[DEBATE] : (Fwd) CCS econ.justice colloquium: more intros/abstracts

[Patrick Bond]

(Later today most if not all the papers will be up at 
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs under Economic Justice)

What was the poverty headcount in 2004? A critique of the latest offering
from van der Berg et al

Charles Meth

This paper is in draft form.[1]  Please do not quote

Introduction

In the field of political economy in South Africa, there are not many more
sensitive subjects than that of the extent to which government policies
aimed at alleviating poverty have succeeded.  There is broad agreement among
academics that income poverty rose in the period 1995-2000.  Government
counters this with the claim that the finding fails to take account of the
'social wage' (social spending).  To date, nobody has succeeded in
demonstrating that the 'social wage' offset increases in income poverty
prior to 2001.[2]  Because of the absence of authoritative data, what has
happened in the years after 2000-2001 is less clear.  This has added to the
contentiousness of the competing claims that are made.  Possibly mindful of
this, Lesetja Kganyago, Director General of the National Treasury, is
reported recently as proclaiming that:

"At this moment, there is just hot air and noise about whether we are making
progress in reducing poverty."  (Business Report, Monday, 28 November
2005)[3]

It would be surprising, however, if he were not tempted to exclude from this
generalisation, the most recent findings on the matter by van der Berg et al
(2005).  They report a significant fall in poverty headcounts and poverty
gaps in the period 2000-2004.  If true, their results would silence critics
of government's anti-poverty policy, critics who, of late, have become
increasingly vociferous.  Unfortunately for the poor, it seems unlikely that
the optimistic picture painted by van der Berg and his colleagues is
correct.

With observations for three separate years, 1993, 2000 and 2004, they are
able to create something of a history of the trajectory of poverty.  The
present paper harbours no such ambitions¾its sole purpose is to present a
competing set of estimates of the poverty headcount for the year 2004 to
those offered by the van der Berg et al (2005) paper.  It is hoped that by
doing so, interest in the major household surveys conducted by Statistics
South Africa as possible sources of information on poverty may be kindled.
Whatever its shortcomings, and an attempt will be made here to show that
their headcounts are out by at least three million, the van der Berg et al
paper has the virtue of re-invigorating a debate that of late, had become
increasingly stale and bad-tempered.

Having begun by expressing the limits of what is to be attempted, it will
probably be useful at this point, to say what else the present paper is not
going to attempt to do.  Accordingly, a few lines will be devoted here to
what either will not be considered at all, or to those (important) matters
which, if they are considered at all, have devoted to them only the few
words immediately below.  In no way does this imply that the subjects in
question deserve such treatment, rather it is because the focus of the paper
is on one matter only, namely, demonstrating that the van der Berg et al
estimates of the poverty headcount in 2004 are wrong.  The fact that the
present paper does not attempt to examine the headcounts for any other year
is the most important of the things that are not going to be done.  The
decision not to look into the past obviously means that nothing can be said
here about improvements in the lot of the poor that may have taken place.
Given the very large amount of money that has been thrown at the problem in
recent years, much of which appears to have reached its target, I would be
very surprised if the headcount had not fallen, or at least not increased.
Despite its importance, the hypothesis that poverty headcounts have declined
is not tested here because of the amount of work that has to be done to
render any of the available household survey results suitable for the
purpose.  The fact that finding suitable data for an earlier year is a job
that has still to be tackled, should not, however, be allowed to stand in
the way of the publication of the results in the present paper.  If the
method by which they were obtained (and the data set from which they come)
stands up to the scrutiny of the social scientific community, then the
numbers that method generates are of self-evident importance.[4]

So much for the absence of an historical dimension to the paper?amongst
other things that either will not be done, or if they are done, are done but
cursorily, is any attempt at reconciling the differences (and they are very
large) between my estimates and those made by van der Berg et al will be
made¾anyone wishing to reject my results has merely to demonstrate that (a)
the method used to generate them is faulty, and/or (b) the data are
unreliable.[5]

Furthermore, although brief references to aspects of the method that van der
Berg et al use are made, there is no systematic attempt in the paper either
to grapple with their primary sources, or with the many data sources they
call on to bolster their findings.  They offer, for example, an optimistic
assessment of possible job growth among the poor.  Other than to remark that
the labour market data may be too fragile to support this claim, it will not
be contested.

In like vein, their treatment of the social grant system will, with the
exception of the brief remarks made here, be ignored.  By my reckoning, the
Child Support Grant (CSG) was reaching about 35 per cent of the children
under the age of 15 years in households where expenditure was reported
(under-reported?)[6] to be less than R800 per month in July 2004.[7]  Since
almost all of these households would meet the eligibility criteria for the
CSG (as will many in the next expenditure category), it is clear that there
is still quite a bit to be achieved by this component of the social grant
system.  Welcome as the grants must be among poor households, the
distribution of CSGs that emerges in the 2004 GHS suggests that the grant
may also be being paid in respect of as many as half-a-million children who
do not qualify for it.  In other words, there is evidence that the CSG
suffers from the usual shortcoming of means-tested grants¾it excludes many
who qualify, and includes many who do not.

[1] Thanks are due to Justine Burns, Reza Daniels, David Lam, Miguel
Lacerda, Murray Leibbrandt, Julian May, Martin Wittenberg and Ingrid
Woolard, all of whom have either been coerced into reading and commenting on
the paper, checking its workings and results, or have been harangued into
discussion of its method and findings.  Special thanks are due to Anna
McCord whose diligence helped me to eradicate a grievous error from the
paper, and to Daniela Casale and Miguel Lacerda for assistance with STATA
programming.  As discussant, David Lam offered useful comments on the paper
at a workshop held in Pretoria on 17th February 2006.  Organised by the
HSRC, the purpose of the workshop was to compare the findings and
methodologies of the present paper with those of the van der Berg et al
(2005) with which it takes issue.  I am grateful to Miriam Altman of the
HSRC for making possible the first presentation of the findings in their
present form, to a wide audience of academics and senior government
officials, several of whose members (notably John Kruger of the National
Treasury) made useful comments.  Although it seldom seems to, it should go
without saying that all errors, omissions and misrepresentations are my own.
[2] See Meth (2005a) for a review of the debate and for a set of estimates
of poverty, taking the social wage into account.
[3] The context was the announcement of the assembly by government of a
"task team made of local and international experts, to develop a poverty
benchmark for the country." in an article by Andile Ntingi, headed "Poverty
measure proposed: SA's own system to evaluate government's success".
[4] The method survived its first public outing relatively unscathed.  It
was presented to the SALDRU (South African Labour and Development Research
Unit) in the University of Cape Town on 18th January 2006.  Participants
made many useful suggestions?this second version of the paper attempts to
incorporate as many of them as possible.
[5] To facilitate this, the spreadsheets used to generate the results, which
have the STATA 'Do File' commands embedded in them, plus the relevant STATA
Do Files will be made available on request to the author at either
meth at ukzn.a.za or chasmeth at telkomsa.net.
[6] These results are based on the 'unpurged' figures (purging is explained
in detailed below).  Since it is not the intention to engage in the debate
over social grants here, no greater precision will be attempted, nor is any
attempt warranted.  There may be about 10-11 million under-fifteens eligible
for the CSG.  In July 2004, the GHS found 4.6 million CSG recipients.
Because the numbers of people in the bottom expenditure categories fall, the
use of the purged figure will raise coverage ratios.  Also, the proportions
of households covered are greater than the proportions of individuals
covered.
[7] The total number of CSGs picked up by the 2004 GHS matches quite
closely, the number reported by the administrative data of the Department of
Social Development (the SocPen database).


