Umrabulo

Number 21, 2nd Quarter 2004

Editorial

Who will set the agenda?

The theme for this edition of Umrabulo is 'Implementing the National Agenda'. In his contribution to this edition, President Thabo Mbeki identifies clear aspects of that agenda, at the heart of which lies the struggle to defeat poverty and create work. The answer to the question of who sets that agenda is clear: it is the masses of our people who fought for democracy and continue to utilise this freedom to make their aspirations clearly known. In realising these aspirations, the ANC has committed itself to a peoples contract to create work and fight poverty.

The President refers to a Chinese saying that the sound of one tree falling is greater than the sound of a whole forest growing. To this we can join another well-known proverb that empty vessels make the loudest noise. South African politics, unfortunately, is marked by a preponderance of empty vessels that spare no effort in their attempt to divert the national agenda in their own interest.

The quiet sound of the growing forest is unlikely to out-shout this cacophony. But implementing the national agenda is certainly the most significant aspect of our recent history. As we enter the second decade of freedom, the quiet work of building a better life is unlikely to grab media headlines, but is certainly the most significant task around which millions of South Africans are united.

The role of social movements in that unity is an issue taken up by ANC Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe. Motlanthe argues that the relationship between social movements and the democratic state is one of creative tension and cooperative engagement, both of which are vital for propelling forward the implementation of the national agenda. Like the President, Motlanthe urges us to focus on the quiet work of building genuine social solidarity for human liberation, and not to be diverted by the empty noise of self-serving 'critics' of democracy. Motlanthe concludes with a ringing quote from Martin Luther King Jnr, who wrote of his predecessor, WEB du Bois: "Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional relief and then retire into smug passive satisfaction. History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry. The supreme task is to organise and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force." The recent congress of the ANC Youth League powerfully demonstrated the capacity of our movement to organise and unite young people for transformation. Four thousand youth gave a ringing endorsement to the task of implementing the national agenda. At the same time the congress raised critical questions about certain policy and implementation challenges that continue to confront youth. In particular the league intends to raise a review of university funding formulas, and proposes a new configuration of youth development agencies such as the Umsobomvu Fund and the Youth Commission. The newly elected president of the league, Fikile Mbalula, reports on the outcomes of the conference and the determination of the youth to unite in action to fight poverty and create work.

The unity in action of our people as a whole was amply demonstrated in April of this year in South Africa's third democratic general election. Michael Sachs takes an in-depth look at the election results. Comparing them with 1999, he shows how, despite the loud noises made by numerous empty vessels, the results show that our people's enthusiasm for democracy as a means to fight poverty and create work has in no way diminished. Indeed, greater numbers of people voted for the ANC than in the previous election. The poor and the working class, in particular, came out in huge numbers, while the movement also consolidated its support in minority and middle class constituencies.

Also in this edition we pay homage to three outstanding South Africans who have passed on over the last few months: comrades Wilton Mkwayi, Ray Alexander and Beyers Naude. Each is a giant, on whose shoulders we will stand as we implement the national agenda. As we lay them to rest, we do so in the firm knowledge that their spirits will fertilise the ground from which the forest of our free nation is quietly growing.

An invitation to Umrabulo readers

Readers of Umrabulo are invited to submit articles for publication in the Readers' Forum section. Articles may cover any topic considered relevant to the purpose of Umrabulo, including responses to previous articles.

When submitting articles, please consider the following:

Readers' Forum articles should be between 1,500-3,000 words in length.
Umrabulo is aimed at a broad range of people within the ANC and democratic movement, but especially at branch members. Contributions should therefore use plain language. Jargon should be avoided, and specialist terms should be clearly explained.
Contributions may be submitted in any South African language. Until resources permit otherwise, however, articles are likely to be translated into English for publication.
Articles should be submitted together with the name and contact details of the author.
Articles may be submitted by e-mail, fax, post or by hand.
The editor may edit any contributions for length or to ensure clarity.
The Editorial Collective reserves the right to decide whether or not to publish a contribution.

Articles may be sent to the following address:

Umrabulo
PO Box 61884
Marshalltown
2107

By e-mail: umrabulo@anc.org.za
By fax: 011 376 1134

Implementing the national agenda

At the centre of the national agenda, which must drive the efforts of all sectors of society, stands the struggle against poverty and underdevelopment, writes President Thabo Mbeki.

It is now ten years since we won our democratic victory. The 10th anniversary celebrations that continue during this first year of our second decade of liberation, communicate the message that the masses of our people fully understand and appreciate the fundamental importance of the victory of 1994 to their hopes and aspirations to achieve the goal of a better life.

These are the same masses who engaged in struggle to defeat the apartheid system, ready and willing to sacrifice their lives if need be, to rid our country of the yoke of white minority domination. They did this because they wanted to translate into reality the vision that the people shall govern.

They confronted the brutal might of the apartheid regime because they wanted to use the opportunity that would be created by the victory of which they were certain, to address the pervasive and deeply-entrenched legacy of poverty and underdevelopment arising from 350 years of colonialism and apartheid, which they knew we would inherit.

They were ready to sacrifice their lives because they foresaw the day when it would be possible for us to say that we have eradicated the extremely painful and destructive legacy of racism and sexism that was a fundamental expression of the system of white minority rule and exploitation.

The people looked forward to a time when freedom would have brought them safety and security after many centuries of state violence and exposure to the most vile abuse at the hands of criminals spawned by the oppressive system, from whose predatory activities white South Africa had protected itself by all possible means, and to which the majority had no access.

They yearned for the re-emergence of a social morality informed by our traditional values of ubuntu, to address the challenge of moral regeneration. This was and is occasioned by the fact that illegitimate rule, the perpetuation of an anti-human social order, and the elevation of the acquisition of money and wealth into the highest of the social values towards which our people should aspire, have combined to produce the social ills of corruption and crime towards whose eradication we are all committed.

The masses of our people also wanted to establish relations of peace, friendship, solidarity and mutually beneficial cooperation between our country and the rest of Africa and the world, to reverse an historical reality as a result of which our country had become a world pariah, and the fountainhead of racism, aggression, destabilisation and war.

These are the same masses who, in April this year, voted us into government.

These masses also see themselves as part of the great army of change that must work together to overcome the legacy of our racist past.

Because of this, they fully understood what we meant when we spoke about a people's contract to create jobs and fight poverty. Because of this, they have understood what we meant when we put forward the concepts traditional to African social practice of letsema and vuk'uzenzele.

The path we follow in building this people's contract requires that we answer the question of what constitutes the main agenda of our process of reconstruction and development. Many in our country give varied answers to this question. These varied responses to this question tell us that our different experiences and expectations as a people dictate that indeed, we will provide different answers informed by our different interests.

Needless to say, the national response to this question - what constitutes the main agenda of our process of reconstruction and development - will determine what we do as a country, what we will do with the human, spiritual and material resources we are able to muster.

In comments I made in 1995 in a public lecture at the University of Port Elizabeth, under the title 'Is there a national agenda - and who sets it?', I asked: "Is there a national agenda around which the whole country should unite? If there is, the question arises: Who has set that agenda? If there is not, the question remains to be answered, who shall set that agenda?" I said then that: "I am told that the Chinese have a proverb which says that the felling of one tree makes more noise than the growth of an entire forest...(But) all around us a great forest of millions of healthy trees is growing quietly but steadily. We owe that process of the renewal of our country to the efforts of millions of our people, including you who are gathered here."

"But if we were not participants in this historic process of the birth of a nation which the nations of the world support and watch with great interest and optimism, we might be tempted to believe that all that was happening was that a single tree was being felled, so intense is the absence of focus on all these things that make for the happy and prosperous South Africa for which our people sacrificed.

"To respond to the effort to set a national agenda focused on the single tree, (which therefore projects only the negative), all of us as ordinary citizens of our country have an obligation to join together to nurture the forest of the positive construction and development of our country.

"It must be a fundamental element of the definition of our democracy that the people shall govern. Let us join our legislators in our millions and together with them, (whom we elected to be our public representatives), say loudly: This is the national agenda which we, the people, have set.

"Let us, in a real and meaningful way, take our destiny into our own hands." understanding of the national agenda As government we believe we have a clear understanding of what the national agenda is and are determined to do everything possible to pursue it, working together with the people and all their representative formations in the people's contract we have spoken of.

At the centre of that agenda stands the struggle against poverty and underdevelopment. In this regard, we are determined to address the challenge of job creation, understanding that this problem cannot be addressed effectively and in a sustained manner by dependence on social security grants, among which is the much vaunted basic income grant.

In this regard, we have insisted and will continue to insist that the idea that the government has access to inexhaustible amounts of money, or an open-ended possibility to borrow money or spend money it does not have, is false, amounting to no more than an illusion.

At the same time, painful though this may be, we must also accept that it will take much more than one decade of freedom to wipe out the problems of poverty and underdevelopment that have accumulated over three-and-half-centuries.

The cold reality is that it is impossible simultaneously and in a short time to find all the means we need to realise the objective of a better life for all. To argue otherwise would be nothing but mere pretence.

Nevertheless, whatever the limitations, we will sustain the progress we have made in the first decade of our freedom, which has meant more, but not enough jobs, houses, clean water, better nutrition, free basic services, free medical care, an improved and improving social security net, better access to educational opportunities, and so on.

Secondly, we will continue to work to ensure that our economy grows and expands, to produce the material means without which it is impossible to achieve the goal of a better life for all.

In this context, we will also work to ensure that wealth in our country is shared more equitably, to raise the standard of living and the quality of life of the poor, and gradually close the enormous disparity in income and wealth, which continues to characterise our society.

Necessarily, and thirdly, the improvement in the quality of life of our people to which we have referred, must include better safety and security for all, the transformation of the socio-economic conditions that result in the poor preying on one another in many violent crimes against one another, the all-round and sustained improvement of the health of our people, attending to all the causes of morbidity and death that afflict our people, and the improvement of the overall environment in which the people have to live.

Further to this, and fourth, our country will continue to occupy its place among the global pace setters with regard to the important challenge to create a non-racial and non-sexist society.

Eradicate racial divisions
As government we are convinced that we cannot claim to be making advances in the continuing struggle for reconstruction and development if we do not achieve significant and continuous progress to eradicate the racial divisions we still experience and secure the emancipation of the women of our country.

Related to this, and as the fifth point on the national agenda, is the great importance we attach and will continue to attach to the issue of national cohesion, which we must also achieve by respecting and promoting all our cultures and languages even as we continue to work for the development and entrenchment of a common patriotism and shared pride in our country and its diverse population.

The unity shown by our people as we celebrated our 10th Anniversary of liberation and rejoiced at the decision to allow us to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup gave us an indication of how far we have moved away from the long years when we were a divided society, incapable of uniting around a common cause.

We are an African country and as a government are privileged to have the opportunity to play a role in the historic process of the renaissance of our continent and Africans both in Africa and the Diaspora, as the sixth point in our national agenda.

In this regard, we have a responsibility to contribute to the solution of the problems facing the peoples of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Sudan and the Cote d'Ivoire, which continue to harbour the potential to claim many African lives.

Similarly, we must, with the greatest determination work to promote the agendas set by the African Union and its socio-economic development programme, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). This will require that we take new decisions about the additional human and material resources we need to dedicate to this purpose.

We are convinced that Africa, our continent, and we as Africans, have never had a better time to take charge of our destiny, however limited our resources. We will do everything we can to seize this moment, pursuing an agenda we have set ourselves as Africans, and not another set by others who might have stronger voices than we.

The last point on the national agenda we must mention is the mobilisation of our people to sustain their role as their own liberators, which they played as we fought for our liberation from racist oppression and exploitation.

The task of these masses today is to join the people's contract for a better life for all, inspired by the confidence that the fact that they succeeded to defeat the brutal system of apartheid, means that there is nothing that will stop them from achieving the goal of the full restoration of their dignity as Africans and human beings.

Thabo Mbeki is President of the ANC. This is an edited version of an address at the triennial conference of the South African Council of Churches, 12 July 2004.

Creative acts of social solidarity

Social movements and the democratic state

Cooperative engagement and creative tension between the state and various social formations are part of a learning process which, writes Kgalema Motlanthe, is necessary in liberating our society from economic and social bondage.

Social movements are networks of associations that develop organically and spontaneously, especially among the poor and the working class. They build solidarity to respond to specific challenges that affect these communities.

Such challenges include eradicating poverty, advancing the moral well-being of the community, the quest for better sports facilities, combating crime, campaigning for better transport, and working to improve the health and education of members of the community. In various terrains of struggle, social movements emerge to address the shop floor issues of workers, the collective interests of residents, or specific issues pertaining to one or other sector of society.

As they build solidarity to resist and transcend such social problems, social movements can take a variety of organisational and ideological forms, being inspired by politics, culture, sexuality, religion or sport, to name but a few.

Social movements have always existed in this country, even in the old days, where the system of government was based on racial discrimination in all spheres of life, including education, skills training, access to health, and the distribution of income, employment, land and capital. Even under these conditions, and in the face of determined and violent repression, social movements forced open the spaces for popular solidarity and democracy.

Let's take two examples: one in the field of sport, and the other in the classroom. Despite being ruled by a repressive and unelected government that was determined to splinter society into racial divisions, communities across the country began to unite in the non-racial sports movement. In 1962, at the height of state repression, the South African Soccer League was formed to provide a framework for non-racial football games. The league operated in the old Transvaal, as well as Durban and Cape Town.

In response the regime acted to create racially-segregated soccer bodies, such as the South African Bantu Football Association, led by Bethuel Morolo.

Because of its readiness to organise and participate in racially-segregated sport, this organisation received the unstinting support of the racist regime, and gained access to a host of facilities that were denied the non-racial sports movement.

In the community of Mangaung, the creative solidarity of the people enabled them to resist this onslaught against their basic rights. Being excluded from the main stadium, the community established its own sports field where non-racial games could be played, and invited people of all colours and ethnicities to participate. The regime responded with what appeared to be overwhelming destructive force: every Friday night, tractors were dispatched to the community sports field to plough up the ground. Every Saturday morning the whole community would go to the sports ground. Armed with nothing more than rollers, they would deploy their collective muscle and prepare the field once again. The local football team, Mangaung United, became a beacon of resistance to apartheid. The community of Mangaung and its football team became an agent for the creation of a new society, in the midst of so much destruction.

Another critical site of sectoral struggle was education. When it introduced Bantu Education in 1954, the apartheid regime set about a programme of weeding out of the teaching profession all those teachers who understood the importance of linking educational attainment with activism. At that time, many African teachers had simultaneously understood two things: first, that teaching was a calling to provide the service of education to our children, and that such education would be the key to the future progress of our people; second, that in conditions of racist autocracy, activism for social change was absolutely necessary.

These teachers understood the implication of both imperatives: the fact that they were activists could not allow them to undermine the academic attainments of their students, even as they participated in struggle. They were able to link the struggle for education with the wider tasks of national liberation. Many of the greatest leaders of the liberation movement came directly from this background: E'skia Mphahlele, Robert Sobukwe, Zephania Mothopeng, Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki and Albert Luthuli, to name a few.

The apartheid regime systematically weeded them out of the teaching profession because it had correctly realised that these activist teachers were a direct challenge to its authority and a danger to its survival as an oppressive system. These pioneers were able to produce educated children, who would use their education to create a new society.

Rich tapestry of activism

These two examples are just two instances of South Africa's rich tapestry of social movement activism. There was always a range of associational forms and movements around community interests that could never be fully suppressed by the state, despite its ongoing attempts to do so. Faith-based organisations, trade unions, social clubs, sports clubs, umanyanos, stokvels and burial societies, and the Zoutpansburg Balimi Association, Sebatakgomo, the Pondo Revolt against cattle culling, the resistance against land expropriations across the country, religious movements such as that led by Mgijima at Ntabelanga in the 1920s, the organised working class movement and even the liberation movement itself: all survived in the most uncompromising environment.

Out of these struggles emerged the coherent ideology of national liberation.

Invariably, all of these social movements, wherever they were working, understood themselves to be acting in concert with the liberation movement.

The links between their localised, sectoral struggles, the immediate problems they attempted to overcome through resistance on the one hand, and the broader struggle for a democratic and non-racial change on the other, were clear and apparent. If the ANC was the head of the spear, penetrating the enemy's armour, the social movements were its shaft, directing it towards the correct target.

This understanding culminated in the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF). The UDF was not the ANC, and it was not a front for the ANC. It was not formed at the behest of the ANC and was not under its control. The ANC's attitude and relation with the Front was best described by then ANC President Oliver Tambo, who said in 1984: "The emergence of the UDF was exactly what we were talking about during the year of Unity in Action, 1982.

It was what we envisaged in our call in 1983 for United Action. We had called for confrontation with the enemy on all fronts, by all our people in their various organisational formations. The response to this call was the emergence of the UDF."

"These 700 organisations that belong to the UDF were not created by the ANC.

But the ANC has called on the people to organise themselves... we said, organise and direct your attention and activity to freeing yourselves so that you become human beings and citizens of your own country, which you are not."

The ANC remained the organised political representative of the people and fighting force for the attainment of democratic and revolutionary change in our society. Only it could effectively coordinate the four pillars of struggle that led to the demise of apartheid: mass mobilisation, the underground machinery, armed struggle and the international isolation of the regime.

