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THE BAROMETER OF SOCIAL TRENDS
, 1Mnir ATOR COUTH AFRICA Quarterly Report and the INDICATOR SOUTH AFRICA Issue he iiNUi^i^i lighed by the Centre for Social and Development Studies, based at the University of T CU n -h T Opinions expressed in these publications are not necessarily those of the Editorial Committee and should not be taken to represent the policies of companies or organisations which are donor members of the Indicator Project South Africa. © Copyright for all material herein is held by INDICATOR SOUTH AFRICA or individual authors, except in the case of short extracts for review or comment, which must be fully credited.
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LIBRARY
"7 0071993 Institute ot ^Development Studies POLITICAL MONITOR Transitional Two-Step: The Only Game in Town David Welsh 7 The Final Countdown: Peace-Keeping & the Election Mark Shaw 13 Regional Forums: New Frontiers, New Creatures Simon Bekker & Richard Humphries 19
ECONOMIC MONITOR Public Finance in a Multi-Tier State Charles Simkins 25 Economic Outlook Mike McGrath & Merle Holden 29 The Maize Industry: Business as Usual? Henry Bernstein 33
DEVELOPMENT MONITOR
A Rural Voice: Strategies for Drought Relief Laurie Adams 41 The Last Straw: Drought and the Economy Johan van Zyl 47 A Prayer for Rain in Bophuthatswana Colleen Vogel 52
URBAN MONITOR Images of Africa: Phantoms in the Mirror Alison Jones 57 Black Hopes, White Fears, Racial Myths ... Joseph Manyoni 62 East Rand Townships under Siege Anthony Minnaar 67
COMPARATIVE MONITOR
Namibia's New Geo-Politics: Lessons for South Africa David Simon 73 Mozambique: Rising from the Ruins Stefano Mainardi 77 The "Salad Bowl" Society: A Constitution for KwaZulu/Natal Mario Oriano-Ambrosini 82 New Frontiers
The multiparty talks at the World Trade Centre debunks the idea that there are technical financial reached "sufficient consensus" on key transitional reasons for allocating powers and functions one mechanisms in the crucial third quarter of 1993. way rather than another. Although some actors, notably Inkatha and the white • David Simon shows how Namibia's regional right, chose not to be signatories to this historic councils provide a national voice for regions compromise, the principal actors, notably the redrawn after apartheid. He warns that South National Party and the African National Congress, Africa's regional power blocs should not be finally agreed on the general formulation of a entrenched before elections. transitional framework. Bilateral negotiations may yet • Other prominent contributors look at negotiations make South Africa's new deal more inclusive. in the new regional economic forums, Inkatha's proposed regional constitution for KwaZulu/Natal, It has been a long and hard road. It now remains for and regional drought relief strategies. parliament to approve the transitional statutes which will guide the formal constitutional negotiations of In two provocative essays in this edition, Joe what essentially will be an elected constituent Manyoni and Alison Jones show why a new assembly. A complex structure of regional constitution is no panacea for the malaise in the legislatures, a national senate and a national assembly national body politic. The constitution which (both with regional representatives) and a multiparty negotiators will put on the shelf is a dry legal cabinet will operate within the parameters of the draft document, a principled framework of state. Practical interim constitution released in July 1993. A new solutions to burning issues such as civil violence, leviathan will be born after the country's first democratic elections on 27 April 1994. racism and political feuds are in the hands of "the real people". These two contributors to Indicator SA caution that the analysis of politics and society should It has been an uphill struggle of progress and reversal. not overlook the values, hopes and fears of everyman. Indeed, in a volatile climate marked by overwhelming political violence the new frontiers of South Africa No constitution can enforce the virtues for society of remain elusively beyond reach at present. At the a democratic culture, inter-racial reconciliation, eleventh hour, a series of technical committees within responsible citizenship and peace. These are our daily the ambit of the multiparty talks are investigating tasks. The national peace day on 2 September was a those critical stumbling-blocks which can be concerted attempt by ordinary South Africans to constitutionally resolved, such as security break the old cycles of conflict. It was a tragically arrangements and regional powers. brief respite. If we are to extend the new frontiers of civil society, if we are to realise the intentions of the This edition of Indicator SA focuses inter alia on the new constitution, we will need to work towards 365 thorny questions of regionalism, pre-election violence days of peace every year. and comparative constitutional lessons: • David Welsh ponders on the prospects for South We would like to thank our readers who took the Africa's transition to a stable and democratic trouble to complete and return the readership survey polity. He doubts that our politicians sense a distributed with the previous edition of Indicator SA. shared fate that transcends political boundaries. Interestingly, 46% of respondents indicate they would • Mark Shaw wonders whether a new national like a letters page. So how about a few in-depth peacekeeping force can march in step with letters on the themes in the current edition or other adversarial election foes. The paradox is that even relevant issues, to enable us to introduce this new a war for peace may require a resort to violence. feature? In the meantime, an overview of the survey • Charles Simkins calculates the economic costs of findings will be published in our next edition due out political compromises on fiscal federalism. He in the fourth quarter.
Graham Howe, Editor September 1993 M N
REGIONAL MODELS FOR SOUTH AFRICA
MAP 1: The new regional boundary proposals of the Multiparty Negotiating Council
TBVC Homelands
MAP 2 The nine development regions of the Development Bank of Southern Africa
Source: Urban Foundation. Development and Democracy No5,1993; Southern Africa Report, Vol11/No32,1993. Note: See ANC and NP regional proposals, maps 3 & 4 on Comparative Monitor cover. "We are committed to democratic principles, individual freedom and a socially responsible free enterprise economy."
An extract from AECI "TOWARDS 2002"
Sustained growth through diversification It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than promoted by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it. James Madison, The Federalist, No37.
outh Africa formally entered a 'negotiating phase in the aftermath of c undertakings made by State President Transition FW de Klerk on 2 February 1990. De Klerk's speech was public acknowledgement that South Africa was in q^oo-Step danger of entering what he would later term 'an absolute impasse' if the discredited policies and institutions of apartheid were not abandoned. He had perceived that the balance of political forces was stalemated: the state had power, but limited legitimacy; the African National Congress and the Mass Democratic Movement had legitimacy and a massive capacity to make large areas 'ungovernable', but lacked the power to overthrow the state.
For its part, the ANC was conscious of its internal support and external legitimacy, but only its romantic revolutionaries supposed that the government could be dislodge by force. In a letter of remarkable force and dignity, written in July 1989 while he was still in prison, Nelson Mandela had reached conclusions congruent with de Klerk's. He Tin• Only Cjame in 'Town urged a negotiated political settlement, warning of 'the civil strife and rain into which the country was now sliding'.
David Welsh, In short what had happened was one of I )epartment of Political Studies, those processes in the evolution of conflicts, in which the conflicting parties University of Cape Town come mutually to recognise that they are deadlocked, that the conflict can be perpetuated only at horrendous costs to This article critically examines aspects of both sides, and that a negotiated accommodation in which neither 'won' nor South Africa's transition to what will 'lost' was the most hopeful possibility. hopefully be a democratic political system. It Thus was the stage set for a transition that looks in particular at the efficacy of the conforms to Samuel Huntington's concept institutions and instruments that have been of transplacement, in which employed in the negotiating process. These 'democratization resulted largely from joint issues, however, cannot be evaluated in action by government and opposition isolation from the context in which the groups' (1991:114). transition is taking place; the strategies and aims of the participants (and whether these No doubt de Klerk had initially hoped that he could steer the process, in conformity are likely to be compatible); and the with Huntington's conception of substantive items on which at least some transformation, in which 'the elites in agreement has been reached. power took the lead in bringing about democracy' (ibid). As with Gorbachev's Ultimately, the test of the efficacy of any attempts at transformation of the Soviet institution is whether it delivers what it was Union, however, events overtook him. Whereas at the inception of the process de created to achieve: in the present case, Klerk held the initiative, subsequently the democratic governance. press of circumstance has forced him increasingly to play a role that has become largely reactive.
INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 7 o^Mtrocs^i muc-ase The rough economy, which has been negative or zero for each of the three years, beginning in balance of The mode of transition shapes in important 1990, of the period of the transition. political forces - ways the kind of institutions and or stalemate - instruments that are created as vehicles for With approximately 13 000 fatalities, that created the the process. All along the government has attributable to political violence since 1984, impetus to the insisted on the process being orderly, further severe pressures have been placed negotiating avoiding sudden ruptures with existing upon the negotiating institutions. Bodies institutions, preventing constitutional such as the National Peace Accord have process has vacuums from arising, and, above all, seemed powerless to halt the violence. No substantially hoping to ensure that the political and single-factor explanation of the violence continued property rights of its constituency were will suffice, but it is common cause that protected. 'Capitulation' or a simple political rivalry is one major source. This, handover of power, which was broadly the in turn, raises a major question about the fate of Ian Smith's UDI regime in the wisdom of the agreed-upon mode of former Rhodesia, has never been on the transition. agenda. 'Power sharing', or the abridgement of simple majority rule, is a Since 1990 two basic proposed models (and response of a quite different character. variation on both) have emerged as vehicles for the transition. First, the ANC's proposal For the ANC and other unbanned that an elected constituent assembly, vested organisations, part of the problem with de with sovereign power, should draft the Klerk's conception of how the transition constitution. Secondly, the NP should proceed was their visceral government's initial proposal was that a detestation of all the institutions of the multiparty conference representing all apartheid order. Who could want parties 'with a proven basis of support' (the 'continuity' when the baseline was the key phrase) should deliberate upon two Tricameral Parliament? Why parley with critical issues: the composition, functioning homeland leaders who represented the and decision-making process of the actual essential sham of apartheid? The ANC constitutional negotiating conference, and would have liked a radical rupture with the the broad principles to be contained in a past, and a transformation that was as much new constitution. a ritual purification process as the creation of democratic institutions. The government refused to accede to the Negative demand for a constituent assembly, arguing consequences The rough balance of political forces - or that this sequence would be putting the have flowed stalemate - that created the impetus to the political cart before the constitutional from the failure negotiating process has substantially horse. The fear was the possibility that a continued, thereby providing some single party, or alliance of parties, would to hold an underpinning for the process itself. The emerge from the election with so election earlier major contracting parties realise that while commanding a majority that it could, in rather than later they may apply pressures outside of the effect, write its own constitution - in other in the process formal negotiating forum ultimately they words, that the constitutional issues to be have little option but to return to it. This negotiated would effectively be prejudged underlying factor has accorded some by the election. There could be no stability to the process, keeping it on track, persuasive answer, however, to the ANC's even if it has been liable to wobble, but it retort that if 'proven basis of support' was has also meant that each institution created to be the criterion, what better way of and each principle adopted has required proving support than determining it by hard bargaining; the further result has been means of an election? awkward compromises, clumsy structures and ambiguous (sometimes vacuous) principles.
Democratising a society like South Africa Two negative consequences have flowed was never going to be easy, in view of the from the failure to hold an election earlier intensity of the conflict and the deeply rather than later in the process: first, the impacted nature of inequality. Democracy representativeness of many of the parties at in deeply divided societies has never been Codesa (Convention for a Democratic easy to attain, let alone sustain, and South South Africa) or the MPNP (Multiparty Africa is unlikely to prove an exception. Negotiating Process) has been in question. Exacerbating these inherent difficulties and Obscure homeland parties and tricameral sharpening the cutting edge of conflict has parliamentary parties with minuscule been the devastating contraction of the support bases have not only enjoyed
12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 19938 "matics®© representation but also formally equal In one aspect politics is about the The task of all representation with major players like the mobilising of resources, and the ANC's political ANC ami the NP. Secondly, and more major resource was its capacity to initiate serioiisl}. the absence of reliable evidence mass action as a means of exerting pressure institutions, as to support, as an election could provide, on what it considered to be the recalcitrance whether has indirectly fanned the flames of of the government. Bellicose utterances by transitional or violence. Parties with questionable and rightwing leaders and threats of withdrawal final, is to provide perhaps shrinking support bases have by Inkatha are variations on the same a mechanism for underlying point: that the legitimacy of the resorted to violence and other strong-arm the management luetics as a means of demonstrating their negotiating forum is in question; it is not political clout. the only game in town, and if you are not of conflict winning in the Codesa/MPNP game you can start up your own outside the The task of all political institutions, whether negotiating venue (or, alternatively, transitional or final, is to provide a physically invade the venue, as the AWB mechanism for the peaceful arbitration and did). management of conflict. William Porter, the liberal Attorney-General of the Cape, said in 185.5. in relation to the issue of the Would the ANC's preferred mode of Cape's ncn-racial, qualified franchise: transition have undercut the violence and 'Now. lor myself, I do not hesitate to say substantially eliminated the need for fora that I w ould rather meet the Hottentot at the like Codesa/MPNP, which were hustings, voting for his representative, than compromises between the government's meet the I Iottentot in the wilds with his gun and the ANC's proposals? Even the exact upon hi> shoulder' (H & R Simons, 1969). science of historical hindsight is of little assistance in this context. Porter's comment illustrates a crucial argument for representative institutions. An earlier election could hypothetically The s;ime point is made by Adam have had some winnowing effect in Pr/euorsld (1991:26): eliminating small parties and cutting down D<'fin" nil y is consolidated when under the pretensions of other, but it would have [•iven political and economic conditions a been a traumatic, convulsive affair. Given [Hiriituhir system of institutions becomes the severity of conflict and the absence of the (>nl\ ame in town, when no one can traditions of tolerance and accommodation, imagine acting outside the democratic the principal parties would have (as they institutions, when all the losers want to do Democracy is still do) regarded one another as enemies consolidated is to try again within the same institutions rather than as opponents. Inevitably the under which they have just lost. Democracy election would have assumed the when, under is consolidated when it becomes proportions of an epic battle for control of given political self-enforcing, that is, when all the relevant the state, with the winner perhaps assuming and economic political forces find it best to continue to a right of uncontested possession. conditions, a submit their interests and values to the uncertain interplay of the institutions. particular system Przeworski writes {ibid:36): of institutions Constitutions that are observed and last for With only slight modification, Przeworski's a long time are those that reduce the stakes becomes the comments apply also to fora that are of political battles. Pretenders to office can only game in town negotiating democratic institutions. The expect to reach it; losers can expect to question that arises in relation to Codesa come back. Such constitutions... define the and the MPNP is whether all or the great scope of government and establish rules of majority of political organisations believed competition, leaving substantive outcomes it was 'the only game in town', even if, in open to the political interplay. Constitutions the ANC's case, it was to be construed only adopted to fortify transitory political as a prelude to a constituent assembly? advantage, constitutions that are nothing but pacts of domination among the most Codesa's representativeness was recent victors are only as durable a the diminished by the absence of the PAC, conditions that generated the last political Azapo and the rightwing parties; the victory. [Emphasis added] MPNP, however, has covered virtually the entire spectrum, although the (temporary?) Again, Przeworski's comments do not refer withdrawal of the CP and the IFP obviously to transitional institutions, but the point reduces this. That Codesa was not thought remains valid in respect of them as well. to be 'the only game in town' was South Africa is too tense and illustrated by the ANC's withdrawal in May conflict-ridden a society to be able to 1992 after the failure of Working Group withstand an election in which the prize Two to reach agreement. could have been perceived (even if
12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 9 "matics®© Assuming that this sequence goes THE NEXT STEPS IN MAKING according to plan (which, alas, is an THE NEW CONSTITUTION assumption that can seldom be made in South Africa), the stakes could be lowered by the existence of agreed upon constitutional principles. Two questions FINISH arise here: since these principles will be incorporated in the interim constitution as New New New Constitution Constitution Constitution well as the final constitution, is there any comes into comes into comes into compelling reason why the latter should effect effect effect differ in any significant respect from the former, apart, perhaps, from filling in some o details and rectifying omissions? New CMB approves Voters approve Newly elected In short, what will be left over for the Constitution amended text comes into of text by -C CMB approves constitution-making body or constituent by two-thirds 60% majority Constitution by effect majority assembly to do? Secondly, if the answer to ordinary majority the foregoing question is very little, why then the continued insistence on the Constitution constituent assembly? Is it for symbolic approved by Voters fail to purposes, in the interests of fulfilling two-thirds • approve text by commitments undertaken in the Harare majority of 60% majority. Declaration? Or is the hidden agenda (as CMB within General two years the IFP believes) a power play in which, in election the event of a thumping electoral victory by G called IP the pro-constituent assembly forces, the constitutional principles that are supposed CMB fails to approve to bind the constituent assembly will be amended text either watered down or jettisoned by two-thirds altogether? Conclusive answers to these majority. speculative questions are obviously not Referendum forthcoming. O called
Elections to be held in April As I have noted, the constituent assembly 1994 for a National Assembly mode of constitution drafting will almost and Senate, which will sit certainly have a severe winnowing effect together as the Constitution-Making Body on small parties, unless, like the SACP, for (CMB) example, they are allied to a more powerful one. The survivors, who may be as few as
Source: The Natal Mercury, 27/7/93 four or as many as seven, will be the bigger parties and it is quite likely that there will be wide disparities of size in electoral terms incorrectly) as supreme, hegemonic power. among them. At the same time it has to be acknowledged, even if paradoxically, that It,could even be that the pro-constituent the longer an election is delayed, the more assembly forces could achieve a two-thirds convulsive it is likely to be. majority, especially, as seems likely, the election will be of an 'uhuru' variety, that is to say, a huge, cathartic affair - perhaps resembling Zimbabwe's constituent election in 1980 in which Zanu won an In the circumstances the awkward overwhelming majority. (Note that this is compromise between the ANC's and the not a prediction: I am merely drawing government's model of transition is attention to a possibility, even if an perhaps the only mode with chance of improbable one. An outcome resembling success. Briefly, the compromise is that the that in Namibia in 1989, in which Swapo MPNP agrees upon certain constitutional won less than a two-thirds majority, is, in principles (listed in Schedule 1 of the draft this writer's view, more likely.) outline interim constitution) that will subsequently bind the constitution-making The smaller parties may have a point in body/ constituent assembly that is to be arguing that now is the time to insist upon elected, in terms of the yet-to-be-agreed- checks and balances and other safeguards upon interim constitution that is being against the abuse of power. It is far more negotiated by the MPNP. likely that an institution such as the MPNP,
^<2>ILII\?ocs&IL irterioaiDS 10 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 Bilateral and in which small (and frankly themselves of narrow partisan advantage, unrepresentative), regional parties are adopting instead a long view in which 'the multilateral numerically dominant, will accommodate national interest' is uppermost in their negotiations that restraining powers than would a constituent minds. lames Madison's ironic comment at feed back into assembly, in which the dominant party, the head of this article is all too apposite, as the Multiparty is the acute observation by Adam and having satisfactorily flexed its muscles, is Process are likely to be far more resistant to limitations Moodley that 'Constitutions reflect rather that will curb its powers. This should not than alter power relationships' (1986:214). probably the necessarily be construed as being inspired Probably the best that can be hoped for is a best hope by an undemocratic sentiment: it is an rough balance in which the hegemonic article of faith in democratic theory that aspirations of bigger parties are tempered minority parties should be able to become by the fears of smaller ones. majority parties. Constitutions, accordingly, should not be written with only the interests A significant criticism levelled at Codesa of majority parties in mind. was its alleged 'elitism'. Critics maintained that it had become a cosy club whose One of the most contentious issues in the members, wined and dined quite lavishly at negotiating process has been the notion of the state's expense, cocooned themselves 'sufficient consensus'. It was conceived at from the 'real world' out there in the Codesa, although it was never really tested. townships. The MPNP has tried to define it more tightly, but it remains inherently It is no doubt true that all parties to problematic, especially when, repeatedly, negotiations run the risk of cutting deals the parties who fall outside what the that alienate them from their constituencies. chairman deems to be 'sufficient It was quite clear that the ANC encountered consensus' are the members of the this danger at Codesa, and it may well have Concerned South African Groups (Cosag). been the real reason for its decision to break It would be an acceptable formula if there off negotiations in May 1992 and embark was a regular turnover among the on a campaign of mass action. Similarly, dissentients, but this has not been the case. the NP has hit the same problem, as its support-base shears off in doves. Clearly Given the nature of the MPNP I doubt if the perception among many whites is there is any institutional formula that can (however unwarranted this may be in overcome the problem. It would be little reality) that the NP government negotiators, short of miraculous if so wide an with Mr de Klerk's backing, have All parties to ideological spread of organisations, with 'capitulated' to ANC demands, watering negotiations run widely contrasting views on what down or entirely abandoning the the risk of cutting democracy is, could ever reach consensus 'guarantees' that were advanced during the deals that on the fundamental issues, like the form of referendum campaign in 1992. alienate them state or the implications of 'self-determination'. It would be realistic to from their I am unaware of any institutional constituencies acquiesce in this, and accept that mechanisms that could serve to shore up a agreements with the habitual dissentients, if party's dwindling support: none exists and they are to be reached at all, will not be politics, after all, is about winning and reached through the formal mechanisms of losing support. The criticisms about MPNP. Codesa's cosy, cocooned ambience, however, had merit, as was acknowledged Bilateral and multilateral negotiations that in the decision by the MPNP to become feed back into the MPNP are probably the more 'open' and 'transparent' in its best hope. deliberations. Certainly press reports have been fuller and more accurate than they were at the time of Codesa, when reporters were forced to nobble participants and extract (often incorrect or partisan) One of the serious, and no doubt information. unavoidable, problems of South Africa's transition has been the simultaneous effort It remains the case, however, that the to draft a constitution and to fight the first information flow to the public, or that election. (In significant respects a third section of the public which is keenly simultaneous activity has been the quest for interested in these issues, is inadequate. a ceasefire.) South Africa lacks a newspaper of record (like the New York Times), and however It is no doubt a Utopian hope that much improved the reportage is it is no constitution-makers might abjure substitute for the outsider's having access
INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 11 tsxatti'ifc©^ trts(iK]©@ Another frequent criticism has been the Only to transcripts of debates, resolutions adopted, technical committee reports, etc. numerical domination of a number of the occasionally committees by lawyers, not all of whom does one see a At present it is difficult to gain access to have had direct experience of the issues that glimmer of a these unless one has contact with a the committees have been dealing with. It sense of shared delegate, who will be reluctant to part with would be invidious to cite examples, but it fate that them since they are needed as working is worth noting that the crucially important transcends documents. By contrast one can, from any Constitutional Issues Technical Committee Government Printer, acquire, at a nominal contains not a single political scientist. political cost, the Debates of the House of Indeed, overall, only one political scientist boundaries Delegates, superbly transcribed by serves as a member of a technical Parliament's excellent Hansard service. 1 committee. There is, consequently, plenty make no invidious comparisons about the of evidence to suggest a disturbing lack of relevance of the MPNP's proceedings awareness in the reports of the implications contrasted with those of the House of for the political process of the different Delegates, but I do enter a strong plea that a institutional proposals advanced. means be found to distribute, through regional outlets, all of the salient It is worth asking how many members of documents, including a Hansard of the the Constitutional Issues Technical debates. Committee have read the extensive literature on the politics of divided societies, or how many members of the Technical Committee investigating the electoral system are an fait with the The old adage 'By their fruits shall ye literature dealing with the political know them' applies to the institutions of the consequences of different types of electoral transition process: will they produce system? To what extent have the numerous political institutions that will afford good foreign experts, who have been visiting governance under democratic auspices? South Africa in droves, been formally Will they promote national unity rather consulted, or has the curious chauvinism or than greater fragmentation and jingoism, initially aimed at an Inkatha polarisation? In short, will they become advisor, precluded this? 'the only game in town'? Clearly it is premature to answer these questions since One would have hoped that Codesa and the As the election the formalisation of principles, to which the MPNP would have generated more of a campaign hots technical committees have contributed, 'personal chemistry' that might expedite up so will the remains at a preliminary stage. the transition from perceiving rivals as political 'opponents', rather than as 'enemies'. When major leaders can describe rivals as temperature, The draft outline interim constitution is an incomplete, flawed document, but provides 'irrelevant' or a 'skelm', it bodes ill for the with disturbing nevertheless a working document. The knitting together of a deeply riven society. implications for more abstract constitutional principles have It is sad to relate that only occasionally hopes of been yanked down and anchored, partially does one see a glimmer of a sense of shared attaining a at any rate, in the more clinical language of fate that transcends political boundaries. As stable and constitutional law. The innovation of the, election campaign hots up so will the technical committees is an advance on the political temperature, with disturbing democratic polity cumbersome procedures of Codesa. To implications for hopes of attaining a stable some extent they have depoliticised issues and democratic polity. QGiOfil by spelling out the options for negotiators and indicating the parameters within which choices will have to be made; but, ultimately, depoliticisation has its obvious limits, since a wide range of critical issues is unamenable to it. REFERENCES Adam H and K Moodley. South Africa without Apartheid: Dismantling Racial Domination. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1986. A sensitive and contentious issue concerns Huntington SP. The Third Wave: Democratization in the late Twentieth the level of competence of the individuals Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. who have constituted the Technical and Przeworski A. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, other Committees. Disturbing reports have 1991. emerged (invariably from Committee Simons HJ and RE Simons. Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950. members themselves) about the lack of Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969. expertise of many of the committee Welsh D. 'The Outlook for a Democratic South Africa', International Affairs members. Vol67/No4,1991.
12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 199312 "matics®© THE FINAL countdown
take place unless the current levels of violence had been reduced (The Star, 12/08/93). More ominous, is the rumour Will elections PEACEKEEPING 8 that the National Party may take a decision bring a scale of to suspend the electoral proceedings if a conflict never certain number of people are killed in a before THE election fixed period before the election date. If true, this would encourage those whose interests encountered? lie in halting the election to bring about high levels of violent confrontation.
Mar/c Centre for Policy Studies, Once the election campaign has begun, it is Johannesburg imperative that people go to the ballot boxes on the designated day. A continually Conventional South African political wisdom postponed election will only result in more holds that violence will increase as the conflict. Once committed to an election elections set for 27 April 1994 draw near. date of 27 April 1994 - as we seem to be This perception may not be a bad thing. It now - every effort must be made to ensure that it passes as peacefully as possible. But may force political parties, private is this probable? Will elections bring a scale institutions, overseas interests and the of conflict never before encountered? If this security apparatus to overreact in an attempt is so, can election-related violence be to ensure peace. At the moment, however, controlled or at least isolated to certain South Africa is woefully unprepared for areas? large-scale electoral violence. Indeed, the adverserial nature of election politics Electioneering is essentially an adversarial suggests that conflict will increase as the day process. In contrast, peacebuilding relies on the breaking down of mutual suspicions and draws nearer. the exposure of weak points. The two forms of activity are incompatible. This in itself henever violence in South Africa spells danger for a violence-free electoral Wseems to have been brought under process. control, South Africans are faced by yet another outbreak. Since 1984, over 13 000 Electoral politics may be abused in such a people are believed to have died in manner that old conflicts are sharpened and politically related incidents of conflict new ones are created (Rupesinghe, 1988). 0Cape Times, 3/07/93). The nature of Thus, the intention of the formally 'white' Can election violence in South Africa since 1989 has parties to campaign in the townships may violence be remained unpredictable; shifting from Natal herald a shift in the conflict to new controlled or at to the PWV, and then within each of these locations, forms and actors. It must be least isolated to regions themselves, confounding any remembered that the nature and form that certain areas? attempt at prediction. various peacekeeping and monitoring interventions may take, may themselves From the beginning of June until the end of spawn further violence. Elections will August this year, over 650 people were involve the introduction of new players, reported to have died in renewed outbreaks who, far from immediately bringing peace, of violence on the East Rand (Citizen, may broaden the spread and scope of 29/07/93). The Human Rights Commission possible conflict. reported that the figures for July 1993 made it the most violent month in South Africa Realistic predictions point, at best, to a since the carnage of 1990 (Sowetan, consistent level of violence in the run-up to 29/07/93). It was'suggested by the ANC at elections. But even the current 'ten deaths a the time that violence was initiated by day' scenario may damage the electoral 'vigilante' elements in reaction to the process. It provides an opportunity for decision of the Negotiating Forum on 2 July political parties to establish the ground from 1993 to set an election date for a constituent which cyclical conflicts can be fostered. assembly during April 1994 (The Star, Each individual death may become an 12/07/93). While the reasons for the East election point-scoring mechanism with the Rand violence are much more complex than danger that this will lead to further deaths. this - related to local rivalries, grievances In other words, since one incident of and conditions - the spectre of a violence- violence feeds off another, not only must a torn electoral period is beginning to loom. predicted increase in electoral violence be In a shock announcement, President FW de countered, but current levels of conflict Klerk warned that an election would not must also be substantially reduced.
INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 13 tsxatti'ifc©^ trts(iK]©@ The P@ae@ Asoord since the modus operandi differed in each Electioneering is region, monitoring by NPS should be essentially an The National Peace Accord (NPA), signed planned and organised at a regional level adversarial by a cross-section of political leaders in within broad national guidelines. process, September 1991, was an attempt to bring whereas and maintain peace during the transitional The growth and development of monitoring peacebuilding period. Chapter seven of the Accord lays activities, in particular the establishment of relies on the down the principles for the establishment of loint Operations Centres (IOCS) on the Regional (RPCs) and Local Peace East Rand and later in Natal, have made a breaking down Committees (LPCs). Regional committees substantial contribution to the reduction of of mutual have since been established in eleven levels of violence. IOCS enable closer suspicions regions across the country while cooperation between various parties approximately 90 LPCs operate with involved on the ground and have proved to varying degrees of success country wide. be useful in a number of instances.