***


Revisiting the Relationship Between Capitalism and Racist Forms of Political
Domination and Post-1994 South African Policy Alternatives

David Masondo

Introduction

The diagnostic theses and propositions on the South African social formation
and its crisis have also informed or influenced normative policy
perspectives in the post-1994 South Africa.   The South African social
formation[1] has been characterized as Colonialism of a Special Type (SACP:
1962 and ANC: 1985) and racial capitalism (Saul:) . The articulation of
modes of production (Wolpe :), racial Fordism (Gelb :), uneven development
(Bond :), Mineral-Energy-Complex (Fine and Rustomjee : 1996) and fraction of
capital (Davies, Kaplan) were used to show the mechanisms through which the
South African social formation was reproduced and maintained. Flowing from
each conceptualization different theorists and activists reached different
conceptual, strategic, tactical and conclusions on the South African social
formation.  The post-1994 policy alternatives were also influenced by these
perspectives. This is not to deny some common normative conclusions reached
through different conceptual schemas.

The South African political economy has been pre-occupied with the
relationship between racist and patriarchal forms of political domination
and capitalism. This issue is not only a contentious between Marxists and
non- Marxists, but also within Marxists and non-Marxists. At the heart of
the scholarly debate is the extent to which racial domination; in particular
Apartheid was functional for capital accumulation. Put differently, the
debate is on the extent to which the racist forms of political domination
were functional or beneficial to capitalism.

The paper argues that liberalism took a dualist perspective of the South
African social formation. It argued that the economy was divided into two.
The first economy (capitalist), which was a desirable model for development
and the pre-capitalist, was as traditional and backward to be obliterated.
It was argued that the two modes were unconnected modes of production. The
pre-capitalist was backward and traditional. In its teleological conception
of social change, it assumed capitalism will swallow the pre-capitalist
forms of production. The demise of Apartheid in liberal circles is
celebrated in these terms, that is, capitalist growth has undermined racist
rationality was imposed itself on the rationality of the free market (O'
Dowd: 1996). In the post-Apartheid South Africa, any form of regulation of
the capital is seen as undermining this rationality.

The paper shows that the Marxist political economists took an organicist
conception of the connection between racism and capitalism and
pre-capitalist modes of production. The pre-capitalist and racism and
capitalism were seen as organically connected, and the functional
relationship between the two was systematically theorized in Wolpe's work
(1975). The liberals only conceded to the organicist connection between
racism and pre-capitalist mode of production, but maintained that racism was
dysfunctional for capital accumulation. The Marxist political economists, in
their early works did not stretch the dialectical method enough for they
would have theorized the relationship between race and capitalism as
contradictory and always leading to contemporary resolution and new
contradictions, but without the Hegelian totalizing dialectic. This has
opened the early Wolpe (1975) to theoretical attacks for his functionalism.

Given the contingent relationship between capitalism and racist forms of
political domination, we argue that there is no necessary functional
relationship between racist forms of political domination and capitalism,
and therefore the destruction of the former does not necessarily mean the
end of the latter. In other words, the end of national and gender oppression
does not mean the end of capitalism. While the paper refutes the functional
relationship between racist forms of political domination, it argues that
the relationship between capitalism and racism was contingent upon the
historical evolution of the capitalist system and opportunities and threats
offered by the racial structure. In other words, South African capitalism
had an opportunistic with racist political domination, but it became
dysfunctional due to the working class struggle and the rise in organic
composition of capital.

The paper argues that technological determinist or vulgar Marxism[2] and
modernization theory have provided conceptual basis for neo-liberalism. The
racial Fordism thesis (Gelb and Saul), has provided firm foundation for the
Keynesian policy alternatives. The CST and its strategy NDR, is used to
justify the current neo-liberal and incorporation of the emerging black
bourgeoisie into structure of capital accumulation. However, the current
neo-liberal and creation of black capital policy paradigm was not inscribed
in the NDR itself.

[1] This refers to a concrete capitalist mode of production.
[2] This is kind of Marxism was advocated colonialism apologetic, Bill
Warren who argued that exploitation of the colonial countries is necessary
for its development (Bond : 1997). This argument is also appropriated to
justify neo-liberalism in South Africa ( Jele and Moleketi : 2002 )

***

Crises in Social Reproduction in a Developmental State: Home-Based care in
KwaZulu-Natal

by Nina Hunter[1]

Introduction

In the last few decades neoliberalism has become predominant in governments
around the world, with assaults on those functions of the state which were
intended to compensate for the inadequacies and injustices of the market (De
Angelis, 2000).  Gill and Bakker (2003) point to a growing crisis of social
reproduction, most acute in poor developing countries, and among the
poorest, that is associated with the fiscal crisis of the state and the
removal of state provisions.  In the South African context, these
occurrences are not new.  Referring to Apartheid South Africa, Harold Wolpe
(1972) argues that the crucial function performed by the policy of
segregation was to maintain the productive capacity of the pre-capitalist
economies and the social system of the African societies in order to ensure
that these societies provided a portion of the means of reproduction of the
African labour power.  The extended family in the reserves to which migrant
labour returned in between periods of work was able to fulfill the social
security functions necessary for the reproduction of the migrant work force.
Therefore the capitalist sector and the state were relieved of the need to
expend resources on these necessary functions, with the former able to
secure an increased rate of surplus value.

