Category Archives: Imraan Buccus

Mercury: Politics is about service, not plundering the state purse

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http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5122138

Politics is about service, not plundering the state purse
One of the themes emerging from the debate on recent protests is that there is a need for the development process and governance in general to be democratised

August 12, 2009 Edition 2

Imraan Buccus

AS THE wave of protests spreads from communities to students and workers, there has been a remarkable degree of reflection on the state of the nation by our public intellectuals. Many voices, old and new, have brought their intelligence and experience to bear on how we have, 15 years into parliamentary democracy and 100 days into the Zuma government, such an incredible level of public dissatisfaction.

The rebellion of the poor has enabled a level of debate not seen in the country since the early 1990s.

This kind of open and careful debate can only be excellent for our nation as we seek a new way forward and out of the current crisis.

There have been superb interventions from our leading and well-established public intellectuals such as Xolela Mangcu and Stephen Friedman.

But I have really been struck by the vigour with which older voices, like former UDF activist Josette Cole, have returned to the public sphere as well as the power of razor-sharp newer voices like those of Ebrahim Steyn in Durban and Shawn Hattingh in Cape Town.

All of the protagonists in these debates came from a range of experiences and backgrounds that extend as widely as the black consciousness movement, liberalism and various forms of democratic leftism.

But despite this diversity, two clear themes have emerged from the public conversation on the crisis.

The first is the absolute necessity for the development process and governance in general to be deeply democratised.

It is clear that the old days of consultants, officials and politicians hammering out a way forward and then simply imposing it on communities in the most high-handed way are over.

It has not been unusual for development – especially when it requires forced removals – to have had to have been implemented at gun point.

The second point of general convergence is that the public greed and general arrogance of our political class is an obscene threat to social cohesion and must come to an immediate end.

Politics has, as many have urged, to be about national service rather than the plunder of the public purse and the reckless swaggering that we associate with blue-light convoys and the like.

But there is a third lesson that can be drawn from this debate. We are lucky enough to have a vigorous left in South Africa; in and out of the alliance.

I say that this is a lucky fact because it means that the issues of the poor and the limits and social costs of the market are kept firmly in the public eye.

In a country with growing inequality on a scale as severe as ours, this is most welcome.

But as many have noted, there is a strong strand of authoritarianism in our left.

This can take the form of an obsession with the state mode of power or a whole range of toxic modes of politics, be they cultic dogmatism of various forms or big man rent-a-crowd politics.

This is no doubt a legacy of the disastrous consequences of the Soviet experience for progressive thought.

Elsewhere in the world there has been a full and proper reckoning with the authoritarianism that is the great curse of the 20th century left but we have not had a serious discussion about this issue in South Africa.

However, the fact is that many young intellectuals have recognised that the rebellions sweeping the country are a demand for both material advances (jobs, services and so on) and bottom up democratisation indicates that the dinosaurs of the left have been left as flat-footed by these rebellions as many in the state.

Indeed, they simply do not have a conceptual framework to make sense of the demand for democratisation.

Our public intellectuals are rising to the challenge posed by the ongoing activism of poor and working class people. The rebellions may also enable the emergence of a genuinely democratic left – one that understands that top-down solutions will always fail. But what of the state and those that have, through the ballot boxes, captured it?

Here the messages have been mixed. We have had to confront the appalling spectacle of a return to the paranoid and ridiculous language of the “third force” as well as new National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele’s widely condemned out-and-out thuggery.

But, in a sense, all of this buffoonery has seemed more like a hangover from a previous era than the dominant aspect of the state’s response.

After all, we have also seen Tokyo Sexwale spending a night in a shack and Jacob Zuma visiting municipalities and schools – unannounced.

These are largely symbolic gestures but they should not be dismissed too easily. For a start their symbolism is powerful. But it does also indicate that the state is willing to react to popular demands rather than, as was previously the case, to allege a conspiracy and send out the police.

And once the state presents itself as caring and reactive, that is the standard of engagement that people will start to expect.

But this thaw in what has been called the “patrician incomprehension” with which government approaches the people will have to translate into concrete action if it is to begin to undo the enormous damage former president Thabo Mbeki and his acolytes did to our country.

Zuma’s government has, despite its mixed messages, opened the door to the people.

If that door can be flung wide open, we will be well on our way to constructing a truly inclusive society.

Mercury: A cry for deep structural change

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http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5103297

A cry for deep structural change
The service delivery protests that have swept the country are a demand for an end to the contempt of the ruling elites for the poor

July 29, 2009 Edition 1

Imraan Buccus

OUR country is burning, and the leading lights in the new cabinet are out shopping for expensive cars. The long-standing disconnect between the political class and ordinary people has become a chasm.

The rebellions have made it abundantly clear that we cannot go on as before.

