Review by Marina Carman
Elite transition: from Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa
By Patrick Bond
Pluto Press, London, 2000
318pp, $47.95
For anyone disappointed with the fruits of the post-apartheid period in South Africa and the rightward shift of the African National Congress in government, books like this one are a real reward â if only because the first step to changing something is understanding it.
The flood of progressive leaders into government in 1994, and the failure of much of the left to adequately criticise and combat the elite transition, has meant that this sort of discussion has been limited to publications such as the African Communist, Links and a small number of others.
The speed of the transition in South Africa also surprised many â but becomes clearer in hindsight.
Bond provides a useful contribution to understanding not only the political shifts of the new government, but also the deeper economic forces at work and the insidious influence of the World Bank. He asserts that it is through classical Marxian approaches to political economy [that] we can best understand the elite character of South Africa's 1990 political transition.
The problems the South African economy faced during apartheid, he argues, were based on the generalised, long-term, structural problems of capitalism, in particular overaccumulation (excessive investment has occurred and hence goods cannot be brought to market profitably, leaving capital to pile up in sectoral bottlenecks or speculative outlets without being put back into new productive investment).
Bond's analysis of the relationship between these economic factors and their political outcomes is a fascinating part of this book. The distorted and ailing South African economy, economic sanctions and political instability (which was not conducive to foreign investment) helped force the apartheid era National Party (NP) into accepting change.
When the ANC inherited this economy, the policy choices it began to make (under pressure from local and international capital) did not solve the underlying problems. In fact, they served to continue them.
This continuation of neo-liberal policies was justified, excused or covered over. Bond's exposition of the sort of social contract politics, talking left, acting right, coerced compromise and corporatist projects led by the ANC is thorough.
The book traces the shifts in neo-liberal policy through the Reconstruction and Development Program adopted in 1994 to the Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy adopted in 1996. While the RDP was initially seen as a battleground between the left and right, by the time of GEAR it was clear which side had control and where the process was heading. Bond's detailed documentation of the failure of the ANC government to deliver on basic needs (housing in particular) is an indictment of the policy direction it took.
Interestingly, the remaining strength of progressive forces and public awareness of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's role in other African countries meant that the first post-apartheid loan to South Africa was not accepted until 1997 (and even then it was a small one). Debt was also a vexed issue, due to the ANC's acceptance of the need to pay the debt run up by the NP government.
However, Bond argues, Conventional progressive critiques of the near-mythical importance of the Bretton Woods Institutions requires amendment in South Africa, where the World Bank barely established a loan portfolio during the ANC's first term: instead, the damage done was in the ideological and policy spheres, where Bank staff were prolific in their support for essentially status quo arrangements even where clear, redistributive alternatives had been mandated by the Democratic Movement.
In the last chapter, Bond provides a good overview of the worldwide efforts of imperialism to rebuild its legitimacy, and the chinks in its armour which have appeared in the form of anti-Third World debt campaigns and the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation in November.
Given the renewed spirit of international solidarity generated by the new movements, Bond's assessment of the possibilities for a struggle for real liberation in South Africa is optimistic. In a previous epoch â one recent enough in the collective memory and still bursting with the pride of authentic struggle â not more than a few thousand South African radical civil society activists took up a task of similar world-scale implications ... and they won! Now the next step needs to be taken.