At the height of these struggles, most activists belonged to five or more structures: a civic, a trade union, a cultural group, a student organisation, as well as political and military structures which continued to exist underground. This mass mobilisation of social forces eventually resulted in the dawn of democracy.

New vistas of social opportunity

Today, under democratic conditions many of the social movements of the past are still in existence. At the same time, new vistas of social opportunity, new spaces for the mobilisation of solidarity, new prospects for community organisation have emerged by dint of the democratic order.

Community-based organisations (CBOs) have grown into a diverse and vibrant movement, seeking to deepen solidarity and so realise the rights and obligations contained in the constitution. In doing so they come into constant contact with the various institutions of the democratic state.

Given the range and diversity of these organisations and given the various forces at play on the terrain of the state, such relationships are complex.

Sometimes there is conflict, but more often engagement and dialogue.

Sometimes there is frustration, but more often social movements and CBOs are able to benefit from their interaction with a democratic government that depends on the whole of the people for its legitimacy.

There is still a long way to go in this regard, and certainly the state could improve its capacity to respond. This is most obviously the case at the local level, where the democratic non-racial state is barely five years old. Nevertheless, in contrast to the racist and authoritarian practices of the past, a qualitative change has occurred, and progress is fast being made towards a situation in which the people are able to liberate themselves from poverty, disease and ignorance.

One of the defining and unusual features of the new society we are building is that, in the democratic South Africa, even difficulties that appear insurmountable can be resolved through dialogue and discussion. The relationship between social movements and the democratic state can be characterised as one of cooperative engagement and creative tension.

Living, as we do, in a society that continues to be divided by class, it is not surprising that the most important of these social movements is that of organised labour. Three federations, NACTU, FEDUSA and COSATU are larger than ever before, although there are still large numbers of the working class that are unorganised, partly as a result of new methods of organising production and the creation of casualised labour. All three federations relate to the government as a partner in their struggles on the shopfloor.

Legislation in support of workers' rights has been introduced and this, together with the organised solidarity of the working class, has led to a historic shift of power in favour of workers at the point of production. In broader society, the union movement plays an active role a range of processes. Forums such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) and the Millennium Labour Council facilitate their interaction with government, and unions are able to influence legislation through their direct participation in parliament. The union movement is able to do so because of their organisational capacity.

Across the country, social movements based on specific issues and localised struggles are learning to interact with government at various levels.

Government institutions too, are learning to interact with social movements.

Cooperative engagement and creative tension are part of this learning process, part of the struggle to create a democratic state, which is one of the critical elements in liberating ourselves from economic and social bondage.

The key challenge we have identified in this globalised world is the struggle against poverty. This informs our national developmental effort, but is also critical in defining our approach to Africa and the developing world as a whole. We do so in the knowledge that poverty is a global problem with universal dimensions.

In this context we need to pose the question of how we link our everyday struggles to this overarching national consensus on the need to push back the frontiers of poverty. In the same way that revolutionary teachers understood the link between education and activism, how do we understand the relationship between the struggles for the improvement of our own lives, with the struggle for the achievement of national development? Inspired by the community of Mangaung, which was able to use creative energy against the destructive forces of the apartheid regime, how can we create in our everyday practice a better South Africa for all our people, where poverty, ignorance and disease are defeated.

There will be some who have no interest in such objectives, but who serve entirely different purposes. Organisation requires resources and, in the process of accessing these resources, some may become beholden to the interests of donors rather than those of the people.

Interests of donors

Former ANC President Nelson Mandela told the ANC's 50th national conference in Mafikeng in 1997 that this situation created the possibility for some NGOs to act as instruments of foreign governments and institutions that fund them to promote the interests of these external forces. He said: "A 'Review of the USAID [United States Agency for International Development] Program in South Africa' dated November 5, 1996 and prepared by two members of the staff of the US House of Representatives, Lester Munson and Phillip Christenson, has this to say on this matter: 'USAID's program is not so much support for the Mandela government as support for USAID's undisclosed political activities within the South African domestic political arena involving the most difficult, controversial issues in South Africa. By funding advocacy groups to monitor and lobby for changes in government policies and even setting up trust funds to pay for legal challenges in court against the new government's action or inaction, USAID is in some respects making President Mandela's task more difficult.'"

"The old 'struggle NGOs' have been redesignated by USAID as 'civil society organisations' (or CSOs). USAID now funds CSOs to 'monitor public policy, provide public information, and advocate policy alternatives' and to serve as 'sentinels, brokers and arbiters for the public will'. The purpose of USAID funding is to enable these CSOs to 'function as effective policy advocacy groups' and 'to lobby' ... 'Through its NGOs, USAID intends to play a key role in domestic policy concerning the most difficult, controversial issues of national politics. USAIDs political agenda is ambitious and extensive.'"

Aside from the malignant influence of such practices, we should always remain alert to the emergence of two forms of opportunism that are inherent in any struggle.

The first arises when we are told: "Why get involved in struggles to change the world for the better because, since we are living in a capitalist system, any such action would amount to mere tinkering?" The second arises when we are told that the struggles we are involved in today are inconsequential, inappropriate stopgap measures and that the real struggle is still to come. In this vein, we are told that democracy, far from being an essential element in realising the goals of human liberation, is merely a bourgeois device. Rather than struggling to build the institutions of democracy we are urged to resolutely oppose them.

Both these forms of opportunism demobilise the masses because they undermine faith in the ability of solidarity and mobilisation to create new realities immediately, and a better society for our children.

The overarching struggle we have identified today, that of defeating poverty, requires a monumental creative effort. The cause of liberation cannot be served by a negative idea. Pure negation, which does not simultaneously create new social realities, is a dead-end because oppression in itself, no matter how great, does not create the basis for the struggle to abolish oppression. Rather, it is the creative act of social solidarity that can do so.

In this regard, it is worth recalling the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jnr, describing the importance and legacy of Dr WEB du Bois for the struggle for human liberation: "Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional relief and then retire into smug passive satisfaction. History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry. The supreme task is to organise and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force."

Kgalema Motlanthe is Secretary General of the ANC. This is an edited version of an address to a Centre for Urban and Built Environment Studies seminar on social movements, August 2004.

We will not fail the young people of our country

At its 22nd National Congress, the ANC Youth League declared that the struggle to eradicate poverty and unemployment constitutes the main frontier of the struggle for the second decade of freedom. Fikile Mbalula outlines some of the main outcomes of the congress.

In the last week of August 4,000 members of the ANC's youth movement gathered in Johannesburg to map out the programme of action of the ANC Youth League for the next three years.

The vibrancy of the congress and the jovial mood of the delegates indicated that young people are equal to the task of mapping out their future, and the future of the country and the African continent.

As the youth of the ANC, we declared that the struggle to eradicate poverty and unemployment constitutes the main frontier of struggle for the second decade of freedom. Social transformation is therefore a key instrument we seek to utilise to create a nation-state that is at peace with itself and shuns racist and sexist tendencies.

Delegates examined in detail a number of government initiatives aimed at advancing youth empowerment. The Expanded Public Works Programmes remains one of the most ambitious, which also holds promise for realistic youth empowerment. As part of our efforts to advance economic emancipation of young people, we will diligently lobby for a 40% quota for young people in all initiatives related to this programme. This programme should not only accommodate young people as labourers. They must also be empowered in a realistic manner that is sustainable and enables them to participate in the country's mainstream economy.

Affordability of higher education is another area of critical importance to the youth. Congress mandated the incoming National Executive Committee (NEC) to rigorously engage with the ANC NEC and the Minister of Education with a view to find a model that incentivises young people who choose to further their studies.

We are of the view that the current funding formula of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is problematic, since it undermines the very youth empowerment it claims to advance. It can never be acceptable that young people be listed in credit bureaus for loans they receive through the NSFAS, particularly at a time when they are still looking for employment.

This diminishes the chances of them being employed, as some sectors use credit information in deciding on employment of candidates. Congress called for a 50/50 split in the bursary and loan components of the NSFAS, and an end to student blacklisting on credit bureaus.

Reach of social grants

We remain concerned about the extent to which social grants reach their intended beneficiaries, particularly the child care grant. This concern is a result of the abuse of grants by members of our communities who are entrusted with receiving them on behalf of the minors they are responsible for. Our response is a call on communities to be vigilant, work towards their eradication and fully cooperate with authorities in rooting out this practice. We must all work together to ensure that social grants reach their intended beneficiaries. Congress mandated us to lobby the state to gradually increase the Child Support Grant to cover all children who qualify up to the age of 18 by 2009.

A major challenge to young people is HIV and AIDS. The role youth are expected to play in eradicating this pandemic cannot be overemphasised. All our branches across the country will be embarking on an intensive campaign to become activists in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Youth League branches must position themselves as leaders in their respective communities in advocacy work, provision of home-based care, supporting the roll-out of antiretroviral treatment, encouraging young people to abstain as long as possible and, where they become sexually active, to use condoms. Our branches will also lead a campaign to ensure permanent availability of condoms in their localities. Congress passed a resolution to achieve a zero new infection rate among the youth by 2014.

Delegates had the opportunity to examine the role of Umsobomvu Youth Fund in advancing youth emancipation, and adopted resolutions which seek an integrated model for youth economic empowerment that closes the gap between research, policy and implementation. We also resolved that the NEC should develop a comprehensive proposal that seeks to integrate the National Youth Commission and Umsobomvu Youth Fund into a single youth development agency.

All processes that enable the establishment of such an agency should be completed by June 2005.

The Youth League will further embark on a drive to canvass and lobby government and business to set-aside a 30% stake for young people in all procurement, both in public and private sectors.

Congress deliberated on the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, and took far-reaching resolutions, which will form the basis of our engagement with the state and all its organs on these matters. Diversity and lower cost for services have been singled out as crucial areas that require urgent attention. Young people constitute a large user base for telecommunications services, and the ever-rising cost of a telephone call has a direct effect on them. Congress delegates placed a lot of emphasis on massive investments in youth skilling and the creation of an ICT sector that responds to the developmental needs and priorities of our society. The Department of Education can play a crucial role through the introduction of a mandatory subject on information and communications technology.

Young people of the future

The country needs to move towards a national policy directive on the technological needs for people living with disabilities. While the public sector can easily play a lead role in this regard, a directive that compels all sectors to take these into account is not only necessary, but a moral obligation. Special signage and sounds in lifts and at traffic lights that assist disabled persons, or ramps in public transport, should not be a luxury, but a basic requirement countrywide.

It must be understood that youth is an integral part of any society, and its empowerment is a permanent imperative if we are to succeed in the task of ensuring an economically stable future. Young people are the future, and that is not likely to change simply because one generation has graduated to being adults and senior citizens. Our commitment to empowerment today, must guarantee a sustainable future for generations to come.

Advancing the struggles of young people in South Africa cannot disregard similar struggles of other young people across the African continent.

Historically, the ANC Youth League has always had an internationalist approach. The work we have done with our counterparts across the continent over the last few years will continue in earnest. Our members have spoken in a decisive manner and mandated the NEC to lead the process of mobilising young people on the African continent towards a progressive youth movement that truly represent their dreams and aspirations, which will become their voice within the African Union and other forums around the world. The first task, however, is a comprehensive programme that involves the masses of the youth across the continent to rally them around New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the African Union and the Pan African Parliament.

While the challenges facing today's youth may be very different from those that faced the generations of yesteryear, their wisdom and conviction remains relevant and we will draw from those. We will not fail the young people of our country. Now is the time to get down to work and build a South Africa of tomorrow for generations to come.

Fikile Mbalula is the newly-elected President of the ANC Youth League.

Pro-poor finance for sustainable livelihoods

Throughout the developing world, the developmental microfinance movement has emerged as a powerful intervention to push back the frontiers of poverty.

Ted Baumann of the Community Microfinance Network looks at how microfinance can help support sustainable livelihoods in the context of the 'second economy'.

Until now, South Africa has been unable to generate the type of pro-poor microfinance sector that has been successful in many African, Asian and Latin American countries. However, government's recent announcement of an apex fund for pro-poor microfinance raises the possibility of new impetus for such programmes.

South Africa's 'two economies'

The concept of 'two economies' describes a challenging fact: although the economy as a whole is growing and modernising reasonably well, many South Africans don't benefit. Why not?

An economy is like a big cycle. We produce the things we consume and consume the things we produce. Many commodities are produced and consumed to produce more commodities. For example, machine tools are built to be used by other manufacturers. The same is true of raw materials like iron, steel or coal.

It's also true of labour - they way we educate our young is shaped in part by the needs of the economy.

Now imagine an economy in which there's a big stockpile of goods used to produce something very specific and nothing else. If the demand for that thing disappears, the economy is stuck with a bunch of economically useless goods. This can happen even amidst shortages of other important goods.

This is the dilemma behind South Africa's 'two economies'. One of the legacies of apartheid is that millions of South Africans are only suited for unskilled jobs, or for jobs in declining sectors like agriculture and mining. But the way our economy is integrating into the global market doesn't generate much demand for unskilled people. As a result, even in our growing 'first economy' with its shortages of many types of labour, millions of people are economically 'useless'. Even if there was no minimum wage, employers wouldn't hire them because they simply can't use them. It's as if they didn't exist.

To survive, such people 'make a plan' in the 'second economy'. We all know what they do: running spaza shops, hawking, brewing traditional beer, selling second-hand clothes, and so on.

There is a 'vicious cycle' relationship between the first and second economy. In a fully integrated economy, everyone sells and buys things from each other. Employees sell their labour-power to firms. Firms produce things and sell them to the public or other firms. The workings of supply and demand channel people and resources into and out of various activities. In South Africa, these links exist within the 'first economy' and to a certain extent in the 'second', but not between them. The first economy doesn't want or need the things the second economy produces. It gets everything it needs from within itself, or from overseas.

To make matters worse, most people operating in the second economy can't compete with the big, efficient firms of the first economy. People just can't produce things as cheaply, as well, or as fast as first economy firms.

Likewise, spaza shop owners and hawkers can't compete with the volume and low cost of South Africa's big retail firms. Most second economy traders only offer convenience, not better value.

The upshot is that the first economy has no direct need for the second economy, but the second economy can't compete with the first. People in the second economy therefore end up buying a lot of what they need from the first economy. This severely limits the second economy's development potential.

Many readers will ask: if they have no formal jobs, where do second-economy people get the money to buy things from the first economy? Primarily from state grants (pensions, disability, child care); transfers from relatives in the first economy; and/or purchases by people working in the first economy.

Some of this money is used within the second economy, but a lot flows right back out again, to buy things from the first economy.

The limits to microenterprise - and microcredit

Since 1994, the government has tried to support the development of microenterprises in South Africa. To this end, it's set up parastatals for training, like Ntsika Enterprise Development, and to provide microcredit, like Khula Enterprise Finance. The idea is to encourage new small businesses because they're thought to create more jobs than big firms.

Unfortunately, this strategy hasn't worked very well. One of the most disappointing things has been Khula's persistent inability to extend microcredit for microenterprise. Why is this?

Recall that in a well-integrated economy, many firms produce things for other firms. For example, a microenterprise might make just the sleeves for shirts, and sell them to a bigger firm that assembles them into the finished product. In such an economy, potential microentrepreneurs will want to take loans to set up such businesses, because they know there's a market for their products.

In a 'two economies' situation, however, there's little opportunity for these kinds of microenterprises in the second economy: the first economy can produce everything it needs cheaply and well, or import it from other countries. As a result, there's little demand for microcredit for microenterprise. It would be foolish indeed to borrow money at interest to start a business that has no future.

Khula's strategy is based on the assumption that there are enough linkages between the first and second economies to generate demand for microcredit for microenterprises that would act as suppliers to the first economy. These linkages, however, are just not there in sufficient quantity. Khula is therefore designed to provide microcredit to a class of microenterprises that doesn't really exist in South Africa because of lack of opportunity.

In other words, Khula and the strategy that underpins it are based on the mistaken notion of a single, fully-integrated South African economy. The two economies thesis is therefore a major challenge to Khula.

Enter 'developmental microfinance'

Microcredit for 'formal' microenterprise with links to the first economy is only one aspect of microfinance, however. All over the developing world, including many parts of Africa, NGOs and even commercial firms provide a variety of microfinance services, including savings and credit, to households living in circumstances comparable to our 'second economy'. These services aren't based on the assumption that the household is trying to start a formal business. Instead, they're designed to support households' 'livelihood strategies'.

A livelihood strategy is a collection of activities, assets, and entitlements that allows a household to survive. A job might be part of a livelihood strategy, but not always. Instead, most livelihood strategies are based on a combination of some informal business activity, transfers from employed relatives, small-scale agriculture, and other 'odds and ends'. The goal of all livelihood strategies is to survive and to reduce the household's vulnerability - not necessarily to grow a business or create new jobs.

Access to microcredit can be very useful to any livelihood strategy, and not just for business purposes. For example, microcredit can help a hawker obtain stock. Life-cycle expenses like weddings and funerals, which help cement people's important social relationships, might require extra cash from time to time. Microsavings are also highly useful. A facility such as an informal community savings and credit pool can help provide access to funds in an emergency.

One of the most famous examples of this kind of 'developmental' - as opposed to entrepreneurial - microfinance is the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. This NGO provides small loans to women in groups of five borrowers. It has helped millions of women and their households to improve their livelihood strategies, although very few of them ever develop 'first economy' businesses. South Africa has its own Grameen-type NGOs, including the Small Enterprise Foundation based in Limpopo. Some South African CBOs, like the Homeless People's Federation and the Poor People's Movement, encourage communities to organise their own informal savings and credit schemes.