While Wolpe's argument has been contested by various commentators
(Barchiesi, 2005, provides an account of these) it is taken as the starting
point by this paper, which seeks to investigate the extent to which Wolpe's
line of reasoning about the relationship between capitalism and social
reproduction, and specifically the state's using families to fulfill social
reproduction functions and thereby subsidise wage labour, as outlined above,
can be applied to post-Apartheid South Africa's social welfare policy and
specifically to the provision of home- and community-based care, where
fiscal restraint is emphasized and the importance of neoliberalism upheld.
In a context of high HIV prevalence levels (estimates range from 19.2
percent to 26.5 percent depending on the study and on the form of
measurement used (Doherty & Colvin, 2004:197)) and relatedly large numbers
in need of care, the government's policy and practical approach to care
provision will be assessed using findings from qualitative research
conducted in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.  Initially this policy approach to
care provision will be outlined, followed by a review of literature that
begins with debates surrounding community care.  Current work on the link
between capitalism and social reproduction in a global context is then
examined, followed by a focus on the South African government's approach to
social welfare provision more generally.  After this the research
methodology is discussed and then relevant findings are reflected, which
highlight crises thrown up for ill people and family caregivers as care is
provided in the home, with little external support.  Finally, conclusions
are drawn around the findings and the government's policy approach.

[1] Research fellow, School of Development Studies, University of
KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. Thanks are due to Francie Lund, Julian May, Caroline
Skinner and Myriam Velia for very useful comments on earlier versions of
this paper. The research in this paper is based on findings from the KIDS
2004 qualitative study. The important contribution of the team involved in
the qualitative study is gratefully acknowledged - thanks are due to Makhosi
Dlalisa, Themba Mbhele, Themba Mpanza, Cathy van de Ruit, Myriam Velia,
Michelle Adato and Julian May. I would like to acknowledge the Department
for International Development - Southern Africa (DFID-SA) for their funding
for the qualitative study, and the South African national Department for
Social Development (DSD) for their support, as well as the Mellon Foundation
Poverty Node for funding towards the qualitative study. The KIDS 2004 study
was funded by DFID-SA and supported by DSD, the Mellon Foundation, and
grants from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). The project is a
collaborative venture between UKZN, the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
LSHTM and IFPRI. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and
do not necessarily reflect the views of DSD, DFID-SA or the Mellon
Foundation Poverty Node.

***

Second Best? Trends and Linkages in the Informal Economy in South Africa[1]

Richard Devey, Caroline Skinner and Imraan Valodia[i]

INTRODUCTION

In August 2003, President Mbeki introduced the idea of South Africa being
characterised by a 'first economy' and a 'second economy' operating side by
side.  In November, in an address to the National Council of Provinces he
stated:

The second economy (or the marginalised economy) is characterised by
underdevelopment, contributes little to GDP, contains a big percentage of
our population, incorporates the poorest of our rural and urban poor, is
structurally disconnected from both the first and the global economy and is
incapable of self generated growth and development.

This idea of a 'second economy' is increasingly part of policy rhetoric at
all levels of state.  For example, the KwaZulu-Natal Minister for Finance
and Economic Development, Dr Zweli Mkhize began his 2005 budget speech with
a description of the economy using the analogy of an apartheid era train
with the first economy occupying the first class compartments and the second
economy being the second and third class sections.  Having made substantial
reference to the notion throughout the speech he argues that interventions
in the second economy are 'even more crucial' than projects aimed at
stimulating growth in the first economy.

In his 2004 State of the Nation Speech, President Mbeki argues that the:

.core of our response to all these challenges is the struggle against
poverty and underdevelopment, which rests on three pillars.  These are:
encouraging the growth and development of the first economy, increasing its
possibility to create jobs; implementing our programme to address the
challenges of the second economy; and, building a social security net to
meet the objective of poverty alleviation.

The governing party elaborated on the notion of a dual economy by
characterising the second economy as:

"The first and second Economies in our country are separated from each other
by a structural fault. . Accordingly, what we now have is the reality . of a
"mainly informal, marginalised, unskilled economy, populated by the
unemployed and those unemployable in the formal sector".  The second economy
is caught in a "poverty trap".  It is therefore unable to generate the
internal savings that would enable it to achieve the high rates of
investment it needs.  Accordingly, on its own, it is unable to attain rates
of growth that would ultimately end its condition of underdevelopment.
(ANC Today, Volume 4, No. 47, 26 November-2 December 2004)

In his 2005 State of the Nation Speech, Mbeki again refers to the concept of
the 'second economy' arguing that:

We must achieve new and decisive advances towards . eradicating poverty and
underdevelopment, within the context of a thriving and growing first economy
and the successful transformation of the second economy.

In outlining what government will do about transforming the second economy,
the President has this to say:

To take the interventions in the second economy forward . additional
programmes will be introduced or further strengthened by April 2005, as part
of the Expanded Public Works Programme.

Although the President does not himself refer to the informal economy, the
quote from ANC Today above shows that, within the ruling party at least, the
informal economy is seen as being located in the second economy.  Further,
the ANC sees the second economy, and presumably the informal economy, as
being structurally disconnected from the mainstream of the economy.
Arguments about dualism and the relationship between the mainstream of the
economy and the periphery have characterised much of South African
historiography.  This is most prominently captured in the debates of the
early 1970s about the relationship between apartheid and capitalism in South
Africa with liberals arguing that capitalism would ultimately undermine
apartheid as more and more of the African periphery came to be incorporated
into the mainstream of the economy (see Lipton, 1985 and O'Dowd, 1978) and
Marxists arguing that there was in fact a close, but exploitative,
relationship between the mainstream and the periphery (see Legassick, 1974
and Wolpe, 1972).  The re-emergence of a dualist view of the economy is
significant not only because it is being articulated by the President and is
at odds with the way in which the ANC has traditionally viewed South African
society, but also because it seems to inform much of the policy focus of the
ANC.  Not having had a definitive statement from the President, we can only
speculate on why he chooses to use the terms first and second economy,
rather than formal and informal economy.  As we shall see, these definitions
matter. The President's view of the second economy includes the unemployed
implying he is using a conceptualisation of the economy that moves beyond a
simple formal-informal dichotomy.

The articulation of the first and second economy conceptualisation of South
Africa by the Presidency coincided, we would argue, with a refocusing of
economic policy in South Africa (see Padayachee and Valodia, 2001).  This
conceptualisation tacitly acknowledges the failure of the trickle down
economic growth policies so central to the post-1996 GEAR era and informs
much of government's more recent emphasis on poverty alleviation.  However,
the dualism suggested by arguments about a 'structural' break between the
first and second economy allow government to argue that its economic
policies have been successful for the first economy (see Naidoo, 2004) and,
as a result of these successes, government is now able to address issues of
poverty and unemployment in the second economy.  As we demonstrate below,
there is in fact a close relationship between the first and second economy
(although admittedly we focus only on the informal economy) and government
policy for the second economy is either absent, and where it does exist, it
is piecemeal and ineffective.