The political class thought that replacing Thabo Mbeki with President Jacob Zuma would pacify the people. The people have smashed that illusion to smithereens. Every day they are burning that illusion in the streets. It is clear that all politicians are now objects of popular suspicion.

This is a time of real risk and real opportunity for the country. Most of the recent protests are a progressive demand for social inclusion. This is a demand that we can all support and, if heeded, could result in real changes.

However, some of the protests have indicated a deeply disturbing return to xenophobic attitudes in which foreigners are blamed for the failures of our political class.

Our task is to oppose xenophobia as militantly as possible and to support the progressive protests and try to link them up so that their demand for social inclusion becomes impossible to ignore.

But it is clear that there is a long way to go. When politicians say that a basic income grant is unacceptable because it will cause “dependency”, they are clearly living on another planet.

A basic income for all will free people from the shame and frustration of poverty. It will empower. It will give everyone a sense of real citizenship.

But the machinations of some among our political class in Durban are cause for even greater concern, especially the obscene attempts to stir up anti-Indian racism around the Early Morning Market issue.

There have been many societies in which elites, confronted with a rebellious populace, have tried to channel the people’s anger towards foreigners, minorities and so on.

The Nazis did this in Germany in the 1930s with their anti-Jewish politics. More recently, Robert Mugabe did this in Zimbabwe with his attacks on homosexuals, and the BJP has done it in India with its anti-Muslim and anti-Christian politics.

If our own local elites are so morally bankrupt that they are willing to try to stir up anti-Indian sentiment to channel popular anger away from where it should be directed – to politicians and big business – it is essential that we all unite around the values of the Freedom Charter and the constitution: South Africa belongs to all who live in it.

On this principle, there can be no compromise. We cannot tolerate any form of racism or xenophobia, whether it comes from our so-called leaders or from the base of society.

Trevor Ngwane’s recent article in The Mercury is an exemplary form of the kind of clear ethical principles that we need to engage into allaspects of our social engagement. The incredible ongoing anti-xenophobic work by grass-roots movements around the country is also exemplary.

Some political leaders think they can keep their game going by turning the poor on one another.

But if people of principle can succeed in opposing this, then it becomes clear that the only real way out of this crisis will be deep structural change in our society.

That structural change will have to be economic – everyone needs a decent life and everyone needs it as quickly as possible. This means that a basic income grant is an urgent priority.

We also need radical land reform and a mass public works project to create employment and build houses.

However, that structural change will also have to be political. Grass-roots movements have been rebelling against ward councillors and refusing to vote since 2004. They are not anti-democratic.

But they are against a form of democracy in which parties exert a top-down control over communities. There is a clear demand for a radicalisation of democracy. People want a bottom-up politics.

The deep structural change that is required has to be ethical. Our society is rank with crass materialism, corruption and a general contempt towards the poor. The political classes have to live simply and to forgo the BMWs and Johnnie Walker Blue. Politics has to be about service – not plunder.

The rebellions that have swept the country are a demand for deep change, and they will produce deep change. The question is whether this change will be progressive or reactionary. If we pass this test, a promising future beckons. If we fail this test we will slowly sink into disaster.

This may sound dramatic. But when burning barricades block so many of our streets, when the police shoot at protesters every day and when hundreds of protesters are sitting in jail cells, the situation is very serious. We ignore the seriousness of the situation at our peril.

Mercury: Who really benefits from big corporate deals?

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http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4988934

Who really benefits from big corporate deals?
Elites always try to tell society that their interests are everyone’s interests, but self-interested corporate propaganda is not neutral analysis

May 20, 2009 Edition 1

Imraan Buccus

MUCH has been said in the past few days about the last-minute bid to prevent Vodacom from listing on the JSE this past Sunday.

On Monday South Africans were greeted with the news that the courts had rejected the attempts at preventing the listing, and the Vodacom listing on the JSE would now go ahead. South Africans – well, mainly the wealthy ones – breathed a sigh of relief.

Cosatu and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa had lodged an urgent interdict to stop the listing of Vodacom, following Telkom’s sale of 15 percent of Vodacom to the UK’s Vodaphone for R22.5 billion, thus increasing Vodaphone’s stake in Vodacom to 65 percent.

Now Cosatu is threatening to mobilise its members to join rival networks as an indication of the trade union’s unhappiness with Vodacom.

So, why the fiasco, and in whose interest is the foreign investment by Vodaphone, one may ask?

Well, over the weekend a leading Sunday newspaper led with a story arguing that “South Africa’s reputation as a business-friendly economy is in jeopardy”, and “the message is that SA does not offer a predictable, stable business environment”.

Losses

For far too long in South Africa and in other parts of the world, we have been forced to view events that affect all of us, more so those who live on the margins of society, from the perspective of elites. What the media hasn’t hammered home is the fact that this deal would lead to massive job losses in a country that is already facing an “unemployment bloodbath”.