Until recently, however, the South African government has largely ignored this type of pro-poor, developmental microfinance. Policy makers have hoped that by focusing on the first economy and its specific microcredit needs, we could create enough new jobs to absorb most of the people living in the second economy. We all know that this is not the case.

The way forward: the 'new apex'

Fortunately, government has finally begun to embrace the challenge of developmental microfinance. In the State of the Nation Address of May 2004, President Thabo Mbeki announced that an 'apex fund' dedicated to the extension of developmental microfinance, will become operational before the end of this year. The apex fund, located in the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), will provide grants and loans to NGOs and other institutions to set up or extend developmental microfinance programmes targeting poor households. There are a number of challenges still to confront, however.

First, the DTI has little experience of supporting non-entrepreneurial economic activity. It's particularly important that we don't try to impose a narrow 'business school' approach on the new apex - ideas and skills from the social development and NGO sector are much more relevant and important.

Government needs to start weaning itself from an 'entrepreneurial' mind-set concerning microfinance and microenterprise. Not all business is intended to accumulate capital and create jobs. Some microenterprises are simply survival strategies that very poor households are forced to adopt because of circumstances beyond their control.

Second, we need to avoid imposing overly-strict 'sustainability' criteria on the new apex. Traditional banking logic is usually applied to microfinance: all costs must be covered through interest charges. One of the reasons for Khula's poor performance, however, has been its reluctance to accept that building a microfinance sector takes time - and money. Khula clients are usually expected to achieve total cost recovery within 2-3 years of starting, which is all but impossible in South African conditions. The new apex should accept that new microfinance NGOs will take several years to 'learn the ropes' before they can be expected to cover their own costs.

Third, the new apex must not neglect savings, the 'forgotten half of microfinance'. Indeed, all over the world, evidence suggests that microsavings facilities are as important to second economy households as credit, if not more so. Although the new apex plans to include support for financial services co-operatives in its programme, it isn't clear that this more formalised, first-world model is appropriate to South Africa. Support for less formal grassroots savings and credit schemes might be more useful.

Finally, the government should recognise that microcredit and self-employment is not the final answer to the problem of the second economy. Intervening with microcredit is a necessary but insufficient strategy for development, because what people can do with it is bounded by external conditions. Without a comprehensive strategy to transform the South African economy into one that provides the kind of opportunities that ordinary people can use, even the new apex will be only a band-aid plaster.

Ted Baumann is coordinator of the Community Microfinance Network, a project to facilitate interaction and mutual support for organisations working in microfinance in South Africa.

A new approach to low-income housing finance

South Africa needs to develop a new model for providing housing finance which is more suited to the needs of the poor, writes Olivia van Rooyen.

South Africa's current housing policy is based on a number of 'pillars'. One of these is the housing subsidy. Another is to mobilise credit and savings to 'top `up' the subsidy. Despite government's best efforts, the credit and savings pillar has not been put in place during the first ten years. The vast majority of subsidised houses have been built with the subsidy only, limiting its effectiveness.

Mortgage finance and the poor

Although government has put a lot of effort into getting the banks to extend the reach of such services, the fact is that South Africa's poor probably wouldn't benefit from, and are therefore unlikely to want, the kinds of credit and savings services that our banks are designed to provide.

The reason for this is that South African banks, like most 'first world' banks, are designed to provide mortgage finance for housing. Mortgage finance, however, is based on a number of conditions that aren't present in South African low-income environments. But most 'beneficiaries' of South Africa's state housing assistance are informally employed, and have low incomes. Even though they can repay small loans, they can't always do so regularly. Moreover, their houses are generally not very valuable in market terms. Housing markets in low-income neighbourhoods are weak, and it isn't at all easy to realise the value of house.

While it may be possible to change some of these conditions, for the foreseeable future, most low-income households won't be in a position to benefit from mortgage finance. If they took mortgages, they would be likely to lose their houses because of income instability, retrenchment, and so on.

They would also be paying large proportions of their income in interest charges.

While it is attractive to think that all South Africans should be able to enjoy the same kind of housing finance products, the reality is that South Africa's 'two economies' require different housing finance strategies.

Kuyasa Fund

Kuyasa Fund is a small NGO-based housing micro-lender based in the Western Cape that has been exploring a more appropriate strategy for low-income housing borrowers. Kuyasa's products are based on a number of characteristics that are more suited to low-income households. Indeed, most housing finance institutions in developing countries employ them:

Loans are small and incremental, and designed to help households build starter houses or extend or improve existing houses rather than buy or build complete structures;
Loans are paid off quickly, and new loans are extended to undertake further extensions or improvements;
Repayment structures and systems are flexible, and assume informal income sources;
Houses are not used as security, which is achieved instead through 'relational' methods - by establishing relationships of trust and commitment between borrowers and lenders and within groups of borrowers.

Kuyasa Fund has incorporated these elements into its loan products, which are unique in South Africa. Kuyasa has succeeded in extending housing finance to households who have no chance of getting it from formal banks -and who probably wouldn't want it even if they could.

In exploring alternatives to the housing finance dilemma, the organisation looked south instead of north for examples of appropriate microfinance models for South Africa. In countries in Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere in Africa, most low-income households borrow money for housing just as they would for any other consumption need. Instead of borrowing a large amount to finance the purchase or construction of a house as a marketable asset (exchange value), they borrow small amounts to finance the improvement of houses as useful things (use value). Formal banks look at houses as big-ticket items that they could repossess and sell if necessary. Kuyasa Fund, by contrast, understands housing as a human need and designs its intervention accordingly - it does not ask for formal security and does not use the threat of repossession.

Most importantly, Kuyasa organises its loans via existing traditional savings and credit groups (gooi-goois, stokvels, etc). Kuyasa Fund doesn't make loans to these groups, but through them, to their members.

These savings groups have two functions. First, they serve as the basis for Kuyasa's 'relational' security model, in which relationships among borrowers and between them and the lender replace the asset-based security of the mortgage model. Second, they serve as vehicles for savings by clients, which are combined with housing microloans to increase the amount available to invest in housing.

Like other relational group microlenders, Kuyasa employs loan officers to interact with the savings and credit groups. Kuyasa's strategy here is roughly modelled on the furniture industry. This is quite sensible: most South African households who can't get formal mortgage finance for housing can get hire-purchase finance for furniture, appliances, and so on. By treating housing finance as a form of small-ticket, repetitive consumption lending, Kuyasa is able to employ proven methods common in the furniture sector. For example, Kuyasa employs loan officers who live in the same communities as borrowers. This gives them insights into the situation in those areas that 'arm's-length' formal banks don't have.

Kuyasa Fund's performance

Kuyasa's performance as a housing microlender is quite good. Using this model, Kuyasa has managed to assist 2,200 low-income households in Cape Town to build bigger and better quality houses than they would have if they had relied only on the subsidy. While the contractor-built RDP norm house sizes are 23m2, the norm amongst Kuyasa clients is 60m2. The value of loans disbursed as at April 2004 was R9,000,000. The average loan size of R4,000 is very small, but coupled with the savings and efforts of the households, the impact has been maximised.

Despite this, Kuyasa Fund has received no support from the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) because policy and parastatal practice is based almost entirely on the 'first world', middle-class mortgage model.

Lessons for housing policy into the future

The following lessons can be drawn from the Kuyasa Fund experience for housing finance policy into the future:

The poor do have a culture of savings that is located in group savings methodologies. Group savings, apart from enabling households to mobilise financial assets also helps them to build invaluable social networks through peer support.
Small unsecured incremental housing loans work much better than traditional mortgages for the very poor, who are the main target of state housing support.
Doing this kind of specialised housing microcredit requires specialised institutions such as Kuyasa, whose model is entirely different to that of traditional formal banks.
There is little or no effective support for the development of such institutions under current South African housing and finance policy, mainly because policy-makers have not paid attention to less formal 'second economy type' institutions to date. Kuyasa has not been able to get loans from the NHFC because of the parastatal's inappropriate credit and risk policies. The needs of an institution like Kuyasa is beyond a credit facility from an institution like the NHFC, but includes the need for institutional support and capacity building and adjustments to the enabling policy environment.

Developing the Kuyasa model further wouldn't take a lot of effort or resources. This would, however, require that government and the NHFC support the model and cooperate with it. This would enable the NGO sector to help to kick start a new, more appropriate housing finance sector for the country.

Olivia van Rooyen is manager of Kuyasa Fund, a housing microlender based in Cape Town.

Election 2004

Unity in action at the ballot box

On 14 April millions of ordinary South Africans voted in the country's third democratic national elections, emphatically declaring the importance of democracy in the struggle to defeat poverty and overturn the legacy of apartheid and colonialism. Michael Sachs looks at the results in detail and how they compare with previous elections.

This article presents an overview of the patterns that lie beneath the ANC's third overwhelming electoral victory. First we consider the general pattern of voter turnout and the ANC's performance in particular. Then we look at voting patterns among key social groups in South Africa. The third section considers the results from the point of view of opposition political parties. Particular attention is then paid to the two provinces where the ANC won for the first time: KwaZulu Natal and the Western Cape.

The baseline against which we compare the results of 2004 is the 1999 election. Although 1994 also provides a useful point of reference it should be remembered that, unlike 1999 and 2004, there was no requirement to register in 1994. Some categories of non-citizens, such as permanent residents and migrant workers, were allowed to vote in 1994 but disbarred subsequently; and 1994 was South Africa's 'founding election', which theory suggests would call forth a larger turnout than 'normal'.

Lower turnout overall

Turnout in the 2004 election was very high by any standard. Nevertheless, fewer people voted in the 2004 election than in 1999. Given the growth in the number of registered voters between the two elections this is a cause for concern.

In the 1999 general election 16.2 million South Africans voted. Since then, the voter's roll has grown from 18.2m to 20.7m but in spite of the increase the number of registered voters, about 400,000 fewer people voted in 2004.

Consequently, turnout of registered voters was 77%, compared with 88% in the last election. Figure 1 shows the absolute number of votes cast, and the number of registered voters in both elections.

Figure 1: Registered voters and votes cast in 1999 and 2004

This overall turnout shows the average for the nation as a whole. Behind this average lie important variations according to geographic area, gender, class and race. Table 1 shows turnout in each province in 2004 and 1999.

While the proportion of registered voters who turned out was lower across the board, it is notable that provincial patterns remained similar between 1999 and 2004. In 2004 the lowest turnout of registered voters was in the Western Cape (73%), while the highest was in the Eastern Cape (81%). This was also the situation in 1999.

Compared with 1999 large decreases in the number of votes cast were recorded in Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal and Free State. Conversely, the Eastern Cape saw a dramatic increase in votes cast (even so, percentage turnout was lower owing to the increase in the number of registered voters between the two elections).

Table 1: Turnout by province in two elections

Table 2: Estimated turnout by demographic category

Table 2 shows the ANC research unit's estimate of turnout among various demographic categories. Turnout was significantly higher in the african community, both urban and rural, than among indians and coloureds. Turnout was also significantly lower, on average, among whites than among africans.

These racial differences appear to explain a large proportion of the variation in provincial turnouts - turnout was lowest in those provinces with a larger share of whites, coloureds and indians in their population, such as the Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal.

In the absence of an exit poll, it is impossible to scientifically estimate the turnout of youth and women. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that a large number of youth did participate in the election, in contrast to the predictions of analysts. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile recalling that levels of registration among younger voters remain low.

If we compare South Africa against international standards, the turnout of registered voters is very high. While it is true that a number of voters are not registered, this is also a very small proportion by international standards. Consider Poland, which underwent a transition to a parliamentary system in the early 1990s, at the same time as South Africa. In its previous parliamentary election, in 2001, only 46% of registered voters cast their ballot. Zambia, which moved towards a multi-party system in 1991, saw a turnout of only 56% of registered voters during the 1996 presidential elections. Low voter turnout is not confined to 'new democracies': indeed, in elections for the British parliament in 2001 only 59% of voters turned out to vote.

More votes for the ANC

Election 2004 represented an overwhelming expression of confidence in the ANC from the black working class and poor. As we have seen, turnout was significantly higher in these communities than in more middle class areas, and the ANC achieved overwhelming majorities of the same level or higher than in 1994 and 1999.

Although turnout declined when compared with 1999, the number of people who cast votes for the ANC increased by about 275,000. Consequently, the ANC increased its share of the national vote from 66% in 1999 to 70% in 2004.

The ANC's increase was truly national, insofar as it gained an increased proportion of the votes in every province. The situation in terms of absolute number of votes cast for the ANC is summarised in table 3.

Table 3: Votes case for ANC in three elections by province

The largest increase in the number of votes cast for the ANC was in the Eastern Cape. In comparison with 1999 an additional 188,000 people voted for the ANC, as those who had voted for the United Democratic Movement (UDM) in the last election returned to the ANC en masse. Of all municipalities, the largest swing in the percentage share of the vote for the ANC was seen in King Sabata Dalindyebo, where the ANC scored only 36% in 1999, but increased to 59% in 2004.

The next largest increase was in KwaZulu Natal, where ANC votes grew by 11.5% (135,000 additional votes compared with 1999). It is likely that many of these were people who were voting for the ANC for the first time. While many additional votes were collected in KwaZulu Natal's rural areas, more than half of the ANC's increase came from the Ethekwini area, formerly Durban. This reflected important shifts among minority communities, but also the effectiveness of our campaign work among the ANC's core constituency.

The number of ANC voters also significantly increased in the Western Cape where 57,000 more voters chose the ANC than in 1999. In the Northern Cape too the ANC appears to have consolidated and advanced on the gains made in 1999, mobilising an additional 5% to vote ANC.

In most other provinces the position remained largely static. However, in both Free State and Gauteng, the number of people voting for the ANC declined by about 5%. This is particularly worrying in Gauteng, where census figures indicate significant increases in the population over the last five years.

As mentioned earlier, in 1994 there was no requirement to register and it was also South Africa's 'founding election' which theory suggests would call a larger turnout than 'normal'. Even so, the 2004 election saw a greater number of votes cast for the ANC in three provinces: KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape and Northern Cape.

The ANC is the only truly national party in the country. The distribution of the ANC's vote fairly accurately reflects the distribution of the voters, whether looked at by provincial or population density measures. In table 4 the proportion of registered voters is compared with the proportion of votes cast for various parties in metro, urban and rural areas. The ANC is the only party that is not significantly skewed towards either urban or rural areas, reflecting an evenness of support across this divide. Table 5 compares the proportion of registered voters in each province with the proportion of the national vote that was cast for each party in that province. Once more, whereas the ANC is evenly distributed in accordance with the distribution of registered voters, most opposition parties are skewed towards one province or another. We return to analysis of the opposition parties below.

Table 4: Distribution of votes by party relative to the distribution of voters by type of municipality

Table 5: Distribution of votes by party relative to the distribution of voters by province

African townships and rural areas

Overall, the level of participation and support for the ANC was extremely high in the african community, both rural and urban. For example, in an analysis of voting patterns in Kwazakele township in the Eastern Cape, Janet Cherry writes "despite gloomy predictions of voter apathy, there was a very high level of participation ... amounting to a poll of over 90%. Voters were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the process of voting, and praised the IEC for its good organisation..."

She goes on to say: "Although an age profile of voters is not available, researchers were impressed by the enthusiasm of young voters, indicating that there is little truth to the notion that the youth are apathetic about politics - at least in the working class townships such as Kwazakele".

This picture of high levels of enthusiasm and very high levels of turnout can be generalised to african townships throughout most of the country. In Cape Town, for example, independent research found that: "Voting stations in african neighbourhoods recorded exceptional turnout, at or above the provincial average of 71.27%". High polls and long queues were the order of the day through Gauteng's african townships, although turnout in rural areas was lower.

In terms of party support the UDM retained about 14% of support in rural Eastern Cape wards, but was down to below 3% in the Metro and about the same in Cape Town. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) retained a majority only in KwaZulu Natal rural wards. The Democratic Alliance (DA) and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) picked up a few votes in among africans in small towns, but failed to register any significant change in the key urban centres.

But throughout the country, it was that ANC that consolidated its position as the party of the overwhelming majority. Outside of KwaZulu Natal the ANC got more than 80% of the large turnout in every african area. For Kwazakele, Janet Cherry observes "the IEC results indicate consistently that between 92% and 97% of voters in Kwazakele voted for the ANC, with the UDM gaining between 1% and 6% of the vote, and AZAPO [Azanian People's Organisation] and the PAC [Pan Africanist Congress] being the only other parties to gain over 1% of the vote in any voting district"

Cherry concludes: "This consistent loyalty to the ANC is ... explained by the fact that despite desperately high levels of unemployment, the government has delivered something to its urban constituency, and life has changed for the better for most people in Kwazakele in the last ten years." Enthusiasm to participate was exceptionally high relative to other parts of the population and the ANC consolidated its position. However, the absolute number of people who voted in most african townships and informal settlements was lower in 2004 than in 1999. As an example, figure 2 shows a comparison of provncial ballots cast in Soweto in the two elections.

Figure 2: Votes cast in Soweto in 1999 and 2004 general elections

Given the population growth such declines should be cause for concern.