In the absence of a coherent conceptualisation of and any systematic data on
the second economy, we focus, in this paper, on one important element of the
second economy - the informal economy.  We analyse the nature of the
informal economy in South Africa, providing some descriptive statistics and
analysis to highlight the nature and extent of the informal economy.  Given
the present prominence of the 'second economy' concept, we provide some
analysis of the efficacy of current government support measures to the
informal economy, concluding that these are few and far between, patchy and
incoherent, and largely ineffective.  We then examine linkages between
employment in the formal and the informal economy arguing that, contrary to
the views of the President and the ANC, there are in fact fairly close
linkages between the formal economy and the informal economy.  Finally, by
way of conclusion, we use the evidence provided in the paper to comment on
the accuracy and relevance of the 'second economy' concept.

[1] This paper was written for Buhlungu, S., J. Daniel. R. Southall and J.
Lutchman, The State of the Nation: South Africa 2005-2006, Cape Town: HSRC
Press
[i] This paper draws on research conducted for a larger research project on
the informal economy. The overall research project was funded by the IDRC
and SANPAD. The HSRC has commissioned us to write three papers drawing on
this research. Some ideas expressed in this paper draw on the papers
commissioned by the HSRC.

***


Labour Market Discrimination and Its Impact on Credit Absorption Capacity in 
Mozambique Rural Settings: A Conceptual Note

Horacio Zandamela

Introduction
Credit has been viewed as an instrument to improve household income and 
address poverty in Mozambique as well as in other developing countries 
within the context of rural development. Nevertheless, the low-income 
communities of Mozambique experience limited access to credit. Whether this 
situation can be changed, and whether it will lead to development, is the 
problem addressed in this paper. To address this problem two questions are 
posed: one related to the capacity and possibility of expansion of credit, 
i.e. an investigation into the credit absorption capacity of financial 
institutions and farmers; and the other related to the impact of credit 
expansion, including both benefits and constraints of credit expansion.

***

The Role of Civil Society in New Approaches to Development

Horman Chitonge

Abstract
Civil Society[1] has always contributed to the development theory and 
practice. However, the contribution that civil society makes to the 
development discourse is largely determined by the predominant development 
theory of the time. This paper explores the role that civil society has 
played in different development approaches focusing on the opportunities 
that the rights based approach presents. The paper argues that the rights 
based approach presents great opportunities for civil society to influence 
both the development policy and decisions, not only at the national level, 
but also at the international level.[2] Unlike in the earlier approaches to 
development where the role of civil society was seen as taking care of the 
victims of failed development and natural disasters such as drought, famine, 
floods, wars, the rights based provides avenues through which civil society 
can participate meaningfully in the development process. International human 
rights norms such as participation, accountability, transparency, 
empowerment, equality and non-discrimination create avenues through which 
civil society can influence development policy, decisions and outcome.
In order to situate the argument in its context, the first part of the paper 
gives a brief overview of the four major approaches to development prior to 
the rights bases approach. The second part identifies the major innovations 
in the rights-based model. Drawing from the two parts, the third part 
illustrate how the innovations in the rights based approach can translate 
into opportunities for civil society to influence development theory and 
practice.




[1]The term "civil society" can have different meanings. This paper, uses 
the liberal-Hegelian notion of civil society as any form of organization 
between the family and the state; any organization including opposition 
parties, trade unions, social movements, and other associations that are not 
government (Veltmeyer, 2004). Using this view of civil society fits well 
with the rights approach which emphasize participation of any organization 
in any activities in society (Tabbush, 2005). A similar notion of civil 
society is evident in the neo-Gramscian notions that emphasize participation 
(Tabbush, 2005). Under this notion of civil society, the main function of 
civil in general is to act as the conscience of the society in soci-economic 
and political matters. As such the civil society's role in this view is to 
prevent the abuse of state power by holding the public office bearers 
accountable to the people. Demands of accountability from state officials 
have become the main way that civil society are pushing for social and 
political reforms not only at the national level, but at the global level 
especially beginning from the 1990s (Veltmeyer, 2004). In this paper focus 
is on development NGOs as part of civil society.
[2] At the international level, the role of civil society with regard to 
development and human rights has been growing since the 1980s. Tabbush 
(2005) in his review of literature on the role of civil society in global 
governance notes the increasing influence of civil society especially in 
areas of human rights, environmental issues, global trading systems and 
development, noting that environmental and developmental concerns mark the 
turning point in civil society participation in global governance Major UN 
summits have repeatedly called on civil society into partnership (ibid).. 
However, the impact of this growing participation is yet to be assessed.


***

The role of the Labour movement under present conditions of globalization

Ntwala Mwilima

Introduction
The current trends of globalization which is characterized by free trade and 
capital mobility is a big threat for trade unions and workers all over the 
world. Under the current global order, we have observed massive job losses 
which has led to declining membership base for unions and the 
informalization of the labour markets. Regardless of the negative impact of 
the processes of globalization, countries continue to adopt and implement 
economic policies in line with the neo-liberal economic paradigm believing 
that this will encourage the inflow of foreign direct investments into their 
countries and thus create employment. Contrary to this belief, effects of 
neo-liberal policies such SAPs and privatization have led to the 
deregulation of the labour market and retrenchments in the formal sector, 
which has traditionally been the strong base of trade union membership. 
Furthermore, we have observed a shift from secure employment towards the 
creation of precarious employment patterns under the process of 
globalization.

***

On Ubuntu Culture and Economic Development in South Africa:
A Critical Review of Debates.

Simon Mapadimeng

1. Introduction
Debate around the ubuntu/botho culture and its potential developmental role
in SA occurred in the context of the post-colonial era and the subsequent
challenges it presented for the African countries (see Gyeke, 1997). It was
necessitated by imminent collapse of the colonial, apartheid political order
became imminent in the late 1980s and the prospects of the creation of a
democratic order were high; with the prospects of re-entry into the global
community and markets were also high. The debate gained even greater
momentum in the post-apartheid, democratic 1994 period and the end of the
20th century that marked the beginning of the 21st century as a new
millennium. This is the period in which SA and most other African countries
publicly declared the 21st century as the century for renewal and
advancement of the African continent so that African countries become active
and competitive players on the global stage. Consistent with this
declaration were some bold initiatives taken by the African states aimed at
achieving the above goals through strategic positioning of the continent in
the era of increased globalisation. Those measures include amongst others
the formation of regional political and economic blocks such as the Southern
African Development Community (SADC), the New Partnership for Africa's
Development (Nepad), and the conversion of the Organisation of African Unity
(OAU) into the African Union (AU) with a new mandate and renewed focus to
relevant addressing of the new challenges facing Africa. In South Africa
similar initiatives were taken at the country level. They include the
launching of the South African Chapter on African Renaissance1998 at the
conference held in Johannesburg. The conference was attended and addressed
mainly scholars and business and political leaders from across the
continent. Its main objective was to define who Africans are and where they
are going in the global community as well as to formulate practical
strategies and solutions for future action for the benefit of the African
masses (see Makgoba et al, 1999).