The structures of the NPA, have, during the International monitors have in certain areas latest bout of violence, come under heavy borne the brunt of monitoring, but this has criticism. The South African Council of changed as regional and local structures Churches recently released a strongly recruit voluntary and permanent personnel. worded critique of the Accord. The Effective monitoring is now carried out at resolution adopted at the 25 th National most mass gatherings and has undoubtedly Conference pointed to the fact that through reduced levels of violence. its funding connections (the Department of Home Affairs) the Accord remained closely Regional and local peace structures have tied to government structures and interests. also been effective in brokering agreements At the same time, it was suggested that prior to marches and rallies so that the 'white technocrats' and business interests possibility of conflict occurring between had hijacked the functioning of the Accord, opposing groups is reduced to a minimum. denying peace structures grassroots Agreements reached between the police accountability and legitimacy. and opposing parties during the Hani funeral week, Sharpeville and Soweto Day Similarly, a recent conference, organised by 1993, proved to be successful in the National Association of Democratic eliminating possible larger occurrences of Lawyers, concluded that the NPA had violence. Peacekeeping failed to halt violence because of a number and monitoring of factors, including the preponderance of Mediating agreements around marches and interventions whites and business interests in its gatherings and the subsequent monitoring may themselves leadership. The South African National of these events has been within the reach of spawn further Civic Association has also labelled the NPA bodies. This is largely because parties Accord as 'toothless', lacking mechanisms to the agreements are clearly defined with violence to discipline offenders. legitimate leadership structures. In addition, the events themselves, by their But has the Accord been totally very nature, have clear parameters; that is, unsuccessful given the structural clearly definable routes, marshalling constraints under which it operates? It is structures, times and participants. doubtful that these criticisms can be laid simply at the door of business or whites Ironically, some of the current violence active in Peace Accord structures. Instead, may testify to the effectiveness of these a more plausible explanation is that certain efforts, but also to their limits. Conflict now forms of violence cannot be solved using seldom involves large groups of people or the mechanisms of the peace process. entire communities. Instead, perpetrators of violence have been forced underground. Hit It is perhaps the monitoring and facilitation and run attacks and isolated revenge of agreements with relation to mass killings have now become common. gatherings and marches, which has been the most successful and visible LPC activity. In short, the ability of the structures of the There is a certain irony in this for actual NPA to end violence, lies in preemptive peace monitoring was not envisaged in the actions before major events. This will be Accord. In most cases, the roles and particularly useful during the electoral functions of monitors have evolved and are period when there will be a large number of now being bolstered by formal training. A meetings, gatherings and marches. If proper National Peace Secretariat (NPS) arrangements can be agreed upon before committee appointed to examine marches and mass gatherings take piace, monitoring concluded in October 1992 that, violence stemming from these events will
t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 14 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 be prevented. The brokering of agreements When the technical committee on violence Peace structures and the subsequent monitoring of events, released its report to the Negotiation Forum will serve a will be the most crucial activity that peace on 2 June 1993, section 5.5 contained a crucial role proposal for the establishment of an structures can undertake during the run-up during elections to elections. independent multi-party peacekeeping force. The aim of the force would be to in mediating and Peace monitoring of events, however, has provide a peacekeeping mechanism during resolving clear limitations. The mere presence of elections and thereafter. The unit's disputes monitors in townships being torn apart by envisaged functions would be determined violence has done nothing in the past to by the elected government in consultation reduce instances of conflict. Monitors are with other parties. It was also proposed that neither armed nor have the ability to the force fall under either the Independent intervene in conflicts where live Electoral Commission or multi-party ammunition is being used. Clearly, this is executive control. not a reflection on the efforts of those involved in peace structures, but rather on Subsequently, the ANC adopted the the nature of the conflict itself. This is the concept of a peacekeeping force as part of primary reason why the presence of peace its official negotiation position. In late July, monitors and a JOC failed to end ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa, internecine conflict during June, July and made a plea for a joint peacekeeping force August on the East Rand. to prevent 'democracy being drowned in blood'. He suggested that the force should Peace structures then are fulfilling a useful, be made up of all armed formations albeit limited role, in preventing violence. It currently operational in the country; the SA is thus important that they are not Defence Force (SADF), Umkhonto we disbanded now as they will serve a crucial Sizwe (MK), Azanian Peoples' Liberation role during elections in mediating and Army (APLA) as well as the KwaZulu resolving disputes between clearly Police and the Bophuthatswana Defence organised and identifiable groupings. Force. An elite group drawn from all of these forces should be picked and retrained However, what forms of violence can the for deployment in trouble spots, where they structures of the Peace Accord not end? would take over from the army and SAP Clearly, they do not have the capacity to who had no legitimacy in the townships. predict where random attacks and assassinations are going to take place, nor The government gave mixed signals to the An independent the manpower to monitor all areas 24 hours concept at the time. While the ANC's call peacekeeping a day. It is crucial to recognise that the was initially supported by government force would fall function of the National Peace Accord is negotiator, Leon Wessels, State President under either the neither to prohibit nor to police violence. de Klerk poured cold water on the idea the Independent next day. De Klerk stated that while he supported the establishment of such a force Electoral in principle, the unit could have no Commission or combatant status and would not replace the multi-party Because the National Peace Accord is role of current security forces in the run up executive control perceived to have failed to end violence, to an election (Sowetan, 4/08/93). other solutions have been sought. Since the greatest failure of the Accord has been The call for a multi-party peacekeeping perceived as its so-called 'lack of teeth', its force was again reinforced on the same day seeming inability to prosecute and act by the Goldstone Commission's panel of against those who break its provisions, the international experts appointed to question of a National Peacekeeping Force investigate the curbing of violence during (NPF) has been brought to the fore. forthcoming elections. Central to the finding of the panel is the inability of the The idea of such a force is not a new one. It SAP to serve all South Africans was first mooted by Bishop Stanley legitimately in an accountable way during Mogoba, the head of the Methodist Church the electoral period. Moreover, the panel in Southern Africa, in May 1993. Mogoba concluded that any skills that the SAP may made his plea in the wake of the killing of have developed 'are not readily transferable Chris Hani: 'Now is the crucial time for to the special demands of policing in the such a unit to be established, so that peace context of the country's first democratic may be separated from power. Peace is a election'. national problem and no party must be allowed to find an excuse for not being Given these factors, the panel concluded involved' (Dimension, April/May 1993). that the 'values inherent in a multiparty
INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 15 tsxatti'ifc©^ trts(iK]©@ The new force peacekeeping structure outweigh the very current SAP would be selected, trained and real difficulties that would be encountered integrated into the new force. Such a would be in attempting to create it'. This was for the process would be necessary as 'a bridge responsible for following reasons: between the old order and the new is election day • The inclusion of all parties in the needed, and we believe that the most security and to process would lend an element of efficient way to do this is immediately to counter violence credibility to it. bring the existing ISD resources under the in the period • The peacekeeping force may assist in control of a new arm of government and a new command structure'. before the defusing tension in pre-electoral period. • The force would pave the way for a election fully integrated police force in the post-election period.
The panel of experts conceded that the NPF By August, the issue of the peacekeeping could not replace the day to day policing force had been debated at the Negotiating functions of the SAP, which was regarded Council. By the middle of the month draft as being impractical in the short term. In legislation was under discussion. any event, NPF recruits would in all likelihood have no training in carrying out The eleventh working draft of the basic policing functions. As a result, 'the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) Bill extraordinary commitment of time, money provides for the establishment of a Nations 1 and energy necessary to bring about any Peacekeeping Force (NPF) falling under significant change in the policing structure the proposed Subcouncil for Defence. The in the short term should be focused on NPF would consist of 'all military forces, those parts of the system that pose the as far as practicable in equal numbers, greatest concerns during the election except in so far any force prefers to period'. Therefore, the force, it was contribute fewer members, [as well as] all proposed, would be responsible for election policing agencies'. The Subcouncil would day security, including the countering of establish a NPF Command Council violence in the period before the election. representative of all military and policing agencies who wish to participate in the NP1- The panel was adamant about the role of as well as any other parties who wish to be the Internal Stability Division (ISD); a represented. semi-autonomous division within the SAP The force is formed in January 1992 'with the The Subcouncil, in consultation with the seen by both the combating of riots as its primary task' (SAP Command Council would, inter alia: SADF and MK Annual Report, 1992). Members of the ISD • establish training procedures for a unit commanders as are dressed in camouflage uniforms to of NPF instructors; distinguish them from the ordinary blue the first step • formulate the 'philosophy, doctrine, clad Visible Policing Division of the SAP. syllabi and training policy for the NPF'; towards direct The functions of the ISD should not, the • establish criteria for recruitment; integration of the panel argued, merely be transferred to the • provide for the jurisdiction and two major armed NPF: 'If that were all that could be deployment of the force; forces accomplished', the report states, 'it would • formulate a disciplinary code which will not be worth the effort'. Nevertheless, the be made binding on the NPF; and panel suggested that all ISD personnel as • make regulations regarding the powers well as SAP officers with community and duties of the NPF. relations and operational experience, be incorporated into the new force. Finally, While the SADF would be made party-affiliated recruits would also join the responsible for uniforms, transport, force. accommodation, equipment and logistical support, the idea is clearly that the NPF The Goldstone panel suggested a two-stage would have its own uniforms, vehicles and programme through which the force would insignia visibly distinct from any other be established. The first phase would entail operational unit. the Transitional Executive Council appointing members of the force's While the concept of the peacekeeping command structure. In turn, those force appears to have been accepted in appointed would be given authority to principle by the Negotiating Council, this develop policies and procedures for the may be more for reasons of political operations of the NPF and the ISD and SAP expediency than a desire to end violence. officers who would be subsequently The East Rand conflict merely served as a transferred to it. In the second phase, the window of opportunity in this regard. In panel proposed, new recruits outside of the reality, the force has been seen by both the
(?®UrBD@i»IL WBIMS.1S8 16 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 cMM-und MK commanders - who have Juried! A joint force hivn locked in discussions for a number of would obviate months - a- the first (and possibly The question of Internal Stability Division the need for full (ISD) participation in the NPF may also experimental step) towards the direct multi-party integration of the two major armed forces. provide points of conflict during the Fonts pan. the ANC may be hoping to process of implementation. As has been control of the reincorporate presently unused and suggested, the Goldstone panel has argued security forces unemploved MK cadres who are beginning for the incorporation of the ISD and SAP by the to msike an el'i'oi t to have their plight heard. into the NPF first, and then the subsequent Transitional inclusion of other armed elements. This may allow the ISD to place their stamp of Executive Already, it seems clear that the force will be Council dominoed '>}' l!,e SADF and MK, which authority on the process before the are both military as opposed to policing inclusion of other members. Or worse, the legitimacy of the force may be undermined formations: MK commander Joe Modise before any members of outside units are has stated dial if any of the other armed admitted. formations could not meet the required quotas both the SADF and MK would undertake more than their share (The Star, Moreover, if the entire ISD are drafted into 7/08/93). Indeed, General George Meiring, the NPF, as proposed, and are retrained at chief designate of the SADF, has stated the same time, who will maintain the public recenth that the SADF and SAP would order policing role in their absence? provide the 'm.ijor component' of the force Despite their lack of legitimacy, they do with additional manpower being drawn serve a useful role in certain instances in from all other parties at the talks (The Star, keeping opposing groups apart. 17/08/931. The creation of the NPF is also a compromise Ivtween the government and While the SAP has argued in its submission the ANC. A joint force would obviate the to the Goldstone panel that the ISD forms need for full multi-party control of the 'a natural recruiting pool' due to levels of sccurit} forces by the Transitional training, expertise and experience in the H,\eciiti\e ('miiicil (Cilliers, 1993). division, individual MK members have declared that it would be 'impossible' for The process of the NPF's implementation the ISD and MK to work together (Sunday may in itseli exacerbate the conflict. While Star, 8/08/93; Sunday Times, 8/08/93). SAP the lnkatlia l ieedom Party has accepted the personnel have also expressed their concept of the I orce in principle, strong opposition to the force with some declaring The force may opposition has heen voiced to the fact that they would only serve as long as they could be seen as an the XI'I v. ill include large components of remain members of the SAP. illegitimate MK cadres. Indeed, a peacekeeping force instrument in made up only of MK, the SADF and the It seems at the moment however, given the hostels on the SAP has become a prospect; APLA too has agreement between the SADF and MK, that Rand as well as refused to participate in any force where the the entire ISD will not be automatically SAP are also included. The danger then lies incorporated into the NPF. This means that in certain parts in a scenario where former MK cadres they, in all likelihood, will continue to of Natal would be required to police Inkatha-aligned operate as a separate unit in the run up to hostel dwellers. elections. As it is, one-third of all SAP officers are engaged in public order Thus, from the beginning, the NPF may be policing. This spells danger if SAP/ISD and seen as an illegitimate instrument of force NPF physical jurisdictions are not clearly in hostels on the Rand as well as in certain defined from the beginning. The potential parts of Natal. Since, due to manpower for NPF and ISD clashes should not be constraints, it appears that these will be the discounted. With both bodies heavily armed only places where the force will be and trained to fight, the consequence of deployed, the danger may be magnified. such an event are not difficult to contemplate. Inkatha opposition, of course, may not simply be the result of a fear of being With or without the presence of the ISD, policed by former MK members. The the procedure whereby the NPF would be movement itself simply does not have the deployed is crucial. The Goldstone panel manpower nor instruments to contribute to recommended that local officials (a SAP the NPF. The KwaZulu Police (KZP) are District Commissioner or the town clerk) already hard pressed and underfunded, would notify the NPF of the time, place and while the KwaZulu government and local circumstances of any proposed march or leaders would be loath to withdraw large gathering. The NPF would then determine elements of the KZP. who would have command responsibility at
INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 17 pourewsfiiii. vinous e The peace force the scene. If it is felt that there is no need to peacekeepers, be obliged to sort out for NPF involvement, the wrongs from rights, confronting the side will be the very demonstration/march/funeral would remain that is perceived to be in the wrong. Within antithesis of in the hands of the local SAP. the South African context there is thus the peace; it will, in danger of peace-enforcers themselves being reality have to Despite these provisions, little work has sucked into the conflict. This danger may make war been done on assessing how the structures be greater in South Africa where peace of the NPF would relate to Peace Accord officials will be drawn from the structures already in place. If for example, communities which they are meant to peacekeeping units are to wield coercive police. powers, should they be represented on LPCs, as the SAP are, so that they are A major drawback is that media coverage responsible to the parties? This could of the NPF at the height of the East Rand compromise their freedom of action. But if violence has created unrealistic they are totally independent of LPCs, their expectations about its capacity to succeed. activities would run counter to LPC Will the formation of the NPF proceed in a decisions and this could weaken the peace similar manner to the National Peace committees. Accord; greeted with great fanfare at its establishment, then gradually coming in for The procedure suggested by the Goldstone greater criticism as the body fails to achieve panel undermines many of the principles peace? Media coverage then may be a that the Peace Accord has attempted to double-edged sword; on one side the instil at local level. Local Peace favourable impression will be given that Committees should be closely involved in national decision makers are reacting to making the determination whether or not local problems, on the other, expectations outside assistance is required. In addition, will be created which cannot be met. Thus, NPF units should rather than establish new like the NPA, the NPF will be rules of procedure, fit in with existing experimental, but with no room to REFERENCES channels for the organisation of marches experiment. Annual Report of the Commissioner of the SAP, 1 January • 31 December established through Local Peace 1992. Committees. As SAP units have begun to The NPF would be in a unique position to Cilliers J. 'A South African act in consultation with LPCs, so too assist in the monitoring of marches and Peacekeeping Force • Is it practicable?', South African Defence should the NPF as LPC representatives may gatherings, an area where it has already Review, Issue No11,1993. have a far better knowledge of local been suggested that Local and Regional Rupesinghe K. 'Ethnic conflicts in conditions. In short, the NPF should not Peace Committees have had some success. South Asia: The case of Sri Lanka and the Indian Peace-keeping Force determine alone how it will act, but be sure Moreover, the force may also be useful in (IKPF)', Journal of Peace Research, to deploy itself in conjunction with local keeping large warring groups apart. Vol25, No4,1988. peace structures. However, what will the capability of the Shaw M. 'Crying peace where there is none? The functioning and future NPF be in relation to internecine urban or of Local Peace Committees of the rural warfare? The answer is 'limited at National Peace Accord', Centre for best'; the unit will not have the intelligence Policy Studies, CPS Transition Series, Research Report No31, capacity to 'predict' where violence will August 1993. The establishment of a National occur next. It will be extremely difficult to Report to the Goldstone Commission Peacekeeping Force (NPF) to end violence, end attacks or massacres in isolated areas of Inquiry regarding the prevention of or at night, although it may be easier to public violence and intimidation by is of course, a contradiction in terms. Those the multinational panel to inquire into who staff this institution will be military control the more predictable cycle of the curbing of violence and men, trained to shoot, fight and die. The protests that follow. intimidation during the forthcoming South African election, 1993. peace force then will be the very antithesis Submission on behalf of the SAP to of peace; it will, in reality have to make What may be needed during the electoral the Commission of Enquiry war. And even a war for peace requires period is some form of joint intelligence Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation, 21 June violence. While, of course, the end may capacity whereby parties to the Negotiation 1993. defy the means, the means used may shift Forum would provide information through Transitional Executive Council Bill the outcome achieved. In short, the use of their political networks on the possibility of (Eighth Working Draft), 6 August violence to bring peace may bring more attacks. This will require a high degree of 1993. violence before any peace is achieved. Transitional Executive Council Bill political maturity and commitment and will (Eleventh Working Draft), 25 August be far more difficult to establish than a 1993. While the idea may be good, the NPF will peacekeeping force. Lastly, it is crucial that Violence - Technical Committee the criminal justice system be seen by the Reports, Report 1-5,11 June 1993. have to master the trick of getting the balance right: in Bosnia, UN forces are public to operate effectively; setting accused of doing too little; in Somalia of stringent bail conditions, charging and Paper presented on 26 August 1993 doing too much. As it is, the experience of prosecuting offenders as soon as possible. to a Round-table seminar on 'A South international peacekeeping is usually based Unless such capabilities are established, African Peacekeeping Force: Practical Aspects', hosted by the on the prior cessation of hostilities. As violence in the run-up to an election will be Institute for Defence Policy. peace-enforcers the NPF will, as opposed contained, but not ended.
c^iurmicg^iL trisdcaiss 18 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 1 s • i K Pit'. Ay i >
REGIONAL W FORUMS
Simon Bekker, Centre for Social and Development Studies, and Richard Humphries, Centre for Policy Studies
What impact will the legacy of apartheid's regional development paradigm have on the activities of the regional forums emerging at all levels of South African society? What role will the new forums (or the new regions) be able to play in shaping regional economic thinking in the short term? Some of these issues are canvassed in this article.
ne of the features of the South Another common thread is the strong OAfrican transition is the development commitment to the empowerment of and growth of a variety of regional forums. historically disadvantaged groups. Established mainly during the last 18 Capacity-building is a variation on this. months, the forums share many aspects in Forums are seem as instruments by which common. such groups can gain access to information and derive skills in policy-making. It also They aim at the inclusivity of implies that the results of forum representation of interests on the forums, deliberations will generally be to the though sometimes differing on the role of advantage of hitherto marginalised groups political parties and movements in the or communities. forum. This stress on inclusivity is largely, but not only, a response to the way apartheid policies imposed effective and severe limits on the representation of essentially black interests on a wide range Forums operate at national, regional or of structures during the apartheid period. local levels and cover a variety of themes and issues. In this process new actors are being involved for the first time in policy debates. Some, like the National Economic Forum, The proliferating Non-Governmental the National Housing Forum or the more Organisation (NGO) sector and the labour newly established Tourism Forum, deal movement are two important examples. with a specific sectoral issue, mostly at a national level. These new regional forums tend to view themselves more as a policy-making Others, like the Metropolitan Chamber in structure debating issues, in the Central Witwatersrand, have crystalised contradistinction to being a structure which around more localised political or urban will implement any decision reached within established forums. Their roots can be the forum. traced back to initiatives during and after
INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 19 t?@IUl'irt)@^Jl "ifKSPaiSS Tlis L« In the past, regional development was directed and informed by central government ideology and its apartheid policies. Separate nations would develop their own territories, in the form of the homelands; their own economies, cultures and governments in separate nation-stales. In the common area, members of these homelands would remain sojourners, selling their labour as foreigners. The core nation-state was to be Afrikaner-led.
This regional development policy failed lor two primary reasons. Firstly, it ignored in- growing importance and location of South African cities to which more and more rural South Africans from the homelands migrated in search of employment. Secondly, the philosophy and its implementation disallowed participation by most South Africans in deciding their own economic and also political futures.
The first changes in government thinking on regional development came in the early 1980s. The Good Hope Plan, unveiled by the PW Botha government in 1982, was an attempt to deal with some of these issues, but arguably more important in its attempt 1990 to negotiate restructured municipal to involve big business interests in regional institutions. planning and development. The majority of Regional forums have formed around one These changes produced the eight (later regional forums of the two themes or issues. Some, like the nine) development regions. The homelands, are however Northern Transvaal Political Discussion whether self-governing or independent, concerned with Forum, bring together most major political were included in these areas defined largely economic or parties and actors in the region to debate on economic and technical criteria rather development essentially political or constitutional issues. than for political, separate development criteria. However state subsidisation for issues The majority of regional forums are decentralisation programmes continued however concerned with economic or until last year. development issues. The more established regional development forums include the The programme of decentralisation benefits PWV Economic and Development Forum, was highly expensive and open to abuse. the Border/Kei Development Forum and These incentives also had been shown to the Western Cape Development Forum. have little effect on shaping the spatial They date largely from 1992. patterns of industrial or economic development in South Africa. More recent examples are the newly established Eastern Transvaal Regional In essence this paradigm of regional Economic and Development Forum and the economic development had three aspects t( > Natal/KwaZulu Regional Economic Forum it: (launched in August 1993). ® Firstly, regional development was The establishment and popularity of these state-directed, particularly by the central regional economic and development forums state; as a result a strong element of raises a number of crucial issues. This is all uniformity pervaded the programme. the more so since it is commonly agreed » Secondly, there was little participation that regional development and planning by important interest groups, especially will be one of the powers that the new community and labour groupings. regional governments will enjoy under a Business interests were only new constitution. incorporated relatively recently into the
c^urvfc@m iresKifDS 20 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 • ,ccss The result was that much of the regional development strategy will have to The forums [viijonal de\ elopment planning focus on the diverse ways in which allow key prosiramines had little credibility m the individual regions relate to others or to the PWV, as the economic centre of South stakeholders in various regions. Thinll>. regional development Africa. each region to pro" •amme-' were built around state debate, analyse subsidies and not on any intrinsic Already various political and development and reach a>mp;iraii\ c advantages which different actors in some of the regions are raising agreement on questions about this relationship. For rL.(.jpns mii:lii enjoy over others. development example the policy framework and development proposals accepted at the priorities launch of the Eastern Transvaal Regional •HPPr&i Economic and Development Forum include The establishment of new regional many reference to the ways in which the economic and development forums calls region suffers from income leakages to into question almost all of these past other regions. It proposes that a 'concerted policies. This i-, leflected in their structure, effort should be made to reduce the direct represcnlalion and the ambitious and indirect effects of leakages of gross wide-ranging pol icy frameworks they seem operating surpluses from the region by determined to confront. More difficult establishing a re-investment code for the perhaps will be lileir ability to shape new region'. policies u hicii <>\ ercome this legacy. Clearly, many of these issues will be raised Some tentative generalisations about the in debate around the workings of a system establishment and functioning of the forums of inter-governmental transfers and grants include the following aspects: to each region.
• They were not formed as a result of the • The forums share neither the same dictates e/. cutral state policies. structures, nor the same constituent membership. The new Inning are rather region-grown, developing mil of initiatives within the Since the new forums are region-grown various re-ion^. Facilitators, such as the each has followed its own path to NGO Consultative IStisiness Movement and establishment and made their own decisions involvement in Idasa. have sometimes played important abut the nature of representation on the roles in the process leading to their forum. the forums establishment. They accordingly see represents a themsclu > as uniquely placed structures One of the major differences seems to be in potential positive allowing Lev stakeholders in each region to the nature of representation of political influence on debate, analyse and reach agreement on key parties. Political parties seem to be regional sivio-eo'iii nmc issues and development represented on each forum but in differing development priorities. ways. In some forums each party is represented in its own right (as in the This does not necessarily mean that in Eastern Transvaal) while in others the pursuing a new regional development parties are grouped together as one sectoral strategy each Forum's deliberations will of block on the forum (as in the PWV forum). necessity be narrowly, inward looking In the latter case business, trade unions and within each region. One element of a governmental structures form other sectoral blocks.
All however aim at the greatest possible degree of inclusivity of representation. In contrast to previous regional development structures this inclusivity extends most importantly to the inclusion of a host of NGOs and labour bodies.
NGO involvement in the forums represents a potential positive influence on regional development. NGOs are, or should be, non-profit making, people-centred and development oriented-organisations. Development impacts are maximised where
INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 21 tsxatti'ifc©^ trts(iK]©@ comprehensive concept of the nature of A key issue will a partnership develops involving the public (state), private and NGOs sectors. development which seems to underpin ihejr be the activities. relationship Interestingly, in the Eastern Transvaal between the Forum, the secretariat of the new forum has The Eastern Transvaal Forum, for example forums and the developed out of the secretariat which used has adopted a definition of development new regional to serve the Regional Development which argues that: Socio-economic development is a long tern governments Advisory Committee (RDAC) for Region F. Additional secretariat members are to be and self-sustaining process of change in the due to be drawn from the ranks of organisations or economic, political, social and cultural elected next year communities never unrepresented on the spheres of a society, which leads to the RDAC. This route does not seem to have improvement of the quality of life of its been considered in any other region. members, as expressed through their needs and legitimate desires.
• Each forum intends to address urban and rural challenges and the linkages between these challenges. It is too early to gauge the chances of these The Eastern Transvaal Forum has new regional forums in being more committed itself to 'specifically successful at shaping development in their acknowledge that development is regions than their predecessors were. For concerned with both urban and rural areas'. one, they are still reasonably far from being Facilitating the creation of employment in at a stage whey they can intervene in policy each region is a high priority. debates. The longer-standing forums are still busy with sectoral policy and information reviews; these are vitally • Each forum tends not to see itself as an necessary if consensus amongst the various implementing body; rather they see key stake holders is to be achieved. themselves as a policy making structure. Yet the one positive factor which holds out The launching documents for the Eastern hope that they will be more effective is Transvaal Forum capture the above their more inclusive nature. differences in the following way: Whether they The Forum itself is not an implementing A key issue will turn out to be the nature of would be body. It comprises a broad range of their relationship to the new regional resourced groupings, of recipients of governments due to be elected next year. prepared to view development and other strategic role Since these governments will have some themselves players. It is therefore well positioned to powers over regional development and simply as reach consensus on key socio-economic planning the potential for overlapping advisory bodies issues and development priorities in the interests and conflict with the regional to either the region and to facilita te appropria te action development forums is there. central or to address these issues. regional It does not seem as if this issue has surfaced Implementation would instead be left to in any of the forums but it would be governments is some of the constituent members of the surprising if they would be prepared to also doubtful forum. surrender the impetus behind their establishment to new regional authorities. Whether they would also be prepared to • The purpose of each forum is wider and view themselves as advisory bodies to broader than simply industrial either the central or regional governments development or formal business is also doubtful. development.
REFERENCE This aspect is partially reflected by the Eastern Transvaal Regional, Economic and Development Forum. Launching composition of each forum but also by the documents, August 1993.