Nevertheless, it does not necessarily reflect an attitude of 'political apathy' on the part of the black working class and poor. A number of other factors could have influenced the picture:

In the urbanised provinces (especially Gauteng) where the population is highly mobile and patterns of circular migration remain strong, the Easter holiday period meant that many were in outside their province of registration on election day. While these voters could have exercised the option of casting national ballots only, most people were ignorant of this provision.
Turnout in african townships and informal settlements would have been negatively affected by the failure of the IEC to provide equal services to all voters, so that the disincentives to vote were generally higher among africans. For example, one observer found that "queues of voters varied in length between voting stations ... At Soweto's Pimville and Orlando East, the queues amounted to several hundred before 09:00 on election day. By mid afternoon in Leandra, the queue stood at about 80 and there were only a handful by 17:00 at the Newcastle Farmer's Hall. In contrast, Sesiyabonga High School at Osizweni, KwaZulu Natal still had a queue of about 200 waiting patiently in the dark at 19:00" (Rule Pillay and Orkin). Long queues and other logistical problems were concentrated where turnout was high, and were certainly a major disincentive to vote.
In rural african areas of KwaZulu Natal the progressive shift toward democratic citizenship and away from 'subject' status granted many the freedom of choice to not vote for the first time, a matter, which we examine in more detail below.

Minority townships and rural areas

April 2004 also saw a significant extension of ANC support into indian townships and consolidation of its coloured support. At a national level, the ANC has become the largest party among coloureds and indians. While ANC support is still stronger in better-off areas, for the first time significant inroads have been made among the working class segments of these minority communities. Furthermore, parties standing on a ticket of cooperation, rather than conflict with the ANC retained a significant proportion of the votes.

These shifts mark the decisive collapse of parties offering a 'swart gevaar' and similar strategies of ethnic divide-and-rule as a political strategy in opposition to the ANC.

Table 6: Average vote by party in selected minority townships

Table 6 shows estimates of ANC support in the 2004 election in key indian and coloured townships. Large swings towards the ANC occurred in most indian areas. For example, the ANC received around 40% of the vote in indian districts of Lenasia in 1999. In 2004, the ANC average percentage increased to 55%. In Chatsworth the ANC came second, behind the Minority Front (MF).

In Phoenix, while the DA remained the largest party, the combination of the MF and the ANC has far greater support.

Among indian voters in KwaZulu Natal, John Daniel of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) reports: "The ANC turned around the 1999 result in spectacular fashion. In the process it routed the DA at the provincial level. In its traditional indian stronghold of Reservoir Hills and environs, the ANC improved its position, winning 15 of 18 voting districts, while in nearby Newlands it captured all eight districts. But the real gains were made in areas like Phoenix, Chatsworth, Umkomaas on the south coast and Stanger along the north coast. In both Phoenix and Chatsworth, the DA emerged from the 1999 poll as the largest party but in this election in Chatsworth the ANC and MF took over 69% of votes compared to the DA's 17.3%, a 50% drop over 1999. Much the same was true of Phoenix where the ANC grew its 1999 vote of 8.9% to 25.4%,overtaking the DA in the process. It was not, however, only the DA vote which shifted mostly to the ANC (some went to the IFP) but also the NNP indian vote which gravitated to the ANC in numbers.

This is suggested by the fact that the NNP's provincial vote in KZN slumped from 97,077 in 1999 to just 14,218 in 2004."

Daniel attributes this success to the ANC's effective campaigning among indian communities in KwaZulu Natal and goes onto conclude: "It is worth noting that this ANC surge in the indian vote was not confined to KwaZulu Natal; it formed part of a national pattern. This is borne out by the fact that the ANC secured the largest share of the vote in Bo Kaap and Lansdowne in the Cape and in Lenasia and Laudium in Gauteng. In Lenasia, for example, the ANC won nine out of ten voting districts, growing its share of the vote from 41% in 1999 to 55.7% in 2004. The fact that the ANC's position on the Middle East paid off handsomely in voting terms was reflected in the comment of one of the ANC's winning candidates in Lenasia, Ismail Vadi, who attributed the ANC 's victory to 'its foreign policy in support of the Palestinian movement and against the unilateral US-led war of aggression in Iraq' (Sunday Times 18.04.04)."

Results in the Northern and Western Cape indicate that the ANC also consolidated and advanced its support among the rural coloured community. It now has substantial majority in these areas.

Substantial levels of support have also been achieved in urban areas in coloured communities, although the picture is more complex than among rural voters. In Gauteng three parties were strong: the ANC averaged around 35% with the DA second at around 30% and the Independent Democrats (ID) emerged as a 'third force' with 20%. In KwaZulu Natal the picture was similar.

In the Cape Town metro there was a four-horse race, with the New National Party (NNP) remaining a strong, but unpredictable, factor. While the NNP failed to poll more than 10% of the coloured vote elsewhere, it retained a solid bloc of coloured support (21%). The ANC and the DA each got a quarter of the Cape Town coloured vote, while the ID emerged as a factor (15%).

Jonathan Faull of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) argues that the so-called 'coloured vote' has never been a homogenous bloc. "The effect of the demise of the NNP is evident in the low turnout of voters in coloured neighbourhoods. The effect within these wards was a proportional increase in votes for the ANC. Given the implosion of the NNP and the failure of opposition parties to win over all these traditionally non-ANC voters (i.e. those who stayed at home), [it was] the ANC who managed to get their voters to the polls in high numbers...".

Whites

The situation among whites is very hard to estimate, since shifts in favour of the ANC in a particular voting district could either be a result of genuine growth in ANC support among whites, or from the influx of black people to the area, or both.

However, there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that effective campaign work served to shift whites towards the ANC in certain areas. For example, in Pietermaritzburg the ANC campaigned successfully for white votes. John Daniel of the HSRC reports that "according to the Natal Witness (18.04.04) there was also a third source of new ANC supporters in the form of largely white voters in Pietermaritzburg who switched from the DA to the ANC as a protest at the DA's support for Ulundi as the region's capital. This was a key issue in the IFP's election platform which the DA must have felt obliged to support in its role as coalition partner to the IFP. However, it badly alienated the predominantly white Pietermaritzburg business community which formed a special campaign committee focussed on generating support for the ANC. Exactly how many whites in the area voted for the ANC as a result of this issue is not know but one analysis estimated the figure at 15,000." Generally, however, the picture is one of low voter turnout in white areas, with white support consolidated around the DA. According to Janet Cherry, who analysed the patterns in Eastern Cape farming areas: "the 'moderate' vote - from white, coloured and perhaps a handful of african voters - has moved decisively away from the NNP and has been shared between the DA and the ID. The UDM, which used to be seen as moderate, non-racial alternative in these communities, has lost its support..."

Analysing Cape Town results, Jonathan Faull detects a varied picture of turnout in the white community according to class and ethnicity: "In white English-speaking Southern Suburbs upper middle class voting districts, turnout hovered at or below the provincial average [for the Western Cape, which was the lowest in the country]... The trend in these wards was a majority for the DA of between 53% (Rosebank) and 70% (Little Mowbray), with substantial support for the ID in traditional "liberal" areas... In English-speaking wards further down the class slope, turnout and consolidation behind the DA increased respectively ... In wealthy Afrikaans areas, where support for the NNP averaged between 60 and 70% in 1999, turnout was excellent, with the vote congealing behind the DA... In petty middle class and white working class areas, voters supported the DA in higher numbers with good turnout..."

Opposition parties fishing from a shrinking pond

Most opinion polls failed to predict the extent of the collapse of the New National Party (NNP). The failure of the polls to pick up this trend itself reveals the speed and decisiveness with which the party lost public confidence. While retaining a bloc of coloured support in the Western and Northern Cape (around 25%) the party's white voters deserted it en masse, eliminating it as a significant force in all other provinces. Perhaps most of the white NNP voters would have cast their ballots for the DA. It is also possible that significant sections of the NNP's voters came over to the ANC, deciding that they required no intermediary between them and the movement (see John Daniels' comment on the indian vote above). Overall, the Democratic Alliance's growth mirrors the NNP's fall. In Mpumalanga the NNP's loss of 20,000 votes (amounting to 81% of its votes in 1999) is directly mirrored by the DA's gain of 25,000.

Figure 3: Votes cast for parties in three elections

It is true that in comparison with the performance of the then Democratic Party (DP) (in 1994 and 1999) the DA has made substantial gains in 2004, scoring an additional 400,000 votes. However, taking into account the rapid collapse of the NNP, and looking to the overall size of the opposition vote given to an anti-ANC platform, the picture does not look so rosy for the DA.

The combined total of the DP, NNP and Federal Alliance (FA) in 1999 amounted to 2.71 million votes. In 2004, the DA (which now incorporates the DP and FA) only netted 1.9 million votes. In other words the DA failed to attain the full bloc of NNP votes that represent the potential limit of 'fight back' politics, and in most provinces the DA's gains (in relation to the DP in 1999) are much smaller than the NNP's losses. Even if we add the votes retained by the NNP (which by 2004 had shifted out of the 'fight back' camp), it is clear that as a combined bloc the DA has been significantly reduced in both absolute and proportional terms. Part of the explanation is likely to be lower turnout among the white and coloured community, with many former NNP voters deciding not to vote. What is more, it failed to increase its african support in any significant manner.

Although the turnout of opposition voters was lower overall, the DA also failed to consolidate these voters into a single bloc. With the exception of Gauteng (where no other opposition party got more than 3% of the vote leaving the DA with 20%) the DA has been unable to assert itself unambiguously as the largest opposition party. Part of the explanation can be gleaned from table 5 above. Here we see that the DA's vote continues to be strongly skewed towards the urban electorate. Sixty-four percent of DA voters are either in the Western Cape or Gauteng, which between them accounted for only 34% of the votes cast.

Roger Southhall of the HSRC reports "The DA, optimistically, had projected the 'Coalition for Change' as heading for 30% of the vote. However, when the chips were down, it secured only 12.4%, which together with the reduced 6.97% of the IFP fell far short of the target. Although the DA put on a brave face, and correctly noted that it had gained over 400,000 votes [over the DP], in private it must have been bitterly disappointed. The increased votes it secured appeared to have come very largely from whites and coloureds who had abandoned the NNP and opted for the DA as the conservative alternative to the ID. Far, far fewer africans than it had hoped for had chosen to abandon the ANC."

In both the Northern and Western Cape the Independent Democrats (ID) emerged as the third largest party in many towns, pushing the DA into fourth place.

But the ID's strongest support is predominantly among urban coloured voters, especially in Gauteng, with a slight impact among indian voters in Gauteng and none to speak of among african voters. Table 5 above shows that 71% of the ID's support is located in just two provinces, Gauteng and Western Cape While not altering its seats in the legislatures, the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) succeeded in registering significant growth in the vote it could mobilise, especially in the North West, Free State, Gauteng and Mpumalanga. Its use of charismatic churches to mobilise african voters may have had an effect in some communities, but this would require further research to corroborate. Table 5 indicates that the distribution of the ACDP support appears much more even than that of other opposition parties. Its core support remains in white areas, in the metros and cities. Nevertheless it attracted some support in several coloured wards.

In the Eastern Cape a diminished United Democratic Movement (UDM) retained its position as the largest opposition. The UDM has probably also lost the white support it had in 1999. Outside the rural areas the UDM's support among africans is low - 5% in the Western Cape, 2-3% in the Eastern Cape and 1% in Gauteng. The UDM receives 59% of its votes from the Eastern Cape, which accounts for only 15% of voters (see table 5). It is likely that the composition of its support in the Western Cape and Gauteng is largely drawn from migrants from the Eastern Cape. Interestingly, its support among the most rural voters is disproportionately low, perhaps indicating the UDM's dependence on peri-urban areas in the former bantustans. The 2004 election, therefore, appears to have confirmed the UDM as a regional ethnic party.

In the North West, the United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP) outdid the DA to the post of 'official opposition', even though it appears to have lost some support, perhaps to the ACDP. As with the UDM, the UCDP has highly localised support among africans in former bantustan areas, particularly around the former capitals (Umtata and Mafikeng) and those elsewhere in the country who retain links with those areas. But the UCDP's support is all in the North West and that part of the Free State that was part of the Bophuthatswana bantustan.

The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) registered no increase in the number of votes it received in 1999. It remains a 1% party. While the Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO) did significantly increase the number of votes it received (by about 50%), this was from such a low base that it did not materially affect the election outcome. Nevertheless, AZAPO's gain was particularly strong in Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal and the Western Cape.

Table 7 shows that, in contrast to the performance of the ANC summarised in table 3 above, the opposition vote haemorrhaged in every province. While the ANC increased its vote slightly, the number of votes cast for opposition parties declined substantially. Aside from the NNP, the other major loser of election 2004 was the IFP, which we consider in more detail below. In North West, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal, those parties built on the remnants of bantustan politics continue to trump the DA in its quest for the title of 'official opposition'. Not only has the opposition vote become smaller, it is also more fractured.

Table 7: Combined opposition votes by province

Erosion of the IFP heartland

The democratic revolution has been a long time coming to the province of KwaZulu Natal. In terms of political rights, many voters in the rural areas continue to have more in common with the subjects of feudal rule than the citizens of a democracy. Nevertheless, in 2004 the ANC managed to turn the tide and secure a significant victory for democratic practice in South Africa, extending its reach into uncharted territory. Throughout the province thousands of people dared to stay at home against IFP directions, while others dared even to vote against the party.

Several factors can be offered in explanation of the IFP's comprehensive defeat:

The ANC's campaign played an important part in reaching out to rural voters and giving them confidence to vote ANC. Also, the campaign in Ethekwini was particularly crucial as the ANC managed to retain and extend support in the metro, netting 80,000 more votes compared with 1999.
The IFP's defence of Ulundi as the capital of the province alienated the business community, while its opposition to pro-poor policies of the government and its alliance with the DA gave it a bad name among the masses of the poor.
Enhanced monitoring and effective security interventions created a climate in which fear was less present than in previous elections. The deployment of ANC party agents to voting stations in former 'no-go' areas was also decisive.
Also important have been the demographic shifts taking place throughout the province, particularly the trend of migration toward urban and peri-urban areas, which has eroded the IFP's domination of the vote.

Table 8 shows the municipalities where the IFP's reversals were greatest in relation to the 1999 result. In all cases the IFP's loss was the ANC's gain.

Going beyond the overall proportions, the underlying patterns are perhaps best illustrated in the IFP's heartland, which are shown in table 9. While the IFP retained overwhelmingly large percentages, its votes in Ulundi, Nongoma and Umsinga declined significantly, while most other parties grew.

The ANC's growth was dramatic, albeit from a very low base; amounting to a 150% increase in Nongoma.

Table 8: The IFP's largest reversals

Table 9: Provincial ballots cast in selected KwaZulu Natal municipal areas, 1999 and 2004

Previously, in several rural voting districts north of the Tugela, turnout was uncomfortably close to 100% in unmonitored voting stations, a result which seems odd, given the long distances people must travel to vote.

Looking at Ulundi, turnout dropped from 94% in 1999 to 82% in 2004, even despite a significant reduction in the number of registered voters (see table 8). More effective monitoring, including the deployment by the ANC of party agents in the IFP heartland for the first time, may have succeeded in curtailing the extent of electoral fraud and reducing the extent of political intimidation of various kinds.

In this context, lower turnout, rather than being interpreted as a sign of 'voter apathy' or disengagement from electoral politics may on the contrary be an indication of greater citizen capacity to exercise democratic choice in areas where the voting public have long been regarded as the 'subjects' of IFP rule. Across KwaZulu Natal the overwhelmingly dominant trend was a sharp reduction in the turnout of IFP voters, combined with a significant increase in the ANC's vote.

Interestingly KwaZulu Natal was also the only province where the DA failed to match the performance of the DP in 1999, thus indicating that provinces decisive rejection of the 'coalition for change'.

ANC advances in the Western Cape

Although Cape Town's demographic weight dominates the voting outcomes throughout the Western Cape, it is worth noting that the ANC increased its percentage of the vote in almost all municipalities in the province. Perhaps the DA's failure to capitalise on NNP losses is most evident in this province, where compared to the combined DP/NNP vote in 1999, the DA failed to increase its percentages in even a single municipality (see table 10).

Table 10: ANC gains and DA losses in the Western Cape

In Cape Town itself, the ANC secured a stunning victory: more votes were cast for the party here than either in 1999 or 1994. Throughout the province a number of developments contributed to a larger than expected ANC victory:

The effectiveness of the ANC's election campaign, combined with successes in government delivery perceived to be led by the ANC;
The opposition vote, instead of being consolidated under the hegemony of DA, was split between the DA, the NNP and the ID. The NNP's vote declined by 400,000 in comparison with 1999. While the DA certainly netted a significant share of these voters, gaining more than 200,000 votes, the ID and the ACDP also benefited.
Turnout in the urban coloured community, was very low; a large proportion of former NNP voters may have deserted the party and decided not to vote. In Mitchells Plain for example, turnout averaged 63% compared with almost 90% in Gugulethu.
The ANC has consolidated and built upon its overwhelming majority in rural coloured constituencies, in both the Western and Northern Cape.
Large demographic shifts. Comparing census 2001 with 1996 indicates that the african population of Cape Town increased by 45%.

Michael Sachs is the ANC's national research coordinator, based at Chief Luthuli House in Johannesburg.

