Dare Not Linger

by Nelson Mandela

  ‘It is, of course,’ he continued, ‘no longer as easy as it once was to speak in any monolithic way about “Afrikaners”, just as it is not that simple for anyone to claim to speak on behalf of the Afrikaner people.

  ‘Afrikaners are spread throughout our society in different spheres, holding different positions and different viewpoints, speaking in different voices.

  ‘Afrikaners are an inextricable part of our rainbow nation, reflecting amongst themselves the rich diversity, which is its strength.

  ‘Yet we do take notice of the voices raised in Afrikaans concerning the TRC; voices suggesting that it represent a witch-hunt.’

  Pointing out that the objectives of the TRC were clearly set out in the interim constitution and in legislation, Mandela advised parliamentarians – and the country at large – that all must ‘emerge from this process with a clearer picture of that part of our history. We must do justice as far as we can to those who suffered and we must end up on the road to lasting reconciliation, determined never to repeat such injustices one against another.

  ‘There is no place for any sense that a racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious or other group is collectively in the dock. The diversity of Afrikaner people means that Afrikaners will know that when a specific perpetrator of gross human rights violations, who is an Afrikaner, appears before the Commission, it is not the Afrikaner in general who is being called to account. Because, as with other language and cultural communities, it is not in the nature of the Afrikaner as such to be brutal to others.

  ‘All of us, as a nation that has newly found itself, share in the shame at the capacity of human beings of any race or language group to be inhumane to other human beings. We should all share in the commitment to a South Africa in which that will never recur.’48

  Mandela engaged in the drive for reconciliation in the full hope that a future South Africa would roll back the past horrors visited on the majority of the population. As in most legends of courage, the man or woman must first go away and experience great privation to be able to return to serve the people. On sultry evenings in the ANC camps in Angola, the soldiers would chant and dance in what was called the ‘Jazz Hour’, a time of reaffirmation. While the revelry continued in the square, a section of a platoon would give literacy classes to the uneducated, the word having filtered through the walls of Robben Island, across thousands of kilometres, that Mandela and the other political prisoners were studying, arming themselves for a return to their native land.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Social and Economic Transformation

  Any student of history – and Nelson Mandela was certainly that – would accept that the white people who had benefited from the plunder of the past, and who still had a firm grip on socio-economic institutions, would fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo. When it transpired that there wouldn’t be any traumatic upheaval and that the oft-heard call to ‘chase the white man into the sea’ was as empty as the cry of seagulls, they changed tack, seeking to impute all societal ills to the ineptitude of the current administration.

  Whether behind prison walls, at the head of transition negotiations or, finally, as the face of the ANC and democracy at the elections, Mandela had been kept abreast of South Africa’s problems – the right-wing threat and high levels of crime and poverty – but until he took power he did not have the total picture. Once in office, he soon realised that the biggest hurdle was the socio-economic one.

  At the inception of the Government of National Unity, Mandela could not ignore the analysis of the economy by the Reconstruction and Development Programme itself. The section on building the economy states that ‘the South African economy is in a deep-seated structural crisis, and as such requires fundamental restructuring’.1 This was due to the white minority’s decades-long use of its exclusive access to political and economic power for the promotion of its own sectional interests, to the detriment of the black majority. South Africa ‘has now one of the world’s most unequal patterns of distribution in income and wealth’.2 Speaking in Addis Ababa on 15 December 1994, Algerian secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Layashi Yaker made an assessment of the African economy in 1994 and of prospects for 1995. He saw South Africa’s economic growth accelerating if ‘labour and employers … build a new pragmatic relationship, based on a sympathetic understanding of each side’s basic concerns as they set out to correct the labour market distortions entrenched by forty years of apartheid’.3

  Mandela saw the mandate given to his government as the first step towards addressing the economic legacy of apartheid characterised by imbalances currently weighted against the black majority.

  For the new government, the first steps towards addressing the socio-economic deficit were taken when the new cabinet assembled the day after the inauguration. They had no agenda apart from a general mandate to change the country in accordance with precepts from policy workshops, conferences and people’s forums. An item recorded on the day reads: ‘The President stressed the importance of the immediate and enthusiastic implementation of the Reconstruction and Development Programme and called on all members for their support.’4

  This mission had its origin in Ready to Govern, the policy framework adopted at the ANC national conference held towards the end of May 1992. The vexed question of state ownership of economic assets versus privatisation had also been under discussion. When he came out of prison, Mandela had been an ardent advocate of the nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, a view he had been forced to revise, as we have seen in chapter four. In the wake of the global loosening of ties on the mobility of capital, the ANC formulated guidelines that spoke of a mixed economy.