i?®(U)'irt REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF GGP The distribution of 1990 Gross Geographical Product (GGP) per capita on the basis of the ANC model TBVC Homelands % GGP Per Capita (1990) L^j R4 000 + j j R2 000 - R4 000 . R2 000 The distribution of 1990 Gross Geographical Product (GGP) per capita on the basis of the NP model Foundation. Development and Democracy No5, July 1993 Source: Urban TRANSFORMATION provides an outlet for discussion on forces TRANS that shape South African society and its FORM potential for transformation. It considers historically AT ION and currently, the criticap*r*p*ctiv«l i class nature of Southern society; political, Atrte* cultural and ideological domination; the state constitution; capital Development Southern Africa is a quarterly journal published by the Development Bank of Southern Africa. and the political The main aim of the journal is to promote research and options of different discussion on development issues relating to southern classes. Africa. 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Charles Simkins, PI 1B1 . 1C Heien Suzman Professor of Political Economy, University of the Witwatersrand FINANCE The public /'»<™ce system within a IN A inulti-li('r -sime- should be congruent with the con^imiK'nal allocation of powers and functions. .In ordingly, there are limits on what one can say about a new public MULTI- finance .s Wcm until agreements about power* (ind functions have been reached. TIER i von ill'1 variety of possible fiscal arrangements, it would a mistake to suggest thai there are technical public STATE financial rea-ons for allocating powers and function?" in mie way rather than another. in a multi-tier system, fiscal arrangements Those constitutional decisions are properly should be such as to ensure that: the pro\ ince of politicians representing ® there is equal treatment of citizens as far constituencies, and they should embody the as entitlement to the benefits of social basis on u hicli South Africans are willing and infrastructural services are to live will) one another. concerned; and * there is nothing in fiscal arrangements to That said. i lie re are a number of issues stand in the way of the implementation central to the debate which can be identified of electorally-approved policies to now. ()n some of them, clear political diminish poverty and improve income decisions h,i \ e yet to emerge. This article distribution. It should of course be deals wilii the following: recognised that the appropriate roles of equality of treatment by the state and the state and market in doing this are role of the state in bringing about more contested and that policies will vary equality in the country as a whole; over time as they do in any democratic It would a ensuring optimality of taxation; system. expenditure control; mistake to allowing for mobility of goods and Additionally, in a multi-tier system it is suggest that factors of production; quite possible that different electorates and there are revenue collection and assignation; their representative authorities will take technical public regional discretion,, especially in the different views at any point in time. How financial reasons field of development strategy; far these different views can find for allocating third tier government finance; and expression in a way compatible with the complications arising from possible equality of treatment requirement is a powers and political compromises. central issue. functions in one way rather than -J equality • optimal taxation another The debate about federalism has often been The optimal taxation problem is usually conducted as though decentralised cast in a form which requires the analyst to arrangements both permit inequality in find the set of taxes which will raise a given entitlements to benefits from state revenue for the government at the lowest expenditure apd.diminish the capacity of cost in terms of social welfare. The the state to promote egalitarian conditions outcome will depend on the form of social in the society as a whole. This is a dubious welfare function assumed, the structure of contention; where tendencies to inequality the economy and a range of elasticities. in a federal system exist, one usually finds This formulation leaves aside the questions compensating mechanisms (controlled by of the determination of the government's the constitution or the central government) revenue target and the allocation of public such as the finanzausgleich in Germany or expenditure between the provision of public special federal educational programmes in goods and redistributive activities. It also the United States. assumes a centre of economic decision making which decides on a social welfare The proposition should rather be put the function and uses knowledge of the other way round: if one wants a stably economy to optimise the set of taxes evolving division of powers and functions imposed. INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 25 B@<§>K)®R»D@ mSBCO®® ,/a\T/A\B/A\: Economic Data by Development Region Key: A - Western Cape; B - North-Western Cape; C • Orange Free State; D - Eastern Cap el South & Central Transkei; E - KwaZulu/Natai/Northern Transkei; F - Eastern Transvaal; G - Northern Transvaal; H • Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging; J • Western Transvaal Source: Croeser H. Funding the Future: Financing Regional Functions. CPS Transition Series Vol6/No3,1993. Per Capita general government expenditure and tax revenue 9 Development Regions 8 ANC Regions ndex: Average = 100 Index: Average = 100 C D E F G H J VVCaoe NWest OFS EP/Kei Natal E Tvl flTvl PWV per capita general government expenditure (based per capita tax revenue: surcharges on on gross geographic product at factor cost) tax on individuals and fuel levy 9 NP Regions 7 NP Regions Indoi Average = 100 Index: Average = 100 51% 8% % r"? w•51% SC riC EC Kel OFSAVT Natal E Tvl N Tvl PWV WCao1e 1EC/Kelii OFSAVl T Natal 1ETvl NTv l PWV II The % difference between per capita revenue and expenditure is indicated above each pair of bars Source: CSS - 1988 GGP data and Inland Revenue - 1990/91 (I@©C8(a)ftfflt)@ -uTSHDSIDS 26 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 More realistic models of public choice physical planning impediments to the !cSUme that political decisions are made establishment of industrial and commercial The taxation th a view to re-election and that policies enterprises in regions. system should ^ decided upon on the basis of their be seen as nodularity. In general, decisions made Competitive variations in taxation and national, with public expenditure across regions in order bout the level and financing of expenditure degrees of n public goods under these conditions will to stimulate economic activity within not be optimal, unless there are a great regional boundaries are not in themselves discretion at many competing jurisdictions offering impediments to mobility, unless they regional and competing tax/expenditure packages and become so complicated as to impose local levels people are perfectly mobile between them. substantial compliance costs or to permit In principle, redistribution in such a system evasion (as opposed to legal minimisation could be effected by lump-sum transfers of tax burden). between rich and poor communities. • revenue collection and assignation The key practical points are: The principle governing revenue collection • The taxation system should be is straightforward - it should be collected by transparent, so that it can be evaluated the tier of government which can do it at by analysts both in the public and lowest direct and indirect cost. Taxes can private sectors, with a view to readily be assigned to tiers other than the improvements. The taxation system tier of collection, in which case the assigned should be seen as national, with degrees tier should have a say in determination of of discretion at regional and local levels. the rate as well as taking responsibility for • Given temptations for accretion of taxes effective utilisation of the revenue source. which may not make sense nationally, consideration should be given to • regional discretion centrally imposed caps on regional and Government proposals are generally based local taxation. Regional authorities on a hierarchical notion of regional could be permitted to depart from discretion: the central government national averages (subject to the cap determines broad policy, within which constraints) provided they (and not the regional authorities implement the central government) bore the revenue programmes for which they are responsible. consequences of doing so. At one extreme, regional expenditure • expenditure control budgets could be determined by Regional One highly undesirable innovation of the participation in nationally defined late apartheid era has been poor control programmes. This could happen whether or authorities could over public expenditure. This is in evidence not regions have their own revenue sources; be permitted to everywhere; in particular, some homeland central government could maintain control depart from authorities and most black local authorities by setting the size of centre-region transfers national fail to keep to their budgets or even present to cover the gap between regional income averages accounts to the Auditor General. and expenditure. Under such arrangements, provided they central government would determine norms bore the Uncooperative 'hold-up' strategies have and standards for regional government been employed to force transfer of services. revenue resources from one level of government to consequences another. Quite apart from undermining the The alternative arrangement would be for authority of legislatures and working the central government to allocate block against equity in allocations, this can have grants to region, based on some general the consequence of destabilising formula. (This formula would have to macroeconomic policy. A new system will embody the requirements of equality.) require the introduction of a more effective Added to this would be regional revenues. accounting and efficiency audit system, Regions would then allocate funds to with reporting determined by the various regionally defined programmes, constitutional allocation of functions and provided these were compatible with powers. policies determined in the exercise of central government powers and functions. • mobility This arrangement allows regional Inefficiencies result from impediments to governments greater freedom to formulate the flow of goods and factors of production and implement regional development across boundaries and so these should be strategies. Norms and standards would be minimised. The two apartheid practices less uniform across the country, but (if which created such impediments were regional authorities were doing their job controls on movement and settlement and properly), the variations would be rationally 12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 27 "matics®© Political related to differences in regional problems are those of effective absorption development strategies (which themselves by local authorities coupled with decisions about should be based on regional comparative inadequate agreements and mechanisms in the level of advantage). respect of cost recovery. expenditure on public goods These are ideal types; they can be mixed by and its financing central government constraining some areas are not usually of regional expenditure more tightly than efficient others. The exercise of concurrent powers Two, possibly related, complications can bc in any field would require dual identified. The first would arise from a subordination of regional departments - to constitution which ascribes asymmetrical the regional authority, on the one hand, and powers and functions to regional to central government departments on the authorities. This would make embodiment other. This requires rationalisation of of the principle of equality in public i inancc existing links in the direction of equality of arrangements more difficult to achie\e, status of second tier authorities (at present, since different functions would be the provinces, self-governing and exercised by different regional authorities. 'independent' homelands are all treated differently). The second is the incomplete or draw n out rationalisation of the second (and possibly In all of this, it should be remembered that the third) tier of the system. Particularities regional discretion may extend further than in the power bases of the various parties intended by administrative arrangements. In negotiating constitutional change are going theory, a block grant to a region is to demand expression and these ma\ iead to equivalent to an increase in regional messy compromises, creating difficulties personal income of the same size. for the rationalisation of the public finance Categorical grants, too, may embody system. Indeed, it is possible that non-binding constraints and lead to particularistic financial arrangements will adjustments in the system. In practice, there be part of some compromises. may be a number of constraints on this sort of flexibility. The point has already been made that political decisions about the level ol • third tier government finance expenditure on public goods and its Third tier government is financed from the financing are not usually efficient e\ en in It will require following sources; well established constitutional democracies. both luck and ® property rates At the level of vertical equity, too, ilieie are determination if ® user charges problems. In so far as the preferences of the ® levies on business payrolls and turnover median voter determines outcomes, there a transparent, will be a tendency to redistribute from both honest and • intergovernmental grants © the capital market, the Local Authority the top and the bottom to the middle development- Loan Fund and the Development Bank (Director's Law). oriented public (for capital expenditure). finance system What emerges from a not very orderly is to emerge Industrial and commercial rates revenue net process of constitutional change ma\ well of expenditure on industrial and be more problematic. A recent development commercial areas will be spread more is the disarticulation of change at local equitably across cities and towns in the government level from change at the coming dispensation. Intergovernmental national and regional level. Metropolitan grants need rationalisation. On the one authorities appear to be constituting hand, functions are delegated by higher themselves rather than being constituted K tiers of government to local government legitimate regional authorities and in turn without being fully financed from these reconstituting local authorities. tiers. On the other, unplanned transfers to bankrupt local authorities are constantly Depending on the course of negotiations taking place. These represent subsidisation over the regional question, dynamics may of metropolitan and urban areas, with arise which lead to subregional tussles o\ er relatively high average incomes; from an power and resources. In the process, equity point of view, they are regressive. precedents may emerge which stand in the way of later rationalisation. It will require At the level of financing capital both luck and determination if a expenditure, greater use could be made of transparent, honest and both the capital market and Development developmentally-oriented public finance Bank of Southern Africa funds. Often the system is ultimately to emerge, gr^ 12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 199328 "matics®© Professor Mike McGrath and Professor Merle Holder) Department of Economics, University of Natal, Pietermantzburg and Durban 7I0SPECT The Anivjal Hconnmic Report of the South African The recession from 1989/93 has been characterised Reserve Bank i August 1993) shows that the decline by a 1,5% annual decrease in real gross domestic in Gross Domestic Product of the past three years has expenditure, which is small when compared with the levelled out. witli ihe attainment of real growth of average annual rate of decline of 11,5% and 5,5% GDP of 1-5'-' 111 l'K" l irsl' ant' 5% in the second respectively in the downturn of 1981/83 and 1984/86. ciuiiUcr of IW. I lowever, the leading and coincident However, the private sector components of domestic business c\cle indicators of the Reserve Bank are not expenditure are extremely fragile because of showing ain clear signs of an imminent upturn in economic and political uncertainty. economic acti\ ii>: as the reversal of the downturn is still largcl\ aiiriluiiable to a return to more normal In the initial stages of the current business cycle, weather in flu- agricultural sector, and as yet there has consumption expenditure by households had not been any sign of a general upward movement in remained relatively firm but by 1992 total annual the non-agricultural sector. household expenditure was falling in real terms by 2,5%. The decline in consumer expenditure has been The severity oi the contraction in the South African halted in 1993 but consumer demand at the present economy o\er ilk- business cycle is shown by the time remains depressed owing to the political and decline of 4.o' - in total formal non-agricultural economic uncertainty, falling real disposable incomes employment since 1989, amounting to nearly 286 000 since 1990, high positive real interest rates and rising jobs. The trend ol employment over the past five levels of unemployment. business e\cles is shown in Figure 1. Employment in the agricultural sector decreased over the same period Real gross domestic fixed investment has been much by y/r. The raliu ol people unemployed or involved more severely depressed by the cyclical downturn in the informal sector to the total economically active and by the waning state of political confidence. It has population has thus risen from 39% in 1988 to contracted by 23,5% over the period from the fourth appro\imaiel\ 46'/ in 1992. quarter of 1989 to the first quarter of 1993. The trend of total real gross fixed investment reveals an erratic decline during the 1980s, and the low level of gross figure 1: fixed investment presently being attained is now only Non-Agricultural Employment sufficient to replace the existing capital stock of the economy. Inventory investment has also followed a % declining trend since the 1980s, but in this area the _ Recession phase comparisons changes in inventory holdings brought about by 7 positive real interest rates have forced increased 6 efficiency. •• 2 At present the immediate constraint to economic 1 recovery lies in the balance of payments and the 0 foreign reserves. From 1989 to 1992 South Africa's -1 gold and foreign reserves had increased by R6,2 -2 _ billion, but by March 1993 they had declined again -3 - by R7 billion thereby wiping out most of the foreign exchange gains of the painful period of downward -4 - adjustment. The decline was due to three sets of -5 Number of quarters from turning-point factors: 1 1 1 1 1 I 1 1 1 1 1 I 1 I • a reduced surplus on the current account mainly as 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 a result of the drought; Percentage change from upper reference turning-point • outflows of capital of R9,8 billion related to the in: 4th qr 1970 3rd qr 1974 3rd qr 1981 repayment of long and short term maturing debt; 2nd qr 1984 1st qr 1989 and Source: SA Reserve Bank. Annual Economic Report, 1993. » the effect on short-term capital movements of Notwithstanding the improvement in the current Figure 3: Gross gold and other foreign reserves account aided by the improved gold price, gross gold and foreign exchange reserves stood at a low level of 2.4 R7,4 billion at mid-1993. Some relief to the relatively 2.2 low level of the foreign reserves will come when a Impo ts COVi< red bygros s final agreement has been reached on rescheduling 2.0 forekjin rese ives South Africa's foreign debt and when South Africa's 1.8 relationship with the International Monetary Fund has been normalised. 1.6 1.4 During the 12 month period to July 1993, the J depressed levels of economic activity (and an 1.2 1.0 1/ associated fall in demand for bank credit) and the outflows of foreign capital resulted in the money 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 supply (M3) growing by only 3,5%, which was below Source: SA Reserve Bank. Annual Economic Report, 1993. SHORT-TERM PROSPECTS Although Gross Domestic Product growth in the June been no exception. quarter of this year registered an annualised 5,1%, this growth was from the March quarter to the June Hence growth predictions for 1993 remain quarter annualised. Furthermore, this growth was pessimistically low with some forecasters predicting largely confined to the agricultural sector of the negative growth of 0,5%. Some private sector economy which has been so severely buffetted by forecasters 'have been more optimistic with a growth drought that this growth was from a low base. rate of 2% for the year. A median forecast is one of 0,5% for 1993. One of the most important variables It is also clear that the South African Reserve Bank in this process of forecasting is, of course, the price ol' intends to maintain a reasonably restrictive stance gold, which is anticipated to average out at US$ 361) regarding monetary policy in the interests of an ounce. containing and hopefully reducing the rate of inflation. In addition, despite the surge in the price of It is also anticipated that the current account surplus gold to above US$ 400 this year the price appears to will average R6 billion. Depending on the degree of have settled down to US$ 370. capital outflows reserves, it may or may not decline as the Reserve Bank continues to defend the nominal Meantime the degree of political uncertainty in South value of the Rand. Africa remains high as does the level of violence. It has been shown internationally that higher political All forecasters anticipate the year ending with a rate volatility has tended to reduce aggregate economic of inflation around 10% or marginally below. At the growth through actual or potential changes in present time of writing, the estimated revenue property rights, laws and regulations. It must also be collections on the part of government appear to be on said that income inequality in other countries has also budget and if the line is held on expenditure the been found to impinge negatively on growth. In budget deficit should be as budgeted for in 1993/94. recent years the South African growth experience has iK§@os@ftsi)<3 wsnMitsg 30 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 in DEBATES [-'conomic reconstruction in the post-apartheid about the proposal, but it has already caused economy will require as a necessary condition the far-reaching concern in financial circles. attainment of relatively high rates of economic i>n'>\vlli. The major preconditions for sustaining • The wealth tax raises a host of problems: economic growth will be: First, the tax which is being proposed is a capital levy of the type which has sometimes been used by j Excessive money creation and inflation will both countries in emergency situations such as war-time or have to be constrained. post-war adjustment. In theory, if the tax was to be The stop-go economic policies experienced in the truly in the nature of a once-and-for-all tax, which |970s ancT 1980s have conclusively discredited the was neither anticipated nor expected to be repeated, it perception that higher rates of economic growth can would have no disincentive effects. However, the he sustained if society is prepared to tolerate an announcement effects of Mr Mboweni's proposal will increase in the inflation rate. The painful economic contribute to capital flight, and will lead to a experiences of the past twenty years have shown that rearrangement of the portfolios of assets of the as long as inflationary expectations are nurtured by a wealthy. There are fears that the tax once instituted laxity of monetary policy the economic growth would be retained. potential of the country will be eroded. Second, the payment of the tax would cause severe The budget deficit cannot thus be financed by cash flow problems for all groups with wealth. If the borrow ing measures which increase the money 5% tax is truly to be levied on all wealth and paid in supply, as this will permit inflationary price rises and one year, the effect on the prices of financial assets, Cecil inflationary expectations. The battle to contain residential properties and farms would be calamitous. inflationary expectations now appears to be swinging Many wealth-holders would have to sell assets in in l'a\ our of the Reserve Bank, and monetary order to pay the tax because the total tax liability discipline must be maintained by the post-apartheid (including income tax) would exceed the annual monetary authorities. income of many households. J The budget deficit must be reduced as a The rate of 5% which is mentioned far exceeds the percentage of GDP. rates which are levied in the countries which at present tax wealth, with the exception of Libya where 'I he deficit has now risen to 9,5% of GDP, and a a 7,5% tax is levied on the net value of property. In deficit of this magnitude will begin to make the European economies that impose wealth taxes, significant demands on private sector savings. upper thresholds to total annual taxes which can be Pressure to reduce the deficit in the 1994/95 budget paid are usually set, eg. in Finland total taxes cannot will come from the IMF which will require a exceed 90% of income, and Norway and Sweden reduction in the ratio of the deficit/GDP as a both have graduated upper limits to total taxes. On condition for granting loans to the new government. the other hand if the collection of the tax is spread over a number of years, and the proposed rate is A return to positive rates of economic .growth will anything more than nominal, capital flight will lower i he deficit if government expenditure is not undermine the revenue which will be generated. increased at a commensurate rate. The deficit will, how euir, have to be held down in the future for fiscal Third, the collection of a wealth tax requires a polie\ lo be sustainable. Thus there are very severe well-developed system for valuing assets and a constraints on the extent to which government capacity to audit tax returns. In the South African expenditure can be allowed to grow to redress the case the receiver of revenue struggles to cope with historical inequalities of the apartheid years. On the the demands of the present tax system, and does not tax side many authorities have drawn attention to the have any capacity to cope with the massive demands a I i ead \ high levels df personal and corporate taxation of administering a wealth tax. in South Africa, and pointed out that there is little scope for raising additional revenue from income Fourth, in theory the tax should be levied on all taxation. assets, which should also include claims to future income but in practice many assets will be exempted. The valuation of residential property, privately owned inusa motor vehicles, valuable household and personal effects, and shares in private companies and closed As a short-term measure to generate additional corporations will pose major difficulties. The only revenue the ANC economist Mr Tito Mboweni has categories of wealth which have values which are recently proposed a once-off tax on wealth at a rate of readily determined and easy to audit are the net assets 5%, and it appears that the tax should be paid in a of quoted companies, quoted shares on the single year. Further details have not been provided Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), and the assets 12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 31 "matics®© of the pension funds and insurance companies. If way of estimating the income loss to black people assets in these categories are all taxed, there will from apartheid is given by the difference between clearly be multiple taxation. their actual share of income and their expected share i.e. their share of population. On this basis it was Nevertheless, we believe that the valuation problems estimated that between 1948 and 1987 apartheid had will be sufficiently severe to cause the base of the tax caused a shortfall in black incomes of some R2 500 to be very narrow and in practice that it may be billion (when expressed in 1989 prices) - which was practical to levy it only on the assets of pension more than eleven times the 1989 level of the GDP funds, insurance companies and quoted shares. The (McGrath, 1991). equity of such an outcome could be debated at length. This estimate is provided here simply to stress the Very few economists would not concur with the need to focus future economic policy on creative and sentiment that a substantial economic gesture towards workable solutions directed towards improving remedying the past injustices of apartheid would be economic welfare, rather than dwelling on past desirable. However, we feel that the proposal for a injustices which cannot be rectified. Economic reality levy on wealth is not appropriate in an economy now requires a strong commitment by the African where there is already great uncertainty and National Congress to sustainable macroeconomic depressed investor expectations. In practice, any policies. Strong restraint needs to be exercised on substantial economic gesture to redress past injustices making policy proposals which although they may will conflict with the more fundamental goal for the win black voter support may have irreversibly economy of moving to a path of sustained economic damaging effects on economic confidence. growth. Taxing past accumulation will not generate new wealth and income. REFERENCE A wealth levy cannot redress the injustices of almost McGrath MD. Economic choices lor post-apartheid South Africa. Durban: University of Natal Press, 1991:15. fifty years of apartheid oppression. If we assume that South African Reserve Bank. Annual Economic Report 1993. Pretoria: Government Printer, all racial groups could have contributed equally to the August 1993. economy in the absence of apartheid, then a possible You might STARCKE think they are worlds apart ASSOCIATES The ccono-political resource. PO Box 87094 Houghton 2041 Johannesburg Ingenuity. Craftsmanship. Universal qualities. South Africa Like the talents that bring people together in appreciation of creative excellence. JCI invests time and money enhancing these Telephone (011) 646-9370 qualities in people from all walks of life. Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company Limited. IONSSONS t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 32 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 IAIZE INDUSTRY Henry Bernstein, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester The impact of the 1991/92 drought has not brought South Africa's maize industry much closer to the market liberalisation that many advocate. This article suggests that, in any case, the current system of national reaulation would survive abolition of the statutory controls of the Maize Board, in important respects. It indicates elements of an alternative approach to restructuring that confronts the relations of property and power bequeathed by apartheid, with important implications for livelihoods and food security. he drought of 1991/92 was the worst particular institutions, forms of organisation Tin the summer rainfall grain producing and regulation (see endnote), and degrees of areas of South Africa since the early 1930s, economic power and political leverage. and required maize imports of 4,2 million tons to meet domestic needs. Upstream of farming is the supply of production inputs, credit, and labour. The The drought served to dramatise, even if it main production inputs are maize seed, did not create, issues addressed by various fertilisers and other agricultural chemicals, official reports published towards the end diesel and other petroleum products, and of 1992: on food prices (BTT, 1992), the farm machinery. Each is dominated by operation of the agricultural control boards between three and six major suppliers, both (Department of Agriculture, 1992b), and private companies and cooperatives, national and household food security engaged in manufacturing, importing, and (Department of Agriculture, 1992a). distribution. The fertiliser and Among drought stories featured by the machinery/equipment branches have been mass media during 1992 were its effects on through severe difficulties and corporate already heavily indebted commercial maize changes due to a combination of domestic farmers; one estimate, for example, was agricultural, macroeconomic, and that 25% of maize growers in the Orange international market factors (Nampo, Free State would be forced out of farming. 1993: 15-24). However, a larger area has been planted to Production credit is supplied by the Land maize in 1992/93 than in 1991/92, with an Bank and commercial banks, often through estimated harvest of around 8 million tons the grain cooperatives which are a key (see Table). Moreover, disputes and channel of credit (and of inputs) to many complaints concerning the buying and maize farmers. The organisation of the selling prices set by the Maize Board for supply of farm labour was, of course, one the current marketing season (1 May 1993 of the bases on which grand apartheid was to 30 April 1994) are familiar from this constituted, the legacies of which still annual round in most years since the early pervade on-farm labour relations and 1980s. practices. So, has business as usual been resumed in Maize farmers' interests are represented by the maize industry in the aftermath of a the National Maize Producers Organisation devastating drought? What is the likely (Nampo), affiliated to the South African further course of policy reforms towards Agricultural Union (SAAU). Nampo has deregulation that have affected the maize been a very effective producer organisation industry in recent years? And what are the with a distinctive history and political style, Acknowledgements implications for transition from apartheid, combining a capacity for strategic thinking This article draws on research and for livelihoods and food security in a otherwise rare in organised agriculture with undertaken during the author's 'new' South Africa? a combative stance towards the tenure as Jill Nattras Rotating Research Fellow at the Centre government. Nampo also dominates the for Social and Development Maize Board (MB), of which it has a Studies, University of Natal, majority of members. Durban, in 1992. Research was ittir facilitated by a grant from Economic Trends (ET), and a more substantial analysis of The maize industry consists of functions The MB operates the most important evidence and arguments will and activities pursued by (groups of) key single-channel marketing scheme in South appear as an ET Working Paper actors in a number of markets shaped by African agriculture, which includes setting in due course. INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 33 e@@ds Sources: Maize Board 1992,1993, with estimated production lor 1993/94 as reported in Farmer's Since the record 14,4 million ton harvest of Weekly. 2 April 1993. 1981, maize farming has been subject to " Some totals differ from sum of white and yellow maize due to rounding to nearest 100 000 tons. endemic and accumulating pressure. Policy A note on 'commercial consumption' reforms reducing levels of support to These data refer to all sales conducted or approved by the Maize Board for final consumption in South commercial farming, as well as adverse Africa * They exclude retention of maize by commercial (ie white) farmers for livestock and macroeconomic conditions and policies, provisioning/payment of farm workers, and also maize 'exports' to TVBC (as well as BLSN countries). have contributed to this pressure, which is This is one form of apartheid statistical distortion with implications for assessing regional food needs also accentuated by years of drought and supplies, namely when TVBC and BLSN 'exports' are lumped together with world market exports. * A secondapartheid-derived problem is the lack of any reliable data on maize production by black (notably in the 1982/83, 1983/84, and farmers in South Africa (including TVBC) for self-consumption and local sales. 1991/92 growing seasons). Maize farming " A third difficulty, of a different and lesser kind, is ignorance of the exient and destinations of illegal is caught in a kind of 'scissors crisis'. sales by commercial maize farmers. Key TBVC: Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei mt million tons One blade of the scissors is deteriorating BLSN: Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia m ha million hectares terms of trade with production inputs, and the erosion of government financial support. The former is manifested in input (subject to government approval) the cost inflation, leading to lower input use buying and selling prices for maize each (probably a good thing in the case of marketing season. The MB itself does not fertiliser application), and failure to handle maize. This is done by its appointed maintain and replace farm machinery agents, above all the summer grain which Nampo (1993:25) regards as cooperatives which account for over 90% possibly the single most serious threat to The of maize deliveries, and among which two commercial food production in the 1990s. cooperatives 'giants' stand out: SWK (Central West The latter reflects a general movement from concessionary to commercial financing of constitute a key Transvaal) in Klerksdorp and OTK (Eastern Transvaal) in Bethel. agricultural production, and the phasing out 'interlinkage' in of subsidies and various tax incentives to the markets and These cooperatives constitute a key investment, including subsidies to the MB forms of 'interlinkage' in the markets and forms of from which farmers had benefited. regulation that regulation that make up the maize industry. make up the In addition to channelling inputs and credit The other blade of the scissors is changes in maize industry to farmers (as noted), and acting as the the marketing and especially pricing principal marketing agents (with the system. Before 1981 producer prices were physical infrastructure this entails, set more or less on a cost plus basis, including ownership of some 14 million assuring profits to maize farmers. Together tons silo capacity), they are also active in with concessionary finance, this had maize milling and feed manufacture, stimulated the capitalisation and expansion thereby competing with corporate capital in of the maize boom of the 1960s and 1970s. these branches of activity. The losses in exports at prevailing world market prices following the bumper harvest The main customers of the MB are milling of 1981, concentrated the attention of the and processing firms, producing maize government on reforming the pricing meal (from white maize) for human system operated by the MB. Prices were set consumption, and animal feeds (from in an ad hoc way during a transitional yellow maize) especially for the poultry period marked by continuous confrontation and pig industries. Milling and animal feed, between Nampo and the government, like poultry production itself, are culminating in the resignation of Nampo dominated by highly concentrated members of the MB in 1985. Realignments corporate capitals (eg, Tiger and Premier in in Nampo after this made possible the milling and processing; Rainbow Chickens negotiation of a new set of price alone uses some 460 000 tons of yellow arrangements introduced in the 1987/88 maize a year). marketing season. E@DS@CfflC© -irtSlIK)!