A passion for human dignity

The living legacy of Chief Albert Luthuli

Chief Albert Luthuli was an outstanding African intellectual, who cherished and promoted the ideals of freedom, peace and justice for all. Jacob Zuma pays tribute to one of the noblest sons of our country and continent.

We will always be proud that Chief Albert Luthuli, a remarkable, yet very humble man of the people, was the first person in our country and continent to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

His humility in accepting this honour, when he stated that he did not believe he deserved it, gave an indication of the type of leader he was: he did not view his contribution as worthy of personal recognition.

Chief Albert Luthuli was born in 1898, near Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. After the death of his father, who was a missionary in Bulawayo, he returned to his ancestral home in Groutville, South Africa and trained as a teacher.

He left the teaching profession in 1936 after being elected chief of the Groutville Amakholwa community. His last teaching post was at Emanzimtoti, Adams College, one of the early centres of political conscientisation.

Long before joining the ANC in 1945, he had already begun participation in ANC activities, attending meetings and was active in other respects.

In 1946 he witnessed the mine worker's strike and police brutality against the strikers. He was also inspired by the indian passive resistance campaign of 1946, in which over 2,000 people defied the government's discriminatory laws and courted imprisonment.

As a teacher, traditional leader and successful farmer, he could easily have turned his back on the struggle for freedom and led a comfortable life. But, when pressured by the apartheid regime to leave the ANC, he instead left the chieftainship and later assumed the leadership of the ANC.

The strength of the ANC has always included its clarity of vision and purpose, and the existence of clear policies on all key questions in our country. Through his writings and public statements, Chief Luthuli articulated these policies eloquently, also ensuring implementation at various levels of the movement, during very repressive conditions, assisted by his able comrades at the time. Chief Luthuli led the ANC during a period of turbulence and intense repression from the apartheid regime. It was under his leadership that the ANC entered what former president Nelson Mandela calls the "fighting fifties". The ANC had taken a decision to become more militant in 1949, under the presidency of Dr AB Xuma.

Under Chief Luthuli's leadership the ANC grew into a mass militant organisation, and, in line with its programme of action, engaged in mass action such as national 'stay-at-home' campaigns, bus and potato boycotts, economic boycott of Nationalist products, peasant revolts, anti-pass campaigns, resistance to forced removals and mass protest rallies and demonstrations.

This period also saw the defiance campaign, the struggle against Bantu Education, the drawing together of all freedom-loving South Africans across the racial line into the Congress Alliance and the adoption of the Freedom Charter, the anti-pass campaign by women in 1956, and the launch of armed struggle in 1961.

In his address to the 42nd annual ANC conference, in December 1953, Chief Luthuli described the defiance campaign, as one of the "most outstanding events in the political history of the Union of South Africa".

The defiance campaign attracted the attention of the world, and racial discrimination became an international issue.

Under Chief Luthuli's leadership, the ANC also brought together freedom-loving people of South Africa to put together minimum demands in the form of the Freedom Charter which was adopted in Kliptown in 1955 at the Congress of the People.

At this Congress, the Isithwalandwe Seaparankoe - the highest honour awarded by the ANC - was bestowed on Chief Luthuli, Yusuf Dadoo and Father Trevor Huddleston. However, only Father Huddleston was able to accept his award as Luthuli and Dadoo were prevented from attending under banning orders.

In his message to the Congress of the People, Chief Luthuli emphasised its significance as follows: "Why will this assembly be significant and unique? Its size, I hope, will make it unique. But above all its multi-racial nature and its noble objectives will make it unique because it will be the first time in the history of our multi-racial nation that its people from all walks of life will meet as equals, irrespective of race, colour and creed, to formulate a Freedom Charter for all people in the country."

An organised force for peace

Chief Luthuli led by example, and this is evidenced by the fact that when he led the people in the anti-pass campaign in 1960, he was the first to burn his pass book.

Another highlight of Chief Luthuli's leadership of the ANC is that it was during this period that the armed struggle was launched.

He clearly articulated this ANC policy in a statement issued on 12 June 1964, when Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and six other leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia trial. It was read at the United Nations Security Council meeting on the same day by the representative of Morocco.

He said: "The African National Congress never abandoned its method of a militant, nonviolent struggle, and of creating in the process a spirit of militancy in the people. However, in the face of the uncompromising white refusal to abandon a policy which denies the African and other oppressed South Africans their rightful heritage - freedom - no one can blame brave just men for seeking justice by the use of violent methods; nor could they be blamed if they tried to create an organised force in order to ultimately establish peace and racial harmony." In a speech during Luthuli centenary celebrations in kwaDukuza in April 1998, Mandela pointed out that this statement by Chief Luthuli sustained them through the prison years.

Mandela said: "As he explained our resort to armed struggle in the face of the uncompromising denial of freedom for the majority of South Africans, he evoked the vision of a peaceful, united and just society which sustained our people through the long years of struggle".

The intransigence of the apartheid regime had also necessitated greater international solidarity and action. A decision was taken, under Chief Luthuli's leadership, that Oliver Tambo should leave the country to lead the ANC's international campaign. The international campaign took many forms, including the call for sanctions against South Africa.

Chief Luthuli, as the voice of the oppressed masses, clearly communicated this policy. In the Rivonia Trial statement, he made a strong call for sanctions, and called upon Britain and America to take decisive action in this regard.

Chief Luthuli had also called for sanctions earlier in 1960, in an article in New Age, reacting to a statement by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who had objected to the call for sanctions.

Chief Luthuli also clearly expressed the ANC position on non-racialism, and it was during his leadership that the non-racial Congress alliance was established. While the defiance campaign was organised by the ANC, it was also actively supported by the South African Indian Congress.

This militancy of the Defiance Campaign created the conditions for the organised participation of the Coloured People's Congress and the Congress of Democrats, and shortly thereafter by the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) after its establishment.

The alliance, born out of the practical apartheid conditions, brought together democrats and freedom lovers in common pursuit of justice and freedom. Chief Luthuli's call for the unity of all the oppressed people and progressive whites found resonance within the Congress of the People campaign.

The ANC had always been clear on the type of society it wanted to build after apartheid, as expressed in the Freedom Charter, and Chief Luthuli as the head of the movement, outlined this policy in many articles and public statements, that South Africa belonged to all who live in it.

In an interview with Drum in June 1958, he emphasised the need for the ANC to pursue cooperation with other racial groups, as the "Africa for Africans" position was only justifiable in territories where other racial groups, especially whites, were not as permanently settled as they were in South Africa or Zimbabwe.

The question of the participation of women in the liberation struggle has always been a focal point within the ANC. In a message to the 1959 congress of the ANC Women's League, Chief Luthuli narrated the various campaigns led by women, and reaffirmed the ANC's position on the critical role of women in the liberation struggle.

The role of the working class in the struggle for liberation was reflected in his favourite slogan that the ANC was the shield, and SACTU was the spear of the nation.

Chief Luthuli's legacy will live on for years to come. His belief in freedom, peace, equality of all and the right to human dignity was a passion that drove him in his leadership of the ANC, and kept him going throughout his period of persecution by the apartheid regime.

His belief in the unity of all, both the oppressed as well as democrats within the white community, promoted the ANC's position on building a non-racial future, of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white.

A fitting tribute

The eventual attainment of liberation in 1994 was a fitting tribute to Chief Luthuli and all who fought for the freedom of this country.

If he could speak today, we believe that Chief Luthuli would say we were correct in the manner in which we worked and achieved a smooth transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994, in working for unity, peace and reconciliation instead of retribution, and in working so hard to ensure the improvement of the lives of the poor and marginalised over the last ten years.

We also believe he would say we are correct in our pursuit of peace and stability within the African continent and in the world.

We recall his words when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo: "May the day come soon, when the peoples of the world will rouse themselves, and together effectively stamp out any threat to peace, in whatever quarter of the world it may be found. When that day comes, there shall be peace on earth and goodwill between men." The message is as relevant today as it was in December 1961, and summarises the legacy of Chief Luthuli, the man of peace, freedom, justice, unity and equality for all.

Jacob Zuma is Deputy President of the ANC. This is an edited version of the second Matthew Goniwe Annual Lecture, held during the Albert Luthuli Memorial Lecture Week, Johannesburg, August 2004.

The SA Labour Party and the ANC

In this extract from the introduction to his unpublished memoirs, the late Alex Hepple describes the relationship between the SA Labour Party and the ANC under his leadership, from 1948-58.

The South African Labour Party, founded in 1908 by immigrant artisans, mostly from Britain, existed for exactly fifty years, departing the political scene in 1958. Throughout its existence, the Labour Party wrestled with the problem of finding a policy which would be acceptable to the whites and at the same time do justice to the blacks. The task was not made any easier by the party's right-wing racialists and the conservatism of several affiliated trade unions, concerned with protecting their white members from cheap black competition. Nevertheless the socialist and progressive element were able to introduce and preserve some liberal principles in regard of the voteless black majority. There were differences of opinion as to what the Party's "native policy" [as it was then described] should be. Over the years these were resolved by compromise, resulting in vague declarations and ambiguous statements.

My election to parliament in 1948 coincided with the first victory of the Broederbond Nationalists. Immediately upon assuming office they embarked upon their policy of segregation and discrimination, and the suppression of political rights and civil liberties generally. In the face of this the Labour parliamentary team was constantly engaged in opposing the government and fiercely declaring Labour's dissent from the government's deplorable programme. The United Party, the larger opposition party, did not take a similar stand and were too often seen to be side-stepping important issues of principle, making it easier for the government to pursue their attack on human rights and freedoms. In agreement with the ANC leaders, the Labour Party warned that no matter how many harsh laws were enacted, no matter how stringently apartheid laws were applied, it was inevitable that South Africa would become a free mixed nation with equal rights for all, and that all the Nationalists were doing was to make it certain that political changes would have to be effected by force.

The Labour Party leader John Christies died during the 1953 parliamentary elections and I was elected to take his place as parliamentary leader. I immediately stated that I would pursue socialist principles and at every opportunity would advance the cause of the millions of voteless and defenceless blacks. This was endorsed by the National Executive Committee and conference. In giving expression to this policy the Labour Party was sensitively aware that our record would be judged not by the black majority but by the white electorate. Hopefully we trusted that a sufficient number of white voters would be inspired to ensure the election of at least a few labourites to parliament. Of course, we were expecting too much; the South African political system made certain our absolute defeat in the 1958 election and the death of the Labour Party.

Exerting influence in white politics

During the period of my leadership we made it our business to maintain cordial relations with the leaders of black political organisations. We had discussions with the African National Congress, the South African Coloured Peoples Organisation and other sections of the Congress Movement, and they acknowledged that the Labour Party would best serve the interests of all the people by exerting its influence in the field of white politics, with regular discussions between the white and black political organisations on developments in the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary spheres.

One expression of our cordiality with the Congress Movement was our attendance at the Congress of the People at Kliptown on 26 June 1955, when the historic Freedom Charter was adopted. The party was represented by Jessie MacPherson, Chairman of the party, myself as parliamentary leader, and my wife Girlie (also an active member of the party). Another Labour Party gesture was to provide headquarters for the Treason Trials Defence Fund, set up in 1956 to raise money for the legal defence of 156 people charged with high treason and for the maintenance of the accused and their families. At the request of the Congress leaders, I took the initiative in launching the fund and inviting prominent citizens to give their support.

Throughout the protracted court proceedings I acted as chairman, with a board of trustees comprising the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg, the Rt Rev Ambrose Reeves, ex-judge Frank Lucas, the author Alan Paton and Dr Ellen Hellman of the South African Institute for Race Relations.

By the end of the trial it had become apparent that a permanent fund was needed to protect victims of political persecution. On behalf of the accused and their leaders Chief Albert Luthuli asked me to undertake the organisation of what came to be known as the Defence and Aid Fund. As with the Treason Trials Defence Fund, the Labour Party offices were used as headquarters.

Biographical Note
Alex Hepple

This year marks the centenary of the birth of alex hepple on 28 august 1904.

He was a member of parliament (1948-68) and the last leader of the south african labour party (1953-58). he was founder and chairman of the treason trials defence fund (1956-61), and of the south african defence and aid fund (1960-64). countless victims of apartheid received his help.

The South African Congress Of Trade Unions (SACTU) relied heavily on his guidance, and he was chief negotiator for the textile workers' industrial union. When the nationalist government's restrictions made it impossible for him to continue the labour newspaper 'forward', he and his wife girlie founded the international defence and aid fund's information service in london. this gave worldwide exposure to the crimes of the apartheid regime.

He wrote a critical biography of Verwoerd (Penguin, 1967) which was banned in South Africa. He died in Canterbury, England on 16 November 1983.

Fifty years of the Women's Charter

This year is the fiftieth year since the adoption of the Women's Charter, an historic document which expressed the philosophy and aims of the newly established Federation of South African Women. To mark this anniversary, Umrabulo publishes the Charter in full.

Preamble:
We, the women of South Africa, wives and mothers, working women and housewives, African, Indians, European and Coloured, hereby declare our aim of striving for the removal of all laws, regulations, conventions and customs that discriminate against us as women, and that deprive us in any way of our inherent right to the advantages, responsibilities and opportunities that society offers to any one section of the population.

A Single Society:
We women do not form a society separate from the men. There is only one society, and it is made up of both women and men. As women we share the problems and anxieties of our men, and join hands with them to remove social evils and obstacles to progress.

Test of Civilisation:
The level of civilisation which any society has reached can be measured by the degree of freedom that its members enjoy. The status of women is a test of civilisation. Measured by that standard, South Africa must be considered low in the scale of civilised nations.

Women's Lot:
We women share with our menfolk the cares and anxieties imposed by poverty and its evils. As wives and mothers, it falls upon us to make small wages stretch a long way. It is we who feel the cries of our children when they are hungry and sick. It is our lot to keep and care for the homes that are too small, broken and dirty to be kept clean. We know the burden of looking after children and land when our husbands are away in the mines, on the farms, and in the towns earning our daily bread. We know what it is to keep family life going in pondokkies and shanties, or in overcrowded one-room apartments. We know the bitterness of children taken to lawless ways, of daughters becoming unmarried mothers whilst still at school, of boys and girls growing up without education, training or jobs at a living wage.

Poor and Rich:
These are evils that need not exist. They exist because the society in which we live is divided into poor and rich, into non-European and European. They exist because there are privileges for the few, discrimination and harsh treatment for the many. We women have stood and will stand shoulder to shoulder with our menfolk in a common struggle against poverty, race and class discrimination, and the evils of the colour bar.

National Liberation:
As members of the National Liberatory movements and Trade Unions, in and through our various organisations, we march forward with our men in the struggle for liberation and the defence of the working people. We pledge ourselves to keep high the banner of equality, fraternity and liberty. As women there rests upon us also the burden of removing from our society all the social differences developed in past times between men and women, which have the effect of keeping our sex in a position of inferiority and subordination.

Equality for Women:
We resolve to struggle for the removal of laws and customs that deny African women the right to own, inherit or alienate property. We resolve to work for a change in the laws of marriage such as are found amongst our African, Malay and Indian people, which have the effect of placing wives in the position of legal subjection to husbands, and giving husbands the power to dispose of wives' property and earnings, and dictate to them in all matters affecting them and their children. We recognise that the women are treated as minors by these marriage and property laws because of ancient and revered traditions and customs which had their origin in the antiquity of the people and no doubt served purposes of great value in bygone times. There was a time in the African society when every woman reaching marriageable stage was assured of a husband, home, land and security. Then husbands and wives with their children belonged to families and clans that supplied most of their own material needs and were largely self-sufficient. Men and women were partners in a compact and closely integrated family unit.

Women who Labour:
Those conditions have gone. The tribal and kinship society to which they belonged has been destroyed as a result of the loss of tribal land, migration of men away from the tribal home, the growth of towns and industries, and the rise of a great body of wage-earners on the farms and in the urban areas, who depend wholly or mainly on wages for a livelihood. Thousands of African women, like Indians, Coloured and European women, are employed today in factories, homes, offices, shops, on farms, in professions as nurses, teachers and the like. As unmarried women, widows or divorcees they have to fend for themselves, often without the assistance of a male relative. Many of them are responsible not only for their own livelihood but also that of their children. Large numbers of women today are in fact the sole breadwinners and heads of their families.

Forever Minors:
Nevertheless, the laws and practices derived from an earlier and different state of society are still applied to them. They are responsible for their own person and their children. Yet the law seeks to enforce upon them the status of a minor. Not only are African, Coloured and Indian women denied political rights, but they are also in many parts of the Union denied the same status as men in such matters as the right to enter into contracts, to own and dispose of property, and to exercise guardianship over their children.

Obstacle to Progress:
The law has lagged behind the development of society; it no longer corresponds to the actual social and economic position of women. The law has become an obstacle to progress of the women, and therefore a brake on the whole of society. This intolerable condition would not be allowed to continue were it not for the refusal of a large section of our menfolk to concede to us women the rights and privileges which they demand for themselves. We shall teach the men that they cannot hope to liberate themselves from the evils of discrimination and prejudice as long as they fail to extend to women complete and unqualified equality in law and in practice.

Need for Education:
We also recognise that large numbers of our womenfolk continue to be bound by traditional practices and conventions, and fail to realise that these have become obsolete and a brake on progress. It is our duty and privilege to enlist all women in our struggle for emancipation and to bring to them all realisation of the intimate relationship that exists between their status of inferiority as women and the inferior status to which their people are subjected by discriminatory laws and colour prejudices. It is our intention to carry out a nation-wide programme of education that will bring home to the men and women of all national groups the realisation that freedom cannot be won for any one section or for the people as a whole as long as we women are kept in bondage.