The argument doing the rounds is that the government had assured the international business world that it would be business as usual under the new regime. What people have not been focusing on is the fact that those at the base of social strata have voted the new regime into power, believing that there would be hope for the poor as the leader of the ruling party somehow embodies the hopes and aspirations of the poor.

Also, the new government has developed at least five focal priority areas, with a prominent one being job creation.

Elites always try to tell society that their interests are everyone’s interests. But this is quite clearly not the case.

Take the case of the AmaZulu World theme park planned for eMacambini here in KwaZulu-Natal. This abomination will, if it goes ahead, result in the eviction of 10 000 families. Of course, those elites who stand to benefit from this “foreign direct investment” will present it as being in the national interest.

While it might be in their interest, it would obviously be a total disaster for the 10 000 families that risk eviction.

If we are going to develop into a society that can have a rational and open conversation about development and social justice, it is essential that that we stop presenting self-interested corporate propaganda as neutral analysis.

When foreign direct investment creates decent jobs and develops the productive capacity of the country, it is to be welcomed. But when it is simply about enriching local elites in exchange for the right to plunder our resources, it must be opposed by all right-thinking people.

Solution

The idea that the solution to our problems is always “investors and tourists” is an idea that, in essence, says that rich foreigners will solve our problems.

It is an idea that says that we should do whatever we can to make our country and economy attractive to rich foreigners looking for profit.

Corporations seek profit, not social justice. They account to their shareholders, not to the poor or the working class in the countries where they do business. In fact, very often their profit-seeking is also a risk to ordinary middle class people.

The idea that the pursuit of profit by elites is somehow in the interests of society as a whole was very powerful after the Cold War. But that idea collapsed in the wake of the financial crisis that saw squatter camps return to American cities for the first time since the 1930s. It is an idea that is as dead as the idea that Soviet-style state communism is in the interests of the people.

If our public conversations and our media are going to grapple with the complexities of reality, it is time to recognise self-interested corporate propaganda for what it is. It is time to recognise the self-evident fact that a people-friendly economy is not exactly the same as a business-friendly economy.

Mercury: Council is starting to work with civil organisations

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http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4860108

Council is starting to work with civil organisations

February 25, 2009 Edition 1

Imraan Buccus

IF THIS column has had one key theme over the months, it has been the need for democracy to be about more than just voting every few years. It has been about the need for democracy to be an everyday way of life for all citizens.

Active citizenship is the essence of what is sometimes called radical or deep democracy, and active citizenship ultimately comes down to the right of ordinary people to participate in governance.

Most of the time what academics call “invited spaces” for public participation are little more than spin-doctored roadshows aimed at showcasing government policies in the best light with very little opportunity for real debate.

But what academics like to call “invented spaces”, “insurgent spaces” or “contested spaces” are a completely different form of public participation.

These are spaces for interaction that emerge from the meeting of popular and government forces. They’re often messy and often conflicted, and governments very often wish that they didn’t exist for the simple reason that they’re unpredictable and can’t be stage-managed. These spaces always entail a degree of risk for governments, and it takes a particular kind of government to open itself up to this kind of public participation.

Interestingly it is often the more local level of government that gets it right – like the municipalities of Porto Allegro in Brazil and Naga City in the Philippines or the state of Kerala in India.

This is probably because most social movements tend to only really have power at the local level, and it is at the local level that they are successfully able to force governments to open themselves up to popular participation.

Where movements have forced governments to share power, the results have been extraordinary. Porto Allegro has won worldwide acclaim for its participatory budgeting, and Naga City is recognised as the leading municipality in the world when it comes to the treatment of shack dwellers.

In Kerala people live longer, are better educated and have better access to health care than elsewhere in India. But this was not easy to achieve. The devolution of power from states has always been hard won after years of grass-roots organisation.

Unfortunately, and despite a lot of rhetoric about public participation, post-apartheid South Africa largely followed the top-down approach to development that characterised all kinds of authoritarian governments during the last century, including IMF structural adjustment programmes, nationalist regimes and communist states.

But recent developments in Durban suggest that we may be in the midst of an intriguing rethink. Mercury readers are well aware that for years there has been bitter conflict between the shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and the eThekwini Municipality. There have been all kinds of disputes over marches, evictions, shack fires and more with the clergy, academics, the New York Times, Al Jazeera and international human rights organisations all weighing in.

However, an excellent article in this paper by Matthew Savides on the need to revitalise civil society quoted the shack dwellers’ movement chairman, S’bu Zikode, expressing his happiness at a “definite shift on the part of the municipality”.

Intrigued, I dug a little deeper and discovered that after 18 months of negotiations, the movement and the city had recently signed a deal to provide services to 14 settlements and to upgrade three, with formal houses, where they are.

