Joel Netshitenzhe
Article: The poor do know that life is much better
16 March 2003
In his article,
"The ANC has failed to give a better life", Opposition
Leader, Tony Leon correctly refers to poverty, HIV/AIDS and crime
as challenges to which government should pay undivided attention.
These issues
are at the core of the programme of social change. Has the time
of national consensus thus come to pass?
To boot, Leon
uses an expression popularised by VI Lenin ("What is to be
done"). And he paraphrases Karl Marx and Frederick Engels ("Hitherto
philosophers have interpreted the world. The point however is to
change it") in asserting that "the point of politics is
to change the world".
And so the Damascene
conversion seems done and complete.
Lift the veil
though, and underneath the pious words are the habitual cheap shots
to prove the government wrong, and a deep ideological bent on neo-liberal
inhumanity.
Leon argues
that government needs to prioritise and adopt the right values.
Nothing wrong with this. It is what government is doing anyway.
The devil is
in the detail: "rapid privatisation, the repeal of job-crushing
labour laws, a radically different approach to Zimbabwe" and
so on, which should be pursued with "ruthless determination".
So, we should
rapidly and aimlessly sell state assets, as distinct from government's
managed case-by-case restructuring to ensure efficiency, to bring
service costs down and to raise funds and further expand economic
and social infrastructure.
To Leon, the
rights that workers now enjoy are "job-crushing" - better
that we should have serfdom on the farms, job reservation, poverty
wages and conflictual labour relations. Better that we should have
an unrestructured economy that is not globally competitive.
Then of course
we should shout from the top of the Zoutpansberg, instead of stating
our concerns calmly and trying to facilitate dialogue among Zimbabwe's
leaders. How "megaphone diplomacy" has helped anyone including
the most powerful states is unexplained. Fact is, short of the rumbling
of tanks across the Limpopo by what Leon ironically refers to as
"our depleted defence services", the most we can do is
to counsel maturity among all Zimbabwean role-players to pursue
their own national interests.
On each of the
"facts" that Leon quotes one could go into detail demonstrating
the fallacy of his approach. Take the issue of poverty: to the 8,3
million now with clean running water; the 3,8 million connected
to electricity; the millions of children accessing real education
and a free meal every school day; and the over 5 million in free
houses - to all these, life has become much better since 1994.
To the beneficiaries
of R1,8-billion in land restitution alone in the past 8 years and
of the R51-billion in tax relief since 1999, the spectre of going
forward to a past that Leon seems to relish is beyond sane contemplation.
Of course the
economy has not been creating as many jobs as the number being shed
plus that of new entrants. But 2002 figures show that the tide is
turning. The Growth and Development Summit in May is meant to decide
on further concrete steps forward.
The rate of
crime is too high. But one has dispassionately to examine the trends,
including public opinion surveys, to realise that even here, the
tide has turned.
In part, Leon's
problem is an obsession with the grains in a still photograph of
the present. He deliberately ignores pictures of skeletons of the
past. Had he discovered the then "surplus people" much
earlier, with no vote and deliberately excluded, with horrible crimes
in their communities which included state-sponsored violence, and
with the devastation of a stagnant economy, his assessment of the
present would perhaps be sensible.
The number of
HIV/AIDS infections has increased massively since 1994 for a variety
of social and epidemiological reasons. Should we ratchet this up
as if to celebrate a complex pandemic, or should we work together
to implement the country's comprehensive strategy?
Many are tempted
to wave a magic wand in pursuit of political office. But a government
has to pursue rational and sustainable policies; for it has to do
rather than just talk.
In closing the
debate on the State of the Nation Address, President Thabo Mbeki
was not, as Leon imagines, "upset with" him. He was emphasising
precisely this challenge when he said:
"It may
very well be that, in the main, all of us agree on the identification
of many of our national problems. But…we have different solutions
to these problems, reflecting our different ideological and political
positions…
"[T]he
consolidation of our democracy [does] not require that we should
try to force ourselves into a false consensus. The Government will
not be persuaded to adopt policies it believes are wrong, merely
to please some...policies that have failed to win the support of
the people"
Joel
Netshitenzhe
CEO: Government Communications (GCIS) and Head: Policy Unit (PCAS)
in The Presidency
Published in City Press
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