Underlying the debate on the African indigenous culture ubuntu/botho, are
the widely held view and claims that this culture has a key role, if not
vital complementary, to play in the socio-economic growth and development
the post-apartheid democratic South Africa. Those holding this view believe
that the strength of the ubuntu/botho culture, which would help to enhance
this role, lies in its unique values and virtues.  This paper provides a
comprehensive and critical review of these debates with the view assessing
the validity and strength of this viewpoint. In so doing both the
opportunities and constraints, if any, are examined in order to determine
the objective conditions in which the ubuntu/botho culture could fulfil this
role.

***

Social Movements in Post Apartheid South Africa:
An Introduction[1]

Richard Ballard

Draft. Please do not quote without consulting author.

Accepted as a chapter in Jones, Peris & Stokke, Kristian (forthcoming) The
Politics of Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa to be published by
Martinus Nijhoff

Introduction

Some of the most influential analysis of post-liberation mobilisation and
opposition in Africa is pessimistic. Fanon observes that former liberation
'militants disappear into the crowd and take the empty title of citizen'
(Fanon 1967: 137). Mamdani warns of the postcolonial 'marriage between
technicism and nationalism' resulting in the demobilisation of social
movements (Mamdani 1996: 21). For Mbembe, political opposition in a
postcolonial context is different to opposition in a colonial context as a
result of the local origins of the postcolonial elite. Whereas colonial
relations are characterised by either resistance or cooperation against an
external oppressor, postcolonial relations are convivial as a result of the
familiarity between the population and now local elite (Mbembe 2001: 104).
Mbembe describes the outcome as a mutual 'zombification' in which the
dominant and dominated are left impotent.

. at any given moment in the postcolonial historical trajectory, the
authoritarian mode can no longer be interpreted strictly in terms of
surveillance, or the politics of coercion. The practices of ordinary
citizens cannot always be read in terms of 'opposition to the state,'
'deconstructing power,' and 'disengagement.' In the postcolony, an 'intimate
tyranny' links the rulers with the ruled - just as obscenity is only another
aspect of munificence, and vulgarity a normal condition of state power.
(Mbembe 2001: 128)

Whereas the need for adversarial struggle for state capture against the
illegitimate apartheid state was clear, such unity of purpose does not
emerge in the context of a democratically elected government. Today's social
movements are no longer affiliated to a political party working towards the
capture of the state, as was the case prior to the democratic transition
(Buhlungu 2004, Bond 2004). Oppositional movements of the democratic era are
more fragmented on what it is that they oppose and what their political
project is. Opponents of the state have to overcome the familiarity that
characterises the postcolonial situation. For Desai, 'It's like marching
against your mother: stoning them, forsaking them, and decrying them' (in
Wren Spaulding 2003).

Perhaps Mbembe's analysis manifests most clearly within the ruling alliance
of the African National Congress (ANC), the Congress of South African Trade
Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), along with the
de facto membership of the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO)
(Zuern 2004). The pillars of the liberation movement were trade unions,
centring the realm of production and the workplace, and civics which
addressed issues related to consumption in the townships and villages. In
post-apartheid South Africa, unions remain active, addressing policy on
formal labour practice, government employment practice of civil servants, as
well as the labour practice of businesses. However, their attempts to oppose
the state's chosen economic path from within the ruling alliance has limited
the extent to which it can block this path. The civic movement has been even
more effectively neutralised, with SANCO being described recently as a
'moribund ally', an 'empty shell' with little capacity for opposition
(Forrest 2003).

Yet despite certain aspects of Mbembe's glum predictions holding true, South
African's have not been reduced to passive recipients of the post-apartheid
order. A large swathe of activism in South Africa is orientated against
government policy on consumption issues. Community movements oppose the
state's failure to provide affordable services (Bond 2004, Buhlungu 2004,
Desai 2003, Dwyer 2004, Egan and Wafer 2004, Pape and McDonald 2002).
Privatisation and cost recovery are seen as key components of this problem.
They also oppose evictions and attempt to secure land tenure (Greenberg
2004, Oldfield and Stokke 2004). The state has been opposed on its HIV/AIDS
policies and, in particular, its reluctance to provide antiretroviral
treatment (Friedman & Mottiar 2004).

It is not necessarily the case that social movements oppose the state
itself, and there is growing interest in the way struggles can confront
corporations (Cock 2004), multilateral organisations (Rustomjee 2004),
institutions (Cock 2004, Smith 2004), or even other parts of civil society
(Kirsten 2004). Corporations and the government are targeted on issues of
pollution. Communities alongside dirty industry have brought tremendous
pressure on these industries and won significant gains of the reduction of
pollution. Movements also seek to counter various forms of social prejudice,
which also manifests in government policy. Struggles against discrimination
by sexual minorities, women, foreigners, and others, are often targeted both
at state policies but have as a broader objective the disruption of social
norms (Amisi & Ballard 2004, Dirsuweit 2004, Hassim 2004). Finally, there
are movements that oppose multilateral organisations and foreign
corporations in relation to unplayable or odious debt, or in terms of
claiming compensation from businesses that operated in South Africa during
apartheid. These include Jubilee, Jubilee South Africa and Jubilee South
(Rustomjee 2004).

The intention of this paper is to contextualise the emergence of a new set
of social movements in South Africa, to examine some of their strategies and
programmes, and to map out some of the lines of debate in relation to their
politics. In particular, the discussion reflects on the predicaments that
result from opposing a democratically elected government. Activists, for
example, face the constant choice between participating in the processes of
government and opposing government. A related choice is between holding to
the view that good can be extracted from the government, despite what is
seen as its misguided path, and the view that the government is more or less
irredeemable and, by extension, to be replaced. For many activists,
struggles in contemporary South Africa may be the building blocks of a new
opposition the state. Capitalism and the market remain a core concern, and
the ANC's shift towards a pro-growth strategy based on market liberalisation
and a restrained national budget is understood to be the primary cause of
worsening poverty in South Africa. Such activists therefore define their
project as a counter-hegemonic or anti-systemic one. To put it crudely,
counter-hegemonic activists feel that the revolutionary economic change that
was anticipated with democracy has yet to materialise, and this remains the
major project. Some explicitly describe themselves as true custodians of the
liberation tradition; a title, of course, also claimed by the ruling ANC
party (Buhlungu 2004, McKinley and Naidoo 2004: 19).

