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16378 results in Political theory

Page 137 of 819

  • Chapter 1 - The Context of Economic and Social Policy-Making in the ANC

  • Vishnu Padayachee, Robert Van Niekerk
  • Book:
    Shadow of Liberation
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 January 2022
    Print publication:
    01 October 2019, pp 1-8

  • Summary

    Talks about the transition to democracy in South Africa began fitfully and largely in secret in the mid-1980s. But President FW de Klerk's announcement on 2 February 1990 that the apartheid regime was unbanning the African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation movements, and the release of Nelson Mandela nine days later, took the transition onto a much higher plane and at a rapid rate. That South Africa remained the only fully capitalist economy on the continent at that time is not in doubt. While we do not subscribe to the notion of ‘South African exceptionalism’, we maintain that its capitalism was an extreme, stunted and distorted one. All of these characteristics, in different ways, had a bearing on the very nature of the transition, including on economic and social policy options and choices. Two such features are worth noting here. Firstly, South African capital represented by white-owned conglomerates such as Anglo American Corporation and Sanlam, both established around the end of the Second World War, remained powerful, globally connected and influential as the twentieth century wound to a close. Secondly, the apartheid regime's economic institutions remained well-resourced and internationally connected, despite decades of sanctions and the crisis of the apartheid state. These state institutions included the Ministry of Finance, the South African Reserve Bank, the Central Economic Advisory Services, a number of regional, national and provincial development finance institutions, and the national statistics agency (Central Statistical Services).

    The real power among the constituencies engaged in negotiations lay in the hands of white business and in the institutions of the late apartheid state, as journalist and author Martin Plaut argues: ‘The men who had run South Africa for decades also embarked on a process designed to incorporate senior members of the ANC. Radical economic policies were dropped in favour of more conventional macro-economic prescriptions’ (2012: 31). As Plaut suggests, this was no accident; it had been thought through by the old regime and it was to prove decisive in many economic policy battles, including, as we show, the crucial issue of the independence of the South African Reserve Bank (see chapter 6).

  • Chapter 4 - Economic Policy Debates during a Decade of Liberation, 1985–1993

  • Vishnu Padayachee, Robert Van Niekerk
  • Book:
    Shadow of Liberation
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 January 2022
    Print publication:
    01 October 2019, pp 73-108

  • Summary

    This chapter and the next lie at the heart of our project in so far as they relate to the key economic debates during the transition to democracy. Drawing on the long history of policy debates that we have traced in previous chapters, we try to make sense of what transpired in the economic policy debate in the crucial first half of the 1990s. For something did unfold, but what exactly, and why? Was the policy shift away from the ANC's traditional values the result of some grand conspiracy by a small elite in the ANC bent on selling out the legacy of African Claims and the Freedom Charter? Or was it the outcome of a rather chaotic, messy and haphazard unfolding of events under conditions of pressure, where an underprepared ANC leadership was outmanoeuvred by the still well-resourced economic institutions of the apartheid state and by the local big business sector? Were the international financial institutions and Western governments the key influence? Or was it something else?

    It would be naive to try to advance some kind of ‘mathematical weighting’ to all the factors that may explain what unfolded in the economic policy debate within the democratic movement in the 1990s. This book is not a ‘who done it’ mystery. Rather, our aim is to rely on our training as academics, our political instincts and our judgement to lay it all out before our readership, as we understand it and based on the available evidence we were able to secure. We use evidence from various public and private archives, from the growing number of recently published memoirs of leading ANC politicians, from other secondary sources and documents, and most importantly from dozens of in-depth interviews with key actors from across the political spectrum that have not been aired before in any coherent and systematic way.

    Firstly, discussion of the evolution of ANC economic policy thinking in the 1990s and the perceived radical shift from the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) cannot really be understood without some recognition of the economic policy changes that the National Party government had been instituting since the late 1970s. Secondly, we need to understand economic policy developments within the ANC Alliance as a whole, including in the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the Economic Trends Research Group set up by Cosatu in the mid-1980s.

