The economies of developing counties, because they’re in state of transformation, award us means to critically examine the means and ways of balancing market economy with democracy. Latin America is presently under the popular explosive multiplier effect led by the firebrand Hugo Chavèz. All developing countries, South Africa included, will not be immune to consequent multiplier effects of what is presently going on in Latin America.
For instance, Chavez is in the process of building ties with the likes of Cuba and China in defiance of what he calls George W Bush’s imposing plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Chavez has proposed a Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA); arguing that ALBA would redistribute wealth to the poorest, rather than siphoning it off to Washington fat cats. Facts on the ground are that he is remaining true to his aspirations.
On the other hand the Chinese economic reforms are fast producing consequences of income polarization, increased poverty for the majority, and intensified exploitation of the majority of people for the benefit of the few emerging rich hooded capitalists. The Chinese Communist party argues that such things are an integral part of the processes of capitalist marketisation that is a necessary step towards fully fledged socialism.
Then there’s India, where the class problem has become more acute with opening of markets and growth of domestic economies. The rich minority of India is mostly aborigine; hence it feels immune to criticism. It sees the country’s economic success as part and parcel of domestic empowerment. But militant parties are mushrooming all over India under the guise of religious tensions when in truth they are people who are frustrated with economic trend of the country that favours the rich and educated.
China has managed to smuggle probably the most radical form of capitalism under the guise of socialist rhetoric; while South Africa has been accused of tricky gymnastics of ‘talking left and acting right’ with an economic growth that is refusing to trickle down to the people on the ground. The truth of the matter, with all the talk of healthy fiscals and markets correcting themselves for the past eons of years, the poor everywhere are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer.
To answer Mr. Joel Netshitenzhe, in his piece Leadership for a new age on the Polokwane Briefing of the Mail and Guardian; yes the ANC is still probably the best party to lead this country forward to a much more brighter democratic future, but the glue is thinning out. What the ANC needs to learn—not emulate—from Asian nations, especially China, is that ingesting some new blood on a party affords it an opportunity to avoid entropy. The ANC is in desperate need of new ideas that’ll take the country into a new age.
A new dawn has come into the world and the ANC cannot afford to miss it. World people of goodwill have woken to the injustices of the present economic system whose status quo is biased to the poor. There’s a surge of civic and political activism that is opposed to the fundamental injustices of neo-liberal economic values: the brutal exploitation of resources, ruthless competition, vulgar materialism, rampant consumerism, morbid individualism, obscene greed, odious hypocrisy, and so on.
I know the ANC keep telling us that its policies are biased to the poor but the evidence on the ground suggests otherwise. South African economic policies are driven by the Washington Consensus with few insignifanct concessions there and there, and windfalls for the poor in the form paltry social welfare programs. When the president stands in front of the nation, as he did towards the national conference of the SACP to asks what’s the alternative; either he’s being naïve, ironical, or simply admitting to the dearth of ideas in the economic well of his party.
The ANC (African National Congress) on its discussion paper titled Economic Transformation For A National Democratic Society has admitted that; “We are still some way from our vision of the economic base of a national democratic society. The ownership and control of wealth and income, the poverty trap, access to opportunity and so on are, are all in the main defined, as under apartheid, on the basis of race and gender.”
It has finally realised that it is chasing a bouncing ball in thinking that the “changes we seek” will emerge from the “invisible hand” of the market.
It seems a paradoxical vacuousness of our times that even the political rhetoric of “bias towards the poor” serves only to feed the coffers of neo-liberal polices. Perhaps it is time for the ANC to realise that there’s an unbridgeable gulf between democratic socialism and neo-liberalism and start acting accordingly.
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