Yet the choice between participation and opposition with a view to rupture
is, to some extent, academic. Struggles in post-apartheid South Africa
respond, in the first instance, to particular manifestations of exclusion,
poverty and marginality. They are very often local and immediate; they are
pragmatic and quite logical responses to everyday hardships (Barchiesi 2004,
Desai 2003, Egan and Wafer 2004). Activists operate to achieve direct relief
for marginalised groupings on particular issues. Such activists do not focus
primarily on opposing the state's economic path, although they may do so by
default, but rather on more specific struggles. This is not to say that they
necessarily agree with the current national programme but rather that they
choose to focus their attention on particular gains in relation to
particular issues. In such situations, engagement with the state may indeed
be on the cards. The country has, after all, installed a democratically
elected government and given it an overwhelming mandate to pursue its
programmes for overcoming the injustices of apartheid. Regardless of the
effectiveness of these programmes, rhetorical interest in resolving poverty
in South Africa allows considerable room for activists to manoeuvre. They
recognise that the current situation allows many opportunities to nudge,
coerce or force the state and other institutions to address various aspects
of marginality. In particular, movements make extensive and flexible use of
the discourse of rights to add legitimacy to their activities (Greenstein
2003). Even the more militant movements who engage in technically illegal
activities such as reconnections and land occupations use the language of
rights to invest their activities with a sense that they are endorsed by a
higher code of 'good'.

[1] This paper draws from a larger project on social movements located at
the Centre for Civil Society and School of Development Studies at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal. While this paper is somewhat general,
comprehensive case studies of particular movements can be accessed via the
CCS web site http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/ .

***

Stitching For Survival:
Home-Based Clothing Operations in the Informal Economy -
The Experience of two Women in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa

Renato Palmi

Introduction
This paper reflects on the literature available on the informal economy,
both globally and within the South African context, and sets out to
establish links between the literature and 'lived realities' in this arena.
The common thread throughout the paper is the focus on the clothing and
textile industries; in particular, the experience and perspectives of two
female home-based workers Jane* and Ann* are documented. The paper also
discusses how globalisation, trade liberalisation, and both illegal and
legal imports of cheaper goods are impacting on the formal and informal
dimensions of this economic sector and their impacts on the operations of
the two home-based initiatives cited in this paper. Through interviews with
the two key informants, it was established that the obstacles facing
informal workers are common, whether they be based in urban or rural areas.
Their accounts, and that of an official from the eThekwini Municipality who
is tasked with regularising support for informal trading, indicate that the
global and local value chains in the context of clothing are not only
placing pressure on formal businesses, but also on informal businesses.
These accounts also mention that in the local setting, some companies
exploit the informal sector for monetary gain through the casualisation of
labour.

***

South African subimperialism

Patrick Bond


Introduction[1]

Imperialism, subimperialism and anti-imperialism are all settling into
durable patterns and alignments in Africa - especially South Africa - even
if the continent's notoriously confusing political discourses sometimes
conceal the collisions and collusions. 'All Bush wants is Iraqi oil,' the
highest-profile African, Nelson Mandela, charged in January 2003. 'Their
friend Israel has weapons of mass destruction but because it's [the US]
ally, they won't ask the UN to get rid of it... Bush, who cannot think
properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust. If there is a
country which has committed unspeakable atrocities, it is the United States
of America.'[2] Mandela's remarks were soon echoed at a demonstration of
4,000 people outside the US embassy in Pretoria, by African National
Congress (ANC) secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe: 'Because we are endowed
with several rich minerals, if we don't stop this unilateral action against
Iraq today, tomorrow they will come for us.'[3]
          This was not merely conjunctural anti-war rhetoric. Mandela's
successor Thabo Mbeki was just as vitriolic when addressing the broader
context of imperial power, for example when welcoming dignitaries to the
August 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development: 'We have
all converged at the Cradle of Humanity to confront the social behaviour
that has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. This
social behaviour has produced and entrenches a global system of
apartheid.'[4]
Mbeki's efforts to insert the phrase 'global apartheid' in the summit's
final document failed, due to opposition by then US secretary of state Colin
Powell, who in turn was heckled by both civil society activists and Third
World leaders in the final plenary session.
          A year later, in the immediate run-up to the Cancun World Trade
Organization ministerial in Cancun, Malaysia's Straights Times reported
Mbeki's comment on the global justice movements at a Kuala Lumpur seminar:
'They may act in ways you and I may not like and break windows in the street
but the message they communicate relates.'[5] Moreover, in light of
Pretoria's
centrality to the India-Brazil-South Africa bloc and the G20 group often
credited (incorrectly) with causing the Cancun WTO summit's collapse and
threatening the Hong Kong WTO summit, the logical impression is that the
anti-imperialist cause has an important state ally in Africa.
         But these outbursts can best be understood as 'talking left,
walking right', insofar as they veil the underlying dynamics of
accumulation, class struggle and geopolitics.[6] Alongside parallel
economic, ideological and military functions played by the governments of
Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Algeria, Uganda and Kenya (amongst others),
Pretoria's crucial role as Washington's main subimperial African partner
requires unpacking.
          For example, in early 2003, at the same time as Mandela's
outburst, the ANC government permitted three Iraq-bound warships to dock and
refuel in Durban, and the state-owned weapons manufacturer Denel sold $160
million worth of artillery propellants and 326 hand-held laser range finders
to the British army, and 125 laser-guidance sights to the US Marines.[7]
South Africa's independent left immediately formed a 300-organization
Anti-War Coalition which periodically led demonstrations of 5,000-20,000
protesters in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. Despite the
embarrassment, Pretoria refused the Coalition's demands to halt the sales.
George W. Bush rewarded Mbeki with an official visit just as the dust from
the Baghdad invasion had settled, in July 2003. As Business Day
editorialized, the 'abiding impression' left from Bush's Pretoria stopover
was 'of a growing, if not intimate trust'.[8]
          In the course of organizing large demonstrations against Bush in
Pretoria and Cape Town, the Anti-War Coalition complained, 'The ANC's public
relations strategy around the war directly contradicts their actions, which
are pro-war and which have contributed to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi
civilians.'[9] But public relations finally caught up to reality, as
Mandela, too, recanted his criticism of Bush in May 2004.[10]
          How much of this political inconsistency linking Pretoria and the
Washington-London imperialist axis was merely contingent? In contrast, how
badly does the world capitalist empire need Africa for surplus and resource
extraction and the deepening of global neoliberalism, and South Africa for
legitimacy and deputy-sheriff support? After all, it should be clear that
the imposition of neoliberal logic, in the form of concrete policies, has
amplified Africa's uneven and combined development.
          As Stephen Gill has shown, continual enforcement of imperialism is
crucial, both through a 'disciplinary neoliberalism' entailing surveillance
and a 'new constitutionalism' that locks these policies in over time.[11]
Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin have conducted emphatic studies of empire's
management capacities via the power and centrality of Washington, linking
the neoconservative military-industrial complex in the Bush White House and
Pentagon to the Washington Consensus nexus of the US Treasury, Bretton Woods
Institutions and Wall Street.[12] Sub-Saharan Africa may be a site to
demonstrate both the structurally-rooted need to extract surpluses (based on
crisis tendencies discussed in Chapter 2) and agency: the importance of
Washington's combined political and economic power. In his recent survey,
Robert Biel identified two central contradictions in US imperialism
vis-à-vis Africa:

First, central accumulation always tends to siphon away the value which
could form the basis of state-building, bringing with it the risk of 'state
failure', leading to direct intervention. Second, the international system
becomes increasingly complex, characterized by a range of new actors and
processes and direct penetration of local societies in a way which bypasses
the state-centric dimension.[13]

Because of the complexity associated with 'indirect rule', and especially
the difficulty of coopting all relevant actors, Biel continues, 'A reversion
to the deployment of pure power is always latent, and the post-September
11th climate has brought it directly to the fore. This is a significant
weakness of international capitalism.'
          If modern imperialism necessarily combines neoliberalism and
'accumulation by dispossession' in peripheral sites like Africa along with
increasing subservience to the USA's indirect, neocolonial rule, the next
logical step is to locate South Africa's own position as regional
subimperial hegemon within the same matrices. That requires identifying
areas where imperialism is facilitated in Africa by the
Pretoria-Johannesburg state-capitalist nexus, in part through Mbeki's New
Partnership for Africa's Development and in part through the independent
(though related) logic of private capital. Finally, in response to this
subjugation, we can consider what kinds of analyses, strategies, tactics and
alliances are being posed by serious African anti-imperialists. First,
however, we must clarify imperialism's militarist and geopolitical
inclinations.

NOTES
[1]. This contribution is in two parts, combining chapters from two
forthcoming books: Bond, P. (2006), Looting Africa: The Economics of
Exploitation, London, Zed Books and Pietermaritzburg, University of
KwaZulu-Natal Press, Chapter Six; and Bond, P. (2006), Talk Left, Walk
Right: South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms, Trenton, Africa World Press
and Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Afterword to the
Second Edition.
[2]. South African Press Association, 29 January 2003.
[3]. Business Day, 20 February 2003.
[4]. Mbeki, T. (2002), 'Address by President Mbeki at the Welcome Ceremony
of the WSSD,' Johannesburg, 25 August.
[5]. The Straights Times, 3 September 2003.
[6]. Bond, P. (2004), Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa's Frustrated
Global Reforms, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
[7]. Clarno, A. (2003), 'Denel and the South African Government: Profiting
from the War on Iraq,' Khanya Journal, 3, March.
[8]. Business Day, 11 July 2003.
[9]. Anti-War Coalition Press Statement, 1 July 2003.
[10]. Mail and Guardian, 24 May 2004.
[11]. Gill, S. (2003), Power and Resistance in the New World Order,
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
[12]. Panitch, L. and S.Gindin (2003), 'Global Capitalism and American
Empire,' in L.Panitch and C.Leys, Socialist Register 2004, London, Merlin
Press and New York, Monthly Review Press.
[13]. Biel, R. (2003), 'Imperialism and International Governance: The Case
of US Policy towards Africa', Review of African Political Economy, 95, p.87.

***

The social formation of capitalism, fossil energy and oil-imperialism

Elmar Altvater

The economy has a monetary and value dimension (value of the gross national
product, of world trade, of FDI, of financial flows etc. and its dynamics),
it has a material basis with regard to production and consumption,
transportation and distribution. The economy is also an element of social
communication. Thus, economic globalisation is a globalised and globalising
process of monetary and value processes, of transformations of matter and
energy, particularly of fossil energy-sources into labour-energy, and last
not least of social relations and contradictions. Transnational corporations
are a good example of this complex societal relation. They have established
commodity chains all across the world. Therefore, it is possible for them to
locate production processes which are labour intensive in places where
labour is cheap, or environmentally harmful processes in those places where
environmental laws and regulations are lagging behind more developed
standards. The decisions in the first place consider values and prices,
profit margins and returns on capital invested. But they have due to the
material dimension of economic processes an important impact on nature.
Moreover, they have the potential to reshape social relations.

Consumption also has environmental effects because of the globalisation of
the western way of life. The "westernisation" of the world follows a model
of consumption which intensively builds on a high degree of mobility, on the
establishment of the "spatial fix" of a huge and thus nature consuming
infrastructure. The natural environment more and more is supplemented by a
"built environment". The effects on natural reproduction on the local, the
national and on the global level mostly are negative. Global transportation
is responsible for the consumption of big amounts of fossil energy and thus
for an increase of CO2-emissions and for the aggravating climate crises.
Preventive measures are so difficult because they have to address the
structures and processes of globalisation, the monetary and value dimension
as well as the material and energetic transformations and processes of
social communication.

At the first glance it seems as if services and finance do not exert
negative effects on the environment. However, the assumption of a "virtual
economy" of bits and bytes is bullshit (in the sense of Frankfurt 2005) and
nothing but a grand illusion. Financial markets exert financial repression
on the real economy, enforce the debt-service of financial claims of
creditors (banks and funds), which are only affordable in the case of high
real growth rates. Therefore, finance exerts indirectly a high pressure on
the consumption of energy as well as of material resources. Due to the
financial instabilities and crises, so visible during the last decades, the
financial sphere is apt of jeopardizing social stability, of pushing large
strata of the population into informality and poverty, and even the World
Bank admits that these nuisances are highly responsible for ecological
degradation in large parts of the world.