An Appeal:
We women appeal to all progressive organisations, to members of the great National Liberatory movements, to the trade unions and working class organisations, to the churches, educational and welfare organisations, to all progressive men and women who have the interests of the people at heart, to join with us in this great and noble endeavour.

Our Aims

We declare the following aims:

This organisation is formed for the purpose of uniting women in common action for the removal of all political, legal, economic and social disabilities. We shall strive for women to obtain:

The right to vote and to be elected to all State bodies, without restriction or discrimination.
The right to full opportunities for employment with equal pay and possibilities of promotion in all spheres of work.
Equal rights with men in relation to property, marriage and children, and for the removal of all laws and customs that deny women such equal rights.
For the development of every child through free compulsory education for all; for the protection of mother and child through maternity homes, welfare clinics, crèches and nursery schools, in countryside and towns; through proper homes for all, and through the provision of water, light, transport, sanitation, and other amenities of modern civilisation.
For the removal of all laws that restrict free movement, that prevent or hinder the right of free association and activity in democratic organisations, and the right to participate in the work of these organisations.
To build and strengthen women's sections in the National Liberatory movements, the organisation of women in trade unions, and through the peoples' varied organisation.
To cooperate with all other organisations that have similar aims in South Africa as well as throughout the world.
To strive for permanent peace throughout the world.

Adopted at the Founding Conference of the Federation of South African Women, Johannesburg, 17 April 1954.

Beyers Naude
A true South African who refused to stand on the sidelines

Valli Moosa pays tribute to Beyers Naude, an outstanding fighter who chose to follow his conscience.

On 22 September 1963, Beyers Naude ascended the pulpit at his Aasvoelkop congregation in the heartland of conservative Afrikaner nationalism in Johannesburg, and renounced the heresy of apartheid. "We must obey God, not man," was his simple message, taken from the Book of Acts.

In one split second Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naude had displaced himself from the comfort of the known and the predictable and embarked on a road so less travelled that there were no mentors or guides, except for an unshakeable belief in justice and righteousness and an unshakeable belief in reconciliation. He not only dislodged himself from the tripartite monolith of Afrikanerdom: the National Party, the Broederbond and the NG Kerk [Dutch Reformed Church]. Moreover, he embarked on a proactive journey of operational and strategic participation in the liberation struggle: a decision with devastating consequences for himself and especially his family.

As the thinking man that Oom Bey was, he knew that his public repudiation of the unholy alliance between church and state in the perpetuation of apartheid would unleash the venom of a scorned Afrikanerdom. The General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church immediately revoked his status as minister of the church. He was condemned and ostracised. His family, his wife Ilse and children Johann, Francois, Hermann and Liesel, had to share his role as new social outcasts. He was placed under house arrest for seven years, from 1977 until 1984, without ever being charged for anything.

Beyers Naude was not the only white person who joined the struggle against the internationally condemned crime of apartheid - and also not the only Afrikaner. This country has spawned a tradition of non-racialism, however small, throughout centuries of struggle. In the history of the ANC, white compatriots had participated proactively in pursuit of justice for all.

Oom Bey was and will be remembered as a singular individual - a man that came face to face with hard choices and who despite the threat of great hardship made the right choice. He was to be denied the comfort of language and cultural solidarity for many decades. Much remains to be said and will be said in other arenas about the dynamic role he has played in the struggle for church unity in the Dutch Reformed family, that has despite his and many other people's attempts, still not overcome their racial divisions.

For Oom Bey the personal was political. With a solid Afrikaner bloodline, a firm foot in the Broederbond and the NG Kerk, Oom Bey, after a journey of intense inner turmoil had to finally unshackle himself from their Orwellian oppression in order to set his mind and conscience free. Without his personal liberation from the prescribed thoughts and pre-ordained positions of the Afrikaner monolith, especially the secretive Afrikaner Broederbond, Oom Bey could not fully embrace the higher truth: that all people are equal before God. He could no longer live a life of hypocrisy.

By the time Beyers Naude had made his giant leap, he had launched the small but influential Christian Institute which, until its banning, became an important platform for inter-faith action and a conduit for financial and other assistance from the international community. Dislodged from his establishment constraints, Oom Bey, who was never a fence sitter, carved his own unique role and crafted a contribution so unusual that many people still find it unthinkable that he not only joined the underground ANC, but more unbelievably became an active agent for the armed struggle.

The deep trust that each and every person that came into contact with him had in him, placed an enormous burden on him. He was first and foremost a people's person and inter-personal contact was never superficial. He cared deeply about each individual and understood full well the extent and might of the total onslaught that had been declared against the broad liberation front.

Beyers Naude raised funds from European governments, NGOs and church organisations internationally. Donors trusted him implicitly and trusted his judgment. Most of the organisations that were funded were semi-legal or completely underground. The funds became a lifeline to a nascent mass democratic movement that stretched its reach into a broad front of organisations whether they were overtly political or the trade unions, student organisations, civic organisations, religious organisations and indeed independent newspapers.

He played an enormous role in convincing the donor country and donor organisations to fund the many grassroots organisations that could not operate openly and could not dare to have a bank account. He did this voluntary and as a foot soldier. Never did he try to gain a leadership position in any of these organisations and never did he claim credit for any of his effort. He never tried to influence the politics and particular agenda of those he channelled funds to. He was never associated with one political faction or the other and was never accused of favouring one above the other.

Once committed, he was not a man who believed in standing on the sideline and hedging his bets. Yet, he also did not try to be a populist leader or a hero - he remained true to himself, a church leader and an Afrikaner, especially the latter. He never pretended to be anything else. His language and cultural preferences accentuated his Afrikanerness. His bravery in denouncing the pillars of apartheid and express opposition to continued state oppression became a north star for many younger Afrikaners who had to cross their own Rubicon. Even those who did not know him personally knew of him and found his courage and commitment an anchor while they themselves were questioning the ethical and moral bankruptcy of racial oppression and state sponsored violence.

What Oom Bey showed was that to be part of the liberation struggle, to believe in the freedom and equality of all human beings, to believe in a true democracy and embrace human rights, did not require one to become somebody else or forsake your language and culture. Indeed, he demonstrated in a most engaging manner that language, culture and ethnic background should never stand in the way of one's pursuit of a higher truth, but equally that the higher truth did not automatically cancel out the deeply personal attributes of language, culture and religion.

This year we are celebrating ten years of our cherished democracy. The debate is still raging and the national question is still being debated.

Minority groups feel uncertain and too many people are still asking: who is a true South African or what do you have to look like or speak like to be a true South African. Oom Bey's life makes it absolutely clear that: he, or she, who is white-skinned and Afrikaans speaking is as much South African, and as complete a South African as he, or she, who is dark skinned and speaks Sepedi.

No person exists as a linear being and Oom Bey demonstrated in the most visible and profound manner that we exist as beings in a multiple of ways which allows us to be Afrikaans speaking, culturally an Afrikaner but equally each others keepers across cultural and ethnic lines. The one does not exclude the other.

Dearest Oom Bey, thank you for your life. Thank you for your humanity. We will remember you forever. Your cherished memory will always bring a smile on our faces, a lump in our throats and a tug on our collective conscience.

Beyers Naude died in Johannesburg on 7 September 2004.

Valli Moosa is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee. This is an edited version of an address at the Johannesburg City Hall, September 2004.

Ray Alexander Simons
A life dedicated to freedom for all

Shortly before her death, Ray Alexander Simons was awarded Isithwalandwe Seaparankoe, the ANC's highest accolade. In the award citation, Pallo Jordan describes the life and work of a dedicated revolutionary.

Ray Alexander Simons was born of Jewish parents in Latvia, at that time part of the Tsarist Russian empire, in 1913, and emigrated to South Africa in 1929. By the time she reached the shores of our country Ray Alexander had already seen service in the revolutionary working class movement as a member of the Latvian Young Communist League.

From her first years in South Africa Comrade Ray threw herself body and soul into the working class movement. Together with her first husband, Eli Weinberg, she joined the Communist Party of South Africa. After settling in Cape Town she was among the key movers behind the founding of a number of labour unions, for railway workers, for the Leather workers and most notably the Food and Canning Workers Union, comprising mainly of black - coloured and african - workers in the food processing industry of the Western Cape.

She served for many years as the general-secretary of that union, until the repressive laws of the racist regime forced her to resign.

She married Dr H.J. (Jack) Simons, then a newly minted communist academic fresh from the London School of Economics where he had completed a doctorate in comparative law, in 1941. They settled in Cape Town after Jack Simons was appointed associate professor of Comparative African Law and Government (at that time still referred to, even in academia, as 'Native Law and Administration').

The Simons home became one of the key centres of democratic and national liberation politics not only in the Western Cape and South Africa, but in the region as a whole.

Ray Alexander was elected onto the political bureau (politburo) of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1938 largely on the strength of her impressive track record in trade union organisation. Under her leadership the Food and Canning Workers Union was able to bridge the racial divide between coloured and african workers which the racist regime deliberately fostered as a means of making both african and coloured workers more vulnerable to exploitation.

When the CPSA decided to transfer its headquarters from Johannesburg to Cape Town in 1939, Ray Alexander became one of its most important leaders. During the years of the Second World War she was a tireless organiser, working in the main among the african women who flocked to Cape Town from the eastern Cape.

The repressive thrust of regime policy in the post-war years, which commenced after the african mineworkers' strike of 1946, resulted in her husband Jack Simons, being charged with sedition together with other members of the CPSA's politburo. Though their trial ended indecisively it set the tone for the next four decades, picking up momentum after the election of the National Party (NP) into government in 1948.

The CPSA was banned in 1950, compelling its leadership to disband the party in June of that year. Undeterred by these measures Ray Alexander remained in the frontline trenches of the struggle. In 1954, after the NP drove Sam Kahn and then Brian Bunting out of parliament, the african voters of the Cape elected Ray Alexander as 'Natives Representative'. Using a recent amendment to the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, the NP barred Comrade Ray from taking her seat, then from entering the precincts of parliament.

When the Communist Party was reconstituted as the South African Communist Party (SACP) as a secret party in 1953, Ray Alexander was among that core.

She became one of the SACP's chief strategists on trade union work and regularly contributed articles to the quarterly, The African Communist, using the nom de plume R. Braverman.

In 1954 Ray was among the founders of the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW), a non-racial body that brought together women of all races around the Women's Charter. Given her record Ray Alexander was elected its first national secretary. That same year the NP invoked the Suppression of Communism Act to force her to resign from the leadership of the Food and Canning Workers' Union. She nonetheless continued to influence things behind the scenes when the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) was formed that year.

Comrade Ray's extensive contacts went beyond South Africa's borders. Many young nationalists from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and even as far afield as Kenya, came into the orbit of the Simons household, sometimes through Jack at the University of Cape Town, at others through Ray's links with shop-floor workers in the food industry. Thus it came about that during the mid-1950s, a small group of Namibian workers in Cape Town assembled at the Simons home to constitute fledgling body that grew into the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) the governing party in Namibia today.

Though Ray was not arrested and detained during the 1960 State of Emergency after the Sharpeville massacre, when Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) units were constituted in the western Cape she was among its earliest recruits.

Ray and Jack left South Africa in 1965 to settle in Zambia from where she continued her work as a militant of both the SACP and the ANC. She collaborated with Jack in the writing of 'Class and Colour in South Africa', which became a classic in liberation movement history.

Comrade Ray, despite her years, continued to work mainly in union organising. She travelled regularly to Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique and later even to Lesotho, to pass on her experience of trade union organisation to a younger generation of activists. The fruits of this indefatigable work only became evident during the 1970s when black workers once again went on the offensive to organise new unions. As members of MK the Simons home in Zambia was always a hive of activity. Ray and Jack conducted study groups for MK, gave shelter to fighters and their home was regularly used as a safe house for weapons and other materials in transit to South Africa.

When the movement was unbanned in 1990, Comrades Ray and Jack returned to Cape Town. In addition to her work in the SACP and the ANC, Comrade Ray has dedicated the past fourteen years to writing her memoirs. It is a book that promises to be extremely rich in both its texture and depth, covering the experience of a fighter that spans seven decades in the working class and national liberation movement.

Ray Alexander Simons was among the last surviving members of a generation of immigrant white radicals who arrived in South Africa during the first half of the twentieth century. Because of their political principles they did not comfortably assimilate into the racist-colonialist political culture then dominant in South Africa. They served their new home and its people by becoming involved in the struggle for freedom and democracy. The sterling example of these comrades translated non-racialism as a principle into something palpable and realisable.

By decision of the ANC National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, Comrade Rachel E. Simons, also known by her maiden name, Ray Alexander, was honoured by the award of Isithwalandwe Seaparankoe for her decades of exceptional and dedicated service to the cause of freedom and democracy.

Ray Alexander Simons died in Cape Town on 12 September 2004.

Pallo Jordan is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee.

Wilton Mkwayi
A hero always among the masses

In an extract from his speech at the funeral of Wilton Mkwayi, Nelson Mandela remembers the courage and selflessness of a people's hero.

We come once more to bid farewell and pay our final respects to one of the brave veterans of our liberation movement and freedom struggle.

We stand at the grave of Wilton Mkwayi, not in sadness or only in mourning.

He has led his life to its fullness in terms of years; more importantly, he lived it to its fullness in the unselfishness with which he served his movement, his country and his people. We gather around this open grave to celebrate the life of our comrade and compatriot - a life singularly given to the betterment of the lives of all in this country.

Wilton Mkwayi was a people's hero in the truest sense of that phrase. The work that he did in and for the liberation movement was always as one of the masses, immersed in and amongst the masses, leading but never looking to be a high profile visibility on his own. One can truly say that Wilton Mkwayi the leader was so much part of the people that he disappeared into the struggling masses.

There can be no better example to all of us in this regard than Wilton Mkwayi. In the changed circumstances of today we too often find that service to the people becomes secondary to the position and status attached to such service rendering. We shall do well to constantly return to the memory and example of such men and women as Mkwayi. They are the true heroes and heroines of our struggle.

I shall remember Wilton Mkwayi for his courage and bravery. He had no fear in him and even physical injury could not deter him from his commitment and the course he had chosen to take.

We shall remember his bravery and courage as volunteer-in-chief in the Port Elizabeth Defiance Campaign; as one of the first group of MK cadres to leave for military training abroad; as acting leader of MK when our leadership ranks were being depleted by arrest and banning. His entire life was one great act of courage and bravery.

It is no wonder therefore that he was decorated Isithwalandwe, the highest honour our movement bestows on its heroes. We bury one of the giants in those ranks. His greatness was achieved through never wanting to be recognised or singled out from the people for and amongst whom he struggled.

We think of the bereaved family and friends, assuring them that an entire movement feels with them. We are humbled and inspired by the nature of his life; and here in death we, and you, have cause to celebrate a lifetime of singular achievement. Hambe kahle, Comrade Wilton.

Wilton Mkwayi passed away on 23 July 2004

Nelson Mandela is a former President of the ANC and an ex-officio member of the ANC National Executive Committee.

Peace in the Middle East and the South African experience

South African visitors to Israel and Palestine often draw parallels to conditions under apartheid. Cedric Mayson looks at South Africa's struggle for democracy and the lessons it may hold for peace in the Middle East.

The odds were all against us. In a world apparently cursed by continuing conflict in places like Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and the Middle East, people often ask how did South Africa experience the miracle of a fairly peaceful transition to democracy in 1994, and ten years of undeniable development since.

The apartheid regime ruled the money, the arms, the industry, the universities, the media, the police, the government, the voters, and had immensely powerful support from major overseas powers. So why did the war stop?

The experience inside South Africa

Liberation was not a miracle. It was the result of three clear polices. The ANC sought unity, not power. From the inception of the ANC 90 years ago its quest was for the unity of all South Africans, not power for this or that group. Pixley ka Seme and his colleagues from 1906 spoke to a people who had been set against one another by the imperial colonial powers, but saw that "conflict and strife are rapidly disappearing before the fusing force of an enlightened perception of the true inter-tribal relation, which relation should subsist amongst a people of a common destiny". That unity, which began with black African tribes, spread over the decades to include coloured, white and indian South Africans, so that we can state: "Over nine decades the ANC has forged and led a powerful national liberation movement which has united millions of South Africans in a hard fought struggle for freedom." It was inevitably a struggle against those who sought power for their own group. The races, religions, universities, trade and industry, unions, political groups, tribal groups, provinces and cultures all contained sites of struggle. Those struggles for separate power were resolved as people realised the needs of different groups could only be realised by establishing freedom, peace and justice for all in a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist society. Power struggles would wreck us: unity would empower us.

The second basis of our experience was the pursuit of reconciliation, of a solution based on a non-violent realism, not the violent promotion of antagonisms which could never be resolved. In certain specific areas the forces of armed struggle were employed to demonstrate the inadequacy of the apartheid regime's reliance on military suppression, but liberation was never seen as dependent upon the military defeat of the apartheid war machine. We won by the sheer weight of the commitment of millions of people to justice, peace, and a new reconciled way of life for the South Africa "that belongs to all who live in it, black and white", as we said in the Freedom Charter of 1955.