®© 34 INDICATOR SA Vol10No4 Spring 1993 The central feature of the current system is One blade of the T t producer prices are determined on the scissors is Whether sustaining maize production in Li J of projected market realisation. The deteriorating MR nrovides a first price scenario before South Africa on its present basis, however hn ins and announces a delivery price at modified, is worthwhile, is a question to terms of trade come back to, but sustained it has been j] starT of the marketing season, with the with production ossibility of an additional payment at the even with the impact of last year's drought. inputs, and the end of the marketing year. The sword of Damocles did not fall on erosion of many heads in the highveld, and the reason government The MB likens its price determination to is straightforward: massive assistance of over R3 billion given to commercial financial support sjngle pool channel scheme . . . where the maximum income in the long term is agriculture in the name of drought relief, realised from each market segment (price x including R640 million paid to cooperatives volume)... The market realisations from against the carry-over of farmers' debts each market segment are then "pooled". (LAPC, 1993). One may speculate why a The pooled market realisation less fiscally hard-pressed government marketing costs determines the net income intervened on this scale, after a decade or so of the pool which is available to pay the of gradually reducing concessionary producer (MB, 1993:7). This procedure finance to farming. incorporates a sliding scale of producer prices in relation to 'surplus' production. At this stage of the transition game as That is, the producer price is adjusted played by the National Party and downwards in relation to (i) the size of the Conservative Party, winning back white harvest expected above domestic needs (of votes to the NP in the farming areas and 6,5 million tons), and (ii) the extent to small towns of the Transvaal and Orange which world market prices fall below Free State (OFS) can not have been a strong domestic prices. argument, even if it was a hope. The principal reason surely was as part of a The discipline of this price-setting strategic concern to preserve the existing mechanism is enforced by rules that the MB structure of property relations under a new can not borrow money to support producer political dispensation. Granting over prices, that it can no longer obtain R3 billion to prevent extensive foreclosures government subsidies or loans (eg. to of white farmers, and to maintain prices in finance export losses), and that it must the land market, can be related to other balance its books each year. Since the new measures like transfers of state land to The other blade system was introduced, and apart from a bantustan 'administration', another is changes in the slight upturn in the exceptional potential minefield that any democratic marketing and circumstances of 1992, it is likely that both government serious about land reform especially would have to negotiate. the MB's buying and selling prices have pricing system declined in real terms (Nampo, 1993:39). Buying prices have declined more than Meanwhile, debate in the drought year selling prices, reflecting a growing gap about (further) reform of the agricultural arising from the new operating rules. sector mainly focused on deregulation of Averaged over the past five years, about the control schemes established under the 40% of this gap is accounted for by export Marketing Act, highlighted in the costs and losses, 31% by financing recommendations of the Kassier Committee domestic stocks, and 25% by domestic Report of December 1992, and of various storage. reactions to it. Thus, in brief, the scissors: production costs Concerning maize, the Report concluded: rising, producer prices declining, in real The marketing scheme is not serving the terms. One response1 of farmers, apart from best interests of a large number of maize reducing input purchases, accumulating and other producers, millers, processors, debt, and retrenching farm workers, has feed manufacturers and feedlotters, nor has been to diversify, helped by a land it been beneficial to the consumers, conversion scheme (from October 1987 to especially the lower-income groups who May 1993) negotiated by Nampo, which regard white maize as a staple . . . Change provided government assistance to convert is therefore necessary. maize land to pasture. The scheme (initiated (Department of Agriculture, 1992b:46-7) against the protests of the powerful livestock/red meat lobby) is an example of The Maize Board's response was that Nampo's strategic vision and tactical skill market liberalisation can only be considered in sustaining maize farming in its recent on the conditions of (i) protection against and current period of pressure. dumping and subsidised imports, INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 35 !3(§®DC®£fiOC§ TrBIIRJOSS (ii) liberalising input markets, What are the prospects of deregulation and The Kassier (iii) deconcentrating the market. liberalisation of maize marketing? One Report is right to major push is coming from feed point to the The first condition may be resolved by manufacturers and poultry producers, negative effects eventual agreement on farm and export longtime critics of the marketing system of the current subsidies, and import tariffs, in the (unlike manufacturers of maize meal). By marketing Uruguay Round of GATT; in any case, the 1992 the poultry industry claimed to be the MB is probably being pushed by the largest agricultural industry in South Africa system for government towards tariffication of maize (overtaking maize and beef), with a growth consumers of imports (as against 'physical controls', the rate over the previous decade twice that of maize meal euphemism for current practice which agriculture as a whole. The drought means a ban on imports except in deficit provided it with an opportunity it had long years). The second condition has been a desired: to supply its coastal plants and demand of Nampo ever since it was markets with imported maize, avoiding the established in 1980. The third condition I costs of railage from the highveld (about come back to below. R130 a ton to the western Cape). Certainly, the Kassier Report is right to When the new season's maize prices were point to the negative effects of the current announced on 1 May 1993, the appetite for marketing system for consumers of maize imported maize was no doubt further meal (even if they are appended to a list of stimulated by the poorest returns in the agribusiness interests). In fact, the poultry industry since its boom began. Feed 'lower-income groups' (i.e. rural and urban manufacturers in the western Cape asked blacks) who buy maize meal as a staple the government to sanction imports of food subsidise maize industry interests in a 500 000 tons of American yellow maize, number of ways. for which they are prepared to pay the full MB list price {Financial Mail, 7 May First, domestic consumers pay for exports: 1993), followed by an application to the this was shown above by the 40% of the Cape Supreme Court that the MB issue gap between the MB's buying and selling them with a temporary permit to import prices accounted for by export costs and maize during the 1993/94 season (Finance losses. Second, a further 25% of this price Week, 3-9 June 1993). This unprecedented gap expended on domestic storage includes challenge to the MB's monopoly controls payments to the grain cooperatives for silo comes in the wake of other recent The capacity, irrespective of whether they hold challenges to the (now defunct) Banana lower-income any grain or not. Buyers of maize meal thus Board, and the Dairy and Meat Boards. groups who buy help support the shakiest of the grain cooperatives, and thereby the 'white maize meal as a Any prompt action on dismantling the presence' in the countryside, above all in Marketing Act following the staple food the northern and some far western areas of recommendations of the Kassier Report is subsidise maize the Transvaal. unlikely. Opposition to the Committee of industry Inquiry was mobilised by sections of interests in a A third form of subsidy by maize meal organised agriculture (led by the red meat number of ways purchasers is of the profits of feed industry) as soon as Kassier's appointment manufacturers, and poultry and livestock was announced. Kassier's producers, as an effect of the MB's 'pool' recommendations are now to be considered price system. Generally, the MB's buying by a Policy Evaluation Committee and selling prices for white and yellow appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture, maize are similar; the limited range of that includes a number of veterans of the variation in recent years has given South African Agricultural Union- producers more for white than yellow cooperatives-marketing boards bloc, maize, and charged buyers a lower list price suggesting a process of stone-walling long for yellow than for white maize. However, practised by organised agriculture. most yellow maize is sold to contract buyers at discounts. In the 1991/92 marketing season, over 90% of yellow maize was sold to contract buyers (feed manufacturers) at R383 a ton, that is 8,6% Liberalising maize marketing entails below its list price of R419 a ton, and market vs administrative price formation, 17,5% below the list price of white maize and (formally) 'free access' to the market of R464 a ton, on which no discounts are for sellers and buyers vs the licensing and given (calculated from the Financial Mail, registration of producers and (industrial) 7 May 1993: 'Revolt of the poultry men'). consumers operated by the MB. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 36 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 nnHMEHflMRHMni M market in the real world is simply an previous general manager of the MB). Maize nnrent and neutral instrument of production as a 1 The importance of the cooperatives should f riency, let alone 'equity'. Real markets whole is embedded in wider relations of property not be overlooked: they and the SAAU are a'd oower that shape their particular forms the twin pillars of the white agricultural overcapitalised nf organisation and regulation, one bloc that generated, and was reproduced by, and excessively manifestation of which is patterns of apartheid. Moreover, the central position mechanised in they occupy in the maize chain due to their concentration. As noted earlier, the third South Africa rendition for market liberalisation put interlinkages, and the control this gives forward by the MB to the Kassier them over farmers, make the cooperatives a Committee is market deconcentration. key problem for any more strategic vision Ironically, an argument sometimes of agricultural restructuring and food advanced for liberalisation is that the security in the transition from apartheid, single-channel maize marketing system that transcends the narrow limits and itself encourages concentration downstream distorting lens of market liberalisation. in the milling and processing sectors. Moving to this wider terrain, we first return By this token, then, some advocates of to the question posed earlier of whether it is maize market liberalisation are concerned worth sustaining maize production in South about its effectiveness without Africa on its present basis, however deconcentration of the food industry, and modified (for example, by measures of cite the rise in bread prices since their market liberalisation, by 'deracialising' decontrol in 1991 due to the so-called large-scale commercial maize farming power base in the baking industry (van Zyl which Nampo now proclaims). andKirsten, 1992:177-9). Such concern should be extended to corporate capital in Although there are highly efficient (and food distribution as well as processing. innovative) commercial maize farmers in South Africa, it is widely recognised that: Significantly, it was the giant milling and maize production as a whole is supermarket companies that joined forces in overcapitalised and excessively 1992 to establish the Food Logistics Forum, mechanised; to defend themselves against charges about it is characterised in some areas by their role in rampant food price inflation; monocropping on fragile and unsuitable they were also awarded their certificate of soils; market hygiene, so to speak, by the 1992 it is internationally uncompetitive; It has been BTT report on price formation in the food it has been sustained on its current scale sustained on its chain. Nonetheless, many remain only by a massive rescue package by the current scale suspicious about the strategies and tactics country's last apartheid government. only by a deployed by processing and distribution massive rescue capitals from the base of their market Even if an eventual GATT agreement levels package by the concentration; last year's government the playing field of the international maize report on food security noted the lack of market, it should not be forgotten that country's last cooperation of food distribution companies average commercial maize yields in South apartheid with its investigations (Department of Africa are about one-third of those in the government Agriculture, 1992a: v, 2, 14, 87). USA, that long distance haulage of agricultural commodities in South Africa is In contrast with this widespread suspicion, three times more costly than in the USA, concern with, and analysis of. the role of and so on. the grain cooperatives as a site of concentration (as well as interlinkage) in What about domestic food production and the maize chain is conspicuously absent. supply as it bears on national food security Cooperatives handle the bulk of maize (one of the longstanding battle cries of marketed, and are undergoing their own organised agriculture)? process of amalgamation and further concentration. If the MB's statutory powers There is a very strong case, under any were abolished tomorrow, a la Kassier, future production system, for encouraging maize marketing would be dominated by the cultivation of white maize which people SWK, OTK, and the OFS cooperative. eat, and at the expense of yellow maize if They are no doubt gearing themselves up necessary (the two being easily for this possibility, especially SWK which substitutable crops). Also, there is virtually may have the Northwest and Southwest no world supply and trade of white maize Transvaal cooperatives (in Lichtenburg and outside of southern, central and east Africa. Leeudoringstaad respectively) in its sights Emphasising white maize production would (and the chief executive of SWK is the enable strategic reserves to be established, TOecatss 12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 37 "matics®© A further step is which could be regulated as appropriate by geography', characterised by various locations and forms of concentration thm to locate issues exports to other countries in the regions noted when they experience deficits, and by would survive any simple market of food drawing off excess white maize stocks for liberalisation. More important and production and processing into animal feeds (white and challenging is to consider how this mii>iu security in the yellow maize having the same nutritional be broken down into more decentnilUed context of more value). food circuits and markets (including the fundamental potential advantages and disadvantages of supplying the yellow maize needs of agricultural coastal areas from the world market). restructuring, including land A further step is to locate issues of food The emphasis on white maize procluciiun reform production and security in the context of recommended above together with a wido more fundamental agricultural ranging land reform and the support restructuring, including land reform. Here measures it requires, could be the spur to a there may be trade-offs (at least during a deconcentration and redistribution not only transitional period) between establishing of maize farming but also of maize trailing, the conditions of household food security in milling and distribution. There are no the rural areas and ensuring food supply to grounds, either deductive or from urban markets. 'experience' elsewhere (see Raikes. 1993). to suppose that more widely distributed, Philip Raikes (1993:15) suggests an small scale farming could not supply local emphasis on the former: or urban markets with white maize. as well If land reform is to con tribute as much as it as meeting the food security needs ol rural can to food security in South Africa, it households through self- provisioning. needs firstly to involve as much (and as good) land as possible, secondly to This scenario includes an important role for distribute this as widely as possible to as a very different kind of Maize Board lhan many as possible, not neglecting the special that currently presiding over (but not needs of women for secure access to land. essential to) national regulation, namely a Thirdly it is most important not to start the Maize Board that establishes conditions in process by saddling the new users of land which small-scale farmers, following land with debts which can force them into reform, are able to compete in mai/c cultivation with large scale producers. Such inappropriate patterns of production . . . 1 (and) not to rush into farm modernisation conditions, subject to Raikes' warn mil References (above) against over-financed and hasty Agriculture, Department of. Report policies which could have the same effect. ol the Committee lor the 'modernisation' programmes, include Development ol a Food and The thrust of these prescriptions, and the structures to provide credit, inputs, Nutrition Strategy for Southern technical, marketing and other services Africa. Pretoria, September, 1992a. dangers to national food security that some Agriculture, Department of. Report may read into them, can be tempered by alternative to those of the giant grain of the Committee of Inquiry into the re-situating some of the other issues in a cooperatives, to which black farmers would Marketing Act. Pretoria, December otherwise be appendaged, at best. (Kassier Committee Report), 1992b. framework of transition that goes beyond BTT (Board of Tariffs and Trade). the attenuated discourse of 'efficiency and An Investigation into the Price Likewise, and extending an approach Mechanism in the Food Chain, equity', that aims for at least some basic Report No 3273. Pretoria, changes in the relations of property and recently argued for the deconcentration of December 1992. power bequeathed by apartheid. milling in Zimbabwe (Jayne and Rubey, Jayne, TS and Rubey L. 'Maize 1993), more decentralised food circuits and Milling, Market Reform and Urban Food Security: the Case of The South African maize industry has a markets, with easier conditions of entry, Zimbabwe', World Development, strong structure of national regulation. create economic spaces for smaller scale Vol21/No6,1993. Contrary to advocates of market food trading, processing and distribution LAPC (Land and Agriculture Policy liberalisation, this is not just a matter of that are able to exploit cost and locational Centre). Debt Relief and the South advantages against corporate capital, and to African Drought Relief Programme, Maize Board controls and procedures, Policy Paper No1. Johannesburg, including pan-territorial pricing (another generate employment and opportunities for May 1993. source of cross-subsidisation), but of ' accumulation from below'. Maize Board. Annual Report particular patterns of spatial, as well as 1991-2, Pretoria, October 1992. Maize Board. 'Maize', Agrocon, economic, distribution and concentration of Note: February 1993. commercial maize farming, of marketing 'Regulation' is employed in this article in a political economy sense, common in French usage, to denote forms of power and control that structure specific Nampo. Maize Production in the infrastructure (cooperatives, silos, bulk markets and shape their dynamics. These forms are both economic and 1990s, Bothaville, January 1993. handling facilities), of mills and processing political (and political in the broad sense). This contrasts with the customary Raikes P. 'Food Aid, Food Security plants, and of the communication routes English language sense of 'regulation' as legislative, policy and and Experience', paper presented administrative measures affecting markets. Not only is this usage narrower at Conference on Food Security in (especially rail) that connect them. but it contains an assumption that regulation is 'external' to markets (or how South Africa, Johannesburg, 1993. markets should be), which is registered in the vocabulary of 'intervention' in, van Zyl J and Kirsten J. 'Food 'interference' with, -distortion' of, markets etc. The French usage, on the Security in South Africa', Agrekon, In short, the maize industry presents a other hand, incorporates a recognition that regulation is an intrinsic and Vol31/No4,1992. particular example of 'apartheid indeed constitutive element of real markets and how they function. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 38 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 DEVELOPMENT I M O N I T o R DROUGHT IN SOUTH AFRICA Regional Profiles VENDA * Drought has allieviated since last year's disaster, with subsistence crops doing well, although commercial farmers are faring worse. 32 villages depend on fankered water NORTHERN TRANSVAAL GAZANKULU * Drought largely * While situation has improved since last year, broken, but as in other areas there v be long-term consequences critical areas include Northern-most parts of Venda and area served by Leiaba river system LEBOWA * Rains have and Fanie Botha dam (at 7% capacity) been patchy and too late for [£*] BOPh'UTHATSWANA * Next years' citrus crop will be very low due to full recovery of crops {3 CISKEI current water shortages KWANDEBELE 'Wafer * Messina declared a drought area jffl GAZANKULU shortage at 50%, with dams and springs dry but new 1§) KWAZULU WESTERN & EASTERN TRANSVAAL boreholes preventing crisis ESI LEBOWA Retrenchments in mining industry have compounded effects of drought on PI QWAQWA communities which have lost both HIGHVELD subsistence crops and cash income 'E KWANDEBELE * Rains above 75% of average {H3 KANGWANE * Commercial maize crop estimate {H TRANSKEI up from low of 2 million to almost 8 million tons IjI'] VENDA * Grazing still problematic, with 42% of veld in poor condition NATAL/KWAZULU * Springs & earthdams serving communities dried up * Commercial sugar crop 50% down * Port Shepstone, Eshowe and Ixopo among the areas in crisis, with rivers low to dry and dams below 30% TRANSKEI * 80% of windmills reported to be broken * 500 000 livestock dead * 50% crop loss * R100 million food imports * 7 major towns without KHROO water * 2 hydroelectric schemes shut down * 40% of livestock weak, with most of the veld in poor condition 200km * North-west around Kenhardt, South-east BORDER/KEI arour.d Middelburg and Cradock, Central * Fourth year of drought means water areas ol Fraserburg, Victoria-West and supply still in crisis despite some rain Murraysburg as well as Laingsburg and * Majority of windmills & handpumps Willowmore reported to be 'disasterously dry' serving communities are broken * No grazing available for winter * Rivers less than 50% Recently declared drought disaster areas Source: Consultative Forum on Drought & Rural Development, 1993. SPECIALISTS IN SOCIAL, ECONOMIC 111 DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH f DATA RESEARCH AFRICA DATA RESEARCH AFRICA are specialists in acquiring, was formed to exploit the vast processing and analysing pool of academic knowledge and demographic, socio-economic private sector expertise in and marketing information, order to meet the planning and community liaison and development requirements of the development planning. public sector in addition to the marketing and investment requirements of the private DATA RESEARCH AFRICA sector. has extensive knowledge and experience of research in underdeveloped and disadvantaged DATA RESEARCH AFRICA urban, peri-urban and rural is an equal opportunities South areas throughout the region. African research consultancy. 291 Florida Road, Durban, 4001. P.O. Box 37656, Overport 4067, R.S.A. Tel: (031) 3032756/7/8 Fax: (031) 231487 Void gprafieg/es for Prong tip Relief Laurie Adams, Information Officer Consultative Forvm on Drought and Rural Development Since late rains in 1992 saved the commercial maize crop, drought has no longer made headline news in South Africa. Yet throughout rural areas, particularly in Natai/KwaZulu, the Transkei, and Ciskei, rural communities have virtually no access to water for human consumption or fodder or grazing for their livestock. For these rural black communities, estimated at ten million people, the drought is at its worst in South Africa's history. p until the end of 1992, South African boreholes dried up in one week in Msinga Unewspapers ran weekly stories on the alone due to the falling water table, and drought, calling it the worst in 100 years. virtually all the rivers south of Durban are Rains in late December and January 1993 dry. Women in Northern KwaZulu are led to more headlines, this time claiming walking from their mountain villages to that the drought was over and hailing the major rivers to get water, travelling up to 20 'miracle' of the maize crop recovery. kilometres a day. There were almost no subsistence crops harvested in most rural While it is true that rain fell over the villages and cattle which survived last highveld, saving much of the maize crop, year's winter are already weak although the this in no way signalled the end of the winter dry season has just begun. drought. The effects of the drought are actually worse in many places in 1993 than In real terms, cattle prices are 40-50% less compared to this time last year: than before the drought. An estimated • Overall rainfall for July 1992 to June 500 000 cattle have died in the Transkei 1993 for most of South Africa has been since the beginning of the year. less than 75% of normal. • The overall water storage level of dams The impact of this drought on rural is at less than 40% of full capacity. communities goes beyond obvious effects Smaller stock and village dams which such as less food and water. The amount of service rural'communities but are not time women must devote to collecting monitored in official statistics are even water from far-off places diminishes their lower. ability to care for children or devote time to • There was a 50% crop failure in income-generation. Loss of cattle not only Transkei. deprives a family of a source of meat and There are virtually no subsistence crops milk, but means loss of capital. Without in Natal/KwaZulu, on which the cattle to sell, families often cannot generate population counts for 25% of their the needed income for school fees, health income. care, or invest in possible income- generating projects. The loss of The rural villages, for which the employment on farms leads to over- government keeps few statistics, are the crowded squatter camps around towns, worst hit. In KwaZulu, according to the exacerbating tensions around scarce Independent Development Trust, 150 resources and jobs. INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 41 ©nwtityBjpfiffltiKrir -irKurasg Little Belief Figure 1 Rather than addressing the development 1992 Drought Allocations needs of rural communities and thereby preparing communities for the nexi drought, the government's drought relief programme has focused almost exclusively on supporting white commercial farmers This is both because rural communities have historically not mattered to the current government and because the current government sees drought in purelj agricultural and meteorological terms. Seeing drought only in terms of its .it,'eel on national crop production implies Uiat thousands of rural dwellers could be starving or millions without source*, of water, but as long as the commercial crop is viable, there is no officially recognised drought crisis (subsistence crops are not monitored). The lack of concern for rural communities can be seen clearly in the government's allocation of drought relief. The government responded to the 1991/lJ2 drought with a massive drought scheme of over R3,4 billion. Figure 1 shows that: • R2,4 billion was spent on paying off debts of white farmers, in addiliun to the Drought is endemic to Southern Africa, normal, ongoing agricultural subsidy occurring in a cycle of about every five to scheme, of R355 million. seven years. Furthermore, South Africa is • Another R100 million was distributed lo Apartheid has in general a dry country. Only 12% of the subsidise approximately 10 000 slock deprived the land is arable. South Africa receives only farmers. majority of rural 475 mm rain annually, compared to a » In contrast, only R543 million w .is made people of the worldwide average of 860 mm. available for drought relief in homeland areas; and infrastructure, But the drought is not merely a question of • only R6 million was allocated lo support resources and inadequate rains and an arid country. These the more than 1,4 million farmworkers employment difficulties have been compounded by a and their 5 million dependents. necessary to history of policies which has deprived the survive drought majority of rural people of the The government justifies this bias toward periods infrastructure, resources and employment > commercial agriculture by arguing: necessary to survive drought periods. The maintenance of a viable comnn nial agricultural sector is absolutely es \i nihil lo Drought is not a cause of poverty; it is an the economy of South Africa and the exacerbating factor which pushes people long-term welfare of all rural inhahuaiu•> in from bare survival into starvation. The those areas, the greater majority of whom policy of creating homelands, where 87% are black. (Drought Center Relief A'< ;>oii i of South Africa's population was meant to live on the least productive 13% of the No-one denies that the agricultural sector is land, has created an unviable rural important and needs support in order to economy. Already poor land has been survive drought periods. Criticisms of ilk- stretched far beyond its capacity by the government's programme are rather large numbers of people forced to live on it. focused on the clear bias of the programme toward the current government's white The drought requires a holistic support base, the failure of the programme development strategy which provides a to address unemployment or poverty in any rural water strategy, credit and support for significant way, and the lack of rural water small-scale farming and farm workers, or a development strategy that would employment opportunities and a primary reduce vulnerability to drought in a more health-care system. systematic fashion. i?i£Vir'Loi=wi£kv -jftSBoarss 42 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 19! Ivbl relief for commercial farmers Fourthly, almost no resources have been Debt relief for allocated toward assuring water supply to :,n important political commercial %up«ii..fiicv lor the government, but did rural communities. Multi-billion rand Cc farmers r' vclucc vulnerability to drought. The schemes such as the Tugela-Vaal and lC !;,'"nil Agricultural Policy Center's Lesotho Highlands schemes ensure water supported an «• J oil released in June, points out that only security to the major metropolitan and important rn of the iiurease in agricultural debt was industrial areas: at the end of the 1992 dry political season, it was estimated that the PWV due to drought. constituency for could survive for another 18 months the government Accord inn to a report by Boland Bank, the without water restrictions in the event of no drought was actually good for commercial rain. aurit5u|„„c because the relief package •ifiowcd tiic sector to reduce its total debt by In contrast, there is no strategy for ensuring R900 million, despite a 25% reduction in rural water supply. Most rural communities real agricultuial production during 1992. depend on surface water (rivers and While lh's may be g°od for individual streams), which dry up during drought, or fanners, subsidising debt does little to on emergency water installations built promote sustainable and efficient farming. during drought periods, such as boreholes Neither while farmers nor rural with pumps and windmills. These communities .ire any better prepared for the installations more often than not have fallen next drought after the 1992/93 drought into disrepair due to lack of maintenance. relief programme. Furthermore, they are not appropriate water sources in the long term because they Secondlv. thi mght relief is heavily biased deplete the important underground water toward while !.ti mers. For example, a table, thereby reducing the quality of soil married lai'iucr who is sequestered can and the viability of farming. receive up to K2 000 a month, while a dismissed latinworker can receive only R150 a mi>iii ii. J-'urthermoii'. larmworkers can not apply for At the beginning of August 1993, the relief m tlvii own right, but rather have to government announced a further R700 rely on then employers to apply for and million in drought relief and job creation distribute this minimal amount. Many white funds. The allocation was much needed and farmers dismissed their workers rather than very welcome, particularly the R255 applv I'oi v. age subsidies, both because of million given to the National Economic the paperv, m k and because in order to qualify ilicv w ould have to declare their farm ol 1 k i.illv 'drought stricken', thereby Figure 2 lessening its worth on the market. In some 1993 Drought Allocations areas I'at me: ^ also used tKe drought as an excuse in i \ k'i labour tenants whom they feared might try to claim land on their farm Job Creation 30,9% under new gi >vernment. Homelands 16.1 ThirdU. //, //> ( ry of drought relief was not integrated, but rather dispersed through a plethora ol hitieaucracies created as aresult of the homeland system. There are over 52 Sugar homeland departments dealing with drought Industry* 2.4% Stock Farmers* 15. relief. well as numerous Regional Agricultural Sen ice Council^, Jbfnt Service Boards, Credit* 10.7% Joim ( ii on I mating Committees, Development Corporations, and Drought Interest Subsidies* 5.5% Co-ordinating Committees. Water Allocations* 18,4% This array of bureaucracies, coupled in some areas with patronage arid corruption, has made effective delivery very difficult. Note: * over 95% of this amount will go to commercial white farms Co-operation between NGOs, the South African and homeland governments has Comment If job creation funds of R255 million are included as part of drought relief, the government's 1993 drought allocation can be seen as benefiting rural communities much more than proven difficult. Many of the homelands are the previous year, although the bulk of funds allocated to water and agriculture will reach large white wary of 'outside interference' and threats to farms. their sovereignty. \TOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 43 ©SmtL©PftCBKW ¥t8BK)l2>g Over 70% of Forum for job creation. Importantly, the that only communities with drought relief will funds are to be given to a central fund to government-aligned headmen receive relief which communities and NGOs can apply, end up rather than channelling the money solely to • lack of targeting supporting government departments. Because the government has no accurate commercial statistics on poverty and because there U ni) white farms, Unfortunately, despite great strides in the Nutrition Surveillance System, it is while the government's understanding of the needs of impossible to determine the greatest areas greatest need rural areas over the last year, the R469 of need. Furthermore, the NNSDP allocates relief through existing welfare and N< i() remains in rural million drought relief allocation for 1993 (see figure 2) reflected many of the same organisations, most often concentrated in black problems and biases of the previous year's urban areas. communities much larger sum. We estimate that over 70% of the drought relief allocation will An evaluation of the NNSDP revealed thai end up supporting commercial white farms despite its own surveys showing that the once again, while the greatest need remains bulk of Natal's poor are in rural areas, mosi in rural black communities. of their funds have gone to urban areas. I;»|- example, according to malnutrition and The R152 million allocation to water is a poverty levels (based on 1985 statistics). good example. Whereas RIO,5 million will Port Natal-Ebhodwe should be allocated go to the Joint Service Boards and R3 28,6% of nutrition relief; yet they recci\ecl million to the Water Supply Task Force 50,4%. Zululandhas approximately 3S'(' of (which is a collaboration between the Natal/KwaZulu's malnourished, yet Department of Water Affairs, NGOs and received only 13.2% of NNSDP fundi im. communities), the entire remainder (R138,5 (Final NNWG Report, April 1993). million) is going to the Department of Agriculture to service the water needs of • focus on food parcels commercial farms. We believe that given Despite the words 'Social Development' in the government's understanding that rural its title, the NNSDP gave almost no support water is a key need, more money should to developmental programmes such as have gone to the Department of Water employment projects. Rather, the vasi Affairs' efforts to supply water to those percentage of their R440 million budget areas. was allocated to food relief. Increasing Food parcels are problematic because: malnutrition is ® they do not allow recipients a choice one of the people may need fuel, soap or clothing effects of the Increasing malnutrition is one of the effects as much as they need food. of the drought, so a drought strategy drought, so a • they entrench dependency - nothing is requires a nutrition strategy. The NNSDP done to assure long-term sources ol drought strategy (National Nutrition and Social food. As soon as the parcel stops requires a Development Programme) was founded as coming, the family is in the same nutrition strategy a poverty relief programme after the situation. introduction of VAT (Value Added Tax), ® they undermine the local econom) - rather than as a drought specific having to compete with free hand-outs programme. Nevertheless, its budget of undermines the ability of local trader to R440 million in 1991/92, and R400 million survive. Cash or work programmes in 1992/93 has meant that the NNSDP is would allow people to buy food from the major funder of nutrition relief in these traders. drought stricken areas. As with the • there are problems in distribution and Agricultural relief, the NNSDP has suffered targeting - eg., in many areas food from several problems: parcels targeted for children are handed out at schools. The child, however, often • lack of community involvement brings the food home where the parcel, While in some areas, such as the Northern meant for one person, is distributed Transvaal, representative committees among many, who all need food. involving community structures were formed to allocate relief, in others, such as Fortunately, the National Department of the Ciskei, the money was allocated with Health and Population Development has no NGO or community involvement. This finally responded to repeated criticisms of led to accusations of political patronage. In the NNSDP programme. They have one area, it was reported that food parcels launched a complete re-evaluation and have were distributed with National Party solicited the input of our Nutrition Task propaganda. In the Ciskei, civics complain Force and our regional fora. i?i£Vir'Loi=wi£kv -jftSBoarss 44 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 19! r DMA BASE msuitaiv© F©rum DROUGHT RELIEF .. , ncctj 10 address all these problems with thtNovcniiricnr s drought relief programme Programme Allocation for d ui respond 10 the deepening drought 1992/93 R-million '•risis in a'ra' communities led to the formation of the Consultative Forum on Continued employment of full-time farm labourers 5,0 Drought and Rural Development in July [yy2.rSMy-eight groups participated in the Phasing out and re-establishing of farmers 3,6 national launch, which was convened by Staying of sequestrations 15,0 Katiiso 'I'nist and the Independent Development Trust (IDT). Participants Co-ordinated restructuring of unmanageable debt 50,0 include the government, ANC, Cosatu, the Carry-over debt: • Co-operatives 426,0 Development Bank of Southern Africa, the • Commercial banks 50,0 South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco). IDT, and many Production credit: • Cooperatives 165,0 Non-(io\ crnmental Organisations (NGOs) • (new) - Commercial banks 60,0 • Land Bank (Section 34) 4,0 invoh cd in relief and development work. The mandate given to the Drought Forum • Agricultural Credit Board 50,0 was tii specifically focus on ensuring Rebate on the transport of stockfeed 30,0 drought relief reached and met the needs of the rural poor. financInt. subside institutiony on long-ters (Lanmd loanBansk excludedat ) 10,0 The Ibrma Lion of this type of inclusive Identified Cooperatives: - financial survival structure is unique in the history of drought amalgamation, etc 45,0 response in South Africa. Important gains were made in bringing civil society together Training of farm labourers (Boskop and other centres) 1,0 with go\ v-rnment, particularly in policy Support measures: • storage compensation 173,0 interuMiiion. A proposal for a Public Works • drilling action 6,0 Programme was developed, the Assistance to industries: • sugar 0,0 establishment of an Early Warning System • wool 15,0 assured, and avenues for contributing to • mohair 2,5 government policy were developed. For • meat 2,5 example, i ne government's new Drought Dept Water Affairs (Water Task Force Contribution) 2,0 Management Strategy is being reviewed by the Consultative Forum, and the Forum was National Nutrition and Social invited iiimi's work has included: Total 1 702,0 Agreement was reached with government Less: Grant under programme 6 for • subsidising of interest 160,0 that a National Early Warning System for • crop-production loans 100,0 Food Security (NEWS) must be established. Currently, the only statistics Total 1 402,00 gathered by government relate to crops, stocking, and dams in South Africa, Note:1 The NNSDP was started at the introduction of VAT • it cannot be taken as indicative of the state's excluding the homelands and TBVC commitment to Drought Belief. Although it is having an impact on the drought, a very small proportion is (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and making its way to the rural areas. Ciskci) homelands.,There is very little information on poverty levels or any other indicator of who is most vulnerable to such as roads, schools, and clinics. They drought. NEWS, once established, will have also promoted the concepts of monitor a variety of factors, allowing more labour-intensity and community control in effective targeting of relief. existing job creation schemes. The Employment Task Force (ETF) Another initiative, the Nutrition Task Force developed a comprehensive proposal for a (NTF), focused on trying to improve the community-based, labour-intensive Public government's major nutrition relief scheme, Woi ks Programme. Such a programme the NNSDP. The government agreed to an would provide thousands of jobs while evaluation and restructuring of the NNSDP; creating much-needed public infrastructure NTF is involved with the task force INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 45 blH\'l£l..at-fAt£KY TOilDflB® The 'rural voice' established by the government for this needs to be process. The NTF also initiated debate around the viability and appropriateness of The work of the Consultative Forum on strengthened in food relief, including organising a Food Drought and Rural Development over Uk- order to continue Security Conference which brought last year has laid the basic building blocks to lobby for more together international and local experts and for an effective drought management appropriate and relief agencies. The NTF also secured strategy based on development and effective relief agreement for the establishment of a community involvement. Given the and National Nutrition Surveillance System that endemic nature of drought in the region, a will monitor malnutrition in children permanent structure monitoring droughl is development throughout the country. necessary. This needs to be taken