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From racial to class apartheid: South Africa's frustrating decade of freedom
Monthly Review, March, 2004 by Patrick Bond
Was Manuel pushed into such substantial "reforms," or did he jump? As veteran Africa watcher John Saul has suggested, the tendency is to distract attention with the cry, "Globalization made me do it!" In a somewhat self-critical May 2003 speech, Manuel admitted that "economic integration must be managed because it carries the possibility to severely restrict the degree of policy choice that a country has. It is worth reminding ourselves that the degree to which a country's choice are limited, and that country's need for access to capital, are directly proportional. The key variables are first, the financing of the fiscal deficit and second, the dependence on external capital for financing economic expansion."
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This assertion of policy impotence in the face of global finance was sound at a superficial level, but Manuel made no attempts to remedy the power imbalance. The "informal" limitations were in part a function of currency fluctuations. As Manuel continued, "The key issue is the extent of capital mobility and a country's demand for a portion of the free float." And yet the crucial lever of counterpower is the application of stronger exchange controls. Consistent with his general zigzag approach to international financial management, Manuel loosened controls yet further in early 2003.
'We will take Sandton!'
Rhetoric in South Africa can be confusing. When Mbeki visited Malaysia on the eve of the Cancun WTO summit in September 2003, he advocated that third world governments join forces with anticapitalist social movements: "They may act in ways you and I may not like--breaking windows in the street and this and that--but the message they communicate relates to us." In reality, many possibilities for unity and cooperation were not merely ignored, but were actively sabotaged throughout the period, as Pretoria sought to impose political order on a society growing increasingly restless.
The repressive side of ANC rule was unveiled to the world during the August 2002 protests against the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development--the preemptive arrest of hundreds of activists from three different movements, the banning of peaceful demonstrations, and the use of stun grenades at a candlelight march of 800 people who had emerged from a conference at Johannesburg's main university. Independent left groups then insisted they would march more than 20,000 people from impoverished Alexandra township to the site of the summit in bourgeois Sandton. A combination of militancy--represented by the widespread call, "We will take Sandton!"--and international media attention forced Pretoria to back down. But according to Yasmin Sooka of the Human Rights Foundation (formerly a Truth and Reconciliation Commission member), "Many senior police officers from the apartheid force were recalled and put in charge of security operations ... It was almost unbelievable to watch the heavily armed police and soldiers lining every inch of the route with guns pointed at the marchers." (A march by the ANC Alliance in support of the Summit covered the same route two hours later, but with fewer than a tenth as many marchers.)
