Debate beyond opposition
Economic and political crises typically encourage new avenues for conceptualising a reordering of society. They open up discourse spaces due to the discrediting of traditional narratives and systems of thought.
If that is the case, it is interesting to note that one could hear a pin drop in the mainstream forums for discussing SA’s political and economic system, despite the heightened sense of crisis that pervades since President Jacob Zuma appointed his fourth finance minister in two years and ratings agency S&P Global Ratings downgraded the country’s credit rating to “junk”.
Elsewhere in the world, (particularly in advanced countries such as the US, Britain, Greece and France) there is significant reconfiguration of the political landscape, with left and right populists leading wave after wave of attack on the political centre, due to the latter’s complicity in failing to resolve social crises.
Some of the most pertinent dimensions of these crises are economic. The crisis has been particularly pronounced for left-leaning parties that have, over the course of much of the past three decades, fallen prey to the hegemony of neoliberal ideology.
What is interesting about SA is that unlike the centre-left in advanced countries, much of the noise about neoliberalism is coming from the dominant faction of the centre-left party trying to hold onto power.
Despite the fact that the Zuma faction has been comfortable with a neoliberal orthodoxy for almost two terms, it now realises the political value of populist left rhetoric. This might not be such an issue if the Zuma faction was not essentially the only contributor to a discursive critique of neoliberalism at the moment.
There have been one or two other spaces where such critique has cropped up recently. For example, Joel Netshitenzhe, who served as adviser to Zuma’s predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, is arguing for a nonfinancialised black capitalist class. Former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas recently referenced financialisation (the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies) and underconsumption (inadequate consumer demand due to reasons including high inequality and systematic depressing of wage income constraining growth).
Until Zuma fired him (along with his minister, Pravin Gordhan), Jonas was the second-most senior politician in the Treasury and yet we have no indication that his analysis fed into Treasury action in a way that is distinct from the decades of orthodoxy that have left SA mired in stagnation and decay.
Netshitenzhe also fails to relate his criticism to his time in government.
It may or may not be unfair to provide a critical line on Treasury orthodoxy amid the hostile political situation (from an intellectually and morally bankrupt Zuma regime) and potentially binding global constraints, but at the very least — given the state of crisis — more could be done to enhance a vibrant public discourse about the restructuring that is clearly needed.
Those who seek to mobilise against the Zuma faction (associated with the Save SA campaign, for example) and who seemingly do not have a critique of neoliberalism, the extent to which a technocratic and constitutionalist discourse around preserving state institutions serves as a useful basis for organising opposition to the Zuma faction seems limited.
So far, it seems to have been most successful in mobilising a smattering of particularly white, middle- and upper-class South Africans to public protests. This is a problem.
Some questions that would be worth engaging on for progressives aiming to break with the current political moment: around what programme should opposition to the Zuma faction cohere?
Will a programme centred on “good governance” and anticorruption be sufficient to successfully rival the Zuma faction and achieve mass support?
What role has the postapartheid economic programme and structure played in leading the country to this current conjuncture? Do we want to centre opposition to the Zuma faction in terms of a defence of a fiscally conservative Treasury? What would a genuine programme of “radical economic transformation” (the slogan used by Zuma and his acolytes) look like and how can we push for it?
In a global and country context in which the capitalist class shows diminished interest in investing, what role should they play in society? What role should a predatory, collusive and parasitic financial sector, which restricts industrial development, play in society?
The narrow and cynical harping on about the admittedly bad state of government corruption does little to answer these questions. All it does is undermine the potential for a vibrant public debate and function as rhetorical cover for efforts at erosion of state intervention as a means of correcting the depravities of the market.
Responding to this, it is easy for those in the Zuma faction to make cynical, bastardised critiques of the economic order through shallow reference to “radical economic transformation” and “white monopoly capital”.
The public debate on SA’s political economy is not a meaningful one – it only functions to wage factional battles.
If we are to move beyond this and counter the Zuma faction’s kleptocratic politics, the country desperately needs an open and honest exchange of ideas between a new generation of discussants versed in radical political economy and the country’s older generation.
Without this, opponents of Zuma and his cronies give all the rhetorical space to the Zuma faction to make cynical and successful use of radical discourse to maintain power.