By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — Mass-based RDP Councils are being established throughout South Africa to ensure that the new government's Reconstruction and Development Program is "people-driven", Cheryl Carolus, the ANC's RDP coordinator, told Green Left Weekly on August 19. Representatives of the national RDP Council gathered to announce their assessment of the ANC-led Government of National Unity's first 100 days.
The RDP Council is a united front of mass-based extraparliamentary organisations which were active in the anti-apartheid struggle and participated in the drafting of the RDP. It is convened jointly by the ANC-COSATU-SACP alliance, the National Education Coordinating Committee and South African National Civics Organisation. Numerous national mass organisations representing youth, women, the health sector, cultural workers, religious, human rights, black business and rural people are represented on the council.
Carolus told Green Left Weekly that RDP councils are being replicated across the provinces. "We believe that the delivery of the RDP is not just about government dishing out benefits to a passive citizenry. A very important principle of the RDP is that it has to be people-driven, and our understanding of the people-driven process is that it accords rights to people and ensures that the real needs of the people are at the very centre of the RDP.
"It places very serious responsibility on people to take an active role, with the government, in bringing about changes in their lives." The establishment of RDP councils "down to as local a level as possible" is crucial, she said. They should involve many local organisations of the people, from the "local church organisations and religious formations to the karate club".
The aim of the local councils is ensure maximum decision making at the grassroots, Carolus continued. "We would like to see decisions being taken at the most decentralised level possible. For example, one of the key RDP demands is the rehabilitation of schools. Decisions around how this should happen will be dealt with at the community level and at every single school. Parents, students and teachers themselves, beyond the organised teachers unions and student organisations, will take decisions about how their own school is to be rehabilitated."
"This is the big challenge", Carolus told Green Left Weekly. "We can all stand and be critical of the government — as we are in some respects about how it has performed, and we will continue to be — but we also are extremely critical of ourselves. We need to organise ourselves. One of the problems of the government at the moment is communication. That is partly our fault. Just who do they speak to? Who does government involve? If we want to be seriously involved and insist that we be consulted, we have to get our own act together. We have to make sure we set up these structures so that there is a place where government can account to us."
In its assessment of the ANC-led government's first 100 days, the national RDP Council said it recognised that it would take many years to redress the imbalances created by oppressive and exploitative governments. Nevertheless, "the people who have suffered under this system need to see visible change that will improve the dismal social conditions under which they live". There is a "need for rapid and visible change on the one hand, and the need for effective consultation, participation and sustainability on the other".
The council warned that there were "tendencies to confine the RDP to its second chapter, that is, to narrow it down to a development program to meet basic needs, leaving the core of the formal economy untouched". There is also an urgent need to "radically transform the public service" so that it is fully committed to the implementation of the RDP.
The ANC Youth League's Neville Naidoo pointed out that the Public Service Commission continues to protect the vested interests of white civil servants and senior management. It is "trying to limit the effectiveness of affirmative action. We feel that affirmative action is a central plank of the RDP and transforming the state. It cannot be held ransom to the vested interests of the Public Service Commission."
Cheryl Carolus said there was evidence that "elements linked with the old intelligence services" were exploiting the insecurity of white public servants. "The head of the National Intelligence Service convened a meeting of director generals to actively challenge the government over advertising for applications for new director generals ... I think we have reason to be concerned that elements of the intelligence services and dark forces from apartheid's past may have a hidden agenda to exploit the insecurity of public servants."
In his contribution, the Communist Party's Jeremy Cronin criticised big business attempts to convert the RDP into marginal charity projects funded by the "trickle down" from economic growth. "This is the message that comes across in the current wave of strikes. The bosses are telling workers don't strike because the surplus — that they have never done anything with other than speculate on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange — will be put into the RDP and wage claims will destroy that."
Summing up, Carolus said, "On the whole, the RDP Council would give the government a very firm thumbs up. That doesn't mean that we are entirely uncritical, and neither do we see criticism as opposition to the government. We think that we share a lot of the concerns that our comrades in government have. We understand they are constrained by a civil service and a budget inherited from the apartheid regime. We are very mindful that this is a government of national unity. There are different parties with very widely differing interests." For these reasons a mass-based movement, like the councils, must organise to break these constraints, she said.
"We want to say to the new government: 'Well done. You are going to hear a lot more from us because we are also going to be critical as you go along. We are going to jealously guard the RDP but we are also going to be right in the trenches with you fighting for the life and blood of the RDP.'"