Issued by WASP Executive Committee
In his final State of the Nation Address before election year, Ramaphosa is seeing no relief from the cascading crises brought on by South African capitalism. When he stands at the front of parliament to review policy decisions for the year ahead, he will do his best to paint the country as emerging out of the worst of times. However, the reality is too bleak to fool us as these crises hit harder and harder.
While we are presented with a reality game show in the “search” for a new Eskom CEO, the country still struggles to keep the lights on as the crumbling power grid bounces between stage 4 and 6 loadshedding. The president’s “urging” of Eskom last month not to implement its approved 18.65% tariff hike is meaningless as the power utility tiredly flails its arms to stay afloat after years of austerity, neglect and looting. Perhaps we will see a return of the “second Eskom” strategy that ANC cadres will fight over for the privilege of hiding it under their own corrupt departments. We may also hear of further unbundling efforts as Independent Power Producers or polluting “powerships” continue to be looked to as the private-sector saviours that introduce an army of profit-seeking middlemen into an already decayed system. The reality remains that we will continue paying more for less, and if analysts are to be believed with pending stage 8 and 10, it will soon be a lot less.
The cost-of-living catastrophe continues to also bombard us as inflation hovers at record high levels. StatsSA reported a “softening” of inflation to 7,2% at the end of last year, though this caps off an average of 6,9% for 2022, a rate not seen in 13 years. The SARB uses its monetary toolkit with interest rate hikes that it trumpets as preventing the issue from getting worse, but unlike their counterparts abroad, their toolkit is severely limited and a lot more deadly. With an already high unemployment, introducing further hikes only slows any potential growth, worsening the situation. Though we may get to hear from the president how the narrowly defined unemployment has actually fallen in the last two quarters to 32.9%, we are likely to see another spike. On top of this, with South African consumers last year spending 63% of their take-home pay to service previous debt, a rising interest rate will only hurt more. Not only does loadshedding create even more dangerous conditions in dark public spaces, but skyrocketing unemployment in a cost of living crisis also pushes people further into the reaches of criminal syndicates to secure a living and ultimately adds to the currently escalating crime rates.
The increased misery the working class faces is also carried disproportionately by women – particularly working class black women. Cases of attempted murders and murders of women, as well as rape, increased by more than 10% between 2021 and 2022. More than 62% of cases of gender-based violence (GBV) are occuring in the private households of the perpetrator or victim. Women and LGBTQ people simply cannot “escape” this absolutely shocking reality, as they are the same people who are first to lose jobs in retrenchments and are systematically under-paid compared to male counterparts. Meanwhile many have been pushed back into the household to compensate for the state’s failure to provide sufficient care for the sick, elderly and children. In spite of lip service over the years from Ramaphosa and his cabinet, the issues that underlie the GBV epidemic we face cannot be solved with “women empowerment”, vague law changes, and multiple gender summits. We urgently need free and safe shelters for victims of abuse, free quality housing for those in need, specialised courts to deal with issues of GBV and domestic violence, and increased spending in the social and health services who are first to respond to victims. We need a serious approach to education from ECD to tertiary on the topic, which requires specialised training of teachers. Police also need retraining on victim-sensitive approaches, and communities should have independent local control to remove those in the police force who further abuse victims and shield perpetrators. On top of this, every person should be entitled to a guaranteed job on a living wage of R15 000 or more to ensure independent living is possible for everyone. Instead of making these changes, year on year the ANC government chooses to sacrifice women, children and the LGBTQ community to the interests of the bosses of the private healthcare system, the pharmaceutical companies, the banks, and the mines.
The crises facing the youth, not least the staggering rate of over 75% of 18-25 year olds not in employment, education or training, also remains unaddressed by Ramaphosa. After promising to create a million jobs and houses on several occasions, there has been no delivery. He also promised that “no child will be left behind” and that his administration would make an intensive effort to boost literacy, provide support to teachers, and work towards free education in order to “prepare our young people for the future”. However, the public education system continues to crumble under the weight of budget cuts. As a result, the shortages of textbooks, labs and other learning facilities at schools across South Africa are set to continue, placing an unbearable strain on educators. The beginning of 2023 saw provincial education departments scramble to secure mobile classrooms to create space for the thousands of unplaced learners entering Gr1 and Gr8 – something that could have been entirely predicted and planned for, without the need to stress out caregivers and learners. These learners will still face class sizes of 50+ learners to a single teacher in schools serving the majority of the working class. Although there was an 80% matric pass rate in 2022, over 50% of learners drop out of the public education system before reaching matric exams – an absolute indictment.