This is an extraordinary breakthrough. It is true that both sides recognise that there are issues on which they continue to disagree, notably the vexed questions of shack fires and the need to electrify shacks, but the fact that so much has now been agreed on is really remarkable.

Interestingly, the movement continues to be in bitter conflict with the state sometimes, but most of the major battles are now, as with the profound opposition to the Slums Act, against the provincial government.

In fact in a recent eviction- related court case in Siyanda, the shack dwellers’ movement and the city were both listed as respondents against the provincial Department of Transport.

The step away from conflict and towards fruitful engagement must have required compromises on both sides. But if both sides are happy enough to move forward with this new deal it’s clear that they must both have gained more than they have lost from this shift from conflict to genuine negotiation.

And it is that fact that is so encouraging.

Given the obvious benefits from the intriguing new spirit of openness in Durban there is every hope the city will be tempted to negotiate in a similar mode with other smaller organisations such as those representing street traders, refugees and so on. And if this happens there is every hope that other municipalities will begin to look at Durban as a place of collaborative innovation rather than, as in recent years, a place of acute conflict between civil society and the state.

# Imraan Buccus is a research organisation and university based researcher.

Mercury: Neglecting the law, failing the poor

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http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4836392

Neglecting the law, failing the poor

February 11, 2009 Edition 1

Imraan Buccus

ONE of the guarantees of our celebrated constitution is that every child has the right to education. In order to secure this right in practice, the law stipulates that fees should not be charged for any child who is an orphan or in foster care, for any child whose guardians receive a state grant or a pension or for any child whose guardians earn less than 10 times the annual school fee.

Yet every year grassroots organisations report that this is a very difficult time of the year for poor families. Despite all the laws and policies that protect the right of all children to access schools, they are unlawfully excluded every year because their parents can’t pay fees. Allegations of racist exclusions also remain common.

Often parents are coerced into paying fees that they simply cannot afford, with devastating consequences for the general well-being of their households. There are also regular reports of parents being forced to come into schools before they go to their jobs to do cleaning work in lieu of fees. And when children are accepted into schools, when their parents haven’t been able to pay the full fees, there are regular reports of children being humiliated and punished for their parents’ poverty.

There certainly are cases where school principals and governing bodies simply do not want poor or African children in their schools. In these cases the failure of the state is one of omission – a failure to clamp down on the bigotry that is often present in state institutions, like some schools and some police stations.

Violated

But there are also many cases where principals and governing bodies have no particular animus towards the poor, or towards Africans, but simply cannot run their schools with the money allocated to them by the government. In these cases, schools that are struggling to buy chalk and pay electricity bills and so on have no viable alternative other than to extract resources from struggling families.

One of the reasons why the government is able to get away with self-aggrandising recklessness while basic needs, such as the right of each child to a decent education, are not taken care of is the widespread failure to implement laws and policies that protect the poor.

It is true enough that we have one of the best constitutions in the world, but it is equally true that it is violated by state and private power every day. Most of the time, people subjected to these kinds of violations simply don’t have the resources to seek legal redress. And when they do get to court they find that the judges in the local courts are not always sympathetic to constitutional values or, in one notorious case, even willing to stay awake, while the poor argue their case. A fair hearing is guaranteed in the Constitutional Court but who has the resources to access the highest court in the land?

The failure to ensure that no child is excluded from school on the basis of their parents’ poverty is just one instance of a general failure to implement legal and policy protection for the poor. Readers of The Mercury will be well aware that international human rights organisations have long argued that in South Africa poor people routinely face unlawful and often violent, apartheid-style, forced removals and that the protests of poor people’s organisations are regularly unlawfully banned and subject to unlawful police violence.

This radical difference between the law, on the one hand, and social reality, on the other, is creeping into more and more aspects of our society. For instance, now that local police appear to have top-level sanction to kill at will, we seem to have a situation in which our constitution rejects the death penalty while there is de facto consent for extrajudicial state murder.

Oppression

One consequence of the radical difference between the laws and policies and the lived reality in our society is that it has now become grossly irresponsible to deny the difference between state principles and state practice. For too long, when academics or social movements have raised concrete issues about specific rights violations, politicians have replied with lists of laws and policies. The laws and policies may be commendable but when they are not implemented they offer no alibi for oppression.

If we are to think seriously about our society we must start with the lived reality of life in our society. And that lived reality is one in which the children of the poor are excluded from schools each year.

We need to face up to this reality and we need to support the heroic non-governmental organisations and social movements that quietly take up this battle year after year.

Laws and policies are important, but for too long there has been far too much academic and civil society attention on law and policy and very little on the reality of how these are actually implemented. It is time for some serious support to be invested in the often entirely unfunded and volunteer-driven organisations that are doing more than anyone else to protect the values of our constitution on the ground.