nonetheless, rallying
behind the ANC as a vehicle.
And that's why I think how
we proceed as a democracy is
an open question.
I think we're going
to win it, but boy.
I don't know.
In which case, my CV
is in circulation.
[LAUGHTER]
Ivor, the fact that Ari
does the work that you do
does, I think, say
something quite important
about the depth of democracy
in South Africa, the crisis
notwithstanding, because I think
the critiques we've heard today
are compelling and
powerful and they
are part of this public
conversation which in itself is
quite extraordinary.
We could think of other
cases across the world
where I suspect Ari
would be out of business.
So if nothing else, at least
that's some room for optimism.
So I just want to thank you
for the time you've taken.
That was absolutely
fascinating, and thank
everyone for their questions.
And it was a really
terrific dialogue.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