  The 1992 Ready to Govern conference had formally registered the change, recognising the need for flexibility after a debate that went on for hours. ANC policy thereafter avoided the words ‘privatisation’ and ‘nationalisation’. Public ownership was to be flexibly expanded according to ‘the balance of the evidence in restructuring the public sector to carry out national goals’.5

  Definitions notwithstanding, when the government mooted the privatisation of state assets, there was considerable dissent within the ANC. But it was Mandela’s view that this ‘should be settled in negotiations on a case-by-case basis’.6

  The country was in the grip of an economic crisis whose severity became even more apparent after the election. The need to turn it around had informed the ANC’s decision to work towards a Government of National Unity rather than a protracted process of mass mobilisation and negotiations, which, even if ultimately successful, would have come at a huge cost.

  The state was in no condition to implement programmes for improving people’s lives, especially the poor. Fragmented along apartheid lines, the state had been effective only in serving white minority interests and suppressing the majority. It was artificially expanded to accommodate patronage, both in national government and in the subordinate administrations. Its narrow focus rendered it ineffectual in policy development. For instance, ANC representatives involved in negotiations over the establishment of a Transitional Executive Council found to their surprise that the apartheid state had only weak mechanisms for financial oversight and control.7 National coordination and strategic direction had been carried out, mainly with security considerations in mind, by the National Security Management System, which De Klerk had dismantled in 1989, leaving an even bigger vacuum at the centre.

  Given the systematic legacy of neglect and impoverishment, tackling poverty and inequality would need both comprehensive transformation of the state and sustained growth and redistribution.

  Constructing the policy and legislative architecture for change got off to a quick start. The first full cabinet meeting tabled about twenty memoranda. This could be credited to the foresight of the cabinet secretariat, which had indicated from the get-go that ministerial and departmental memoranda were the staple raw materials of cabinet meetings.8 These were the beginnings of prolonged procedures; some memo
randa took up to two years to emerge as White Papers – and then more time to find operational authority in legislation. Therefore, the changes deferred by oppression would not be immediately realised with the advent of democracy. The first years were devoted to preparing the legislative framework to empower the state to effect the much-needed, and long-awaited, transformation.

  Research, sometimes unrealistically, pointed to a widespread acceptance among the poor that meaningful change would take time. The reality was that the spectre of volatile impatience was never far from the national conversation. Ever optimistic, Mandela, who was alive to the impatience, would say that it would take ‘at least five years’ for the changes enshrined in the policy manifesto to take root.9

  It was therefore with a great sense of urgency that the programmes focusing on ‘major areas of desperate need’ had to be implemented within the first hundred days, as announced by Mandela in his address to Parliament in May 1994.10 These were to piggyback on pre-existing activities; their success would make a visible impact, the numbers indicating that progress would become a staple in the president’s communications. Other projects, however, needed more preparation. Putting in place housing and land reform was analogous to building a castle, which would need deep foundations and sturdy walls to withstand the buffeting winds of time. The programmes had to grapple with obstacles deeply entrenched in the South African state and society at large.

  Housing and land are central to any liberation struggle, and Mandela knew this only too well. In his unpublished memoirs, he writes:

  ‘The plundering of indigenous land, exploitation of its mineral wealth and other raw materials, confinement of its people to specific areas, and the restriction of their movement have, with notable exceptions, been the cornerstone of Colonialism throughout the land.

  ‘This was the form British Colonialism took in South Africa, so much so, that after the passing of the Land Act of 1913 by the South African government a white minority of barely 15 per cent of the country’s population owned about 87 per cent of the land, while the black majority – Africans, Coloureds and Indians – occupied less than 13 per cent. They were forced to live in squalor and poverty or to seek employment on white farms, in the mines and urban areas.

  ‘When their Nationalist [sic] Party came to power in 1948, Afrikaners acted with unbelievable cruelty and sought to rob blacks even of these meagre rights to land they still possessed.

  ‘Communities large and small, who had occupied areas from time immemorial, where their ancestors and beloved ones were buried, were mercilessly uprooted and thrown into the open veld, there to fend for themselves. And this was done by a white community led by an educated but infamous clergy and its successors who used their skills and religion to commit various atrocities against the black majority, which God forbade. Yet they hypocritically claimed that their evil schemes were inspired by God.’11

  Here in the manuscript, Mandela has included a note in parentheses to ‘quote Sol Plaatje on The Land Act of 1913’.*12 Plaatje’s words on the issue of dispossession read: ‘Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.’13

  Mandela continues, ‘It was against this background that the African National Congress Reconstruction and Development Programme highlighted the importance of land reform by calling for the abolition of the Land Act, and by guaranteeing residential and productive land to the rural and urban poor, labour tenants, farm workers and previously disadvantaged farmers.’14

  Six months after taking office, Mandela’s preamble to the White Paper on Reconstruction and Development promised that the transformation will permeate every level of government, every department, and every public institution. The government’s RDP activities therefore should not be seen as a new set of projects, but rather as a comprehensive redesign and reconstruction of existing activities. Growth and development are more than interdependent. They are mutually reinforcing. Addressing inequalities will expand markets at home, open markets abroad and create opportunities to promote representative ownership of the economy. The expansion of the South African economy will raise state revenues by expanding the tax base, rather than by permanently raising tax rates.’15