up w iihin programmes government, but cooperation between The Water Supply Task Force (WSTF) is a government, NGOs, relief agencies, unique collaboration between the community structures and policy Department of Water Affairs, institutions must continue. The 'rural \oiee' Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), needs to be strengthened in order to and communities. This collaboration has continue to lobby for more appropriaie and allowed WSTF to utilise government effective relief and development expertise and resources to supply programmes. emergency water installations in over 400 rural communities in Lebowa, Gazankulu, It is for these reasons that the Consulialise Venda, Border/Kei, and KwaZulu. The Forum, at its most recent plenary meeting Task Force operated on a system of on 27 May, resolved to become a more employing community liaison officers permanent structure focused on longei -term along with field engineers, in order to development issues as well as drought. ensure community involvement and Building the strength of the regional fora ownership of the water installations. This is was outlined as the major task for the to forestall the problem experienced with coming year, as well as continuing to water sources installed during the 1983 monitor the drought, respond to emerwncv drought, which fell into disrepair, situations, and promote policy that meets worsening water shortages during the the needs of the rural poor. current drought. The necessary work for establishing an This cooperation is an example of one of effective drought management strategy is The Fora the best aspects of the Consultative Forum: not as formidable as it may seem. AhvaiK, provide an successful partnerships and positive much has been accomplished. The opportunity for exchanges between government and government has agreed to establish a rural non-governmental forces. The Department National Early Warning System for 1 nod of Water Affairs, originally with no Security, and a National Nutrition communities to mandate to work in homeland areas, ended Surveillance System, two information promote their up devoting time, equipment and resources mechanisms that will greatly enhance needs and to to these historically neglected areas. government's ability to respond to drought participate in and plan for development. A framework debates around Lastly, a capacity-building programme was has already been developed for a viable Public Works Programme that would drought and established to promote and strengthen regional formations. To date, seven provide employment while creating rural regional drought and development fora much-needed public infrastructure. development have been established. They are in the Northern Eastern, and Western Transvaal, Furthermore, a precedent has been set, Orange Free State, Northern Cape, through the work of the Water Suppl \ I ask Border/Kei, and Natal/KwaZulu. Force, for cooperation between government, NGOs, and community These fora bring together regional structures. The government is currently government structures, NGO service looking at restructuring the NNSDP with providers, and community-based the aim of making it more developmental organisations. The Fora provide an and community-oriented in nature. opportunity for rural communities to Furthermore, the regional drought and promote their needs and to participate in development fora operating in each of debates around drought and rural South Africa's drought-prone areas provide development. They also provide a venue a valuable and unique mechanism for where relief agencies and NGOs can share government, NGOs, and communities to information with each other and come together to develop and implement communities. long-term strategies, (pg^ i?i£Vir'Loi=wi£kv -jftSBoarss 46 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 19! Drought and the Economy Johan vanZyl, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Pretoria The third in this series of Indicator SA articles (see Bernstein, Adams here) focuses on the effects of the drought on commercial agriculture, rural communities, subsistence farmers and the economy as a whole, as well as specific impacts on growth, income, expenditure and employment. It also briefly evaluates the effects of rural restructuring on the impact of future droughts. The article is based on several reports on the drought, including two recent studies by the South African Reserve Bank and the Development Bank of Southern Africa. outh Africa has recently experienced The impact of drought has also to be S(and in some areas is still assessed against the current extent of experiencing) one of the severest droughts poverty in South Africa. An estimated 42% of the past century. Agricultural production of the population live below the poverty in the summer rainfall regions has been line; 40% of working age people have no markedly lower than expected in a normal formal job; and less than 10% of new What about the rainfall year. Although the relative entrants to the job market can find a formal plight of the poor contribution of the agricultural sector to job. This means that even if drought is not communities Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has in itself a major problem, it may be the last who have no declined sharply since the 1960s, straw for many communities which are organised voice, agriculture still plays a prominent role in already at the limits of survival. lhe economy. The drought thus not only nor structures in influences the economy via its direct effect The prospects for improvement over the place to ensure on the agricultural sector, but also through short-term are not good with negative per that their needs the linkages of agriculture with the rest of capita 'growth' in the South African are recognised llic economy. economy. We need to look to the welfare of and met? the poor beyond the immediate period of The drought affects different communities drought. Much of the grinding poverty that in different ways. Farmers, for instance, are lies behind these figures is hidden in the particularly vulnerable. It takes only a homelands. month or two of low rainfall to destroy dryland crops in farmers' fields. This is a risk that South African farmers face on a regular basis every "season; it is one for which they (should) plan either by ensuring The impact of the drought on poor rural that they have sufficient savings or by communities and subsistence farmers has taking out some form of insurance. been very different to that of the commercial agricultural sector. The issue is Commercial farmers, however, have one not really one of production losses, but one important resource - their effective political of the human impact. For poor people, this lobbies. For this reason, concern should be translates into decreased levels of focused upon the plight of the poor employment, income, food, nutrition and communities who, in many cases, have no health. organised voice, nor structures in place to ensure that their needs are recognised and While the aggregate production losses in met. terms of crops, livestock, portable water INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 47 ®Bim<§#{ifiBKriF 'BTSBK)®© Drought may be supplies, etc., are not as large as those of diarrhoea, for instance) as well as more the commercial sector, they form a vital serious diseases transmitted in the absence the last straw for part of the rural household's entitlement or of safe water - such as typhoid and cholera. many ability to obtain food. The impact of this While there are reports of sporadic cases of communities loss in terms of survival is therefore crucial. cholera, what is clear is that the general which are health of the population - and of children in already at the It is often mistakenly assumed that the particular - has deteriorated in areas whnv people are hungry and have inadequate limits of survival self-provision of food can be equated with security of food supply. People in the water supplies. so-called 'rural areas' cannot support themselves by subsistence farming alone. Most affected by these problems are Research indicates that a high percentage of communities in the homelands; commercial rural households are in fact net consumers farmers usually have resources to ensure of food, even though many of them are that domestic supplies at least are engaged in food-crop agriculture. Sales of maintained. There are unfortunately no food are also highly skewed with a small soundly based estimates at national level of minority of households accounting for the scale of the problem. What makes the more than 80 per cent of the sales. Certain poor particularly vulnerable is not just that areas are now totally reliant on outside they lack resources. They neither have the assistance. Livestock losses in these rural political lobbying power nor the structures areas are particularly severe (up to 60 per to ensure that their needs are recognised cent in certain areas), due to the poor and met. condition of rangelands and overstocking. It is important also to dispel the myth that people in these so-called 'rural areas' (many of them are better described as There is a distinct difference between 'displaced urban areas') support themselves famine (as a result of, for example, drought by subsistence farming. In only a few areas or floods), and the quieter and more are there natural resources to allow the persistent phenomenon of regular majority of families to live off the land. The under-nutrition and deprivation, both from main sources of income for South Africa's the view of diagnosis and action. It is, rural poor are remittances from the cities, therefore, instructive to view the pensions and, for a small minority, consequences of the drought on agriculture, The impact of homeland salaries. Because they have no the environment, and rural people in a the drought on access to productive resources - or to jobs national context of endemic under-nutril ion employment is in the productive economy - they are and poverty. compounded by desperately dependent on the fortunes and The drought certainly has had a negative the national misfortunes of others. Informal security systems are important, but are insufficient impact on the other, already struggling, employment if the entire community is affected. sectors of the economy. This is in terms of crisis agriculture's decreased contribution to the The impact of the drought on employment national economy as well as a further in! ln\ is compounded by the national employment of rural people into the urban areas. crisis and the decreasing potential for However, the ongoing national economic self-employment. The consequence of problem, while further exacerbating the economic crisis and drought may be impact of the drought (lack of markets for measured in terms of unemployment and agricultural produce, etc.), is in itself a far income statistics; the real measure of its greater cause of poverty than the drought. impact is in terms of food, nutrition and what it does to the ability of people to feed Employment losses in the agricultural themselves. One reality we face is that sector should be compared with the job millions of South Africans face hunger. losses in other sectors such as mining and The other is that we do not know how many manufacturing. Official unemployment is in are threatened. the region of 20 per cent, but 42 per cent or five million people cannot find employment What drought has done is to make some in the formal sector. Ninety per cent of the people more vulnerable to hunger; it is not 300 000 annual new entrants into the clear that, in itself, it is the major cause of formal job market cannot be absorbed each hunger, simply a contributing factor and, year. This far exceeds labour displacement for many families, the last straw. as a result of the drought. Drought-related health problems, apart from nutrition, include diseases caused by In previous droughts, the majority of rural lack of cleanliness (many kinds of families had access to migrant remittances. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 48 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 r%Mh BASE This source of income is much less reliable. The number of people requiring assistance can be estimated according to two norms. The Drought and Commercial Agriculture According to income norms, about 17 million people (42 per cent) have an The 1991/92 drought has had a severe impact on commercial income lower than the minimum agriculture in South Africa through reduced rain-fed crop yields, subsistence level in 1990. The current reduced availability of water for irrigation, the reduced capacity of drought has therefore exacerbated the rangelands to support grazing, and the lack of drinking water for existing and persistent structural problems livestock. The statistical indicators show that: in the national economy. • South Africa needs 6,5 million tons of maize per annum whereas the crop estimate for 1992 is 2,4 million tons, with only 1,4 million tons delivered to the Maize Board - import ££acro-Eo>nomic Impact costs amount to approximately R2,2 billion. Agriculture's direct contribution to GDP • The wheat crop was 1,2 million tons which necessitated has varied between 5 per cent and 7,3 per imports of 1 million tons at a cost of R550 million. cent over the previous ten years. Although • The production of grain sorghum in 1991/92 was 95 000 the agricultural sector's relative tons whereas domestic consumption during 1990/91 contribution to GDP is small and still totalled 283 000 tons. declining, it nevertheless plays an important role in the creation of wealth in South • The production of sunflower seeds for 1991/92 is 173 000 tons as against 589 000 tons in 1990/91 and 559 000 tons Africa, specifically in the rural areas. in 1989/90. The share of agricultural production in total • The wool-clip decreased from 101,7 million kg in 1990/91 to output has been severely affected at times 77,75 million kg in 1991/92. h\ poor weather conditions and droughts. In • The sugar crop dropped to 1,7 million tons from 2,3 million 1992 the drought and the expected poor tons. harvest of summer crops not only led to a further decline in the contribution of Impact on Livestock agriculture to GDP, but it also causes a lower-than-expected economic growth rate. The impact of the drought on livestock numbers is partially hidden It is well known that the agricultural sector by the long-term herd cycle: has very important linkage and multiplier • Since reaching a low of 7,8 million in 1986, the cattle herd effects on the rest of the economy. is expected to increase to 8,85 million this year as part of a trend likely to peak at 10 million in 1996. '\'he forward linkages originate from the • The 28,6 million sheep herd (1991) is expected to decrease agricultural sector's delivery of a wide to 28,5 million this year, and peak at 31 million in 1996. range of raw materials to the secondary sectors. A report by the Economic Advisory • These averages, however, exclude the TBVC areas Council of the State President indicates that (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei) and according to the input-output table of the disguise the fact that certain areas experienced severe national economy, approximately 58 per losses. cent of the value of agricultural production • Losses in certain of the rural areas was as high as 60%. was delivered to secondary industries for This had a devastating effect on rural households that further processing, whereas the delivery of depend on their livestock for survival. agricultural production to processing • Livestock are furthermore not only held as capital to industries amounted to 8,2 per cent of the generate economic growth in these areas, but also to total value of manufacturing production. satisfy a complex set of socio-cultural needs. The backward linkages with other sectors arise from the fact that the agricultural sector is an impprtapt purchaser of the sectors of the economy can be calculated by products and services of other sectors. The means of sectoral multipliers. The manufacturers of livestock feed, fertilisers, agricultural multiplier has been calculated insecticides, agricultural machinery and as 1,6, which means that for every implements can be singled out as fairly R1 million of agricultural production, exclusively dependent on sales to farmers. additional output amounting to R600 000 I f production in the agricultural sector will be generated in all the other sectors should decline because of drought together. This multiplier is calculated as an conditions, this will inevitably influence average for the country as a whole, but it activity in these industries. may differ considerably for different regions, depending on the importance of The total impact of changes in the agriculture in a particular region. It is thus production of one sector on the other possible that the multiplier could be larger t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss49 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 For every in rural areas that are mainly dependent on direct impact on economic growth. Because R1 million of agriculture. it requires inputs, such as machinery and implements and chemicals, from other agricultural In order to determine the effect of the sectors and, in turn, provides inputs in nihL.r production, drought on the main economic aggregates, sectors, e.g. food processing, it also a fl eets additional output a baseline simulation based on the the economy in indirect ways. The amounting to assumption of a normal agricultural year is estimated decline in farm income and R600 000 will be compared with an alternative simulation associated decline in the profits of related generated in all taking drought conditions into industries would have had a negative e licet on personal disposable income per capita in the other sectors consideration. In the baseline simulation the gross value added by the agricultural South Africa of approximately R70 ( hy together sector is presumed to be determined by the multiplier effect above). long-term growth trend of 2,5 per cent per annum. Under normal conditions The lower personal disposable income per agricultural production meets most capita would inevitably lead to lower domestic requirements, which means that private consumption expenditure. there is little need to import agricultural Furthermore, the higher inflation rate as a products. result of the drought, especially increased food prices, would also have an adverse The South African Reserve Bank gave a effect on private consumption expenditure. statistical account on the macro-economic Between January and October 1992, the effects of the drought (June 1992), through price of vegetables increased by an a\ erage the simulation of a 14 per cent decrease in of 31,5% and milk and fresh eggs by 17.5V; agricultural output on their macro- compared to the figures for the same period economic model. in 1991. The possible effects of the drought in 1992 It is thus clear that drought affects included: household food security very directl>. ()n the supply side, South Africa was able to » the economic growth rate might have supplement its food supplies by imports, been 1,8 percentage points lower as a thus ensuring the availability of food. result of the drought; However, on the demand side, many » as many as 69 000 job opportunities households' food security, in both mi al and might have become redundant; urban areas, were threatened because of The economic ® the inflation rate (measured by the their decreased incomes and/or higher growth rate consumer price index) could have been prices of food. might have been approximately 0,8 percentage points 1,8 percentage higher than it would have been during a About 49 000 job opportunities would lui\ e been lost in the agricultural sector diiriiK points lower in normal rainfall year; ® the surplus on the current account of the 1992, apart from the 20 000 job losses ii'i 1992 as a result balance of payments might have been other sectors associated with agriculi inc. If of the drought Rl,2 billion lower due to a rise in food the dependents of people losing their jobs imports and a decline in food exports; in the agricultural sector are also taken into and account, about 245 000 people would have ® the drought would have tightened the v been forced to find another livelihood or overall financial position of farmers, become dependent on the state for transfer business enterprises associated with the payments. farming industry and government. Lastly, although it is difficult to determine the number of people who migrated to urban areas on account of the drought, it could have contributed to an increase in the These macro-economic indicators give an rate of urbanisation over the short term. indication of the impact of the drought on This would have exerted even more the whole economy. It does not, however, pressure on the already short supply of give an indication of how it actually affects housing and urban infrastructure. individuals or communities. Some communities are more vulnerable to the Apart from the Nutritional Development impact of drought than others. The fact is Programme for which R440 million was that we are all influenced by the drought, in budgeted in 1992/93, the central one way or another. government has also allocated an amount of about R4 billion to farmers for financial For instance, a decline in production in the assistance. The opportunity cost of the agricultural sector does not only have a latter amount is huge. In the absence of the t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 50 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 agricultural sector. Its influence is felt in l,-(,u"ht. the R4 billion could have been Comparative spcnuiltematively. Rough calculations terms of inter alia job losses and lower advantages and incomes, higher prices, particularly for indicate that for this amount 170 000 market classrooms could have been built or about food, and foregone economic opportunities 53 } 000 serviced sites (at a cost of R7 500 due to state expenditure that has to be principles are per unit) could have been provided. This allocated to ensure national and individual playing an [ides not take into account the thousands of food security. increasingly jobs that could have been generated by the important role in pro\ i s i on of such infrastructure. The impact of the 1992 drought is the South obviously severe and especially harmful to African economy the producers of summer crops. Although the agricultural sector's contribution to the and specifically Gross Domestic Product has declined agriculture The commercial agricultural sector is continually since the 1960s, it nevertheless undergoing a restructuring phase which is still plays a very important role in South linked to the unsustainability of the current Africa's national economy, especially system in terms of economic, political, because of its interdependence with the financial and ecological principles. It is other sectors. clear that comparative advantages and market principles are playing an The results obtained with the macro- increasingly important role in the South econometric model of the Reserve Bank African economy and specifically indicate that the average inflation rate agriculture. This has already impacted could be approximately 0,8 percentage heavily on the structure of agriculture and points higher as a result of lower will continue to do so in the near future. agricultural production. Although most These trends of rural restructuring will food prices probably increased at a faster receixe new impetus once a political rate because of the restricted supply of settlement has been reached. agricultural products, meat prices usually tend to rise at a slower rate and may even Deregulation and market liberalisation have decline during periods of drought. Meat had major effects on commercial prices may, however, start affecting agriculture: crop production has shifted consumer prices at a later stage when eastw ards to the higher rainfall areas; grazing conditions improve again. li\eMuck production is taking place on marginal crop land; agriculture has The direct negative effect of R2,1 billion on These trends of intensified considerably in especially higher the current account balance as a result of rural potential areas; and farm sizes seem to have the lower maize crop could be partly restructuring will decreased. Where commercial agriculture neutralised by a decline in imports because receive new was e\ tremely rigid at the beginning of the of the lower level of economic activity. impetus once a I Win. this movement towards free market This, together with the lower exports of political principles in agriculture has drastically agricultural products, could result in a net increased the responsiveness of agriculture, negative effect of approximately R1 200 settlement has especially in the grain sectors. This is million on the current account, which could been reached adequately illustrated by the increase in be further affected by the adverse effect of elasticities of substitution between the the drought on agricultural products other major inputs such as labour, land, than maize. machinery and energy from 1980 to 1990. The drought will not only tighten the The increased responsiveness and overall financial position of farmers, but flexibility of agriculture to changes in also that of the government and other prices of inputs and outputs will also impact business enterprises associated with the positively on the sector's ability to both farming industry. The Minister of counter the negative effects of drought and Agriculture has already granted additional revive itself after severe drought. This will financial aid to farmers for the next three decrease the adverse impact of drought on years. This demonstrates the fact that the the economy and agriculture in particular. drought not only has a once-off impact on the economy, but that its effect will still be It is clear that the drought has influenced all felt in forthcoming years. South Africans, not only those in the INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 51 IDtlV/aiy3)Pftffl!ID8¥ mSBCSlDS Prayer for Raiabn7 The loss of livestock is, however, predicated on the condition of the veld. Reports from all but one district (Ganyesa) reported that grazing conditions were fair to poor, deteriorating or in a bad condition during the III height of the 1992 drought. It has been estimated, moreover, that the region is some 55% over-grazed - with a theoretical long-term carrying capacity of 450 000, livestock numbers currently approach 700 000. Although figures for subsistence farmers are difficult to obtain, recent estimates indicate that the Colleen Vogel, Department of Geography, subsistence sector holds about 470 000 livestock University of the Witwatersrand (Bophuthatswana Planning Division, 1992). The drought has revealed the parlous state of Drought impacts in Bophuthatswana, as in other areas agriculture and government management in several where several households are engaged in subsistence of the black rural areas and the 'homelands'. This production, often merely draws attention to the case study of drought relief initiatives in endemic problems of the region. The lack of rainfall Bophuthatswana highlights the tensions that can therefore is only a facet of the overall picture. develop between official and community perceptions Although much has been made of the impacts of the of appropriate coping strategies. recent drought, it is the evaluation and analysis of the response to drought that very often receives little attention. Yet it is precisely this issue that will assist he droughts of the 1980s and 1990s have in better drought management in the future. Tresulted in the reduction of water levels in dams and a much reduced national maize yield. Descriptions of the physical characteristics of droughts very often, however, mask the social and human faces of such events. The impact of the Ad-hoc drought committees were initiated in drought is usually aggravated in poorer, rural Bophuthatswana to try and relieve problems households. Another dimension of the drought, until encountered during the droughts of the 1980s and recently often overlooked, has been the revelation of 1990s. It involved the expansion of the state initiative poor management, including national drought and into Thusano, a parastatal body controlled by the local farm management. Bophuthatswana administration, which included a multi-faceted drought relief initiative including food Rainfall in Bophuthatswana is erratic, often occurring relief to over 12 500 families, water relief, in short thundershowers in the summer months. labour-based relief programmes and agricultural Drought years, often prolonged, are a frequent assistance. phenomenon and have occurred regularly in the past, most notable being the droughts of the 1930s, 1960s, These initiatives were commendable but several 1980s and that of the 1990s. problems arose, partly as a result of crisis management schemes and the lack of a detailed The prevalence of drought usually accentuates the understanding of the drought phenomena. problem of poor water supply in many of the rural areas of Bophuthatswana. Problems, although not Firstly, the management of drought as seen by several unique to this region, include the long distances that governments, not least that in Bophuthatswana, is have to be traversed to obtain water, the drying up of seen as a temporary affair that is usually countered boreholes (often ascribable to poor maintenance) and with crisis management (Vogel and Drummond, the problem of varying prices that can be paid for 1993). The formation of 'ad-hoc' committees in times water which can lend itself to exploitation of rural of drought are fraught with problems, such as poor (IDRR, 1986). bureaucratic matters, that often delay relief intervention: The loss of a household's livelihood, such as It should be recognised that employment through livestock and maize, is also a well-known factor selection in districts took a very long time to take off. during drought periods, although precise estimates of It was at the peak of the feeding scheme that selection the magnitude of the problem are difficult to for employment had to be embarked upon. ascertain. While the efforts of the Department of Understandably social workers were busy with Health and other social workers appeared to be feeding and could not pause to complete the reaching those in need of assistance during the employment survey . drought the position was much worse with cattle, a (National Disaster Drought Committee, 1992:4) valuable resource to rural households: Large numbers of cattle are being fed at own cost by Intervention moreover, though well-intentioned is villagers. Alongside the road, the desert look of the often haphazard and lacks focus. Firstly, it can also veld and the carcasses bear evidence of the impact on often create feelings of dependency amongst the the rural economy (Prinsloo, 1992). recipients of drought relief, by delivering food aid t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 52 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 d then removing it when good rains return. Large 3 Drought Impacts mounts of drought aid are also usually required but in Molopo and Ditsobotla during 1992/1993 drought these assistance measures are frequently written off when the crisis has passed. Cattle loss Numbers of Numbers of people on people in The second, but most important, problem in feeding schemes1 employemnt understanding the enigma of drought in several scheme southern African countries is that there is official Ditsobotla 2 366 21 581 67 confusion as to what constitutes drought relief and what constitutes development. A socio-economic Molopo 2 280 18 305 1 056 survey of destitute households (Drought Relief Total 20 9012 104 582 9 165 Office, 1987), for example, noted that some of the problems of the rural destitute in Bophuthatswana Source: Drought Relief Report, Mmbhato included job opportunities, improved water supplies, Note: ' Figures for Jan/Feb 1993 2 Figures for June 1992 - Feb 1993 arable land, access to education and better health facilities. These problems remain and precede droughts and are not caused by them but are merely income and survival in the face of increasingly severe exacerbated by such phenomena. external stress need to be explored (Cekan, 1990:5/6). As a result of this dilemma, the Thusano operation, Furthermore, the role of several socio-political factors although a very valuable initiative, encountered have served to change these coping strategies through bureaucratic difficulties. In fact, after a lengthy court time, while gender differences in coping strategies case, several of Thusano's activities were also occur. The issues influencing drought coping discontinued: strategies are poorly understood and require further State officials having special knowledge of the analysis and investigation. company were firmly of the view that other departments of State were carrying out the company's objectives cincl projects such as "Drought Relief" and that because of lack of resources its future existence was no longer necessary; they were of the opinion In order to illustrate the need for a greater that the company should be placed under final understanding of local drought coping strategies in liquidation in that the very reason for its existence Bophuthatswana the case of two village communities, had fallen away (SA Law'Reports, 1992:553). Disaneng (Molopo district) and Kunana (Ditsobotla) are briefly examined here (see tables). A longitudinal r ''ikM© H _ — - - - - - survey of these two villages was undertaken, Drought Coping Strategies of householders in Disaneng embracing the droughts of the 1980s (Freeman, MA (Molopo) and Kunana (Ditsobotla) during 1992 drought Wits, 1988) and 1990s (Vogel, PhD Wits, 1993). YEAR VILLAGE COPING STRATEGY These villages are characterised by a semi-arid No Strategy Pray Sell stock Govt aid climate. Dryland and livestock farming are the main 1990s Disaneng 78% ' 72% 22% 26% agricultural activities practised. Although several Kunana 30% 78% 68% 54% households engage in these activities, with livestock ownership being common (previous estimates Note: These coping strategies were ranked in order of first choice and so on. The notion of a linear, organised series of coping options in the face of harsh droughts, indicating that at least half of survey sample owned as mentioned in literature for elsewhere in Africa, does not occur in this case. Rather strategies are location/regionally specific. The choice of coping mechanism livestock, whereas less than 20% engaged in crop is influenced by variables peculiar to these areas while the role of violence as a cultivation) variations do occur. The presence of the deterent in migration options cannot be underestimated. Mooifontien Co-op near Kunana, for example, has Source: Vogel CH. Consequences of droughts in southern Africa (1960-1992), had an influence on the number of crop farmers in the unpublished PhD thesis in preparation, University of the Witwatersrand, 1993. area. Thirdly, investigations of local, community coping Some of the results indicate that, firstly, mechanisms indicate that greater knowledge and notwithstanding the drought intervention of the 1980s understanding of these is required to ensure adequate and the 1990s by the government, the communities drought relief. Many rural African communities have indicated that they lacked the ability to collectively lived with the legacy of drought and related impacts mobilise themselves around drought. This is not to for millennia. Those living in drought prone areas, say that they have no coping mechanisms but that moreover, have developed coping mechanisms but it these tend to be unorganised. Apathetic and often is argued that failure to access and understand these pathetic responses revealed that the local community may explain the ineffectiveness of relief and either do not know what to do during a crisis situation development aid: such as drought or resort to prayer as their first option To resolve the problem of coping mechanisms (see table one). More than 70% of the respondents, endangering long-term survival, we need to know during both the 1980s and the 1990s drought, much more about "traditional" coping strategies ... indicated that they have no drought coping strategy Indigenous systems of knowledge for maintaining and that their first option is to pray. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss53 INDICATO R SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 These findings were borne out in other community The indications of drought coping strategies during responses to drought such as in the north-eastern periods of crisis have been a more valuable product Transvaal. Cattle farmers in the Western region of of the research. While much is known of such Bophuthatswana also indicated similar coping strategies in the rest of Africa, including areas to the responses, particularly the primary option of prayer. north of South Africa, little local detailed knowledge- Factors mitigating against the sale of cattle during is available. Communities in rural areas, even where- 1992 included the optimism of sellers that conditions well-intentioned drought relief has been devised, would improve: appear to lack any ability to actively mobilise The realisation of impending disaster as so strongly themselves around droughts. expressed at Head Office, has not fully dawned on the cattle owners. Even as they withdraw animals from Traditional coping strategies have been eroded sale, their sentiments seemed to express two kinds of through time. Even though recourse can be made to sentimen ts. Hope that things would change for the official relief measures, the overwhelming responses better. A number of sellers held the view that through to drought appear to be that communities do not prayers they would make it rain and that they were know what to do in a crisis situation and that several prepared for the worst... if it so happens that there is resort to prayer as a first option. While individual no grazing left he could still eat the animal. households exhibit coping mechanisms such as (Tube, 1992:6). seeking alternative local work, digging wells for water, selling cattle and seeking help from official Over time, notwithstanding the efforts from the sources, the majority indicated that they remain government, it would appear that the villagers essentially powerless during droughts. interviewed have not been able to become more 'drought proof'. The results were in fact surprisingly Food security is an important issue in South Africa, similar for both surveys, both that undertaken in 1982 particularly for rural households. Issues such as and 1992, although it would appear as if the presence effective targeting of households, efficient and of a cooperative, access to credit and other support reliable methods of identifying those in need and has enabled some of the households of Kunana to gender differences remain high on research agendas. begin to better equip themselves against drought. Through all this, however, one needs to be extremely sensitive to the local community responses. Secondly, the poor economy and violence detracted from the often cited migration option. This The need to look within, at how local communities mechanism was not high on the list of coping have responded and are responding to times of crisis, strategies, with several of the respondents preferring such as drought, rather than how outside agencies can to 'sit out' the drought. Such tendencies are not deliver, must always be borne in mind. unique to these communities. Research elsewhere in Community-based strategies need to be understood the country and in neighbouring countries such as and enhanced and/or developed. Initiatives underway Zimbabawe report similar patterns. Indications from to survey rural communities to establish indicators of surveys undertaken in squatter settlements in the poverty, although useful, may therefore miss a great PWV, for example, also seem to indicate that the deal if drought coping mechanisms, both those used influx of migrants from rural areas occurred prior to in the past and those of the present are overlooked. the drought periods of the 1980s and not as a direct consequence of the dry period. The research findings in this case study suggest that even though official relief mechanisms have been in place during periods of crisis, these could have been improved if a greater understanding of local Evaluation community coping mechanisms had been more Droughts are regular features of the South African constantly and effectively monitored and evaluated. QMS! landscape. Severe drought periods, including devastating 'back-on-back' droughts have occurred in References the 1980s and 1990s. While several of the impacts of Cekan J. 'The use of traditional coping strategies during famine in sub-saharan Africa1, Drought Network News, 1990:2,3,5-6. the most recent drought have not become visible and Drought Relief Office, Institute of Development Research and the Department of Health and may be delayed, research into local communities Social Welfare, Socio-economic Survey of Destitute Households, Bophuthatswana, 1987. indicates that the impacts have been marked. Institute of Development Research and Human Relief. Workshop on the Destitute Household in Bophuthatswana, 17-18 November 1986, St, Mary's Mission, Lomanyeng. Some of the impacts of tlie drought for two villages National Disaster Drought Committee. Bophuthatswana Drought Employment Scheme, Mimeo, Mmabatho, 1992. have been identified in this case study. While the Planning Division. Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Bophuthatswana, surveys were small, covering only approximately 100 Bophuthatswana National Agricultural Policy, September 1992, Mmabatho. households in both villages, the results indicate that Prinsloo H. Bophuthatswana drought assessment, Memorandum, 16 October 1992, the removal of valuable subsistence back-ups such as Development Bank of Southern Africa. cattle and food have occurred as a result of the Tube J. A brief study of the status of the cattle market in the Western Region, Mimeo, drought (see table two). These impacts have, Development Research. Mmabatho: Agricor, 1992. however, been predicated on a poor supply of water SA Law reports. Pienaar v Thusano Foundation and Another, 1992 (2) SA 552, Juta: 552-593. in the area. Vogel C and Drummond J. 