This commitment to unity and reconciliation focused on the third aspect of the internal experience: the struggle. Comfortable people do not change, so oppressors must be made uncomfortable. To this end, the struggle was taken into every part of our society. Parliament and church, school and media, industry and entertainment, were made uncomfortable, ungovernable, and unsustainable, while they supported the apartheid regime. The suffering and death in those many long struggles gradually won the victory in every sector of society until the De Klerk government itself realised that they too must accept that unity and reconciliation and the establishment of justice was the only way forward.

The international experience of South Africa

From far back in the colonial era other countries had an interest vested in the support of the apartheid regime for racist, political and economic reasons. This was expressed in direct political or financial support for the regime (including the supply of military equipment), and in attempts to destabilise the liberation struggle by supporting divisive political, economic or religious elements overseas, in surrounding countries, and in the internal conflicts with bantustans and 'white liberal' groups. Against these we mounted two strategies.

The first was the advocacy campaign focused on the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

This began when supporters in the United Kingdom began to mobilise in the fifties and sixties; was totally transformed when Oliver Tambo, Ruth Mompati, Frene Ginwala and others were instructed by the ANC to remain in exile and build up the 'External Mission'; and ultimately became an international movement to isolate the apartheid regime and support the forces of liberation. The whole world knew that apartheid must go.

This led to the sanctions campaign against all those giving political, economic, or cultural support to apartheid. The campaign against any cooperation with apartheid South Africa was mounted at all levels from parliament, board rooms, and church conferences, to factory floors and the women working on the tills in supermarkets. One of the most effective was the ten year campaign by British students who refused to accept their government grants through Barclays Bank until it withdrew from South Africa.

The economic impact of sanctions was a major factor in breaking the oppressive regime. The moral and political effect of enabling the people of the UK and United States to see themselves as supporters of oppression, while making disgusting and hypocritical claims to be leaders of a just and democratic world, was of equal effect. Decent people in the West wanted out.

The spiritual experience of South Africa

The word 'spiritual' here is not confined to its religious sense, but to the spirit that drove South Africa throughout that struggle: the belief, the certainty, the assurance that we would win. This underlined all the commitment, hope and faith of the struggle. It is well captured in the words of Chief Albert Luthuli, Helen Joseph, and a thousand other speakers. Former ANC President Albert Luthuli said "Somewhere ahead there beckons a civilisation which will take its place in the parade of God's history with other great human syntheses: Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish and European. It will not necessarily be all black: but it will be African."

Helen Joseph said: "I believe that South Africa will one day become a united, democratic country. My hope is grounded in my faith in the extra parliamentary strength of the people, both those who reject the present constitution and those who are rejected by it." That's the spirit! The poor and oppressed always do win in the end, and oppressive empires collapse like popped balloons.

The relevance of the South African Experience

A few years ago four of us visited Palestine from South Africa: black, white, coloured and indian, two Christians and two Muslims. It was a strange feeling, like returning to the apartheid era, with soldiers and police everywhere, constant demands for identification, forced removals, demolished homes, dispossession, brutality and fears. A Parliamentary Commission found the same: "It becomes difficult, particularly from a South African perspective, not to draw parallels with the oppression experienced by Palestinians under the hand of Israel and the oppression experienced in South Africa under apartheid rule." We also noted that 20% of Palestinians are Christians, and that many of the 'old Jews' who had lived side by side in Palestine for centuries, did not share the attitude of many modern Israelis.

Despite our belief that peace and justice in South African is dependent upon our establishment of a single united state, we recognise there are differences between our countries, and the strong support for a two state solution for Palestine and Israel. President Thabo Mbeki spoke of this in his address on 'Breaking the chains of violence in the Middle East': "We cannot accept this death and destruction as it affects both Palestinians and Israelis. When we call for respect for life we must state firmly that we refer both to Israelis and Palestinians...Fundamental to the resolution of the conflict that is exacting such suffering is the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The incontrovertible reality is that the conflict will not end until this objective is achieved...At the same time, we unreservedly recognise the right of the Israelis to live in their own state with secure boundaries. They too are entitled truly to determine their destiny in a country they can call their own in conditions of peace..." But it is from our experience in the struggle that President Mbeki also said: "The rulers of Israel are repeating the costly mistakes made by the captains of apartheid in our country. Everything that has happened in the Palestinian territories says that the Palestinians, and especially the youth are ready to march against tanks and armoured cars because it is no longer possible for them to live as a dispossessed people. To shoot them only serves to emphasise the justice of their actions."

The oppressive regime depends upon the role of the USA in empowering Israel to wage war. Analysts throughout the world view with concern the US policy to possess control of the oil of the world, through its military domination of the oil-producing nations, and its use of Israel as a major staging point of that war. Sanctions against Israel would thus be ineffective without sanctions against the United States. This is considered futile by those who forget David and Goliath, or the British students and Barclays Bank. But the political and moral effect of a carefully renewed campaign about the role of the US in the Middle East should be re-examined, focused not on the military capacity of Israel but on the comfort zones of Americans.

A review of action on the religious front

The South African inter-religious experience suggests that a major review of action on the religious front should be considered. We in the ANC are of all faith groups including some very healthy and spiritually alert agnostics.

The religious component of our struggle was important. We identify strongly with the Jews, the Muslims and the Christians of Palestine and Israel. We are well aware that these three great religions have the same origin, worship the same God, and share their basic beliefs on justice, peace, and the well-being of the human community. We recognise and endorse the courageous effort of adherents of these faiths in Palestine and Israel who are seeking to solve the problem by working together. The Middle East is not suffering a religious war: it is a war of politicians, merchants and racists who deliberately misuse and distort religion to support their ends. We suffered that experience in South Africa too.

Dialogue and care are the only way forward. Many important strategies are considered for solving the crisis in Palestine. From our experience we would strongly endorse a united, non-racial, inter-religious, progressive movement among the religious people of the world to present a positive vision of a solution to the Palestinian and Israeli situation, and in particular an unprecedented campaign to disturb the comfort zones of the religious people of the USA, for that country to change the strategies which promote aggression and violence in the Middle East.

Cedric Mayson is coordinator of the ANC Commission for Religious Affairs.

This is an edited version of his speech to the UN Conference of African Civil Society for Peace in the Middle East, held in Cape Town in July 2004.

Towards a national patriotic culture

After ten years of treating culture as little more than an afterthought, the ANC needs to work to build a national patriotic culture, writes Lebogang Lance Nawa.

Thunderous applause reverberated through arts and culture corridors with President Thabo Mbeki's announcement of the new Minister of Arts and Culture after the ANC's resounding victory in the 2004 national election. It could be argued that the appreciation may not necessarily have been aimed at the appointment of Pallo Jordan, but to the fact that arts and culture has been, at long last, returned to its rightful home, the ANC as the ruling party in government.

Without advocating an exclusive partisan approach to culture, it nonetheless can be stated that culture was for the entire decade of democracy treated almost like a political pawn sacrificed to other parties, such as the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), at the ministerial level, and Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO), at the Director-Generalship level, for purposes of reconciliation and nation-building. Furthermore, for unclear reasons (to me, at least), arts and culture were also configured together with science and technology into a single ministry - much against the spirit of ANC's earlier conferences such as Culture in Another South Africa (CASA), held in December 1997, in Amsterdam, Holland, and Culture and Development Conference (CDC) held in Johannesburg, April 1993.

As apart of preparing the ANC's take-over from the previous government, these conferences, particularly the latter, unambiguously called for a single "Ministry of Culture " and not even a Ministry of Arts and Culture as it has now been reconfigured. The implication of this is that arts and culture have been put on equal footing on the same pedestal whereas in actual fact, arts are but just one of the many components of culture. Put another way, this is like removing, in Marxist-Leninist terms, the base (arts) from the superstructure (culture) or, from a UNESCO point of view, taking 'action' out of culture; a factor considered as "ultimately anti-cultural".

The latter view proposes that "culture is an inalienable and indivisible human right: it pervades all aspects of life... [and that] culture is always something more that just culture. It is perforce revolutionary, in that it retains the qualitative and individual element in a culture which has a constant tendency to become an article of consumption, measurable in terms of quantity only".

The ANC has itself to blame for laying to slumber its vigilance over cultural matters when it allowed certain discussions within its structures to degenerate to such an extent that the movement was never to recoup or exert its hegemony over culture.

It is a pity that some earlier propositions from debates gave opportunistic and politically questionable 'culture vultures' a chance to hijack culture.

Some of these include statements from Albie Sachs's article, 'Preparing ourselves for freedom', to the effect that "we [the ANC] exercise true leadership by being non-hegemonic...by showing the people that we are fighting not to impose a view upon them but to give them the right to choose the kind of society they want and the government they want" and that "Constitutional Guidelines should not be applied to the sphere of culture".

Such approaches helped to cultivate a South African culture that could best be described as 'out of the centre' or 'without the centre' or in a more brutal sense, as Siers put while responding to the very paper, "a lovely culture... that is decapitated of its political and militant head. A culture sucked dry by those vampire bats of ambiguous metaphors." Consequently, thereafter the debates followed a litany of political errors that disempowered the development of culture to such as extent that to date the ANC is, for example, unable to pronounce itself authoritatively on how to deal with crucial issues like national symbols and geographical names.

This terminal political inertia can be traced back directly to the country's 1996 constitution that is otherwise regarded as the most - please, notice the pun - liberal in the world.

So, now the country celebrates a constitution that currently treats culture like an afterthought appendage to human rights, religion, language and so forth. Worst still, it is a doctrine that lists culture as a concurrent competence between national and provincial governments, thus completely marginalising local government - a very important sphere of government often referred to as at the "coal face of delivery" due to its close proximity with the masses on the ground.

As if contradictions are part of a culture of drafting legislation on culture in South Africa, then followed the 1998 White Paper on Local Government that expects a legal framework to be drawn in order to manage such concurrency, especially with regard to libraries, cultural centres and cultural industries. In between the two documents there exists a supposed national cultural policy, the 1996 White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage, which instead of providing some solution, contradicts sharply with the role of developmental culture as espoused by the 1994 White Paper on the RDP. Perhaps with the exception of the latter, all the other pieces of legislation have drastically moved away from the ANC's 1994 Draft Policy on Arts and Culture such that it can be stated that it is just as good as not having them in the first place.

Now, the very people who, while applauding the appointment of Pallo Jordan, are quick to offer him some advice, almost in a perverse way as it has always been the case on their part, on how to run his office on a daily basis. At the risk of falling into the same trap, could Minister Jordan be reminded of his words, while delivering a key-note address to CASA, on behalf of the ANC National Executive Committee: "My remarks today should rather be read as part of continuing dialogue amongst cultural activists, committed to the national democratic struggle in our country, to define jointly and more clearly the role we would like culture and cultural workers to play in the struggle." This should undoubtedly be a point of departure from which to begin to navigate his way through otherwise complex cultural landscape to ultimately emerge with what Ngugi wa Thiongo terms a "national patriotic culture".

Among some of the challenges that will have to be tackled along the way is to reposition discussions on culture into ANC structures. This should not be done in the manner of the ANC's 51st National Conference in Stellenbosch in 2002, when a question raised on culture was met by a very revealing response from one of the facilitators of the relevant commission: "Yes, comrade, the ANC takes culture seriously, that's why our leadership often visit graves of our fallen heroes such as Moses Kotane when they are touring overseas." There is yet another important area that ought to be explored: that of perhaps following international trends of using local government, through a National Municipal Cultural Policy, as a potential tool for positioning culture as a vehicle for reconstruction and development. This would fall in line with a proposal once proposed made by Wally Serote, the former head of the ANC's Department of Arts and Culture, in the aftermath of the CDC discussions, when he argued that "legislation will have to be put in place that ensures that all South Africans have access to cultural expression and activity".

"This principle," Serote said, "must permeate the implementation of the RDP: when housing is planned, cultural recreation facilities must be included in those plans; when health schemes are devised, art must be included as legitimate forms of counseling and therapy; when the departments of defence and safety and security develop their programmes, they must embrace arts and culture as building exercises. The area of arts and culture is very important, especially during the transition. It is through arts and culture that we can build a united culture of democracy." Of course, there may be claims that such attempts were made, as was the case with the Department of Arts and Culture's partnership with the Flemish government through a pilot "cultural policy project". But that the noble attempt changes hands and directions so often, and also moves at tortoise pace, is a reflection of inherent problems in the approach adopted in this regard.

The minister must therefore be wary of those who applaud the loudest for his appointment for it may be some of the very persons who, if it were possible or convenient to institute a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or Commission of Inquiry into cultural matters in South Africa, especially around the demise of many cultural organisations immediately after liberation, may well have been found wanting in the so-called "struggle accounting" practices prevalent during those days. Up to now, many a cultural workers, especially young writers, remain disillusioned as a result of having been lured into organisations where their names were only good for raising funds, nationally and internationally, but did not benefit them directly.

If whispers doing rounds in arts corridors to the effect that the minister is considering convening a cultural policy review conference sometimes this year are anything to go by, then all one can do is to shout, bravo!

Lebogang Lance Nawa is a member of the ANC from Gauteng.

Debating the 'National Question' for unity and transformation

In working to push back the frontiers of poverty, the ANC needs to continue to debate the National Question. This, James Ngculu writes, is important both to strengthen the political unity of the ANC and the direction of its transformation programme.

A symposium was held in Cape Town in May 1954 on the national question. Its purpose was: "To encourage and develop a unity of ideas in the movement especially on the National Question, by encouraging thorough discussion and even polemics, on a national scale." The organisers noted also that "in the absence of discussion, sectarianism thrives and the best interests of the whole movement are sacrificed."

What was said in 1954 is relevant in today's discourse and revolutionary activities. The issue of the national question has always been a central part of the discourse within the liberation movement. This issue has the potential to evoke intense debates and must always be handled sensitively in the movement.

African Nationalism

The emergence of nationalism in Africa and in South Africa in particular came as a consequence of colonialism. After the wars of resistance that began with the first war against colonialism in 1658 led by Autshumayo to the battle of Isandlwana in 1879, South Africa was in a period we call the primary phase of resistance. The secondary phase of resistance, led by Bambatha in 1906, was resisting the impact of colonialism, such as the imposition of taxes on the colonised people.

The emergence of the ANC in 1912 was the climax of attempts by Africans to forge unity and fight all forms of division and suspicion. The emergence of nationalism went through a number of phases, from the period of the Herzog Bills in the 1930s, the Youth League in 1943, the African Claims and the 1949 Programme of Action, culminating in what is called the 'roaring fifties'. The revolutionary nationalism of the ANC was articulated in the Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People in 1955.

The emergence of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1921 was another important and significant development in the history of South Africa. At the time of its formation the mainstays of the CPSA were white revolutionaries and intellectuals. Given their class and national background, the founding fathers of the Party simply dismissed the ANC as a bourgeois and irrelevant organisation.

By 1924, the complexion of the Party had changed. A number of africans had been recruited into the Party. In the 1924 conference of the CPSA the Cape delegates, who were also active in the ICU, together with the Transvaal delegates defeated the motion by CPSA General Secretary Bill Andrews that the Party should apply for affiliation to the white-led Labour Party.

Moses Kotane in 1942 said "in a Party like ours, where whites and blacks come together, the general tendency of non-European members is to take a back seat and leave leadership to Europeans". This changed only after the war when the reverse occurred, with whites inclined to "take a back seat".

On the other hand there emerged in particular after the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 another grouping which subscribed to the narrow and backward interpretation of African nationalism. This particular strain of African nationalism adopted the "Africanist" tendency. This form of Africanist exclusiveness opposed in particular the clauses in the Charter which talked of South African belonging to all and the land being shared among those who worked it. As Francis Meli said: "They failed to modify the aspirations of the Africans to suit the concrete reality of our country by accepting the historical fact that there is room in our movement for those whites who are prepared to fight side by side with africans and who are willing to accept the policy of the ANC under African leadership."

Forging unity in South Africa

The ANC has always been at the centre of the struggle for the unity of the oppressed in South Africa. In doing so, it realised that the struggle for freedom and the amelioration of the conditions of the oppressed could only be realised when the oppressed are united against the common enemy - white oppression.

Unity of the oppressed people was forged out of the necessities of struggle against white domination. This unity had never been sectarian or racialist.

It embraced all those poised against white domination and in that fold were also democratic-minded whites, who even though they were a tiny minority, but were far-sighted enough to embrace the revolutionary African nationalism of the ANC.

The ideology of African nationalism is political in form and content rather than idealistic. It is based on action not ideological theorising.

Nationalism need not and should not be synonymous with racism. When approached from a class perspective, it cuts across racial barriers. That is the revolutionary African nationalism of the ANC. The liberation movement recognised that apartheid was the modus operandi of the exploitative system of capitalism. It was in other words the technique of super exploitation and oppression.

The 1962 programme of the SACP, 'Road to South African Freedom', said: "the immediate and imperative interest of all sections of the South African people demand the carrying out of a national democratic revolution...and establish an independent state of national democracy... the main content of this revolution is the national liberation of the African people." The 1969 'Strategy and Tactics' of the ANC, in discussing the very same question, stated that "the main content of the present stage of the South African revolution is the national liberation of the largest and most oppressed group - the African people."

The emphasis in the ideological position of the ANC on the main content of the revolution being the liberation of blacks in general and africans in particular is found within the nature of the pyramid of oppression in South Africa. It is the africans who were the mainstay of the liberation struggle and also the ones who bore the main brunt of oppression and exploitation.

