Manifesto for a new society beyond the neoliberal era

Console Tleane

Published in Business Day, 27 June 2005

While the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Freedom Charter take place, it is also important to note the debate outside of the African National Congress (ANC)-led tripartite alliance over the relevance of the document in the era of neoliberalism.

There are sections of thought that reject the charter as a compromise document. But there is agreement that SA is under the firm grip of neoliberalism and that there must, therefore, be an alternative.

A reading of the charter produces at least two interpretations. The first is that it contains what can broadly be seen as “appealing demands”, and the second is that it contains problematic sections.

The charter is a highly contradictory text. This stems from the fact that it seeks to appease all classes within the society.

In the same way that the radical nationalist critique will hold that the charter is ahistorical in its treatment of inequality in SA by failing or deliberately ignoring the reality of colonial conquest (for example, the land question), a working class reading of the charter exposes it as containing classical bourgeois democratic demands.

The sections of the charter that are appealing argue that the ANC has moved away from its struggle history.

Under this category one can cluster the sections that deal with the right to (enjoyment of) equal human rights work and security, learning and culture, and houses, security and comfort.

No one can dispute the relevance of demands for a 40-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for workers.

Nor can any person stand against the demand for “education (to be) free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children”. Who can stand against “free medical care and hospitalisation (that should) be provided for all, with special care for mothers and young children”?

Broadly speaking, the demands can be said to be social democratic, akin to the advancements made mainly in Scandinavian countries.

But the document also contains ambiguous statements that can be manipulated by those in power to serve their interests.

For instance, the charter talks about the state recognising the right to work. What is needed in this epoch is for the state to guarantee the right to work, to review current policies and move towards a macroeconomic policy that will ensure that every employable person is working.

Another example that demonstrates how the charter can be manipulated, due to its lack of clarity, is the section on education. Asked about free education, a former parliamentarian said that there was indeed free education, for those who cannot afford it. And he was right! Yet, we all know the difficulties that poor parents face when trying to exercise the right to have their children educated for free.

The charter fails to recognise the simple fact that one of the primary pillars in a national liberation struggle is the struggle for land. Black people were robbed of their land and the fundamental question of reconquest has to be addressed. A radical nationalist agenda would be useful when approaching the land question.

It is precisely because of this lack of clarity that the post-1994 land reform project has failed to address historical injustices.

In the same way that it fails the working-class test, the charter fails the radical nationalist project — it remains a bourgeois democratic platform.

Is the Freedom Charter still relevant? There is an argument that the ruling alliance might be celebrating the charter in this grand manner simply because there is a realisation that there is a crisis of delivery.

There is genuine sentimental attachment to the charter that offers a convenient message that still appeals to the working class.

It is still necessary to invoke the section, “there shall be houses, security, and comfort”, when residents of Harrismith and Gugulethu rise up to demand the fruits of liberation?

What is rather odd is the extent to which some sections of the alliance, the Congress of South African Trade Unions in particular, are failing to develop a critique of the charter, and start a debate for a need for a more radical programme that will force the state, and the nation, to think outside the current neoliberal dispensation the charter does not challenge.

The major challenge facing SA is to realise that the current epoch needs new tools of analysis. The Freedom Charter, and other pre-1994 demands, might have been relevant and revolutionary enough for a particular era. For instance, they addressed themselves largely to racial segregation. But apartheid capitalism has changed form. We now have a much more complex situation of unfulfilled demands and the ascendancy of a new ruling class, the rainbow bourgeois class.

Perhaps the way to go is to take along some of the more clearer and still progressive demands contained in the charter, like some of the clauses in the section on the right to “work and security”, into a new, more radical, programme.

‖Tleane works for the Freedom of Expression Institute. This article is an edited version of the Harold Wolpe lecture he delivered recently at the University of KwaZulu- Natal . He writes in his personal capacity.