Racialisation of country’s capital
Bell Pottinger did not invent white monopoly capitalism, as many like to think
WHITE monopoly capital has been written about and studied by social scientists in South Africa. It is not something invented by Bell Pottinger, as some want us to believe. Instead, we must be careful not to dismiss such concepts, as the majority of South Africans and black South Africans in particular are trapped in poverty. Those who deny this phenomenon of white monopoly capital will suffer the same defeat as Thabo Mbeki did at Polokwane, if not worse consequences.
In an era of fake news or in what some may term a “post-truth” world, the fallacy that we might fall fool to is that we throw the baby out with the bath water. In other words, we might dismiss truths that have been established simply because of where they emerge from or because they are clouded in non-truths.
This has been the case with the concept of white monopoly capital. For decades, South African writers and scholars have been able to study and write about this phenomenon. Capital has oligopolistic or monopolistic tendencies and that in South Africa, in particular, is racialised. Yet because the term was used by those who oppose the current narrative of the mainstream media, we tend to throw out the truth which is white monopoly capital.
In his seminal work, A History of Inequality in South Africa: 1652-2002, the economist Sampie Terreblanche highlights among other things the “close symbiotic relationship between the white political class and the white economic class”.
In particular, Terreblanche points out the “Anglo-Americanisation” of the South African economy whereby this white, English elite has been able to influence Afrikaner corporations as well as the ANC to adopt overtly liberal capitalistic and oligopolistic tendencies in order to fit into the international trend of globalisation.
South Africa had to go this neo-liberal, capitalistic and monopolistic way, suggested the English corporates, else it would perish like the rest of the countries on the continent.
As a result, suggests Terreblanche, the ANC government post-1994 allowed for the South African economy, based on colonial and racist capitalism, to evolve into one that was neo-liberal, first-world capitalistic, thus implicitly excluding a large part of the black labour force. Despite the co-option of a black elite, both bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, the new system remained fundamentally racist and continues to be characterised as “a white controlled enclave in a sea of black poverty”.
Those studying the social sciences do not need the exact words “white monopoly capital” to appear in a scientific text in order for it to gain credibility or legitimacy. Rather, what is often done is to engage the concept in order to elicit from those using the term their understanding of what they mean when they employ such a term.
Therefore, in order to answer the question of whether white monopoly capital exists in South Africa, one has to question whether monopoly capital is racialised in South Africa. No doubt the resounding answer to this is yes, it is racialised.
The co-option of the black bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoise, articulated by Terreblanche, highlights the lengths to which the Nelson Mandela and Mbeki administration, in particular, went in order to deracialise the economy.
The founding philosophy of BEE and later B-BEE was that the South African economy was racially skewed in favour of whites and therefore interventions, albeit by the state and therefore artificially, had to be made in order to rectify this racially skewed position of the economy.
These policies and programmes, implemented primarily during the Mbeki administration, failed initially because the interventions were not widely and evenly spread. A few selected and politically-connected individuals were given access to these empowerment deals, and then only in sectors that hardly had any influence to effect real racial change in the economy.
For example, scholars Adam Habib and Vishnu Padayachee, in an article titled “Economic Policy and Power Relations in South Africa’s Transition to Democracy”, suggested that through a process of unbundling, large English corporates in South Africa sold off their subsidiaries to this emerging black business class.
This resembled the affirmative action applied to Afrikaners in the post-World War II period, yet it remained a minute capital base compared to the conglomerates that existed.
As a result, the Mbeki administration went on to declare B-BBEE in order to ensure that the effects of economic growth, in particular, were felt among the black population instead of making a few blacks billionaires.
It is, therefore, difficult to expect Mbeki today to deny that the economy remains largely monopolistic and racialised, still skewed in the favour of whites, when he wishes his legacy to portray that he had deracialised the economy.
Yet it has not only been scholars that have exhausted the concept of white monopoly capital. The SACP, for example, tabled a seminal document, “The Path to Power”, at its seventh congress in 1989, highlighting the features of South Africa’s “Colonialism of a Special Type”.
This document is clear what the characteristics of this “Colonialism of a Special Type” is when it says: “white South Africans enjoy political power, racial privileges and the lion’s share of the country’s wealth”.
This is contrasted with the mass subjugation of the black population to unemployment, poverty and inequality then already in South Africa.
That document goes on: “The form of domination developed by the Union of South Africa also perpetuated the racialised economic structures of the preUnion period. There was a white monopoly of capitalism, means of mining, industrial and agricultural production and of distribution. There was also a virtual white monopoly of skilled and supervisory jobs in the division of labour. Whites had privileged access to trading and petty commodity production.”
Terreblanche’s book came on the eve of South Africa’s 10th year of celebrating democracy and freedom and spelled a clear signal to the ANC government at the time: change course.
Mbeki, having commandeered the ANC ship, was at the height of his influence, and so weak was political opposition that the ANC gained the necessary two-thirds majority to make the essential structural changes.
It was not to be. Instead the neo-liberal, inflation-targeting, currency valuing and macro-economics of Growth, Employment and Redistribution was just fastened on to the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa. So powerful and boastful was the administration, they thought they could stop the tsunami; a phenomenon based mainly on ideological differences with Mbeki.
Today, after another decade, South Africa stands at a crossroads and the hegemonic influence, no matter who is elected party president, stands to wane. Both sides, Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosizana Dlamini Zuma, are said to be set to split from the ANC if they lose and a further fragmentation of the ANC is bound to happen.
Unfortunately, part of the reason for the fragmentation is based solely on the social distance created by the black bourgeoisie and that of the black masses trapped in poverty. This black business class, continuing to be led by the likes of Mbeki, do not hear the signs of the times that the people, black people, are tired and hungry.
In denying the existence of white monopoly they think they can drown out the screaming of the black masses. But as with Polokwane, this black elite will be defeated, this time not by ANC delegates but by the people.
IN OTHER WORDS, WE MIGHT DISMISS TRUTHS THAT HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED SIMPLY BECAUSE OF WHERE THEY EMERGE FROM OR BECAUSE THEY ARE CLOUDED IN NON-TRUTHS
Wesley Seale Teachers Politics at Rhodes University.