'Dimensions of drought: South African case studies', GeoJournal, 1993:30,85-98. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 54 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 he American philosopher Robert TNozick once remarked that the trouble with frameworks of reference and method is that they define and therefore limit the scope of ideas. Hence one is sometimes reduced to squeezing and prodding ideas in an energetic attempt to get them to fit within the confines of one's framework, and a certain amount of distortion is regrettably inevitable. The beauty of mentalite as a method of assisting or even enhancing understanding of what one might call 'the African situation' or 'African systems', is its conceptual fluidity which enables it to defy distortion. Mentalite has been variously described as a set of attitudes; as ideas - or feelings - or beliefs; as spiritual values; as conceptual apparatus - as mental Africa, a equipment; as a mode of thought - a continent which cognitive map. It can also be described as a refuses to be way of life based on any or all of these items. kicked into shape, whether Mentalite is a concept pioneered and the boot is developed by the Annales school of Marxist or historians (1929 onwards) as part of a new Liberal, capitalist approach to history - an approach which or socialist was formulated as a reaction against analyses of history which focus on great leaders/great events/great civilisations/great Pl)AT)C001S historical and economic laws and so forth. It is a search for real people and their function in history through an examination of their daily lives, their habits, their belief t o cbe systems, and the way in which they adapt to (accept/reject/modify) their economic and (DfRROR political environments. This approach to history inevitably involves the Annalistes in a variety of other social sciences. Wherever the words 'mentality' Alison Jones, Department of Political or 'mentalities' are found, wherever there is an emphasis on the importance of value Studies, University of Natal, systems and mental perceptions, the Pietermaritizburg influence of the Annales school may be discerned. The "new South Africa" is a mythical nation in The philosophical stance of the Annalistes is, in essence, as follows: as much as it exists in people's minds but • economic factors do not dominate not, as yet, in reality. When it does exist in society to the extent postulated by the reality, to what extent will it be the product of Marxists (or indeed by any school of planning and of policy, and to what extent the thought which focuses on economics); creation of "mentalities", combining past and « conflict between groups is not merely present modes of thought and ways of life to economic but a conflict of thoughts and feelings as well; shape the future? Alison Jones philosophises ® spiritual attitudes and values should not on the role of value systems in changing be reduced to mere manifestations of government and society in Africa. economic change. As Le Goff (1974:79) remarks: In the mirror which the study of economics INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 57 ©BIMBO trtSBCfllDg The 'new South offered society, one was only able to see a between different modes of thought. At th funeral of Chris Hani, the Archbishop f Africa'stands as faint reflection of abstract schemes rather 0 than well defined outlines of real people. the Anglican Church behaved in a way an apt concrete which shocked some (conservative) metaphor for The task of analysis is not to explain human Anglicans; nevertheless he is the head of Africa - more phenomena in terms of this or that the Church and as such he symbolises a fiction than fact developmental stage, this or that mode of blend of mentalities which has created a and trading in production, but to understand societies and unique form of Anglicanism. One could see Archbishop Tutu as a living image of the hope and epochs in an imaginative and empathetic way. The Crusades, for instance, would be 'new South Africa'. promises perceived as a collective religious mentality, focused on the image of Mentalite, in its imprecision and fluidity, its Jerusalem ... the Medieval mentality/the resistance to the imposition of structure and idea of service would be emphasised as method, is an apt conceptual metaphor for intrinsic to an understanding of the Feudal Africa, a continent which refuses to be system ... Capitalism would be made kicked into shape, whether the boot is explicable (as Max Weber demonstrated) in Marxist or Liberal, capitalist or socialist - terms of the Protestant ethic. and it seems to me that Nozick would appreciate the irony of the term 'structural In this way, history is seen as a set of adjustment'. unique contributions of the human mind, on different levels, at different times, Sub-saharan Africa is neither definitively interacting (whether by consensus or European nor definitively African. Colonial conflict) to produce a result (that is, a systems were by definition separate from different society at a different time) which the systems in Europe which spawned them is greater than the sum of its parts. Such an - and the post-colonial systems are not analysis is holistic as opposed to African in the true or traditional sense. mechanistic. African states define themselves in terms of one political ideology or another, one economic system or another, yet the concept 'African state' is itself an interesting blend of fact and fiction. The co-founders of the Annales school, Territorial boundaries were arbitrarily Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, provided imposed by the colonial powers and Territorial illustrations of the impact of mentalite on national unity is correspondingly boundaries were history. A river - one of Febvre's favourite undermined by ethnic differences and cleavages. arbitrarily examples - might be treated by one society imposed by the as a barrier, but as a route by another. In the final analysis it was not the physical A system in a condition of precarious colonial powers, environment that determined the collective balance, as many African systems are, and national choice but people - their ways of life and tends to define itself not in terms of what it unity is their attitudes (Burke: 1990:15). is, but in terms of what it would like to be - undermined by and here the 'new South Africa' stands as ethnic Bloch's best known book, The Royal an apt concrete metaphor for Africa. More ( fiction than fact and trading in hope and differences and Touch, examined the medieval belief that the king's touch gave healing, and came to promises. Yet the power of the idea cleavages the conclusion that the mentality of a 'great transfixes us all. man' is precisely that which he has in common with the people. Closer to home, to take an African example of mentalite in action, Cetshwayo is quoted as having said What is C5vilis@d? to the Lutheran missionaries (on the matter The phenomenon of colonialism has been of redemption): explicitly analysed in terms of mentalities We do not resemble you in living, so why in opposition: the mode of thought and way should we resemble you in dying? of life of the coloniser vs. that of the (Oschadleus: 1993:97). colonised. Perceptions of 'otherness' have been imposed on colonised people, The Zulus had no concept of heaven and reflecting not the reality of the other but the hell. To them, death was the inevitable reality of self. As JN Pieterse (1992:232) punishment for sins (equally inevitable) remarks: committed during life. The way in which An ideology of alter involves an ideology of the Christian religion has developed in ego. Representations of otherness are Africa and taken unique form can best be therefore also indirectly representations of understood in terms of the interplay self. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 58 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 French colonies; African Socialism in Pieterse suggests that the origin of the The colonisation ae or concept of civilisation arose as a Tanzania which, in its philosophical of Africa would 'cess of opposition to that which was underpinning, depicts a 'golden age' not have been if fined as not civilised. Terms which have Africa; the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa ... these are all illustrative achieved without been used to denigrate the colonised the invention of eoples and justify the imposition of alien of the African perception of a mental war ''lie are to be found in the history of Europe waged against them by the European the machine gun nd in the way that Europeans defined colonisers. themselves and distinguished 'the other'. Xhe first recorded distinction was made by the Greeks as a way of separating themselves from other peoples in general Liberation wars are fought on two fronts; and the Persians in particular. A similar and the mentalities front, freeing the mind distinction was later made between people from a condition of inferiority, is at its most who were part of the Roman Empire and explicit in the writing of Frantz Fanon. people who were not - and later between the Saxon mainstream in Europe and the Fanon worked for a time as a psychiatrist in Celtic fringe: the 'wild Irish', the 'barbaric an Algerian hospital. In the condition of the Scots' and so on. A distinction which, in its mentally ill he diagnosed a deep seated original form, referred to the frontier psychological neurosis implanted, as it between cultivated and uncultivated land were, by colonialism. In his letter of (the forests and the mountains, inhabited by resignation to the colonial government he mythical beasts and half-human creatures) noted that there existed a massive degree of was translated into a distinction between alienation among the indigenous cultures. population; he wrote of a mental state of absolute depersonalisation. These attitudes and relations between societies, pioneered and developed in Fanon's books were based on the case Europe, were subsequently used to define histories of his patients and the notes he relations between the European and the made during consultation and treatment. non-European world. Terra mdlius, usually Among the conclusions he drew, one is interpreted as meaning uncultivated land, vital to my thesis: ultimately, colonial became, as it had in European territory, a power does not depend on military and mental image which justified invasion, administrative structures; it depends upon Colonial wars in conquest and the subjection of one people the creation of a certain attitude in the Africa have been by another. Pieterse quotes Beloc: minds of the colonised people, that is, an fought as much 'Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim attitude of subjection. (Fanon: 1969). His on the gun, and they have not'. solution - 'purification through violence' - is challenged by Gandhi's opposite solution battleground of The colonisation of Africa would not have to the same problem. mentalite as on been achieved without the invention of the the military machine gun. The definition of If violence starts in the mind and is battleground 'civilisation', it seems, rests in the final perpetuated through mental exchange, then analysis on military technology. I am using the same methods as the coloniser civilised because I can kill ten people at one merely serves to recreate a cycle of time (or millions, as the case may be); you violence in which different people use force are not civilised because you can only kill at a different time but otherwise nothing one person at one time. This, at any rate, is much has changed. Any rejection of Pieterse's argument. Whether or not one colonialism must of necessity include a agrees with him, it is true, I think, that rejection of violent attitudes because it is colonial wars in Africa have been fought as our attitudes which construct our behaviour. much on the battleground of mentalite as on Liberation without freedom from violence is the military battleground. colonialism by another name - and this point is not disputed by Fanon in as much The European perception of the 'other' was as he believed that colonialism in its wider imposed on the African as his or her context is the exploitation of man by man. perception of self. The psychological or mental component of colonialism was as To elaborate: if we take the point of view important as any other component, if not that race is a social construction and all more so - as testified by the schools of human behaviour is cultural in character, thought in Africa which have arisen in then the racial component to colonialism reaction to the European perception of what was never a reality, it was no more than a it is to be African. Negritude in the former justification. In which case it follows that INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 59 IMSIMK) IfGSEGflfDS The end of other justifications will do just as well. I am We do not resemble you in living; why colonial rule entitled to dominate and rule over you by should we resemble you in living? enabled African virtue of my age/gender/nationality/ethnic Africa is par excellence the continent of group, or by virtue of my education/ elites to exploit conflicting realities. Where once there was the people with socio-economic status etc. conflict between the realities of coloniser all the ruthless In a continuum of inequality and and colonised, now there is conflict arrogance of the exploitation, racism is one of the more between the realities of rulers and ruled - colonisers objectionable manifestations but it is hardly elite and masses - government and people unique. Any analysis of post-colonial Army coups, assassinations and so forth are African states should not give so much perhaps no more than the dressing on top of weight to the elimination of racism that a profound resistance to forms of rule other factors are, if not discounted, at least which have not taken root in the minds of overshadowed and pushed into the the ruled. background. It should be acknowledged that discrimination of various sorts has Mentalite has been widely used by hidden behind the euphoria attendant on the historians of the Annales school and by end of colonial (racist) rule, enabling theorists who lean towards the Annalistes, African elites to exploit the people with all to explain the phenomenon of collective the ruthless arrogance of the colonisers. resistance in its various forms: religious; ritualistic or symbolic; active (revolts and The attitude of subjection described by uprisings); passive (the withdrawal of Fanon has been perpetuated to serve the cooperation). interests of Black elites, and the two opposing modes of thought which Le Roy Ladurie (1981) describes the clash characterised the colonial era, namely between the ideology of Catholicism and modes of domination and modes of the mentalite of heresy in 14th century defiance, have also been perpetuated in the France. He notes that when Catharism post-colonial era, along with the violence of began to spread, the dominating ideology repression and resistance. could no longer tolerate it and the suppression of heresy achieved that The models which have been deployed to refinement of cruelty which is the speciality explain the fragile nature of the African of the elite which believes itself to be state, the precarious relationship between seriously threatened. The new state and society, the crisis of legitimation missionaries are and the resort to force as an habitual Burke (1992:87) describes the sent by the solution, have placed their emphasis on reminiscences of the poet Illyes who grew International structure and system, political or economic. up on a Hungarian farm at the beginning of States of mind are ignored or lightly passed the century: Monetary Fund over. Yet if the mentalities which Work for the farm servants was unremitting and the World characterised the behaviour of rulers and ... their reaction was to perform every Bank and they ruled were seen (by theorists of repute) as action in slow motion ... this style of preach capitalism being of supreme importance in the behaviour may be seen as a form of analyses of the colonial era - why is this no reaction to excessive demands. longer the case? This paradigm - the excessive demands of The elimination of racism has not an ideology and the resistance, in various alchemised Africa. Surely an analysis of forms, of mentalite - may be usefully opposing modes of thought is as important applied to post-colonial African states, now as it was then? particularly when considering the phenomenon of disengagement. Disengagement is the tendency to withdraw from the state and keep at a distance from Resistance t© Rul© its channels as a hedge against its The new missionaries are sent by the instability and dwindling resource base. As International Monetary Fund and the World scepticism rises concerning the Bank and they preach capitalism. Hymns of effectiveness and legitimacy of state praise are sung to liberal democracy. actions, they are undermined by subtle Expatriates proselytise on behalf of United means of popular evasion and Nations agencies and multinational dissimulation. companies. Where is African reality in all (Azarya in Rothchild and Chazan: 1988:7). this? As Cetshwayo might have said (bearing in mind that redemption has lost Azarya goes on to distinguish between its association with the afterlife)... disengagement on the one hand and active t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 60 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 attempts to replace one form of rule with have been European in derivation and have Secession, civil mother on the other hand. These are not adapted particularly well to the African war and regional attempts to capture the centre of the state, environment. Can it be honestly said that a separatism may not to disengage from it. However, country which is being held to ransom by also be seen as the World Bank is making a voluntary and secession, civil war and regional separatism manifestations s0 seen as enthusiastic change from socialism to fliay al manifestations of of detachment jjsengagement in that the objective is capitalism? (two cheers for democracy). Or detachment from the state. This mode of . . . will South Africa become, with from the state defiance - which manifests itself in a need supreme irony, the last bastion of Stalinism, to escape the state and its representatives, is the sole surviving outpost of a defunct most commonly acted out in the form of communist empire? satire, ridicule, disinterest, passivity, apathy . recalls to mind Fanon's diagnosis of the Such is the paradoxical, sometimes farcical, ills of the colonial system: a massive degree too often tragic nature of African reality. of alienation. The failure of African Socialism is another Amilcar Cabral once remarked that there story - but it does represent the only are no wars between the peoples of Africa, autochthonous ideology to date; the only only wars between their elites. In the light sustained and conscious attempt to mesh a of this remark, military coups d'etat may be political and economic system with the seen as a would-be elite trying to capture mentalite of the people. the state from the elite in possession. The non-elite, that vast, politically silent The study of mentalities involves, among majority, is too alienated to act. Instead it other things, what might be described as an turns in on itself in the ways described by imaginative leap into the realm of the the Annalistes and by Azarya and, as a way 'other' - a creative and challenging leap in of denying the legitimacy of the justifying as much as it involves the attempt to free ideology, it undermines and sabotages the oneself from the constraints of one's own effectiveness of the state. time and place. The study of mentalities can, in fact, help us to avoid the use of For the purposes of this paradigm, how is rhetoric in which people in the collective ideology most appropriately defined? It can become, to use Le Goff's phrase, best be understood, I think, as the 'grimacing phantoms'. It is a perspective hegemony of the ruling group which which gives us real people instead of the depends on a certain degree of acceptance cardboard cutouts of Marxist determinism, Amilcar Cabral by the subordinate groups. Gramsci or the huddled masses behind the spotlit once remarked contrasted the functions of 'domination' figures of Hitler/Stalin/Thatcher/de Klerk/ that there are no (direct physical coercion) with those of Mandela/the Statue of Liberty et al. wars between 'hegemony' or 'direction' (consent, the peoples of ideological control) (Boggs: 1976:39). The Annalistes explore what they call Africa, only wars 'history from below'; their conceptual When the latter fails, a ruling elite resorts to journey takes them 'from the cellar to the between their the former. If an ideology does not mesh, at attic'. More specifically, their method has elites least in crucial areas, with the mentalite or been described as: The history of those who cognitive map of the people, it is likely to have suffered, worked, declined and died fail and physical coercion is likely to result, without being able to describe their driving the people further into an alienated sufferings (Burke, 1990:8). With many of condition and lending further impetus to the the inhabitants of this vast sub-continent in process of disengagement. this unenviable condition, what Le Goff called 'the profound song of mentalities' is supremely appropriate in an African setting. QtPOfii The REFERENCES; The absolute 'truth' of a belief in the eyes Azarya V, in D Rothchild & N Chazan. The Precarious Balance. Slale and Society in Africa. Boulder, Colorado: Weslview Press, 1988. of the ruling elite (and Africa has produced Burke P. History and Social Theory. Oxford, Polity Press, 1992. its fair share of fanatics) in the long run BurkeP. The French Historical Revolution. The Annales School 1929-1989. makes no difference to the phenomenon of Cambridge, Polity Press, 1990. collective resistance. The point being that Boggs C. Gramsci'sMarxism. London: Pluto Press, 1976. what is true or right or appropriate in one Fanon F. The Wretched olthe Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969. setting is not necessarily right in another Hall S & T Jefferson. Resistance Through Rituals. London: Longman, 1987. setting. Le Goff J & P Nora. Faire de I'histoire. Nouveaux Objets. Gallinard, 1974. Le Roy Ladurie E. Montaillou. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1981. Oschadleus HJ. Heidenmissionar. The Life and Times olHC Prigge In Africa, with the sole exception of 1831-1920. Unpublished MA Thesis, Dept. of Historical Studies, UNP, 1993. African Socialism, ideological systems Pieterse JN. White on Black. Images ol Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven:, Yale University Press, 1992. INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 61 IMSIMK) IfGSEGflfDS De Klerk's change of heart, more than anv other event in South African history, fueled Black Mepes, White Fears,blac k hopes, and correspondingly, raised dark forebodings and fears among the majority of whites. It is not without significance that de Klerk has become one of the most vilified politicians among manv Racial Myths... of his former supporters. A recent Markinor survey on leadership popularity revealed a dramatic decline in the State President's popularity among white voters, from 84% Joseph Manyoni, Department of Sociology white support in March 1992 to 69% in March 1993 (The Daily News, 27/4/93). and Anthropology, Caileton University, Ottawa De Klerk's efforts to cooperate with the black anti-apartheid alliance are not viewed by many white respondents as Is there a South African political mythology? nation-building but as a 'sell-out to the How are our myths related to the task of blacks ... to please the international community'. Any obituary for the demise building a "new South Africa"? After a of Apartheid would be quite premature at four-month research trip to South Africa, a this stage. visiting research fellow reflects on the dilemmas faced by white South Africans in • myth of democracy making political choices in response to South Africa has never developed a imminent changes. He contrasts black hopes democratic culture in the true meaning of for the future with white fears about the new the political ideal. If there were already order. such a political culture of democracy, it would be a contradiction in terms to speak of a 'new (democratic) South Africa' as many people are trumpeting at present. South Africa has always been a hen on 2 February 1990, President mono-racial oligarchy whose sense of South Africa has WFW de Klerk pulled the rug from nationalism was defined by both skinship never developed under the feet of white South Africa by affinity and the collective mortal fear of announcing the prospect of a non-racial a democratic whites of their black counterparts. From the political order, he exposed the myth that first post-imperial government in 1910, culture in the Apartheid was only a corpus of legal every South African government elected up true meaning of prescriptions that could be removed by the to the present has been installed precisely to the political ideal stroke of a pen. maintain minority hegemony, the direct antithesis of democratic nationalism. Three years later, one is struck by the concrete manifestations of apartheid in Democracy is about political rights (not terms of the geographic and physical - dispensations); it is about human rights (not distribution of ethnic groups as a prescribed freedoms to 'develop along own permanent feature of the social landscape. lines'). Democracy is about universal Two cases in point are the sprawling, often franchise, the right of every eligible citizen decrepit (black) townships which are to vote for a national government and to satellites of every major city, and the stand for free election. One may be tempted various (black) 'homelands' that epitomise to ask: if South Africa were already a apartheid social engineering. democracy, why have de Klerk's proposals for reforms aroused such considerable It would take the combined wisdom of a apprehension and opposition from those Solomon and a Solon, as well as the accustomed to seeing democracy as a technical skills of an Archimedes and a privilege of the few? Leonardo da Vinci to unscramble this whole mess. It is beyond the capacity of The massive 'Yes' vote to the March 1992 mere politicians to reverse apartheid in Referendum on constitutional reform itself practical terms. Then there is the attitudinal was an exercise in ethnic politics. One dimension of apartheid which affects all might even suggest that the 'Yes' vote was ethnic groups in South Africa. Like a in itself inspired by the fear of black anger deeply-rooted cancer, apartheid is in the streets. In other words, the response exceedingly recalcitrant to rational therapy. was less a principled one than enlightened t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 62 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 elf-interest. It could be argued that 'a destinies. Ironically, these myths are Only an act of S jural society [like South Africa at present] embedded in the plethora of apartheid faith can sustain legislation. P n0t a conducive environment to the the belief that an nractice of democratic competitive politics' [Rubishka, 1978:180). The (now repealed) legal repertoire of election can apartheid is itself a renunciation of the idea cure the current q myth of elections of a South African nation: The Group Areas malaise in the Election fever appears to have captured the Act; The Separate Amenities Acf, The national body collective imagination and affected the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act; as politic national psyche like an endemic virus. well as the various Departments of 'Own Affairs'; and separate educational systems. Let us debunk the myth that equates By the government's own admission, the elections with democracy. Elections are over three hundred apartheid laws on the essentially about choosing candidates for statute book pose a monumental task in the political positions and to install creation of 'a New South Africa'. All the governments to office. They are about legislation related to the creation of the mobilising constituency support for one's so-called homelands is a political negation own party against all others. Elections are a of the notion of a common South African democratic exercise, but not democracy in, citizenship. and of themselves. (South Africa has had some sort of election since the eighteenth century, but the country has never been a democracy as such.) South Africa today reflects a political Elections are democratic only within a culture in which violence has been democratic culture nurtured on universal rationalised as an instrument for the principles of equity; otherwise they merely attainment of rights, claims and perceived amount to five-yearly rituals to change or to entitlements, regardless of the legitimacy or re-affirm governments. It may be recalled morality of such claims. However, the that it was a duly elected government that violent confrontation in the contest for abolished a common voters roll and passed political space is not new. The whole the Separate Representation Registration political superstructure of South African Act in South Africa in 1952 (to society has, historically, always been disenfranchise 'coloured' voters). underpinned by state-controlled violence and coercion. South Africa The current turmoil in Angola following today reflects a Savimbi's renunciation of the recent The contemporary predicament can be democratic elections should have laid this traced back to the historical struggles political culture myth to rest. Without a national democratic between African aspirations for political in which culture, i.e. democratic norms of political and civic rights and the government's violence has behaviour commonly shared among citizens refusal to acquiesce in defence of white been of a nation, only an act of faith can sustain claims to exclusive hegemony. During a rationalised as the belief that an election can cure the century or more of confrontation and state an instrument for current malaise in the national body politic. intransigence, the hopes of black South Africans had gradually deteriorated to the the attainment of • myth of the nation point of despair while the sense of security rights Another popular myth assumes that South among the whites appeared unassailable. Africa is a nation. It overlooks the fact that However, after the mid-1980s when the it is not, and has never been a nation. It state appeared unable to contain the would be more correct to speak of South escalating violence, black hopes began to Africa as a country since it physically exists rise while white security gave way to fear. with distinct boundaries or as a State since it is a territorial juridical unit with a Both white and black expectations have recognised formal governmental structure been given further credence by the series of and a population. It certainly is not a nation. events since President de Klerk's historic pronouncement of 2 February 1990, which South Africa has no over-arching ideology heralded the imminent demise of official of nationalism; no common notion of apartheid and exclusive white political citizenship; no national institutional culture; dominance. no common basis for dialogue; and no common sentiment of peoplehood. In fact, An objective analysis would suggest that the state ideology of apartheid has always both sides are realistic in their assessment insisted that South Africa consists of 'plural of their respective positions. Black hopes nations' with separate freedoms and are buoyed by the recognition that, INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 63 IMSIMK) IfGSEGflfDS Whites fear for historically, a minority oligarchy cannot of interaction on the part of some educated their physical permanently hold on to power in the face of and self-respecting black individuals often an overwhelming and persistent onslaught, earns them the opprobrium of 'cheeky safety and group Native' or 'uppity Black', i.e., one who survival, they given the numerical superiority and does not know his place. fear the loss of increasing political sophistication of the minority privilege challengers. The entrenchment of such attitudes was and they fear For their part, whites fear for their physical clearly manifested in the reaction of many that past safety and group survival. They fear the whites of a company town called Kragbron loss of minority privilege; they also fear in the Orange Free State, which was injustices will be that the injustices heaped upon the black purportedly being 'put up for sale'. The turned against population by white-dominated possibility that the town may be purchased them governments, particularly under apartheid, by the ANC and then flooded by blacks will be turned against them. Regrettably, aroused considerable apprehension. There their fears are now being given impetus by was talk of an armed struggle and a call to the random but sporadic slaughter of whites the AWB for help. In the words of one by elusive terror gangs in both rural and local resident, 'All we want is urban areas. well-mannered black people like James Shembe. He knows his place and how to Despite prolonged co-existence with behave'. But they still call him 'kaffir', blacks, most whites do not really know which James Shembe explained as 'merely their fellow citizens as people or as a term of endearment' (Sunday Times, individuals. White knowledge of their black 14/2/93). countrymen is filled with negative imagery, reified in the persistent depiction of blacks Because white/black relations in South by the state as the 'black danger' (swart Africa are normatively modelled on white gevaar), terrorists, agitators, communists, interactions with the semi-literate, rural savages, etc. These images, fueled by the servant or labouring classes, most media penchant for reporting in vivid and less-educated whites often display a minute detail the endemic acts of violence, derisive attitude, bordering on hostility, murder, robbery, and rape by the criminal towards educated black people. These elements in the black population, are attitudes are reinforced by the kind of further etched in the collective psyche of policies which subject blacks to inferior the white population. education, or relegate them to low status What black jobs for which they are often over-qualified people may term For many whites, these images have and traditionally underpaid. the levelling of become metonyms for black people. Most significantly, the blacks whom most whites While this situation is rapidly changing in the playing field feel they do know are those closest to them response to political developments, the may be viewed in their service, particularly domestic perceived status enhancement for blacks, as relative status servants. They are the 'good Natives', the contingent upon these changes, is likely to deprivation by ones to whom you could entrust your engender further feelings of resentment. many white family and household possessions. Beyond What black people may term the levelling people that, blacks are remote shadowy diurnal of the playing field may be viewed as figures who disappear at nightfall to those relative status deprivation by many white equally unknown places called locations, people. townships and homelands, from where most of the shocking incidents are reported. It requires no great sociological imagination to recognise that white fears and uncertainty about the future are real and have a profound bearing on the current Terms off Endearment constitutional negotiations. The cardinal In systems of dominance, those in question, however, is: How are black subjugation cannot afford not to be fully people reacting to 'the new dispensation'? cognisant of those who occupy powerful positions of dominance over their lives. In Many blacks, especially those who are practical terms a survival strategy is informed, educated and politically astute, manifested by many black workers in the feel it should not be their responsibility to deliberate obsequiousness, the feigned take on the burden to allay the puerile behaviour and the studied self-generated fears of whites. These fears, appearance of being less intelligent, after all, are the consequence of the very appearances which they often display in fear-mongering policies propagated by their day-to-day interaction with whites. successive all-white governments over the Deviant behaviour from this expected norm years. