ANC+Discussion+Documents+for+NGC+2005-06-29

=ANC June 29th 2005 NGC (<500 words)=

The ANC has published four discussion documents for its National General Council (in hard copy, and on the Internet at **[]**). Those on Strategy and Tactics, Unity of the Movement, and the National Question are mostly confirmation of what has gone before.

The controversial document is the one on Development and Underdevelopment, beginning with its review of world history that leaves out China and India, each is in its tenth Five-Year Plan. These two countries are about to become the greatest economic powers of the 21st century.

If South Africa had started Five-Year Plans from 1994, we would already be in our third one. The document juggles intervention and laissez-faire, and “First and Second Economies”, so that it is not clear which is supposed to be the state-supported and which the free market one.

The document admits that South Africa is “a country with a 40% unemployment rate and a youth unemployment rate of almost 60%” and it wants government to anticipate and provide for future training and infrastructure demand in the bourgeois marketplace. Such measures have long been in place. They are failing.

The document asks for “a more nuanced inflation targeting policy” (cheaper Rand) and looser exchange controls (stronger Rand). It complains not only about the evil of jobless growth but also “the capital requirements of financing BEE”.

Marx proved in 1865 (in Value, Price and Profit) that free collective bargaining would not affect employment. But this discussion document asserts, “…small adjustments to the current regulation of the labour market could produce substantial returns for job creation. Government should consider adapting the present bargaining arrangements to limit the effect of agreements on parties outside of the agreement, such as smaller firms.” The document blames “the unintended consequences of the Labour Relations Act and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act”.

These are proposals to re-cast basic labour law in favour of capital.

The document praises the temporary Expanded Public Works Programme and “Home-based and community based care services.”

“The application of the minimum wage in sectors that potentially could employ more people must be examined” says the document. This is DA policy. The document proposes a “dual labour market” using zones, age grouping, industries, size of business or even race to qualify and disqualify people. Finally the document says: “Aside from these changes to labour market regulation, we also need to streamline our efforts to promote small business.” It claims: ”better access to credit for small businesses would stimulate the informal economy and increase employment.” No proof is offered. In fact, more than a decade of expensive small business promotion has produced almost no result.

What South Africa really needs is big capital investment in a big-scale central plan and not to repeat the wishful pursuit of small business hopes that have never materialised and will never materialise.

The document should have expressed a sense of common purpose and provided a central plan for the country to rally round. Instead, the job was given to a Thatcherite. It is an anachronism.

The ANC NGC needs counter-proposals, fast - proposals like the COSATU 2015 Plan.


 * Dominic Tweedie, 2005-06-06.

ONE PERSON ONE JOB IN A UNITARY ECONOMY!

“…a vast association of the whole nation …in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” (Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848)**