The environment in synchronic terms includes the energy system, climate,
biodiversity, soils, water, woods, deserts, ice sheets, etc. and
diachronically the evolution of nature. Therefore, it is necessary to
analyse the impact of human (above all: economic) activities on all these
dimensions of the comprehensive environment. The complexity of nature and
the positive and negative feed-back mechanisms between the dimensions of the
environment only partly are known. Therefore, environmental policy has to be
performed in the shadow of a high degree of insecurity. Human activities,
particularly the economic ones and their effects on the natural processes
are the central elements of the so called man-nature relationship (societal
relation of man to nature), which also includes feed back mechanisms on the
totality of the social, political and economic system. Only a holistic
endeavour of integrating environmental aspects into discourses of political
economy, political science, sociology, cultural studies etc. enables a
coherent understanding of the environmental problems and can give advice for
the elaboration of adequate political responses to the challenges of the
ongoing ecological crisis. Moreover, the exploitation of natural resources
and their degradation due to a growing quantity of pollutants results in a
man-made artificial scarcity (or shortage) so that conflicts on the access
to natural resources are coming up. The environment more and more is
transformed into a contested object of human greed. The societal relation of
man to nature therefore also includes environmental conflicts and even wars
on resources. The reason is the contradiction between the necessity of
certain resources for human survival and for the working of the modern
economy and the scarcity which is becoming the main characteristics of many
resources: of land, of fresh water and above all of oil.

***

Governance and the Economic Partnership Agreements Negotiations : a
contestation of the European Union's interests and exclusion of the poor
constituencies in Eastern and Southern Africa

Richard Kamidza


Africa-Europe economic relations spans for over 500 years and is
characterized by massive extraction and exploitation of resources from the
former, which fueled industrial expansion of the latter. This vertically
integrated the economies to Western capitalism. In the process, the colonial
states became the main suppliers of raw materials and consumers of
manufactured goods, a position that has remained entrenched in the
ideological thrust and the economic needs of the European economies.

The relationship is between unequal partners in both economic and political
terms as evidenced by their levels of socio-economic and political
development. On the one hand, Europe through her long-term capitalist agenda
and vision, has eventually assumed a dominant role in determining and
controlling the socio-economic and political affairs of African countries
through trade regimes. This is in addition to becoming a major donor to
individual countries and regional institutions such as the Common Market for
Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Southern African Development
Community (SADC), the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS)
and the East African Community (EAC). The European Union (EU) has become an
important trading partner, and is currently sponsoring preparations of the
on-going economic partnership agreements (EPAs) negotiations with the
Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) member-states. Furthermore, Europe has
assumed greater control over the developmental agenda of the continent,
hence continues to set conditions that facilitate further capitalist
exploitation, expansion and hegemony. In this agenda, European states are
able to protect their industries, farmers, service providers and other
producers as well as consumers through tariff escalations, quotas, tariff
peaks, rules of origin, patent legislation, subsidies, export credits, tied
aid, etc. thereby preventing Africa's industrialization in spite of the
continent remaining economically stagnant if not deteriorating.

On the other hand, Africa is known for its massive poverty,
underdevelopment, declining industrial development, social crisis,
unemployment and political instability among many socio-economic and
political ills. These are symptoms of a system that exploit the continent.
Through developmental aid and debt control, Europe has strong influence in
the internal affairs of the respective countries, regional developments,
events and policy formulations and their implementation. This influence and
structured imbalance is reflected in the on-going EPAs negotiations in which
EU institutions have remained central to the process at the national and
regional level.

Trade negotiations become an instrument that ensures perpetual dominance of
the EU, reflecting its crisis at any time. Currently the EU crisis is linked
to lack of economic growth, and lack of access to use expansive
stabilization policies/counter-cyclical policies under their Stabilization
Pact, increasing unemployment, enlargement, and profitability crises. What
the EU needs now is control over resources, the main objectives is to access
African markets both for basic government services, financial and
telecommunication services; and manufactured goods and security for its
investments. Rhetorically, EU is interpreting this to mean developmental
processes likely to benefit the continent.

While the main objective of negotiations is assumed to be a win-win-game,
for countries in Africa, particularly the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA)
sub-region, the on-going EPAs negotiation remains complex without clear
outcomes, and are between two unequal parties in both economic and political
terms as reflected by huge disparities in socio-economic and political
conditions between the two regions. Weak, poor and fragmented countries in
the ESA configuration negotiate with largely strong, enlarged, powerful and
a united EU.

There is a tendency by the stronger party to favor multilateral agreements
regarding policies, so that these policies become irreversible and protected
by the Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
However, when they do not make their way in the WTO, their fall back
position is the bilateral level. After having agreed at the bilateral level,
countries may be less hesitant to accept multilateral rules, as these rules
are already a part of their domestic policies.

Given the above, this paper exposes deficiencies in governance in the
ongoing trade EPAs negotiations between the EU and the ESA configuration.
Further, the paper argues that EPAs negotiations process is contestation of
the EU interests and the exclusion of the poor constituencies in the ESA
region. In this respect, Chapter 2 of the paper discusses the trajectories
of Africa - Europe economic relations that created and natured the latter's
hegemonic powers in trade negotiations with its former colonies. Chapter 3
interrogates governance in international trade negotiations; Chapter 4
assesses ESA-EU negotiating teams and institutions; Chapter 5 discusses EPAs
as a project designed to advanced and protect EU's economic and political
interests; and Chapter 6 assesses the involvement of the poor constituencies
in the EPAs negotiations process. The paper concludes with policy
recommendations for future trade negotiations for the ESA region.

***

Property for People, Not for Profit: Alternatives to the Global Tyranny of
Capital

Ulrich Duchrow

Since the breakdown of historic socialism the category of private property
has practically disappeared from the discussion on economic justice. The
Cold War alternative was: private property or state ownership. As the latter
has become obsolete there seems to be "no alternative" to private ownership.
The discussion on neo-liberal globalisation normally deals with the three
main characteristics: liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation. But
even in the growing struggle against privatisation of public services there
is hardly any reflection about the fundamental role of private property in
the make-up of the dominating political and economic system leading to so
much impoverishment of people and destruction of nature. The thesis of this
essay is that we cannot design and implement alternatives to neo-liberal
globalisation creating poverty, exclusion and destruction unless we tackle
the issue of private property.[1]

[1] The argument of this article is extensively unfolded in Ulrich Duchrow/
Franz J. Hinkelammert, Property for People, Not for Profit: Alternatives to
the Global Tyranny of Capital, Zed Books, London in cooperation with the
World Council of Churches, Geneva and CIIR, London.