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 64 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 glaolc Mao's Borden continually being re-defined into The concerted decreasing categories of threat! Hence a outcry from the recent national survey showed that the Blacks feel, and justifiably so, that given white community that the present white fears about the future South African Communist Party (SACP) were generated by the very political system was the most hated party among whites, that black they supported, it should be the with 80% rejecting it out of hand; next the political parties responsibility of the governing party to Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which was should publicly assuage such feelings of apprehension. rejected by 67% of whites and the African assure whites is Nevertheless, political prudence impels the National congress (ANC) by 43%' (The viewed by many Daily News, 27/4/93. black leadership to publicly declare their blacks as an commitments to the 'safety of all citizens', and they have adopted a policy of handing These statistics suggest a polarisation of effort to maintain over apprehended culprits to the police, divergent interests, which is not conducive the status quo partially to propitiate white anxieties. to nation-building. The concerted outcry from the white In the current scale of risk calculation, the community that black political parties ANC is perceived as threatening to white should publicly assure whites that their security largely due to its traditional current political privileges, way of life, and alliance with the fearsome SACP, and in personal safety will not be jeopardised or part to the realistic possibility that the ANC attenuated under majority government, is is the potential successor to the present viewed by many blacks as an effort to governing party. Correspondingly, the two maintain the status quo. Quite conceivably, so-called 'radical' parties, the PAC and the just as the fears of the past were imaginary, SACP, are equally feared, but such fears are the fears of the future may be equally tempered by the belief that neither group is spurious since they are all predicated upon likely to form the majority government in presumptions of the supposed innate violent the new political order. nature of blacks. The recent assassination of SACP chief, Sometimes it seems to matter little that by Chris Hani, on Easter Saturday, 10 April far the greatest incidents of violence are 1993, was a practical affirmation of the directed against blacks, regardless of who endemic fear that pervades the white the real perpetrators are. community about the possible shape of the new political order in South Africa. As the In contrast, black political history in South most touted leader of the 'young lions' Black political within the movements, Hani's enormous Africa reveals a remarkably consistent history reveals a opposition to the race politics that influence was perceived to be a significant emphasised irreconcilable destinies threat to white security. consistent between black and white. Yet from even a opposition to the casual perusal of editorials, feature articles, Following the assassination, many race politics that and readers' letters in South African right-wing whites openly voiced their relief emphasise newspapers, one cannot fail to be struck by that Hani was out of the way. As one irreconcilable the historically myopic flurry of pleas to, prominent Conservative Party member put destinies and demands from black political leaders it: 'We shall raise monies to defend Mr and their organisations for assurances for Walus [the alleged assassin]; mind you I am between black white safety and the protection of 'group not sorry he did it'. A spate of letters to and white rights'. newspapers from relieved whites left no doubt about their feelings on the removal of Considerable moral pressure is being their perceived nemesis. They evoked many exerted directly or indirectly upon the of the so-called terror incidents allegedly major political players during this period of linked to Hani; they pointed to his failure to transition to commit themselves with condemn these acts. The blatant assurances for the protection of the white harassment, intimidation and shootings of community. One may postulate that the black participants at the funeral ceremonies increasing gravitational pull among whites of the slain Hani, provides strong evidence towards Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party of white intolerance of Hani's politics. (IFP) indicates a frantic search for a safe port against anticipated political storms of All this leaves the Inkatha Freedom Party change. (IFP) as the most risk-free and propitious organisation for apprehensive whites to The irony of this development is not lost on align themselves in this period of any perceptive student of South African uncertainty. However, in the scramble to social history in that the traditional object secure a political home, it is often forgotten of white fears, the black population, is that the IFP is not, by its own definition, a INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 65 IMSIMK) IfGSEGflfDS The ruling truly national party, nor an avowedly More and more white people are begilm; National Party heterogeneous organisation, but a regional to think of the IFP. They don 7 particular movement whose mandate is primarily the like it, but they have been blinded by the and the IFP are promotion of Zulu culture and traditions. anti-ANC propaganda and they will clutch constrained by at any straw. their past and Thus the concept of 'White Zulus' appears (,Sunday Tribune, 7/2/93). present incongruous even by the South African ideologies which penchant for syllogism. Significantly, the It is plausible to suggest that while promote party (IFP), rejected by most blacks (71 % affiliation to Inkatha may help to allay in urban areas), is the one whites would white fears and assuage the collective guilt exclusive ethnic most likely support after the two main it is doubtful whether it would result in the' interests white parties, the governing National Party, kind of affinity of interest expected by the and the principal opposition, the white community. Furthermore, white Conservative Party. members of the IFP may be dogged by a haunting dilemma in that, having been aligned with a party which may not command a majority in the legislative arena, they could find themselves in a Fear, it seems, can create strange minority situation. This dilemma is not bedfellows. One might carry the point unlike that of the decision faced by both the further. Since the whites' mortal fear of the Coloured and Indian communities in their ANC is predicated principally upon its search for a safe political home. massive numerical power, then the perceived relative numerical strength of the Constituent communities in the South IFP can be deemed the only possible African political landscape are a counter-force to neutralise that power. It consequence of the erstwhile policy of would thus make political sense for the spatial segregation. This patchwork of whites to seek shelter in a corresponding electoral constituencies which corresponds strong black movement, albeit of regional to ethnic distribution, renders any appeals strength. to transcendent political interests highly improbable to a sceptical electorate. Both Due to South Africa's traditional race the ruling National Party and the Inkatha politics such a choice is not as simple as it Freedom Party are constrained by their past may appear. The political culture under and present ideologies which promote The task of which all political movements and parties exclusive ethnic interests. nation-building have been nurtured militates against cross-ethnic affiliation (other than Inkatha's political ideology of ethnic will be the more individual high profile members of other nationalism is, by definition, exclusionary difficult precisely parties who defect to the IFP). It is a moot of other groupings. How could such a party because South point as to what extent the rank and file accommodate white South Africans, a Africa lacks a members of the white electorate would feel constituency whose political interests are political culture politically comfortable in such an ethnically equally predicated upon the of nationalism chauvinistic black African political party, self-preservation of their own racially given the historic relations and differing exclusive group? agendas which have hitherto informed black and white politics in South Africa. The task of nation-building will be the more difficult precisely because South For the white electorate, finding a political Africa lacks a political culture of home in accordance with the changing nationalism. In the apartheid years the realities in the country is more difficult than government by its own volition opted for a it would appear. Parties in South Africa are negation of an over-arching South African not merely divided by political ideology as nationalism by creating multiple in most multi-party systems; they are citizenships within the state. The primarily organised along racial/ethnic constitutional negotiations involving over lines with conflicting interests. In twenty-six participating groups are a signal consequence, for the traditionally opposed demonstration of the degree of pluralistic groups to join each other's party is indeed a thinking in South Africa in transition. QP0& quantum leap into ideological affinity and sentiment that does not derive from a Research Note natural commonality of interest. This analysis is based on random but intensive interviews conducted between February to May 1993 by the author with white, black and Indian South Africans, as well as a careful examination of public statements made The 'white dilemma' is aptly summed up by their representatives. The respondents are fairly representative of a cross-section of the Durban metropolitan area. The research project was by one of the former Democratic Party undertaken as part of a visiting research fellowship at the Centre for Social & defectors to the IFP, Mr Rob Haswell: Development Studies at the University of Natal in the first semester of 1993. t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 66 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 accused of being the aggressors, of fomenting the violence and of undertaking Anthony Minnaar, pre-emptive strikes against township residents. But by the same token they were By March 1993 Centre for Conflict Analysis, HSRC also victims. Hostel residents found the leaders in 32 themselves lumped together, subjected to Reef hostels had approbation and vilification as the alleged signed a peace t the time of the release of the hostels cause of the renewed violence. Areport of the HSRC/Goldstone pledge Commission in March 1993 there were Events during April to August 1993 aptly evident signs of lessening conflict between demonstrated that the dynamics found to be the residents of hostels and townships, previously operating in the Reef townships especially on the East Rand. There were were still in place, viz. the atmosphere of exceptions, however, notably the burning threat, the social divide between hostels and and looting of the hostels at Bruntville near townships, political competition and the Mooiriver during January 1993 just a week cycle of revenge and retaliatory attacks. before the hostel residents were to return from the Christmas recess (Sunday Times, 10/02/93). On the Reef there had been encouraging Rumours remained rife. A case in point was signs, like the homegrown peace initiative a protest march on 22 May 1993 from the started by the leadership in the Jeppe Hostel Thokoza Stadium to the Alberton Police (central Johannesburg) who decided they Station organised by the ANC to hand over had had enough. In August 1992 a peace a petition. However, when it became known letter was written and delivered (at that the march would pass close to the considerable risk to his own safety) by Thokoza Hostel, the hostel residents Jacob Dlomo, a Johannesburg bank expressed the fear that the march would be messenger and Zulu-speaking resident of used as a cover for an attack on them. They the Jeppe Hostel, to the Xhosa-speaking accordingly prepared for this eventuality by There were residents of the nearby Selby Hostel. This arming themselves. Another rumour then was the start of a peace process further circulated that the hostel residents would plans afoot for facilitated by the Reverend Mvume launch an attack on the marchers as they communities Dandala of the Central Methodist Mission. passed the hostel. This, in turn, led some of around many of the marchers to arm themselves for the hostels to In November 1992 delegations from both protection. re-establish hostels met at a neutral venue, with direct contact Reverend Dandala as chairman. These The rumour of an impending attack under initiatives involved the residents themselves cover of the march was strengthened when between hostel who expressly excluded any involvement the organisers rejected a local peace committees and by political parties. Their peace effort led to committee proposal to change the route of civic a certain amount of socialising between the the march. Their refusal was seen by the associations residents of the two hostels, who even hostel residents as a confirmation of the played a soccer match. By March 1993 the marchers' covert intentions. On the day of leaders in 32 Reef hostels had signed a the march the hostel residents massed in the peace pledge and there were plans afoot for hostel grounds, ready for anything. Such a communities around many of these hostels volatile situation was bound to explode. to re-establish direct contact between hostel committees and civic associations (Sunday When some of the marchers tried to force a Times, 21/03/93). small group of Zulu protestors back through the hostel gates the police fired teargas, Unfortunately, the relative peace was rubber bullets and birdshot to disperse the shattered in the aftermath of the two groups. However, a group often assassination of SACP Chief Chris Hani in persons, ostensibly having broken away April 1993. The subsequent course of from the march, fired into one of the hostel events aptly demonstrated that not much buildings from behind the complex, out of had changed. In the renewed spiral of sight of the marchers. This resulted in violence on the Reef, hostel residents once return fire from both within the hostel and again found themselves caught up in events within the group of marchers. In the not always of their own making. They were ensuing crossfire, 13 people were killed and INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 67 IMSIMK) IfGSEGflfDS Hostel residents at least 61 injured (Goldstone Commission, In retaliation the inhabitants of Tembisa continued to feel 1993). The open antagonism between instituted a blockade of the hostel, denying hostels and townships was once again its residents access to local shops and under threat, with resurgent. services. The children of those who had rumours sought refuge in the hostel (IFP supporters abounding that In the recriminations following, the forced from their homes) were also not township government was blamed for not having allowed to attend local schools. In short, the inhabitants 'secured the problem hostels' by fencing hostel residents were shunned and totally isolated. wanted to them as agreed to by the Record of Understanding signed between the physically government and the ANC in September demolish all 1992 (Sunday Times, 23/05/93). The hostels on the fencing of hostels was anathema to hostel Reef residents who vehemently opposed this The situation on the Reef continued to measure, firstly on the grounds that they worsen in mid-1993. A renewed round of were never consulted on the desirability of violence erupted at the beginning of July this step, secondly because it would isolate after 27 April 1994 was set by the them further from the surrounding Negotiating Council as the date for national communities, and thirdly because it would elections. restrict them in 'cages like animals', inhuman treatment denying them The immediate catalyst of the new cycle of recognition as ordinary people. township conflict was not clear. The new spiral of violence apparently began with the Hostel residents continued to feel under alleged ambush of a funeral march in threat, with rumours abounding that Katlehong by gunmen in a passing car township inhabitants wanted to physically which then reportedly sped off in the demolish all hostels on the Reef. The direction of the Mazibuko Hostel. In rumours became so strong that at the end of revenge comrades burnt down nearby June 1993 Mr Chilly Magagula, the shacks and looted the belongings of some spokesperson for the Tembisa ANC branch, IFP supporters who, forced to seek refuge, had to publicly go on record that the aim of fled to the hostel. a march from the Jan Lubbe Stadium to the Rabasotho Centre was not 'to go and The streets of Katlehong were soon destroy the Vusimuzi Hostel'. However, he crisscrossed with barricades and deep A renewed had reiterated the demand that the local trenches. Neighbourhoods were patrolled council evict those hostel residents living in by members of local Self-Defence Units round of this hostel illegally (Sowetan, 23/06/93). (SDUs). Gunfire echoed constantly violence erupted throughout the night. In the ensuing at the beginning The particular problem with the Vusimuzi violence, Zulu-speaking residents in the of July after Hostel in Tembisa stemmed from the townships of the East Rand became the 27 April 1994 presence of a criminal gang called 'the targets of attack by armed youth while was set by the Toasters'. In the early 1990s the Toasters, hostel residents launched a number of pre-emptive and retaliatory attacks on the Negotiating after being driven out of certain areas of Tembisa by local comrades during an communities surrounding the hostels. The Council as the anti-crime drive, sought refuge in the worst-hit areas seemed to be those date for national Vusimuzi Hostel, becoming nominal neighbourhoods close to hostels elections members of the Inkatha Freedom Party. (Ramokonupi, Mavimbela, Kwesine and While using the hostel as a base and for Hlahatsi in Katlehong and Khumalo Street protection they continued their criminal in Thokoza) (Sunday Times, 11/07/93). activities, attacking critics including local ANC leaders and comrades. The spiral of violence resulted in a high death toll - 343 deaths for the PWV Region So long as they confined their activities to (580 for the whole of South Africa) for the the township, the hostel residents tolerated month of July (the second highest since the presence of the Toasters (City Press, 1990 when a high of 709 was reached in 04/10/92). Even though some hostel August of that year) (HRC, 1993). residents met with the local civic to resolve the problem, the hostel residents conceded Public transport came to a complete that they could not evict members of the standstill with taxis refusing to enter any Toasters since they had the protection of area near a hostel, while the railways certain high-up leaders (Sunday Times, discontinued some services to the East 08/08/93). Further, the Toasters were Rand after train drivers were threatened. heavily armed and would resist any such Services to the hostels were also stopped move. with no delivery vans being allowed t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 68 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 through- Residents also blamed the police, sinister forces wanting to fan the violence Enforced accusing them of leaving the area in the and deliberately turn it into an ethnic political evening and only returning the following conflict. Gunmen with AK-47s flagged recruitment was down a minibus taxi, ordered all the morning to pick up the bodies of victims of occurring on a the violence. passengers out, pulled aside members of the ANC and PAC, then marched the large scale to Complaints were also voiced by apolitical remaining Zulu-speaking passengers (all achieve residents who claimed that enforced men) into the veld and executed them. This territorial control political recruitment was occurring on a appeared to be a deliberate attempt to target and establish Inkatha supporters (Pretoria News, large scale to achieve territorial control and 'no-go' areas establish 'no-go' areas for members of any 19/07/93). opposing party. Residents despaired of peace ever being possible in such an On 22 August, in an apparent retaliation atmosphere of intolerance and hatred attack for this ambush, 13 people were between the township inhabitants and the killed and 16 injured when three gunmen hostel residents. It was openly stated that all with AK-47s opened fire on a meeting of a you needed to start a war in the East Rand burial society in the grounds of the Scaw townships of Katlehong and Thokoza was Metals Hostel. All the victims were 'two bullets' - one fired at a hostel and the Xhosa-speaking. Prior to the attack rumours other at the residents' houses (Sunday had been rife in the hostel itself that a Times, 11/07/93). revenge attack on Xhosa-speakers was imminent (Sunday Times, 29/08/93; City The violence spread to other parts of the Press, 29/08/93).' Reef. At the end of July members of the Toasters gang raided a party in Tembisa but What made these two incidents more one of them was caught and killed. In significant was the fact that prior to the retaliation, other gang members called a attacks the Scaw Metals Hostel (home to meeting of hostel residents and mobilised some 2 000 company employees) was them. On the night of 1 August hostel regarded as a model of community relations residents launched a retaliatory attack on where both Zulu and Xhosa-speaking hostel Tembisa which resulted in numerous residents lived together in apparent deaths. Many local residents felt that the harmony. It was felt that someone from the tensions between the hostel residents and outside was responsible for the attempt to the township inhabitants had been polarise the hostel residents. Tensions manipulated and exploited, in particular by within the hostels had started when the All you needed the Toasters (Sunday Times, 08/08/93). company allowed sanctuary to refugees in to start a war in June 1993- mostly genuine refugees but The hatred of township inhabitants towards according to one union official 'there were the East Rand hostel residents was much in evidence at also some suspicious characters among townships was the funeral in Tembisa on 12 August 1993 them'. 'two bullets' - of victims of this attack. During the funeral one fired at a orations, when a PAC spokesperson Soon after the arrival of the refugees a spate hostel and the reminded the crowd that the 'hostel of violent incidents occurred. First, four other at the dwellers are also people', the audience people (two of whom were union residents' houses erupted in jeers and catcalls, their mood members) were shot at the nearby railway palpably changing to one of menace. The station. Then the taxi ambush occurred, ANC Youth League Chairman, Peter followed by the injury of two hostel Mokaba, called on this funeral crowd 'to residents fired on by unknown gunmen. help me demolish that [Vusimuzi] hostel... There was also the theft of workers' brick by brick'. By association all local licensed firearms from the company's safe. hostel residents were blamed for the actions On 15 August a trade union activist and of the Toasters gang. hostel resident, Zolile Mxhasa (Mnconshoza), was killed. It was at a burial society meeting to collect money to transport his body back to the Transkei that the massacre of 13 people occurred (Sunday One of the fears of the latest round of Reef Nation, 29/08/93). violence has been that the 'ethnic' factor might become central to the ongoing During the July/August violence on the conflict. East Rand many hostel residents found themselves under siege. The blockade of Township residents point to an ambush of a the hostels by local Self-Defence Units was taxi near the Scaw Metals Hostel in extended to the delivery of food and Germiston on 19 July 1993 as proof of enforced a work stay away. The worst-hit INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 69 IMSIMK) IfGSEGflfDS One of the fears hostels were the Buyafuthi, Kwesine and held because of the continued tensions in Mazibuko hostels - all Inkatha strongholds. the surrounding Vaal townships i Wir of the latest Close on 7 000 people in these hostels were Nation, 11-17/09/92). round of Reef ordered by the Inkatha leadership not to set violence has foot in the surrounding townships. The KwaMadala Hostel was still occupied been that the by many who are not Iscor workers ,.tt 'ethnic' factor The hostel residents talk about 'the war' in end of August 1993. A plan to reseitle Katlehong and like the comrades of the many of these hostel residents on scia iced might become plots in Orange Farm has broken down in central to the local SDUs, they take turns to guard their hostels round the clock against 'the enemy'. the face of strong community opposition. ongoing conflict The hostel residents dismiss talk of a 'third The refusal of the local community to force', rather fearing an organised accommodate the hostel residents 'campaign to clean out Zulus from highlights the problems of trying t > close- townships'. Food and other supplies only down any hostel (regardless of poor reach these hostels when the delivery trucks physical conditions) and resettle residents are escorted by the SADF right to the hostel on a permanent basis on the Reef. gates. This informal siege was still in place However, the suspicions of township residents are perhaps understandable attev at the end of August (City Press, 29/08/93; l Weekly Mail, 13-19/08/93). the Boipatong massacre of June 19 )2 l\\ attackers from the selfsame KwaMadal.'i Hostel. Tli© Township Divide Township inhabitants fear hostel residents The basic anomaly of hostels stems from and point to the numerous attacks their role as cheap accommodation for emanating from hostel compounds. Tlicy migrant workers in single sex quarters. also feel that the hostel residents are being Until those residing in hostels decide upon used, armed and manipulated by unknown more permanent urban links, i.e. bringing forces to ensure that the violence will their wives to the cities, the social divide continue. Most township inhabitants between hostel residents and township perceive hostel residents as being part of inhabitants is likely to remain. the violence and would therefore like to see them removed permanently from their The social tensions have been exacerbated midst. For their part, the hostel residents in by the political violence whereby IFP turn interpret this objective as a direct supporters in particular and Zulu-speakers political attack on them. in general (who may not necessarily be IFP supporters) are targeted in the townships During all this violence there were again for attack. Numbers of them have sought allegations of the presence of agent refuge in the hostels. These so-called provocateurs and 'third force' activity in 'refugee' hostels (KwaMadala Hostel in the East Rand townships aggravating the Alexandra and Nguni Hostel in Vosloorus situation. The ANC paraded a suspected being two examples) now house not only IFP supporter and police informer caught migrant worker men but also whole by the Self-Defence Unit from the Phola families who have sought refuge and Park squatter settlement who first publicly protection through necessity in the hostels. ' stated that the police had supplied The hostels have become almost Inkatha-supporting hostel residents with self-contained communities with their own arms during the most recent round of spaza shops, churches, schools and even violence. He was handed over to the creches. Goldstone Commission but subsequently retracted his accusations, claiming to have The problem of 'illegals' living in the been coerced and intimidated by certain hostels is also a complicating factor. members of the SDU. REFERENCES Because of the ongoing violence the Goldstone Commission. planned closure of the KwaMadala Hostel The alleged involvement of the security Statement by the Commission in was delayed. In an agreement reached in forces in the current wave of township respect ol the march at Thokoza on 22 May 1993. Pretoria, September 1992 between Iscor (the violence merely reinforces existing 28 May 1993. owners), the National Union of negative perceptions and further entrenches Human Rights Commission Metalworkers (Numsa) and the Vaal Civic the cycle of conflict. On the Reef the (HRC). Monthly Repression Association (VCA) it had been planned that challenge for peace is to break the spiral of Report. July 1993. the KwaMadala Hostel near Sebokeng retaliatory violence and to get opposing Minnaar A (ed). Communities in isolation: perspectives on hostels would be closed down and that meetings groups to meet and talk to each other, to in South Africa. Pretoria: HSRC, would be held in order to reconcile the move towards healing the deep community 1993 hostel residents with the township rifts and antagonisms. Newspaper Clippings. See references in text. inhabitants. But these meetings were never t®Bwi&©pfifflBi)S"ir wacorss 70 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 0G3B NAMIBIA'S NEW GEOPOLITICS Lessons for South Africa David Simon, Centre for Developing Areas Research, Department of Geography, University of London The bitterly contested and drawn out political wrangle over the future and nature of regions in post-apartheid South Africa has at times generated more heat than light. It is thus timely to examine how neighbouring Namibia has addressed this vexed question. lthough there are some major Union in 1910, albeit increasingly as an Adifferences between Namibia and international pariah. However, the South Africa, Namibia's experience in substantive changes now required in seeking to overcome the twin legacies of instituting the post-apartheid order are colonialism and apartheid has many useful structurally akin to the process of lessons. decolonisation. Hence in this respect, the similarity between the two countries Key characteristics of both countries arguably outweighs the formal difference. include wide disparities in population distribution, composition and density, Finally, whereas the armed conflict in income and wealth distribution, social and Namibia was a guerrilla war between the physical infrastructure, economic military wing (PLAN) of the South West development, agro-ecological potential, African People's Organisation (SWAPO) drought proneness and resource endowment and the South African Defence Force across large territories. Moreover, racial, (SADF) waged almost exclusively in the far ethnic, socio-cultural, linguistic and north, internal violence in South Africa has associated political differences have been now become virtually endemic, much of it greatly exacerbated and institutionalised politically inspired and approaching a low through more than a century of segregation intensity civil war in places. The substantive and apartheid policies and their attendant changes now conflicts. required in instituting the Townships and 'homelands' represent the post-apartheid very geographical impress of such Namibia's constitution was hammered out order are structural discrimination dnd symbolise the prior to formal independence by the legacy to be overcome by any new system. Constituent Assembly elected in the structurally akin Nevertheless the seismic break with the UN-supervised poll of November 1989. to the process of past being experienced by both Namibia This was no mean achievement, although decolonisation and South Africa represents a unique the compromises reached will inevitably opportunity in this respect. limit the extent of future socio-political change, as Andre du Pisani (1993) pointed There are also important differences out in the previous issue of Indicator SA between Namibia and South Africa. At 1,5 (VollO/No 1:29-31; see also Simon, 1991; million, Namibia's population is dwarfed Tapscott, 1993). by South Africa's which is estimated at more than 35 millions As the regional Constitutionally, Namibia is a unitary state superpower, South Africa's formal with a bicameral parliament, comprising the economic sector is infinitely larger and National Assembly (superseding the more sophisticated than that of any of its Constituent Assembly) and National neighbours; Namibia's Gross Domestic Council. Provision was made for the Product (GDP) is only 2-3% Of South creation of subnational territorial units Africa's. called regions and local authorities, although the task of determining their For these and related historical reasons, respective numbers, boundaries and precise Namibia is still greatly affected by South powers was deliberately left till after African actions and policies. Namibia independence. Mechanisms for achieving attained statehood only in 1990 whereas this were, however, set out in the South Africa has had sovereign status since Constitution and the regional councils were 12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 73 "matics®© origin of the inhabitants of such areas' Reforms aimed to be established within two years of independence. (Republic of Namibia 1990b: 2); and to ensure that that each constituency within a «iven' boundary Whereas National Assembly elections take region had to have as nearly equal a delimitation place on a proportional representation basis number of eligible voters as practicable reflected on national lists, regional councils comprise dispassionate six to twelve single-member constituencies. analysis and The electoral system thus blends national will with local responsiveness and local opinion accountability. Chaired by Justice Johan Strijdom and rather than comprising also Professor Gerhard central political The independence constitution also Totemeyer (Political Science, University of priorities repealed all existing legislation constituting Namibia) and Mr Martin Shipanga 'homelands' and their aspatial but (Ministry of Education), the Delimitation ethnically defined neo-apartheid Commission was served by three specialist successors, the second-tier Representative advisers (including this author) and had to Authorities, created by South Africa in report by June 1991. Following rigorous 1980. Since, under a constitutional research, the consideration of both written guarantee, no incumbent civil servants and oral submissions from interested could be sacked, all personnel of the parties and individuals, a comprehensive abolished administrations were transferred national fact-finding and consultation tour, onto the central government payroll at a total of thirteen regions was ultimately independence and designated to the most recommended (Figure 1). appropriate ministry pending the necessary reorganisation and redesignation. Although initially conceived of by the politicians as essentially electoral regions, These procedures and mechanisms formed the Commission became convinced of the an important strategy, designed to hasten need for them to be appropriate for the process of reaching a constitutional administrative and development purposes agreement, to reduce the potential for too, in view of the cost and infrastructure conflict and to ensure that subsequent involved and the great regional diversity boundary delimitation reflected across Namibia. This clearly meant that dispassionate analysis and local opinion additional variables had to be evaluated, rather than merely central political thus rendering the task more complicated. The Constitution priorities. South Africa would do well to However, the price of failure would be extremely high. also accorded consider aspects of this strategy carefully, Namibia's although obviously the retention of all civil servants is a two-edged sword (du Pisani, Apart from the statutory requirement regions an 1993; Simon, 1991). regarding population distribution the important Commission sought wherever possible to national role in The Constitution also accorded Namibia's combine both communal and commercial addition to the regions an important national role in lands within the same region. This would exercise of addition to the exercise of designated facilitate the breaking of a key foundation designated powers within their boundaries, in that two of apartheid and the fostering of integrated representatives from each regional council and more sustainable land, agricultural and powers would constitute the National Council, the general development policies. Already second chamber of parliament. This body there have been some significant acts of has power to review, refer and under cooperation between the respective groups certain circumstances effectively to veto, of farmers, quite apart from the effects of proposed legislation. more enlightened and unified government agricultural policy. In terms of the constitution, President Nujoma appointed the First Delimitation Other criteria taken into account by the Commission in September 1990 with the Commission included various measures of brief to determine the number of regions, local senses of community, patterns of regional constituencies and local interaction, communications infrastructure authorities, and their respective boundaries. and accessibility, water resources, The only limitations placed on the physiographic conditions, agro-ecological Commission were: potential, availability and potential of that regional and local authority non-agricultural employment and income, boundaries should, 'in accordance with social and economic infrastructure and Article 102(2) of the Constitution, be services, urban functions and services, and geographical only, without any location of appropriate regional reference to the race, colour or ethnic headquarters. TrtSlIO®® 74 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 In addition, regions had to be viable in terms of population, resources and potential tax base, while at the same time not being so large as to render relative internal coherence and communications difficult. Moreover, in view of the cost of establishing and maintaining regional councils in so vast yet generally sparsely populated a country, it was imperative to recommend the minimum number that would meet the essential criteria (Government of Namibia, 1991). The outcome had to be both workable and politically practicable, although inevitably it represented something of a compromise among numerous often conflicting criteria, variables and sentiments. Predictably, each of the political parties submitted proposals which reflected the distribution of its supporters and a desire to minimise the number of regions likely to be controlled by opponents. The extent to which demographic, economic or other variables were taken into account varied greatly. Despite the high stakes and great sensitivity of the Commission's task, it was accorded complete independence and no undue pressure was brought to bear by SWAPO or any other party. The two principal headaches were the Figure 1: Namibia's thirteen new regions absence of recent and reliable population in relation to the former bantustans distribution data, and the long delay in promulgating legislation to define the pre-independence elections three years The Commission respective powers of regional councils and earlier, they confounded many observers. sought wherever local authorities. The latter reflected Not only did they pass off smoothly but possible to logistical problems as well as political SWAPO increased its share of the vote manoeuvrings behind the scenes but meant from 52,7% in 1989 to 67% in the regions. combine both that we were working in something of a The governing party performed well communal and vacuum, since different functions countrywide and now controls nine of the commercial frequently have different optimal 13 regions; the other four are shared among lands within the boundaries. smaller opposition parties. same region In the event, the government accepted the Commission's recommendations in full, save for changing the proposed names of Regional Gouneifls two regions. The regional boundaries were The new regional councils and the National then gazetted in March 1992. Since it was Council were inaugurated in early 1993. clearly going to be impossible to comply Many will take some time to find their feet with the constitutional requirement to hold and acquire the necessary administrative elections, institufe'regional councils and the and executive skills, and it is premature to National Council within two years of evaluate their performance. independence, a special derogation had to be passed to permit an extension. The three It is still unclear to what extent they will be long-awaited laws, the Regional Councils permitted or able to recruit their own Act, Local Authorities Act and Electoral officials; for the foreseeable future, reliance Act were finally enacted in August 1992. on central government staff, especially specialised financial advisers and planners, These were an essential prerequisite for the is likely to be considerable. Their budgets holding of the crucial regional and local will also come essentially from central elections, which then followed at the government subventions out of central beginning of December. As the first revenue, an arrangement which could be barometer of public opinion since the used as a political lever. This is unfortunate. INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 75 ©©CS^mW/ll tflSliWS The redrawing of It is likely to result either in tame councils This project is now complete and is Namibia's or in central-local conflicts of the sort designed to provide the new regional councils as well as government officials in internal political experienced in other independent African states. This is one aspect which South the various ministries with an appropriate geography Africa would do well not to emulate. set of principles and guidelines for their aimed to new roles. It is envisaged that similar establish a Nevertheless, regional councils enjoy studies will be undertaken for all regions in uniform national considerable powers and responsibilities due course. The fact that regional councils now exist should facilitate this task. system of under Section 28 of the Regional Councils Act. Moreover, they are fully consistent regions with the intentions behind the Delimitation Real progress does appear to be emerging Commission's boundary recommendations. from South Africa's constitutional The principal responsibilities are: negotiations despite innumerable problems development planning, with regard to and the murderous backcloth against which physical, social and economic they are being conducted. Throughout characteristics, demographic conditions 1993, the regional question has proved (including urbanisation), resource and highly contentious. The balance of powers developmental potential, infrastructural between the centre and the regions is seen provision, land use patterns and as vital by those seeking a strong central environmental sensitivity; government as well as the protagonists of • the establishment, management and greater regional autonomy. control of settlement areas (i.e. agglomerations of dwellings which do Although the principle of a unitary state has not yet possess any form of local seemingly now been agreed, much pressure authority as defined in the Local remains for regional powers, and even the Authorities Act); and number and boundaries of regions, to be assistance to local authorities resolved ahead of non-racial elections and (Government of Namibia 1992). the establishment of the Constituent Assembly. The prospect of entrenched While many problems and obstacles to regional power blocs seems increasingly redressing past inequities remain, the likely under this scenario. regional question is being tackled far more fundamentally than in several other If this is really the will of the majority, so decolonised countries with hitherto more be it. But their voice should be heard before As the primary radical governments (Sidaway and Simon, it is too late. The Namibian experience subnational 1993). The redrawing of Namibia's internal provides evidence that such an approach territorial units, political geography to establish a uniform can work in a fractured and war-riven national system of regions, the allocation of South Africa's country moving away from all the problems appropriate development oriented powers of apartheid. Moreover, as the primary regions should and responsibilities, and the successful subnational territorial units, South Africa's serve as the holding of the necessary elections represent regions should serve as the principal focus principal focus important steps forward. for development policies. These issues are for development too important to be relegated to mere policies Prior to the elections a major study was afterthoughts, yet to date the debate has underway to formulate an outline failed to break out of its political sustainable regional development strategy straitjacket. BPS)£\ that would be environmentally sustainable for the north of Namibia. Based on extensive research and discussion with REFERENCES local officials and community DuPisani A. 'Affirmative action in Namibia', IndicatorSA Vol 10/No3, Economic Monitor: 29-31. representatives, the requirement of Republic of Namibia, Windhoek: environmental and social sustainability was Constitution of the Republic of Namibia. Government Gazette Not, 21 fundamental. This is the most populous and March, 1990a. politically important part of the country, Proclamation 12: Establishment of the First Delimitation Commission and comprising the four new regions of the Duties Thereof. Government Gazette No69,3 September, 1990b. Report by the First Delimitation Commission of Namibia on the Oshikoto, Oshana, Ohangwena and Determination of Regions, Constituencies and Local Authorities, 1991. Omusati (Figure 1), which correspond very Regional Councils Act, Government Gazette No469,31 August, 1992. closely to the former Owambo bantustan Sidaway J and Simon D. 'Geopolitical transition and state formation: the and the adjacent commercial lands of changing political geographies of Angola, Mozambique and Namibia', Journal ol Southern African Studies, Vol19/No1, special issue, 'Namibia: Tsumeb magisterial district. Parts of the Africa's Youngest Nation', 1993:6-28. area, one of the most underdeveloped in the Simon D. 'Independent Namibia One Year On'. Conllict Studies, No239. country, are subject to unsustainable human London: Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, 1991. and livestock pressures under current Tapscott C, 'National reconciliation, social equity and class formation in conditions and tenure arrangements. independent Namibia', Journal ol Southern African Studies, Vol19/No1, special issue, 'Namibia. Africa's Youngest Nation', 1993:29-39. TrtSlIO®® 76 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 I* * I P* 0 i m Risin Stefano Mainardi, from Department of Economics, the University of Natal Ruins Pieteimaritzburg ith an estimated per capita income The reasons for the renewed decline of Wof US$ 80 in 1990, Mozambique is economic activity in Mozambique in the among the poorest countries in the world. 