NDZ sings in harmony with the president on radical economic transformation
● In a series of speeches over the past year, President Jacob Zuma has hardened his position on the economy to arrive at a vision of radical economic transformation that is likely to be the key policy item at the ANC conference this weekend.
It has also become the main policy plank of Zuma’s preferred successor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who is running on a slogan of “Radical economic transformation. Now.”
The speeches of the two leaders offer a guide for new parameters of transformation. Radical economic transformation is state-led (not private-sector driven as the first wave of black empowerment was) and it drives towards hegemony — black people must be in control, not in shared and marginal stewardship.
Black empowerment has hardly moved the needle on control of the listed economy, as the annual employment equity reports show. The C-suites in South Africa are largely white-controlled through immutable and hardened networks.
At its hard edges, radical economic transformation can be read as nationalist and racially wedging. On the campaign trail, ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial spokesman Sihle Zikalala, for example, said Indian people should no longer be regarded as black in that province.
Last weekend, Dlamini-Zuma said white people were ignorant of how most black people live.
Earlier in her campaign, the candidate also laid out a blueprint of mooted changes to the independence of the South African Reserve Bank.
No indigenous control
In a speech last year at a cadre forum in Pietermaritzburg, Zuma said that everywhere in the world local people were in charge of the economy.
“In . . . India you will find Indians in charge of their economy, if you go to China the Chinese are in charge of their economy, if you go to America the Americans are in charge of their economy, it is the same with the English, Germans and anywhere else.
“It is only here in South Africa where people indigenous to the country are not in charge of the economy. That would be us.” He told the forum that the economy was one of three pillars that supported the state.
“If you don’t know that, the country will one day fall on top of you and squash you,” he said.
“Political power, which we have, enables you to win elections.
“You can write the law with this power and run the country. The second pillar is money matters or the economy. The third pillar is defending the country or what is called the security of the country.
“If you have not properly grasped all three, your power has an expiry date. It will start to weaken . . . after 20 years things change and political power can no longer grow.
“Those in charge of the economy, try to influence those with political power,” Zuma said.
“Unfortunately, those who have political power have that alone, you cannot eat political power. Those in charge of the economy have something they can actually eat.
“If you stumble about in the dark as if you are blind, those in charge of economic power will humble you.”
Here are quotes from speeches made by Dlamini-Zuma while campaigning for leadership of the ANC:
“In the world’s most equal societies, the top 10% earn about six times as much as the bottom 10%. In South Africa, the top 10% earn 110 times more than the bottom 10%.”
“Radical economic transformation is an agenda directed at the large army of unemployed and poor South Africans, to build an economy and society that include everyone, as a precondition for stability.”
“The focus on radical economic transformation, changing the structure, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership, management and control of the economy to include all South Africa, is fundamental to building the society envisaged in our constitution.”
Money is power
Dlamini-Zuma has said that “power is not just the vote, parliament”, but resides “primarily in controlling the economy”. In August she said: “Radical economic transformation is nothing new. The land is nothing new, the wars of dispossession went for centuries because our forebears knew that land was an asset.
“Just in the Eastern Cape, they fought for 100 years for land, but this time we are not going to fight for it. Our forebears sacrificed and lost their lives so that now we can be able to get it in a civilised manner.”
No dignity without land
Dlamini-Zuma, at a prayer meeting in KwaZulu-Natal last Sunday, said white people had looted and stolen the land from black people.
“We are not talking radical economic transformation because we want to steal. We want people to get their land back. There is no dignity if people do not have land.”
Dlamini-Zuma said if she were elected she would take white people on a bus to show them how black people lived in informal settlements.
“I will show them that those people live worse than their dogs.”
She also referred to radical economic transformation in a speech to the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria in August.
In her notes for the speech, she said the Reserve Bank would no longer be allowed to hold on to its “amorphous independency” and would have to follow development goals set by the ANC government. She said ownership of the bank would be debated by the ANC at its conference this weekend.
Reserve Bank revision
“We must ensure that the South African Reserve Bank will not hold onto an amorphous ‘independency’, but has as its clear and deliberate task to implement the developmental policies of the people-orientated developmental plan of the majority ANC government,” the speech notes said.
“I reiterate again that it just simply cannot any longer be allowed that the Reserve Bank be policy-independent from government.
“The Reserve Bank must be aligned to support and implement government’s economic transformation policy. Furthermore, the private ownership of shares in the Reserve Bank must cease, and government must be the sole owner of all Reserve Bank shares.”