  Success in both endeavours required the government to get into ‘active partnership with civil society, and with business and labour in particular … [to] jointly pursue the broader challenges of extending opportunity to the millions of adult South Africans who can currently find no place in the formal economy …

  ‘Our people have elected us because they want change,’ Mandela said, in conclusion. ‘Change is what they will get. Our people have high expectations which are legitimate. While the Government cannot meet all these needs overnight, we must put firmly into place the concrete goals, time frame and strategies to achieve this change.’16

  In his first address to Parliament in May 1994, Mandela announced that R2.5 billion had been redirected from within the budget to fund the RDP in the coming year and that, to demonstrate its seriousness, government would in the next one hundred days implement a set of Presidential Lead Projects. These focused on free medical care for children under six and pregnant women; a nutritional feeding scheme in every needy primary school; to continue with the programme to electrify 350,000 homes in the current financial year; and a public works programme to rebuild townships and restore services in rural and urban areas. In addition, there would be a one-off 5 per cent reconstruction levy on individuals and companies with taxable incomes of more than R50,000.17

  Given the inherited economic crisis of the early years, the government was often forced to strike a complex balance between engaging in poverty eradication or stimulating growth. The point of departure for implementing the democratic mandate was that, short of dependence on international loans, resulting in loss of sovereignty, the economy had to be on a sustainable path that promoted growth and attracted domestic and foreign investment. The government also had to reorient the state by reallocating existing resources.18 This included reducing the volatility of the exchange rate. In a television interview after his presidency, Mandela said: ‘The president of the IMF came here and said, “The reason why your currency is unstable is because your foreign reserves are very low. I am prepared to help you, to give you funds.” And I say, “No, the difficulty with you is that you impose conditions which violate the sovereignty of a country.” He says, “No, I will not do so.” I was happy. I then called the deputy president, Thabo Mbeki, and said, “Man, this is what the IMF says.” He said, “Nothing doing.” I won’t go into the reasons, which they advance, but I regarded them as better than me in questions of this nature and I accepted their suggestion that we don’t want to be indebted to anybody. We want to rely on our own resources and taxation and so on.’19

  In October 1994, cabinet adopted restructuring as ‘a contribution to the transformation of the public sector to promote implementation of the RDP, growth and prosperity’.20 Leading by example, the president and his two deputies all took a 20 per cent cut in their salaries while ministers took a 10 per cent cut; there was to be a freeze on salaries of senior officials and an increase in the minimum wage of public servants of R15,000.21 This might have been a drop in the ocean insofar as the budget was concerned but it was an effective message on combining cost-cutting and narrowing the wage gap. Mandela saw the salary cuts as an example to be emulated as South Africans dealt with the apartheid legacy of social ills.

  While promoting the RDP, the government had to reduce the fiscal deficit, by not spending more than what was in the coffers, to avoid a debt trap over time. Government spending was therefore shifted towards more capital expenditure with the RDP financed mainly via restructuring of budgets towards RDP priorities. The civil service would be reorganised and trained to provide effective and efficient services to all citizens (as we saw in chapter nine). Development of human resources, labour market reform and collective bargaining rights for all were
‘essential if we are to succeed in attaining the objectives contained in the RDP’.22

  The austere economic environment, a legacy of past misspending, inevitably had a negative impact on the financing of RDP objectives. Each day led to more worrying discoveries about the depth of the crisis. During the negotiations, Derek Keys, the National Party government’s finance minister, had briefed Trevor Manuel, then head of the ANC’s Department of Economic Policy. Manuel conveyed to Mandela what he had learnt. Mandela concluded that extended negotiations would end with a democratic government inheriting an economy that was beyond recovery.23

  Mandela never forgot this. Years later, while campaigning in the 1999 elections, he responded to a question about unemployment with an explanation of the state of the economy he and his government had inherited:

  ‘I would like to place the question of unemployment in context because it would be a mistake to think that the question of joblessness has just dropped from the skies, that there is no history. We all know that in the decade leading up to April 1994, R5.1 billion left the country as a result of political uncertainty.

  ‘Secondly, the economic growth of the country was negative. And there was high inflation, which was in two digits; also the budget deficit was in two digits.

  ‘But what was even more shattering was the discovery when we took over, that this country had a public debt of no less than R254 billion, which we are now paying at the rate of R50 billion a year. That is R50 billion which we do not have in order to create jobs and to reduce the rate of unemployment. That is the background to this issue.

  ‘Now, it is not very easy to deal with because one of the major decisions we took when we took over as the government was to reduce the rate of inflation, to reduce the budget deficit, and we have succeeded enormously in that regard.