Tomorrow, the 27th of April, marks the 30th year since South Africa went to its first democratic elections. These first democratic elections marked an end to the policy of separate development. Separate development meant that there was no equality in the justice system, prohibited mixed marriages, perpetuated poor and underfunded education system for the non-white community, poor health care services, and discrimination of access to public amenities such as parks and toilets.
Liberal democracy has since abolished those discriminatory laws and outlawed institutionalised separate development. However, outlawing discrimination based on race and ethnicity has not fundamentally changed the structural makeup of society, especially the class relations as shaped by colonialism and apartheid.
Gains and contradictions for workers
In Section 22 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, “every citizen has the right to choose their trade, occupation, or profession freely.” This clause represented a leap forward from the repressive trade regime of apartheid concerning the non-white communities.
During colonialism, capitalism dispossessed people from their lands and forced them to trade their labour power. Under liberal market capitalism, land is regarded as property, the owner of which should freely trade it or choose not to. Despite the pretence that capitalism created free markets in which buyers and sellers met and negotiated freely, the land was taken from our forefathers and mothers by force. In fact, this was the case even in Britain with the enclosure system, where the peasants were dispossessed by force.
Moreover, different types of taxation were introduced to compel the African agro-pastoralists to become wage workers. Hut tax, poll tax, and livestock tax were introduced and only levied in the currency of the colonialists’ choice (Pounds and Shillings). The only way to pay this tax was to earn the currency, and the only way to earn this currency was by doing paid work for the colonialists. Forcing African farmers into the labour market through taxation was certainly not an act of liberal freedom.
The Colour Bar Act and Masters and Servants Act also created a labour regime that was based on non-market discrimination i.e., discrimination based on race and ethnicity, not the market variables of supply and demand. The suppression of black trade unions also meant that workers did not have the political right to bargain and influence the market.
So, the advent of liberal democracy in 1994 brought important changes and put a break to the suppression of black workers, and Section 22 is politically significant in this regard. Though with challenges, it lays a legal foundation for the protection of workers against non-market discrimination.
However, the market players, even if they were to act within the confines of the market without political interference of racial discrimination, are not entirely free. Contrary to market liberalism which claims workers and capitalists are untrammelled when they meet in the market, they are very much trammelled. The worker enters the market as an entity that has been stripped of its immediate means of subsistence through historical dispossession. In addition to this, high unemployment makes the workers in the labour market weaker and even more vulnerable. Left to its mechanism of demand and supply, the “free market” will starve the workers by giving them lower wages.
Commodification of goods and services
By making capitalism as its mode of production, liberal democracy rests on the foundation that undermines the subsistence and economic well-being of the citizens. The capitalist mode of production and exchange rests on top of the commodification of goods and services. It imbues in each good, commodity properties and harnesses every good for exchange purposes. In this sense, all goods produced by the capitalist enterprise are commodities that can only be consumed by consumers through a transactional exchange.
For ordinary people to access the basic goods and services that come in the form of commodities, they must have an income. Income usually comes in the form of remuneration for work done. Therefore, to live decently, ordinary people must earn a decent income.
However, the capitalist economy has barred many from accessing work and generating a form of remuneration. The booms and bursts that characterise capitalism have led to massive job shedding in times of bursts. Even during booms, the capitalist economy has found ways to keep many out of work because of its structural unemployment i.e., unemployment created by endeavours to maximise profits.
In 2020, the economy’s contraction led to the massive shedding of jobs of over a million. From its low in 1995, unemployment rose two-fold from 16% to 42% (inclusive of those who have given up looking for jobs) in 2021. Today, we have 11,6 million unemployed people in this country.
Those who succeed in finding jobs are usually remunerated for anything less than poverty wages. Even though we campaigned for a living wage of R12 500, which must be revised given the increasing inflation, 75% of the South African workforce earns less than a modest R5 800.
The combination of these factors: unemployment which virtually means no income for most working age groups, and the meagre wages for those who are lucky to find employment, has meant many people in this country cannot realise most of their freedoms and rights. The laws that pass different freedoms to individuals in a liberal democracy are effectively constrained by commodification, unemployment and poverty wages.
Economic freedom and liberation of the working class
Since the dawn of liberal democracy, market liberalists have been campaigning to position the state for the service of capitalists and remove it from servicing the people as a whole. The results have been market-driven policies. In other words, the policies are intended to get the government to help create markets for them ¾from the production of goods to and provision of services.
Cleverly, and not to sound evil and indifferent to the needs of the people, they pushed the government out of the production of goods and provision of services by saying the government had no money. This narrative was pushed and is still pushed to compel the government to divest from state companies and cut financial allocations to public service institutions. In anticipation, the government has failed to deliver quality services and maintain its companies, and this has been used as a premise to call for the private sector to enter such spaces as energy, passenger and freight railway, health, education, mailing, and many others.
The under-investments and divestments due to fiscal austerity policies have deprived more than 80% of the population from realising certain freedoms and rights. It has compromised the right to education and healthcare. Poverty that has resulted from the logic of capital accumulation has caused high crime levels. These crime levels are restricting us from fully enjoying the right of movement as other areas are crime zones, and from freely walking in public spaces at night.
To fully enjoy the freedoms and rights enshrined in the Constitution of the country we need a different mode of production based on planning. A new mode of production based on planning will be incompatible with liberal democracy. This means the destruction of the capitalist mode of production is inextricably interwoven with the struggle against liberalism. Thus, SAFTU strives towards establishing a socialist democracy. It is the form of democracy that can guarantee genuine freedom to the people as a whole and free the working class from exploitation.