1990s are again identified with climatic conditions and continuation of internal In the late 1970s, the country had managed insecurity, though the latter is of lesser to recover part of the losses of the relevance since the signing of a peace immediate post-independence period, with agreement in October 1992. Beyond these a GDP yearly growth between 1977 and similarities, a fundamental difference also 1981 nearly matching the average annual exists: whereas in the early 1980s population growth rate during the same misconceived government policies years (2,6%). By striking contrast, the contributed to the negative performance of Mozambican economy underwent a the economy, the early 1990s have been dramatic decline particularly in the period characterised both by an enduring Sustained 1981 -1986, when GDP and per capita GDP commitment of the government to operate economic dropped by a yearly growth rate of more effective reforms and by a substantial development for than 10% and almost 13% in real terms, reduction of aid flows. respectively (See Tables 1 & 2). the near future will depend on In spite of the increasing flows of foreign internal political grants in the 1980s, the continuous w stability, the economic disarray - created by warfare Sustained economic development for the solution of activities all over the country, adverse near future will depend to a great extent on regional weather conditions and foreign exchange the achievement of effective internal shortage - severely affected Mozambique's political stability, the solution of regional tensions and import and investment levels, and hence its tensions - with particular regard to the external domestic production capacity and exports. situation in South Africa - and the assistance maintenance of high levels of external Due to the more favourable performance of assistance. the late 1980s, which largely coincided with the implementation of the first economic In reality, foreign aid has decreased with rehabilitation programme (1987-1990), the the curtailment of assistance from Eastern average yearly growth rate for the past Europe, including the former Soviet Union, decade was not as negative as a simple and reduced import support funds from continuation of past trends would have led some western donors (Consultative Group to: the average yearly decrease for Meeting, 1992). Moreover, according to a 1980-1990 is estimated to lie at nearly World Bank study (WB, February 1993), 0,7%. Actually, the economic recovery was the level of aid is likely to decrease to more initially even more successful than 'normal' levels, closer to those of other government expectations, with the economy low-income countries: in 1990 net receipts achieving an average rate of 5,4% in of per capita ODA (overseas development 1987-1989. However, this recovery has aid) amounted to US$ 60, as opposed to been followed by a modest growth of 0,8% only US$ 24 for low-income countries as a per annum in the period 1990-1992. whole (excluding China and India). INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 77 (^/^AtSMFMI TrltlxW rsg r DATABASE On the other hand, emergency assistance which has actually increased in recent years Table 1: Gross Domestic Product by Region in Mozambique, has been criticised for its disincentive effects on local crop producers 1985 %of 1990* % of MTbn total MTbn total and rural traders. Even recognising its relevant function as a relief measure during Agriculture 70,7 54,8 637,0 37,3 times of heavy warfare or drought, as in Industry & fisheries 19,4 15,0 390,0 22,9 1992, with the return of peace and normal climate conditions, food aid and the free Construction 6,2 4,8 225,0 13,2 distribution of seeds and tools can disrupt Transport & communications 8,8 6,8 162,4 9,5 local production and marketing of basic Commerce & others 23,8 18,4 292,2 17,1 food products. This is especially so if it is carried out in an insufficiently selective Total 100,0 129,0 100,0 1 706,7 way and with strong delays in delivery. Note:' Provisional Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit. Mozambique: EIU Country Profile 1991-92. London, 1993. Another factor which is likely to affect negatively the official trade market is the widespread presence of the parallel market, Table 2: Expenditure on Gross Domestic Product at Market Prices largely connected with illegal imports circumventing trade and income taxation. 1984 1989" % % MTbn MTbn The combined effect of droughts, enduring Private consumption 86,38 80,2 902,60 94,5 internal hostilities and reduction of external Government consumption 28,00 26,0 238,00 24,9 aid in the period 1990-1992 (excluding therefore the effects of the last oil crisis, Gross domestic investment 11,43 10,6 318,60 33,4 which is considered by far a less important Exports of goods factor) is estimated to have been equivalent & non-factor services 6,65 6,2 149,60 15,7 to an 11% decrease in GDP in those years. Imports of goods Had these negative factors not been present, & non-factor services - 24,76 -23,0 -653,90 -68,4 the same estimates would suggest an alternative scenario of a 5-6% growth per GDP at market prices 107,70 100,0 100,0 954,90 year (Consultative Group Meeting, 1992). Note:1 Estimates Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit. Mozambique: EIU Country Profile 1991-92. London, 1993. These negative factors have been only partly offset by increased export earnings, Within Southern Africa, only Lesotho deriving especially from non-traditional appears to overtake Mozambique, with an manufacturing sectors. In view of the ODA per capita of US$ 78. The decreasing relevance of foreign assistance corresponding figures in US$ for other inflows, as opposed to the increasing needs A kind of 'donor major countries of the region were (though of post-war development, particular fatigue' was most of them are lower middle-income attention will have to be paid to the countries): Angola 21; Botswana 118; potential role of exports and domestic and prompted by the Malawi 56; Namibia 32; Zambia 54; and foreign investment, as complementary meagre return of Zimbabwe 35 (World Bank, 1992). factors vis-a-vis external aid. aid during the years of internal Even more than other sub-Saharan African In this respect, the two preconditions of an hostilities countries, the role and magnitude of equal and stable political set-up both in external assistance is a controversial issue Mozambique and in the Southern African for Mozambique. region as a whole assume a particular importance. However, the role of external On the one hand, the recent registered assistance, even if bound to diminish, decline of this assistance should not should not be downgraded too much. continue to the extent of impinging upon the process of rehabilitation of the domestic The increase in export earnings in 1992 has trading system and the rural economy, thus not been sufficient to counterbalance the turning into a new external shock for the growing import needs, so that after economy. Budgetary constraints in donor accounting for special donors' support the countries and a kind of 'donor fatigue', current account deficit as a percentage of prompted by the meagre return of aid GDP does not register a substantial increase during the years of internal hostilities, may relative to the preceding year, stabilising at lead to a premature real shrinking of aid, nearly one-fifth of GDP (see Table 3). which would be deleterious for the Similar results come out in the latest achievements of medium and long term tendencies of the fiscal deficit, with a development objectives. increase of the budget deficit before grants TrtSlIO®® 78 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 coupled with a shift in the opposite labour-intensive industries and services, The direction for the after-grants deficit (the both aspects being generally overlooked by reconstruction incorporation into the budget of previously previous policies. plan has been unregistered military expenditures, largely specifically financed by USSR aid, has also contributed For urban areas, the government is to this result). committed to improve the efficacy of targeted to the poverty targeting, by phasing out existing reactivation of price subsidies (with the exclusion of economic and Reconstruction commodities clearly targeted to the poor, social life in like yellow maize and millet) and by eliminating the rationing system. For rural areas affected The ongoing Economic and Social by war Rehabilitation Programme sets a strong areas, the participation of NGOs is emphasis on investment mobilisation and encouraged both in the free distribution of removal of present internal and external food in case of droughts and other macroeconomic imbalances. Government emergencies, and in food or cash for work objectives for 1992-1994 include an schemes. In view of war disruptions, average yearly GDP growth of 3%, a low-cost traditional building is being gradual reduction of inflation, up to 18% by promoted, especially in rural areas. end-1994, and containment of the negative trends in the budget and the current account Over the last few years, parallel to the deficits. This policy programme, which improvement of internal security, the started in 1987, has in the meantime government has tried to address more received the support of international resources to rural areas, where the vast lending institutions (an ESAF from the IMF majority of the population live in poverty since June 1992 and a fourth adjustment but may have the greatest potential for credit from IDA-World Bank since August growth in the short-medium term. Links 1992). between rural and urban economies are strengthened through revitalising the Besides the stated objectives, particular trading network. attention, both in the short and long term, is being devoted to the alleviation of poverty, In this respect, the state of infrastructure in a problem exacerbated by the prolonged rural areas is particularly weak (GRM, war and droughts. To this end, a National December 1992): Reconstruction Plan has been implemented Less than half of the secondary roads are since February 1991, following the in good condition, and 70% of tertiary signature of a partial peace accord between roads are accessible only in the dry the contending parties in Rome in season. December 1990. On the base of 1983 infrastructure figures, 68% of rural primary schools, Since its first phase, covering a two year affecting 1,2 million pupils, and period, the reconstruction'plan has been two-third of rural health units have been specifically targeted to the reactivation of destroyed during the war. economic and social life in areas affected • As a consequence of these disruptions, by war. A second phase, envisaged for the only slightly more than half of the following three years (1993-1995), would school age population had access to be concerned with resettlement and primary education in 1992. reintegration of displaced (including refugees in nearby countries) and Table 3: Fiscal accounts, trade and debt: the role of external support demobilised military. In a partly 1990 1991 1992 overlapping and partly subsequent phase, incl drought excl drought planned to start within the next two-three fiscal account (% GDP) years for those districts where war damage is relatively more limited, the range of • deficit before grants 29.5 26,8 33,7 30,3 priorities would be enlarged, within a more • deficit after grants 12.6 6,0 7,3 4,7 integrated local development strategy. current account (% GDP) 54,7 58,9 70,0 60,8 Two-thirds of the Mozambican population • deficit before grant • deficit after grant 23,6 21,2 21,3 21,3 are estimated to live in extreme poverty and more than 50% of urban and rural debt service ratio households are believed to suffer from food (debt service/exports of insecurity (GRM, October 1992). goods and services) Generation of employment and incomes for • before debt relief 169,8 146,5 133,1 the poor is pursued by supporting • after debt relief 28,4 28,2 32,8 - family-based agriculture and Source: Consultative Group Meeting, 1992 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 79 tmWMMMW WMS Figure 1 These massive migrations have Distribution of Mozambican Population, 1989 ('000) simultaneously been the consequence nf insecurity and droughts in rural areas iind a major factor contributing to further disruptions in the agricultural sector. Furthermore, within the above figures, mis- estimates that half a million are children under fifteen years of age living in extremely difficult conditions (orphans, unaccompanied, or traumatised). The population expected to resettle during 1993 amounts to more than three million, of which one million are from neighbouring countries: the majority is expected to resettle without waiting for specific programmes of assistance, but the government is facing difficulties in predicting the directions and timing of these population movements. A specific problem for the absorption capacity of the Mozambican economy is represented by the demobilisation of between 70 000 and 100 000 armed I'mws. including former government and Rcnamo soldiers. This process was supposed to be completed by April 1993, but in reality it is still far from completion. Excluding the additional costs of employment reintegration programmes, this operation is estimated to cost between US$ 53 and 73 Source: Population figures from The Economic Intelligence Unit. million. This puts new strains on Mozambique: EIU Country Profile 1991-92. London, 1993. government efforts to foster employment creation, adding to the already existing In terms of number of people per unit of need for job absorption for other groups health facility, whereas in 1985 this (returnees from former centrally planned figure amounted to less than 10 000, in economies, and retrenched mine workers A second phase 1992 it almost reached 13 000. from South Africa). would be Infant mortality in rural areas is concerned with estimated to be as high as 180 per Furthermore, with the security situation resettlement and thousand. improving, the demographic pressure can reintegration of ® The 1995 government target for be expected to increase above its ahv;ul\ displaced provision of safe water supply is a 45% high growth rate: World Bank projections point to a 3% average annual population refugees and coverage, with a protected water source for every 500 persons within half a km "growth over the present decade (WB. demobilised of each village: by contrast, the present 1992). These demographic trends would military supply covers only 22%. also further press the government to provide more employment opportunities The pressing problem of population and improve social services. resettlements poses the need not only to rehabilitate existing infrastructure, but also to expand it. Government estimates point to Policy Dilemmas between 4,6 and 5,5 million people as directly affected by the war (the affected Along with efforts to direct more resources population includes both 'displaced' and to social sectors of high priority, tight fiscal those who, even if not displaced from their and monetary policies have been applied, homes, have suffered serious capability so as to control inflation, which decreased losses in agricultural production) from 85% on average over the period (Consultative Group Meeting, 1992; GRM, 1987-1989 to 33% in 1991. However, a October 1992; GRM, December 1992). new price upsurge has been recorded in Among them, possibly from 2,5 up to 3,5 1992, as a consequence of a looser credit million are internally displaced and another policy and the drought-related supply 1,5 million are refugees in neighbouring shortage. The price system has been countries. liberalised, except for a limited number of TrtSlIO®® 80 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 basic necessities, such as staples, fuels and connected services should be restored, as an A 6% yearly utilities, which are periodically adjusted and alternative to the networks established growth lies far gradually brought to their respective import during the war. below what will parities. Only food subsidies for the poorest population groups are envisaged to remain. Several reforms undertaken so far, such as be needed in those applied to the exchange rate, the price order to achieve Fiscal revenues are expected to increase to system and the domestic trade, have given by the end of the at least 25% of GDP by 1994: given the more value to land, hence providing an century the small base, the present fiscal revenue ratio incentive to agricultural production and same level of reversing the previous discrimination to GDP (24%) is already very high, thus per capita demanding a broadening of the coverage of against this sector. However, the nature of tax collection. This certainly looks a this sector remains to a large extent dual, income in real difficult goal, in a country with negative with a relatively wealthy commercial sector terms as in 1980 private savings (equivalent to 20% of GDP) as opposed to a poor and populous family and increasing budget finance requirements. sector. Public spending constitutes already more than 50% of GDP, an alarming proportion In this respect, many state farms have been in view of the hitherto restricted use of privatised: while possibly removing market public finances, limited to safe inefficiencies, this might perpetuate the geographical areas. However, the reduced imbalance within the agricultural sector. In need for military expenditures is expected spite of present attempts to redress this to allow the redirection of more resources imbalance, and the emphasis of the to development. economic rehabilitation programme on the recovery of this sector, problems have been The exchange rate is now freely determined aggravated by war-related resettlements, as by market forces and the gap with the witnessed by conflicts on former state farm parallel rate has therefore substantially been land in the South. reduced: in contrast with a disparity of more than 100% between the two rates at Given these various constraints, the the end of 1990, the premium of the parallel recovery prospected by the government for market over the official one amounted to 1992-1994 seems ambitious. This recovery 20% by the beginning of 1992. In order to would imply reaching a 6% yearly growth encourage firms to use tied aid, which is in 1994. Still, this figure lies far below the more costly to importers than untied funds hypothetical growth which will be needed due to different import and procurement in the 1990s in order to achieve by the end A stable solution procedures, a more favourable exchange of the century the same level of per capita of internal and rate is still applied by the Bank of income in real terms as in 1980 (Mainardi, Mozambique in this specific case. 1988). Therefore, a stable solution of regional tensions in the country and in the Southern tensions and an In broader terms, a more efficient system of African region and an effective and lasting effective and foreign exchange allocation has been contribution of foreign aid, trade and lasting promoted, aimed at providing special investment is needed. South Africa could contribution of incentives to service and non-traditional definitely play an essential role in this regard. P3& foreign aid, trade exports. Despite these changes, several and investment enterprises operating in internationally traded goods can be expected to incur is needed losses during the transition to a more market-oriented economy. Therefore, the REFERENCES Consultative Group Meeting. 'Strategy and Program for Managing the need for selective and provisional support Transition to National Reconstruction', Consultative Group for from government will have to be met. Mozambique/World Bank, Paris, December 1992. Government of the Republic of Mozambique (GRM): As far as service1 receipts are concerned, the In collaboration with staffs of the IMF and the World Bank): 'Policy present situation is fraught with uncertain Framework Paper 1992-94', Maputo, October 1992. 'The Current Status of the National Reconstruction Plan', December 1992. achievements: while migrant receipts from Mainardi S. 'A Quantitative Assessment of Shortcomings in Basic Needs Mozambican miners in South Africa are Fulfillment and Differences in Living Conditions in Mozambique', UNDP bound to be not so relevant as in the past, a Working Paper, Maputo, July 1987. strong potential for development is believed Mainardi S. 'Growth, Productivity and Foreign Resources: Analysis and to exist in the energy supply to Projections for Mozambique', UNDP Working Paper, Maputo, January 1988. World Bank: neighbouring countries, such as the case of World Development Report 1992. the hitherto under-utilised Cahora Bassa 'Accelerating Economic Growth in Post-War Mozambique: Challenges and dam, transport and tourism. However, for Opportunities', Mozambique Issues Paper, February 1993. these favourable expectations to be able to 'Aide Memoire: World Bank Mission Issues for the Transition from materialise, confidence in the security and Emergency to Sustainable Growth', March 1993. competitiveness of Mozambican routes and INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 81 ©©CfiP&lMTO^ raUKlI® A rejoinder to de Haas and Zulu mm A Constitution for HivaZutu/Natal By Dr Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, Constitutional Advisor to the KwaZulu Government The form and extent of regional powers has emerged as a major stumbling-block in the present stage of negotiations at the World Trade Centre. The inkatha Freedom Party requested the right of reply to a critique of the KwaZulu/Natal Constitution published in Vol10/No3 of Indicator South Africa (Development Monitor:47-52), under the title 'Ethnic Mobilisation: KwaZulu's Politics of Secession'by Mary de Haas and Pauius Zulu. In this rejoinder, Dr Oriani-Ambrosini takes up the cudgels on behalf of the IFP. he constitutional thinking developed of the KwaZulu government to the process Tat the World Trade Centre indicates of transformation in South Africa. that regions will have their own Unfortunately, the article by de Haas and constitutions, even if at present it is not Zulu seems to contribute more to political conceded that such constitutions should be polemics than to academic and intellectual finalised through the establishment of debate around the Constitution. In fact, that federalism rather than regionalism, and that contribution contains significant errors and therefore they should be autonomously is highly inaccurate as a matter of adopted. During his visit to Durban in early constitutional law. August 1993, State President FW de Klerk also promised that KwaZulu/Natal could be The purpose of this rejoinder is not to organised under a regional constitution. continue or exacerbate polemics but rather to reestablish a level of scientific and The adoption by the KwaZulu Legislative objective debate which could be conducive Assembly of the Constitution of the State of to a more in-depth analysis of the KwaZulu/Natal on 1 December 1992 had Constitution and of the policies of the the purpose of erecting the region of KwaZulu government. KwaZulu/Natal into statehood within the unifying parameters of a constitution for a Federal Republic of South Africa, to be drafted through the process of negotiation at national level. The action taken by the The Constitution of the State of KwaZulu Legislative Assembly raised KwaZulu/Natal comes at the culmination of considerable debate which has often a long process of conceptual and political degenerated into political controversy development. This process began in 1972 without focusing on the objective meaning when Mangosuthu Buthelezi first made a and purposes of the Constitution. fervid appeal for the establishment of a federation in South Africa, and for the It is regrettable that this debate has often racial harmonisation among all the people fallen into partisan and distorted living in KwaZulu/Natal in a climate of propaganda overshadowing the pluralism and mutual respect for cultural constitutional meaning of the contribution diversity. 12 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 82 "matics®© The Buthelezi Commission of 1980 and the International Covenant on Indigenous and In many subsequent KwaZulu/Natal Indaba had the Minority Rights. In the African continent constitutions distinctive purpose of bringing together all these concepts have long been entrenched specific mention the social, cultural and economic in Africa's Banjul Charter on Human and formations of the region to work in the Peoples' Rights. is made to the common interest and across racial right of the divisions. From this experience both the Throughout the world, modem constitutions people 'as KvvaZulu Government and the Inkatha recognise and protect social and cultural individuals and Freedom Party developed a clear formations in a sharp departure from the as members of understanding of the conditions for future French revolution tradition which extended the social and nation-building in South Africa. It was recognition and protection from the State firmly understood that South Africa can only to individuals. In many constitutions cultural finally become a nation only to the extent specific mention is made to the right of the formations' that it succeeded in accommodating and people 'as individuals and as members of capitalising on cultural diversity rather than the social and cultural formations to which ignoring, and destroying it. they belong'. This language has earned itself into the Constitution of the State of From this point of view, the KwaZulu KwaZulu/Natal. Government and the Inkatha Freedom Party developed federalistic proposals, not only It is true that ethnicity has been used in for the sake of KwaZulu/Natal but as a plan South Africa upon which to base racial to ensure long-lasting peace and prosperity discrimination, but this should be no reason in South Africa. The adoption of the to ignore ethnicity as it relates to freedom Constitution must be read against this and human rights protection. In the South background. African context, the demand for the protection of cultural diversity cut across Ms de Haas and Dr Zulu appear to contend the political spectrum. that ethnicity is a creation of the regime of apartheid and should be disregarded in the future nation-building. Now more than ever world experience proves this statement wrong, for ethnos exists in the social reality From a technical point of view the best beyond political motivation. It is true that methods employed to protect cultural ethnicity is often instrumentalised for diversity rely on the recognition of political purposes of different connotations, autonomy viz. the right of self-regulation, The best but it is surely not created by parties' on all matters which relate to the essential methods political agendas. part of one's own culture and ethnicity, employed to subject to the democratic parameters and protect cultural principle set forth in the constitution. The The fact of the matter is that the most diversity rely on essential part of the human condition concept of autonomy can either have a emanates from the way we perceive territorial or a personal/collective the recognition ourselves as member of social and cultural connotation. It implies limitation on the of autonomy viz. formations and from our respective powers of the government to regulate or the right of religious, cultural and ethnic identity. There control matters which are best left to self-regulation is no need to stress the fact that in no other territorial, personal or collective autonomy. country in the world might this be as true as it is in South Africa. The notion of recognition of cultural identities and of a related area of autonomy The international community has long are crucial to the protection of freedom in recognised ethnicity as an emerging aspect its most advanced development. It needs to of human rights protection. The Charter of be stressed that these developments in the UNESCO recognises the right to be frontiers of freedom are not the by-product different and to be perceived and of academic speculation but immediately considered different on the basis of one's arise out of the demands of people on the own culture and ethnicity. ground from all over the world. The second International Covenant on Even countries such as the United States of Social and Cultural Rights set the America, which for centuries has embraced foundation for the development of the the ideology of the melting pot has had to so-called fourth generation human rights to come to terms with the recognition and protect cultural diversity and ethnic protection of cultural diversity. It has had to identity. The UN Human Rights adjust to communities such as the Latinos Commission has recently been instructed by and Asiatic communities which have the UN General Assembly to draft the third clearly indicate their unwillingness to INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 83 ©©CfiP&lMTO^ raUKli® The Constitution merge, stating the demand to protect in Constitutional Court, as is the case for all is by no stretch autonomy their cultural diversity and ethnic other human rights. of the identity. Not surprisingly American scholars no longer refer to the United States It is obvious that this regulation of interests imagination a as a 'melting pot' but rather as 'salad bowl'. does not only apply to Zulus but also to all Zulu constitution the other social and cultural formations of for the Zulus only It takes no great academic analysis to the newly-created state of KwaZulu/Natal. support the conclusion that it would be Such formations are not only established on absolutely preposterous to believe that the an ethnic basis but refer also to people of South Africa could only be professional, religious, recreational, considered as individuals on the basis of scientific, academic and civic formations French revolution-type models which the and other institutions of civil society. rest of the world has long abandoned and which seems to be nurtured only by the The Constitution carries a strong African National Congress/South African commitment to preserve the integrity of Communist Party (ANC/SACP) alliance. civil society, through powerfully limiting the role and extent of government in all This is the sociological and factual situations in which there is no need for background against which we need to government action. The limitations of the assess the solutions and the techniques role of government are in tension with the adopted in the Constitution of the State of constitutional imperative of redressing the KwaZulu/Natal. social imbalance of the State and bringing about social justice. The actual resolution of this tension is left to the process of constitutional adjudication which is likely to follow a path very well-experienced in At the outset it needs to be stressed that the many other countries which faced similar Constitution is by no stretch of the problems. imagination a Zulu constitution for the Zulus only. It is a democratic constitution The Constitution is fully inspired by the which meets the highest standards of notion of pluralism, intended as social, modern contitutionalism and recognises cultural, economic and political pluralism; broad areas of personal and collective ® Political pluralism is protected and freedom and autonomy. Within such promoted over and above the mere It is a democratic freedom of autonomy falls the recognition recognition of the co-existence of constitution of the right of the people to express and political parties. Special protection for which recognises maintain their cultural diversity. political minorities accompanies a structure of the State where different broad areas of political parties could be in power at the personal and This includes, amongst many other thins, the right of the people to live by rules of same time in the various regions into collective customary law if they so choose and desire. which the state is subdivided. freedom and It is very significant that customary law is Social and cultural pluralism is autonomy recognised and protected only to the extent protected through the recognition of that it is consistent with the very extensive areas of personal and collective and democratic parameters set forth in the autonomy and through the limitation of Constitution, and it can be enforced only in the role of the State. relation to those individuals who © Economic pluralism is brought about by voluntarily choose to identify themselves intense programmes of privatisation and with the specific system of traditional and the full protection of an economic system based on free market customary rule. competition and limited government intervention. Therefore, also the recognition and protection of traditional and customary law falls within the greater parameters of Pluralism is framed within a set of unifying protection of personal and collective parameters at state and federal level. In this autonomy for matters which are best left to respect, it is essential to read the the autonomy of the people rather than to Constitution against the draft constitution the regulation of government. There is for a federal Republic of South Africa clearly tension between other applicable submitted by the IFP to the multi-party constitutional principles and mandates and negotiation process. This exercise will personal and collective autonomy. This reveal how the concept of federalism tension will need to be resolved through the endorsed by the IFP closely resembles the process of constitutional adjudication system adopted in the United States of centred around the jurisdiction of the America. TrtSlIO®® 84 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 KwaZulu/Natal . Walvis Bay Present Homeland/Provincial Boundaries Pretoria / Johannesburg SWAZILAND LESOTHO SOUTH AFRICA Cape To Port Elizabeth Model Federation should be established, leaving with the member states all the residual powers and allocating to the federal government only those powers which can not be adequately or properly exercised at state levels, on the basis of the notion of residuality. The relation between protection of cultural diversity and residual powers is self-evident once we consider that residual powers are what really shape society in its everyday operations, as they include the KWAZULU adoption and administration of criminal, family, contract, commercial and other laws. NATAL INTERNATIONAL The combined reading of the Constitution BOUNDARIES with the IFP's draft constitution for a federal South Africa shows clearly that the statements contained in de Haas and Zulu's article are utterly wrong as a matter of produced by the KwaZulu Government or constitutional law. There is no foundation the IFP elements which could characterise to support the proposition that the the Constitution or the constitutional Constitution (of the State of policies of the KwaZulu Government or the KwaZulu/Natal) is designed to facilitate IFP as 'reactionary and retrogressive' as The Constitution secession and that it grants the national stated by de Haas and Zulu. On the of the State of government 'minimal powers'. On the contrary, the Constitution throughout its KwaZulu/Natal is contrary, the powers granted to the federal provisions shows a very libertarian and not designed to government are in excess of the powers socially orientated nature which remains facilitate reserved by the Constitution of the United unparalleled by any proposal ever advanced States to the US federal government. by the ANC/SACP alliance or any other secession nor political party. This libertarian philosophy grant the Moreover, constitutional theory reserves to runs through all the various chapters of the national the federal government, in addition to the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, government listed powers, those unlisted powers which the recognition of social and economic 'minimal powers' are known as 'necessary and implied rights, the entrenchment of personal and powers'. Similarly' a reading of the two collective autonomy, the institutions of above constitutional documents, and the democratic participation and the control of extensive analysis of any piece of literature the people over their government and the ever produced by the KwaZulu political representatives. Government or the IFP, clearly indicates that no one has ever proposed secession for Furthermore, the article by de Haas and KwaZulu/Natal, nor has anyone ever Zulu fundamentally misunderstands the role advanced the statement that KwaZulu/Natal of independent commissions. Each of these could cut itself off from the rest of South commissions should be analysed in detail. Africa from a financial or a political point However, as a general statement it can be of view. said that their function is to limit the extent of all branches of government and control Anyone would be very hard pressed to find their functions. A 13-person Civil Service in any of the constitutional documents Commission, as provided for in the tmWMMMW WMS INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 85 There is nothing Constitution, combined with a 13-person Contrary to what the two authors indicaic. in the Regulatory Relief Commission, should there is nothing in the Constitution which' have the capability of cutting off billions of could suggest that government is not baiul Constitution rands worth of government waste, on the principle of full transparency. On iIk- which could corruption and unnecessary government contrary, the people are empowered with suggest that functions. full access of all government information government is which can not be withheld without couri not based on the What is more important is that the approval, and many government actions ;nv principle of full Commissions are tools of direct subject to the control of the commissions and to other reporting requirements. transparency empowerment of civil society to control and regulate governmental functions in addition to the often ineffective mechanism Moreover, and contrary to de Haas am I of political representation. Zulu's understanding, rule of law and abidance to the provisions of the Constitution controls to the fullest extern possible the action of all political representatives and makes them Empowerment of the people is what the accountable to their electorate. The IFP and the KwaZulu Government stand Constitution even contains provisions for. This objective is fully reflected by the which makes civil servants similarly provisions of the Constitution which allow accountable for their gross negligence ami the affected interests to have a say in the malice. As the two authors provided no concerned government functions. This corroboration nor legal basis for their vision of democracy clashes with autocratic conclusions, their sweeping statement in and totalitarian tendencies expressed by the this and in other respects can only be ANC/SACP alliance which would want all countered by indicating that they are the power of the people to be delegated to erroneous. the state and administered by the government in its discretion. South Africa should not fear freedom and empowerment. Pluralism and diversity is Similarly, the Judicial Service Commission what brings people together and creates has been modelled after, and capitalises on strength. Throughout the world all political the most advanced experience of philosophies which tried to acculturise and international constitutionalism to guarantee level diversity have led to unspeakable The Constitution the efficiency and the impartiality of the misery and destruction. I would truly invite controls to the administration of justice. In this respect, it any concerned scientist and intellectual to fullest extent must also be noted the erroneousness of the analyse on a chapter by chapter basis the idea that breaking down the South African possible the various provisions of the Constitution of administration of justice into nine state and the State of KwaZulu/Natal against the action of all one federal judiciaries would create more background of available constitutional political bureaucracy, for this process does not knowledge and experience in the world. representatives increase the required number of and makes them courtrooms, judges and paralegals, nor does No constitution is either perfect or above accountable to it have any bearing on the number of cases criticism, and the Constitution of the State pending before the court. their electorate of KwaZulu/Natal is no exception. However, the 'Buthelezi Constitution of The remarks of de Haas and Zulu related to 1992' could be remembered as one of the the need to report all cases in which the best constitutions ever adopted in the public prosecution failed to prosecute also continent, and whether it remains a dream show a fundamental misunderstanding of or becomes a reality will depend on our the institutional alternative between the capability to explain it to the people of mandatory or discriminatory nature of KwaZulu/Natal. criminal prosecution. The Constitution does not make a choice in this respect but It is essential that in the constitutional indicates that should the discretional option development of South Africa we seek be chosen by the legislature, correctives solutions which work outside preconceived should be put in place to redress some of ideas and political rhetoric, starting from the problems which arise from that type of the true demands of the people of this policy. This type of provision ties in with country and inspired only by the goal of the independent role of public prosecution meeting their true needs, wants and set forth in the Constitution to de-politicise aspirations. This is the test which should and make more efficient the administration direct any constitutional critique. on criminal justice. TrtSlIO®® 86 INDICATOR SA Vol 10 No 4 Spring 1993 EDUCATION IS THE FOUNDATION BUILDING OUR SUPPORT BEGAN IN THE OF OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE. HOPE 1960'S - AND WE ARE STILL THAT'S WHY THE SUGAR HELPING TO BRING EDUCATION INDUSTRY BUILDS CLASSROOMS, GIVES BURSARIES TO THOUSANDS OF YOUNG SOUTH AFRICANS. AND FUNDS TERTIARY EDUCATION IN THE SUGAR BELT. GROWING WITH SUGAR. 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