Hence also the characterisation of the gender question being triple oppression of the african women - in terms of race, class and gender.

The inclusion of the coloured and indian groups as part of the oppressed group as blacks again is found in the operation of apartheid. They too bore the brunt of oppression and dispossession.

But the movement was always alert to the fact that the white group was not and is not monolithic. There were and are democratic and far-sighted whites who were part and parcel of the struggle against white domination and continue to be. When caught by the apartheid system, they too met the same fate as other fighters against apartheid.

Non-racialism in action

In this context, the concept of so-called 'coloured-african solidarity' borrows on short-termism and the immediate, and is not able to be a sustainable strategy. Firstly, it denies a place for democratic whites, who even today, however small the numbers, vote for the ANC in the midst of the most rabid and racialistic campaigns. Secondly, it seems to suggest the existence of two separate communities that must show solidarity to each other, as if the government in place poses a threat to them. If you take away the Democratic Alliance (DA) coalition in the Western Cape, and the ANC governs the Western Cape, you may find that the concept becomes problematic and it could not be sustained. The issue of 'indian-african solidarity' in KwaZulu Natal can be argued along the same lines. Hence one argues that it is a short-term approach that may blunt the strategic objective of the movement.

The ANC is genuinely a non-racial organisation, not multi-racial. The critical question that must never be overlooked in this current conjuncture is that we are in the national democratic phase of our struggle, which embraces the national, class and gender dimensions, and africans are still the group most severely affected by the ravages of apartheid in every aspect of human activity. They too remain loyal to the view that the only organisation to pull them out of this situation is the ANC. Hence their repeated display of confidence in the ANC by overwhelmingly voting for the ANC in each successive election. We have come to call this the traditional base of the ANC. At the same time, sections of the coloured, indian and white communities also display this loyalty by voting for the ANC despite virulent, racialistic and fearful campaigns of the opposition.

That is why it serves no purpose, as it has served no purpose in the past, to pander to populist and reactionary tendencies of chauvinism and other backward tendencies. Accordingly, the notions of 'africanist' and 'colouredism' is alien to the theoretical and ideological principles that underpin the policies and principles of the ANC. What generally happens is that when people run short of cogent arguments they tend to resort to labelling.

The debates on the national question have been with the movement for a long time. Strictly speaking, the national question can never be fully resolved in the foreseeable future, because the national question is both a psychological and, more importantly, a material question.

On the psychological question, Rick Turner wrote, in 'The Eye of the Needle': "It is 'common sense' (to white South Africans) that black people are inferior to white people. And this common sense is not just some delusion. It is based on white South Africans' experience of the objective 'inferiority' of most black people in, for example, education, income, dress and language proficiency, (that is proficiency in the only language that whites recognise). And moreover, nearly everyone they know treat blacks as inferior."

The material side is best illustrated by the President Thabo Mbeki: "One of these nations is white, relatively prosperous, regardless of gender or geographic dispersal. It has ready access to a developed economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastructure. This enables us to argue that... all members of this nation have possibility to exercise their right to equal opportunity..."

Census 2001 found that the number of unemployed whites was 124,962 compared to 6,171,310 unemployed blacks. Furthermore, the Annual Employment Equity Report 2002 states that of all senior and professionally qualified management recruits, 27% were black, 6% coloured and 7% indian. Sixty percent of management recruits were white. Whites occupy 75% of top management positions. The Human Development Report Review 2003 of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) reveals that of all school leavers who enter the labour market for the first time between 1995 and 1999, 75% of whites found employment compared to 70% of coloureds, 50% of indians and only 29% of blacks.

These figures should not shock anyone within the liberation movement. They are rather a clarion call for more vigour in the pursuit of the objectives of the national democratic revolution.

If we could factor the dominance of minority languages - English and Afrikaans - in the academic and job market, we then realise that the task ahead is huge. We know that imbalances in power relations sustain linguistic imbalances and this has an adverse effect on the development, knowledge and respect of African languages. The danger here is that our nation may be creating a new form of 'assimilados'. This colonial hang-up will metamorphose into 'legitimate' discourse because there are no black intellectuals to confront it and offer alternatives. This too severely impact on the national question itself.

The question we started with above becomes critical here. Unity is not just something abstract. It is something born of the ideological unity of members of the ANC and a precise understanding of the tasks of the movement at every turn. But understanding the tasks of the movement presupposes ideological and political clarity of the cadres of the ANC. Ideological unity can only be achieved if the cadres and members of the ANC are fully informed of the politics and policies of the ANC.

There will always be differences of opinions in the ANC, and that is healthy. But it cannot be that people go overboard and believe that the only way of moving forward is factionalism, rather than organisational unity. The dearth of political consciousness is one enemy the movement must confront.

That is why it has always been important for the organisation in mobilising voter support in South Africa, particular among minorities, for its approach to be founded on the fundamental pillars of the liberation movement, non-racialism and non-sexism. It serves no purpose in appealing to them on the basis of backwardness, pandering to the backward instinct of self interest. Hence in the Strategy and Tactics the ANC would maintain that it is still a national liberation movement even though it will also reflect the elements of a classical political party. This is so because it fights for power through the ballot box but must remain the primary organisation of nation building in South Africa.

The critical call from the ANC is to push back the frontiers of poverty.

Poverty is a consequence of apartheid, because in its reflection, poverty reflects the pyramidal operation of apartheid. The stark reflections of that poverty are there to be seen in Khayelitsha and they are in Manenberg or Phoenix. Yet in mobilising for pushing back those frontiers, it is necessary to mobilise all South Africans, black and white. Blacks will contribute in their own way, just as whites will also have a role in the struggle. At the head of that struggle, as the people who stand most to gain from our freedom, will still be the african people.

James Ngculu is a member of the ANC in the Western Cape and an ANC Member of Parliament.

Understanding basic economics / 3

Labour Markets / Part One

In this part of our course on understanding basic economics we consider some economic analyses of labour markets. In the next part, we will look at the South African labour market and unemployment today. In this edition we consider some of the theories that underlie analysis of the labour market.

One of the defining features of capitalism is that there is a market for labour. This has not always been the case. In pre-capitalist societies, such as those that existed prior to the colonisation of South Africa, people did not sell their labour power in exchange for cash on the open market.

Production was conducted within the household and exchange usually involved finished products (ie. barter). Much of the history of colonisation and apartheid has been the story of how the majority of South Africans were forcibly coerced as unequal participants in a racially segmented market for labour power.

The neo-classical model of supply and demand

Orthodox economics (which is represented here by the 'neo-classical' model) regards labour as a factor of production, one of the inputs that produce wealth. The other inputs include capital, land and raw materials.

In this model, the market for labour works along much the same principles as the market for any other commodity. In a 'perfectly competitive' market, the forces of supply and demand counteract each other until equilibrium is reached. At this point, both the price of labour (the wage) and quantity of labour (the number of people employed and the hours they work) will be decided as the outcome of the interaction between individual firms and workers, each of whom is acting rationally to achieve the greatest economic benefit for themselves.

Figure 1

Figure one presents these tools of analysis in a graphical form. The vertical axis represents the wage rate and the horizontal axis represents the amount of labour that is employed. The two diagonal lines represent supply and demand.

The demand line slopes downwards (\) showing that, all other things being equal, when wages are lower firms will buy more 'labour'. Conversely, when wages are higher then less labour will be bought.

The line representing supply is also diagonal, but going in the other direction (/). The higher the wage the more people will come out to sell their labour. If the wage decreases people will either stay at home, or find other ways of living instead of selling their labour.

The point 'E' shows the equilibrium. Here the forces of demand and supply meet and the two sides of the market, the sellers and the buyers, each acting independently in response to the changing price of labour come to a determination of how much labour should be bought and sold at the given price. In this example a wage of R500 a month results in the employment of one million people a month.

Figure 2

Figure two shows how equilibrium is reached in this model. Lets say the government has fixed the wage rate at R1000 a month. How will the 'perfectly competitive' market of buyers and sellers of labour respond? The buyers of labour (firms) will follow the demand line. Seeing that the wage rate is higher, they will demand less workers. In the figure, this is illustrated by D1, which is the number of people the employers will choose to employ every month if the wage rate is R1,000. But the sellers of labour will respond according to the supply line, increasing their supply to take advantage of the high price. The difference between what the sellers of labour (workers) want to sell (S1) and what the buyers of labour (firms) want to buy (D1) is called excess supply. What this means in reality is that there will be more people looking for work and less jobs available. While government maintains the wage at this rate, this disequilibrium will result in unemployment. If government relaxes the policy and allows the market to determine the outcome the level of unemployment (excess supply) will result in workers being prepared to accept lower wages. This will continue until the excess supply is eliminated as the wage returns to point R500 a month.

At this point the market is said to 'clear'. In other words the supply of labour is equal to the demand for labour.

Factors influencing the supply and demand of labour In the discussion above, we could have as easily been talking about chickens or tomatoes, instead of workers. Does this mean we can analyse the behaviour of people in the same way we look at animals or vegetables? Is labour simply a commodity, to be bought and sold to the highest bidder? Are the assumptions that we have made about supply and demand in a perfectly competitive market valid for the reality we face in South African labour markets? If they are valid, then does it mean that we should simply allow equilibrium to emerge, even if this means high levels of unemployment? All of these are perfectly valid questions, and very good arguments could be made either way. But before attempting an answer, we should first look in more detail at the model we have been talking about.

Even in the crudest neo-classical model, the labour market is regarded as fundamentally different from the market for chickens or tomatoes in several important respects. The first is that the demand for labour is derived demand. Underlying the demand for a tomato is the question "what is the price of tomatoes and how many can a person afford to buy at that price".

But labour is not consumed directly; it is employed in order to produce.

Labour is a commodity that is bought in order to produce other commodities that will themselves be sold on the market. Take an example of a factory producing cars. Certainly, the price of labour (the wage rate) will be an important consideration for the employer in terms of how many workers to employ. But ultimately, the number of cars that the employer can sell (and therefore the demand and supply of cars) will also directly influence the number of jobs created. Therefore, demand for other commodities in the economy as a whole will have a determining influence on the amount of labour that is employed.

Figure 3

Figure three shows what would happen in the market for factory workers if the demand for their products, for example cars, increased. The entire line representing demand would shift to the right, from Demand [1] to Demand [2] in the figure. This shows that, even at the same wage rate (eg. R500), employers would now demand far more workers (shown in figure three as 2 million people employed). But if wages remained the same, we would have another disequilibrium. This time the demand for workers from firms at the wage R500 is far greater than the amount of work that is offered. In the car making factory of our example, there would be a shortage of workers. As a result the firm would have to increase wages if it wanted to attract workers. But since the new demand line (Demand [2]) is also downward sloping, the increased wages would in turn cause the firms to hire fewer than the 2 million people. The disequilibrium would be result when the market clears once more: the market clearing equilibrium would have shifted shift from E[1] to E[2].

The supply of labour is based on special circumstances that do not correspond with those of ordinary commodities. Underlying the supply of chickens is the question "how many chickens are produced and how are they produced". The same question underlies the supply of labour "how many workers are produced and how are they produced". But the production of workers is not an activity carried out by private firms hoping to make a profit out of producing a worker and selling him to the highest bidder.

Rather, workers are produced by families, educated by schools and universities, and shaped by the society in which they live. Factors such as the size of the population, its growth rate, immigration, the quality of education and a host of other social processes determine the supply of labour in the market. The supply of labour, in other words, is socially determined.

Segmented and Dual labour markets

One of the assumptions underlying the neo-classical model we presented above is that markets for labour are perfectly competitive. This however is not the normal case with labour markets. In fact, it is very rare to find individual buyers and sellers of labour behaving in the manner associated with 'perfect competition'. While this is true of all markets, the social nature of labour makes uncompetitive markets pervasive.

Since labour markets are embedded within society, social relations and institutions have decisive impact on both the supply and demand for labour.

In particular, discrimination on grounds of race, religion and gender remain common practices in labour markets even in the most advanced capitalist countries. Such practices defy the logic of perfect competition.

In order to explain these factors, economists have developed the idea of segmented labour markets. Rather than participating in a single market for labour, workers are divided between distinct 'segments' in the market, each of which has its own way of functioning. Because of socially created barriers between the segments of the labour market it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for workers to move from one segment to another.

One type of segmented labour market is the dual labour market. Arthur Lewis, a development economist, first proposed the idea of a dual labour market functioning within one macro-economic framework in 1954. Lewis's article was entitled 'Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour' and was an attempt to explain why the neo-classical model, which we have described above, does not fully explain the situation in the developing countries.

Lewis says that "an unlimited supply of labour may be said to exist in those countries where population is so large relatively to capital and natural resources, that there are large sectors of the economy where the marginal productivity of labour is negligible, zero, or even negative". In other words, even if more labourers were added to the workforce the output produced would not increase, but may even drop as a result of 'too many cooks spoiling the broth'.

The situation that Lewis described appears somewhat familiar: "Another large sector [in addition to agriculture] to which it applies is the whole range of casual jobs - the workers on the docks, the young men who rush forward asking to carry your bag as you appear, the jobbing gardener, and the like.

These occupations usually have a multiple of the number they need, each of them earning very small sums from occasional employment; frequently their number could be halved without reducing output in this sector. Petty retail trading is also exactly of this type; it is enormously expanded in overpopulated economies; each trader makes only a few sales' markets are crowded with stalls, and if the number of stalls were greatly reduced the consumers would be no worse off."

In such conditions two economies are said to exist side by side, as a result of the fact that whereas labour is abundant, cooperating factors of production such as capital are very scarce. Capital is invested in the commercial sector where the labour market clears in terms of neo-classical model that we presented above. But beside this modern globally integrated sector of the economy there is a second sector, where labour markets do not clear. In the second sector, workers can generate enough subsistence from working the land that they are unwilling to sell their labour at the prevailing market rate. Also, instead of the wage being determined by a free market, the price of labour is held artificially high by the existence of traditional practices and social norms that regulate the wage. Since the supply of labour does not respond well to market forces a condition of excess supply is maintained.

Capitalism and cheap labour power in South Africa

The type of dualism that Lewis identified in the labour market is not the outcome of 'natural' economic logic. Rather, it often the result of deliberate discrimination in the labour market over many years. Apartheid South Africa is a case in point. Here, dualistic labour markets were the deliberate policy of successive governments that used the criteria of race to define some people as insiders (whites) and others as outsiders (blacks).

The roots of this division can be traced to the needs of the mining industry. Since South Africa's gold deposits were very deep, huge quantities of labour were required to reach them. In order to remain profitable in these conditions, the mining industry created a coercive system of contracts and labour migration in order to keep wages as low as possible. The majority of the population, having been conquered and suppressed by colonialism, was herded into overcrowded 'reserves', which later became bantustans. As a result, the modern sector of the economy was able to function profitably because it was able to rest on subsistence production in the reserves.

Harold Wolpe analysed the relationship between the two sectors of the South African economy in an article written in 1974 entitled, 'Capitalism and Cheap Labour Power in South Africa'. To show how the 'modern' sector rested upon the 'traditional' sector, Wolpe quoted the Chamber of mines input to the Witwatersrand Native Mine Wage Commission in 1944: "It is clearly to the advantage of the mines that native labourers should be encouraged to return to their homes after the completion of the ordinary period of service. The maintenance of the system under which the mines are able to obtain unskilled labour at a rate less than ordinarily paid in industry depends upon this, for otherwise the subsidiary means of subsistence would disappear and the labourer would tend to become a permanent resident upon the Witwatersrand, with increased requirements."

But conditions in the reserves became worse and worse until the point where they were unable to provide the basic level of subsistence that could subsidise wages on the mines. Wolpe argued that in these conditions apartheid emerged after 1948 as an attempt to use coercion in order to maintain the wages of unskilled workers at a low level. By refusing to allow africans to join trade unions and denying them political rights, apartheid undermined their capacity to demand higher wages. Elaborate systems of forced labour, such as the pass laws, also responded to the economic pressure for higher wages controlling the supply of African labour using coercive means.

Conclusion

Neo-classical economics provides a set of tools of analysis for the functioning of markets. In this scheme, labour is treated much like any other commodity. The conclusion reached by this simple analysis is that, where there is unemployment it is largely because wages do not reflect the prevailing conditions of supply and demand. Where unions are strong, or governments act to defend workers through minimum wage legislation, disequilibrium will be reflected in a situation of excess supply, translating into mass unemployment.

However, it has long been remarked that such a framework fails to explain the observable facts about the functioning of labour markets, especially in developing countries. Discrimination and other social institutions intervene in the labour market, creating a variety of maladies, including segmentation and dualism.

In South Africa's history, such tendencies were taken to the extreme: government policy over more than a century was designed explicitly for the purpose of creating and maintaining a dual labour market. As the economic basis for this dualism eroded, the racist state became more and more coercive in its attempts to control the supply of labour and thus maintain low wages for black workers.

Apartheid, at an economic level, was a system for the control of the labour market. With the defeat of the racist state, this regime has been replaced by an active labour market policy which seeks to advance the rights of workers. This poses a number of difficult questions:

What have been the consequences for labour markets in South Africa?
How have firms responded to the change in the labour market regime?
How has dualism and segmentation in the labour market changed in the new situation?

These and other questions will be the subject of the next in our series, which will discuss the evolution of the labour market in the democratic South Africa, including the emergence of mass unemployment.