Furthermore, over four million applications were made to universities, with only 162 900 available places – a direct result of the government’s failure to invest in post-secondary education and training, while at the same time pushing the reality that the only chance to escape poverty is a university degree. Those few who do qualify for university will further face increased financial exclusion as NSFAS increases its threshold to qualify for funding, as well as chronic housing insecurity as students are more dependent on parasitic private residences, such as South Point, seeking profits through university contracts. The lack of space at academic institutions, the accommodation crisis around tertiary institutions, and the failure of both government and the institutions to address students’ demands for safer campuses, and quality education with updated curricula now lead to annual student protests.
Chronic budget cuts to basic services have also ravaged communities. Instead of creating places of leisure for the youth to enjoy safely and freely – such as sports and social centres, cinemas, theatres, parks, music and art centres – this government has overseen the youth forced out onto the streets, succumbing to drug and alcohol addiction as a means of coping with extreme mental health issues, and tragic events like the Enyobeni tavern disaster where 21 young people died. So far, the ANC government has offered the future generations of this country nothing but the slave wages of the EPWP programme that has failed to lift the 100s of 1000s “beneficiaries” of the programme out of poverty.
Whatever the coming solutions planned for the year, the certainty is that life will only get worse for the working class as the shrinking group known as the capitalist class plunders more and more from society. SONA takes place so the president can assure us that problems are being looked at. His words are not necessarily meant to be convincing when he assures us those problems will be fixed, but to convince the capitalists that he is still on their side. This is the fundamental contradiction that any political party is faced with when it refuses to cut ties with the ruling class. This could not be a worse scenario, because the class itself today is in turbulent times as it struggles to keep the system stable worldwide. The go-to strategies of the past to privatise services, cut spending, and open up markets have not produced the fruits they had hoped.
Global decoupling aggravated by the US-China rivalry, Covid pandemic and Ukraine war means countries are turning inward. In the waning days of the neoliberal era, we see today how the ANC’s post-apartheid policy has evolved into a devastating nightmare over three decades and serves to only make things worse. What was supposed to be the golden ticket for the South African ruling class of unfettered economic growth along with the political favour of its class allies abroad has been revealed as a farce. They are not alone as worldwide, decades of market crashes, mounting debt, and decreased real wages have shown that something else must be done if the capitalist class is to keep its precious system alive.
The difficulty that the ruling class faces is keeping the scam of capitalism going through a new strategy that still demands the working class produce the wealth while the capitalist collects the profits. Solutions that benefit the working class are kept off the table because that is against their interests. However, these are the very solutions that are the most simple and effective. Unemployment, low-wages, climate change, failing education and a electricity shortage, for example, can be solved through a mass public works programme that trains the unemployed in quality, well-paid jobs that directly address the country’s problems. We can have a generation of workers trained to build renewable energy infrastructure that uses South Africa’s sunny skies and windy coasts to provide cheap, reliable electricity to the people. A reliable electric grid can sustain the public building of a reliable public transport network, close to homes, jobs and leisure. Additionally, new teachers can be trained to address the crisis of class sizes and construction workers can be trained to build quality, affordable housing. This can be funded many times over by nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy under democratic worker control. Only by having this proper democratic control over the mines, commercial farms, and finance sector can the working class use the wealth to benefit society instead of feeding the greed of the capitalist.
These are solutions you will never hear from the SONA, because the ANC is too beholden to its class interests. It is therefore a political choice that the country remains in ever increasing poverty and misery. The ANC simply will not deliver, and its current opposition in parliament will only continue the problems as they grapple to put their own friends in charge of society’s wealth. This is why we need a political alternative that will put such solutions forward, which must be done through struggle. We need a socialist alternative in the form of a mass workers party in which we unite the workers, communities and the youth in fighting for a better future.
