Dare not linger: The presidential Years

An extract from Dare Not Linger: The Presidential Years,by Nelson Mandela and Mandla Langa.

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 the 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”. 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”.

President Nelson Mandela takes the oath on 10 May 1994 during his inauguration at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

Speaking in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 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 its 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 inauguration. They had no agenda apart concerns as they set out to correct the from a general mandate to change the labour market distortions entrenched by country in accordance with the precepts 40 years of apartheid”. from policy workshops, conferences and people’s forums. An item recorded on

Mandela saw the mandate given to his the day reads: “The President stressed government as the first step towards the importance of the immediate addressing the economic legacy of apartheid, which was characterised by and enthusiastic implementation of imbalances currently weighted against the Reconstruction and Development the black majority.

For the new government, the first steps towards addressing the socio-economic This mission had its origins in Ready to deficit were taken when the new

Poet, short-story writer, novelist and cultural activist Mandla Langa.

the end of May 1992. The vexed question of a debate that went on for hours. ANC state ownership of economic assets versus policy thereafter avoided the words privatisation had also been under discussion. ‘privatisation’ and ‘nationalisation’. When he came out of prison, Mandela

Definitions notwithstanding, when the the mobility of capital, the ANC formulated government mooted the privatisation guidelines that spoke of a mixed economy. of state assets, there was considerable

The 1992 Ready to Govern conference dissent within the ANC. But it was has formally registered the change, Mandela’s view that this “should be settled recognising the need for flexibility after in negotiations on a case-by-case basis”.

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 minority interests and suppressing the majority. It was artificially expanded to accommodate patronage, both in national government and in 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. 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.

These were the beginnings of prolonged procedures; some memoranda 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.

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. 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 in 1913 by the South African government a white minority of barely 15 per cent of the country’s population owned about 87% of the land, while the black majority – Africans, Coloureds and Indians – occupied less than 13%. They were forced to live in squalor and poverty or to seek employment on white farms, in the mines and urban areas.

“When the Nationalist 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.”

Here in the manuscript, Mandela has included a note in parentheses to “quote Sol Plaatje on the Land Act of 1913”. Plaatje’s words on the issue of dispossession read: “Awakening 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.”

Mandela continues, “It was against this background that the African

National Congress Reconstruction and Development Programme highlighted the importance of land reform be 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.”

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 taxes.

Success in both endeavours required the government to get into “active partnership with civil society, and with business and labour in particular … 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 into place the concrete goals, time frame and strategies to achieve this change.”