‘You are not speaking for us,’ ANC’s alliance partners tell Ramaphosa

The left within the ANC has emphatically told President Cyril Ramaphosa “you are not speaking for us” in what they call his “fatally flawed assertion” that big business should lead job creation because it’s not the duty of the state to do so.

Both the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) demanded radical policy shift to realise economic growth and creation of jobs. Cosatu national spokesperson
Sizwe Pamla acknowledged that the State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday contained some workable proposals.

But the government refused to acknowledge that the prolonged economic crisis caused by big capital prescriptions, that had been tried, had dismally failed to provide solutions to the country’s socioeconomic problems. Pamla said Ramaphosa’s speech did not represent a radical shift that the moment demanded.

“The economy remains subdued, bogged down by electricity supply constraints and low private sector investment amid the persistent global Covid crisis.

“This moment does not demand gradual tinkering with policy in certain areas, but calls for an overhaul of the overall architecture of the government’s policy,” Pamla said.

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These sentiments were echoed by political analyst Dr John Molepo, senior lecturer in public administration at the University of Mpumalanga. He said Ramaphosa’s Sona was “more on the neoliberal stance”, rather than speaking to the poor.

“It was a fair speech with liberal connotations and he addressed issues of economic recovery, but failed to deal with the chaos of immigration,” Molepo said.

SACP central committee member and party spokesperson Dr Alex Mashilo made it clear Ramaphosa’s statement did not include them as the left.

“The president should re-examine the idea he asserted that ‘we all know that’ the state does not create employment.

“Besides the fact that the ‘we’ is definitely not inclusive, but in fact refers to the category of individuals who believe in that fatally flawed assertion, it is important to build a capable developmental state with organic capacity to
serve the people diligently and capably.”

The party cited instances of the state’s role as a job creator in both China and South Africa, including in the state-owned enterprises such as Eskom, Transnet, development finance institutions and many others. The party rubbished Ramaphosa’s suggestion that business be responsible for creating jobs. While it acknowledged that there is significant private sector employment in South Africa, it asserted that workers “found work in profit-driven private
sector companies only so long as their labour increases capital for accumulation by their owners”.

“This is one reason the private sector has also created and increased unemployment, through retrenchments in pursuit of profitability and profit maximisation.

“It is also one reason inequality, both wealth and income inequality, is systemic under capitalist relations of production.

“Except wages – to the capitalist employers a cost they seek to curtail – workers receive nothing from the value that their labour creates in the process of production,” he said.

In his address, Ramaphosa left no doubt he wanted to see capital playing a leading role to creat jobs because it was their job. In fact, Ramaphosa’s statement was bound to open him to further attacks by the self-created leftists, such as the radical economic transformation (RET) movement within his party.

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His statement and refusal to implement the Nasrec’s ANC resolution to nationalise the South African Reserve Bank, played into the RET’s accusation that he was a stooge of big business. However economists fear the central bank’s nationalisation and the implementation of land expropriation without compensation policy would cause investors
to flee. Molepo said Ramaphosa had failed on delivery timelines in his announcements, including on ending load shedding and action on state capture, among others.

“He was telling us what he intend to do, but where are the timelines and what achievements had been made for his previous promises,” Molepo asked.

Ramaphosa made important pronouncements to promote small business but that wouldn’t work because of economic inequality: “How do you open an icecream vending outlet when you are hungry. This means the rich
will remain rich and the poor will remain poor,” he said.

The president’s continued privatisation of public enterprises would gain business more.

“He takes business to run the government and that shows he has no confidence in his ministers. He spends more money on things we have already and that the government can do,” Molepo said.

– ericn@citizen.co.za