  • Chapter 7 - South African Reserve Bank Independence

  • Vishnu Padayachee, Robert Van Niekerk
  • Book:
    Shadow of Liberation
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 January 2022
    Print publication:
    01 October 2019, pp 179-198

  • Summary

    Since its establishment in 1921, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) was both legally and practically subordinate to the Ministry of Finance and to the government of the day, despite the fact that it was wholly owned by private shareholders. It had neither the mandate to set independent goals to achieve nor full operational independence to realise them. Its mandate was eclectic and at various times included price stability, exchange rate stability and economic growth.

    It is important at the outset to gain some understanding of government–SARB interactions in the late apartheid era to better understand the significance of what followed in the ‘negotiations’ over central bank independence in the 1990s. We learn from former President FW de Klerk that Gerhard de Kock regularly appeared at Cabinet meetings during his tenure as governor to make presentations on the economy, a practice that De Klerk apparently stopped soon after he became president in 1989. Yet, we also know that Governor de Kock met De Klerk in Hermanus (where both had holiday homes) from time to time to discuss economic issues in general terms. De Klerk's views on central bank independence may have arisen out of these meetings, but also from his general belief that the state should not interfere in economic matters, including the work of the Reserve Bank. De Kock was clearly an important influence on De Klerk on such matters (De Klerk interview, 28 January 2019).

    De Klerk's decision to end the practice of the governor attending some Cabinet meetings appears to be in stark contrast to developments in the 1980s. There is a view that during PW Botha's term as prime minister, then president, he intervened directly in monetary policy matters (see Rossouw and Padayachee 2011: S60–61; Rossouw and Padayachee 2019). This is illustrated by the ‘infamous’ Primrose by-election on 29 November 1984, when President Botha allegedly instructed Governor de Kock to reduce the interest rate in order to win the support of heavily indebted farmers in that constituency, in what appeared to be a close contest between the governing National Party and the opposition Conservative Party. Despite official denials, the governor complied with this directive from the president and dropped rates.

  • Chapter 6 - Making Sense of the Economic Policy Debates

  • Vishnu Padayachee, Robert Van Niekerk
  • Book:
    Shadow of Liberation
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 January 2022
    Print publication:
    01 October 2019, pp 143-178

  • Summary

    OPPOSING INTERPRETATIONS

    A number of analysts have attempted to explain how all the developments in policy-making discussed in chapter 4 happened, in particular why the ANC made the choices it did regarding social and economic policy from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.

    To date, two broad approaches to the explanation of these events can be discerned: one best articulated by Patrick Bond (2000) in Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neo-Liberalism in South Africa; the other advanced by Alan Hirsch (2005) in Season of Hope: Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki. Our analysis departs from both, though we do share some elements of Bond's argument.

    Bond is correct when he notes that there is yet ‘no conclusive statement about what is happening and how we should confront it until more arguments are tested against time and opposing view points’ (2000: 2–3). We began our project 15 years after Bond made this statement and 26 years since the unbanning of the ANC. We believe that this distance from those heady and hotly contested events does offer some advantages, especially as we have interviewed many of the actors in that unfolding drama, from opposing sides, hopefully satisfying the point made by Bond of the need to seek and understand opposing viewpoints. But we do not expect that everyone will agree with our interpretation. We are especially sensitive to the fact that our own colleagues and comrades in the Alliance1 may find our interpretation difficult to accept, but this is how we see it based on our analysis of the evidence secured and our understanding. We fully expect future commentators to cover similar terrain, and who knows if they will come to similar conclusions to us or to very different views.

    Bond's view is neatly summed up as follows: ‘A large part of the drought experienced in the realm of macroeconomic policy – which would, by 1996, decisively rule out the implementation of RDP [Reconstruction and Development Programme] social promises – stemmed from intellectual retreat by select ANC leaders’ (2000: 54). Such a retreat, it would appear, arose out of the nature of South Africa's capitalism and its integration into global circuits of ‘uneven and combined’ development, which locked in the policy options open to the ANC leadership during the transition to democracy.

  • Chapter 3 - Incarceration, Exile and Homecoming, c.1960–c.1991

  • Vishnu Padayachee, Robert Van Niekerk
  • Book:
    Shadow of Liberation
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 January 2022
    Print publication:
    01 October 2019, pp 27-72

  • Summary

    In 1961, the ANC was declared a banned organisation. Many of its leaders were arrested; others had to go underground or flee the country for Lusaka, London and other parts of the world sympathetic to their cause. The years that followed required a whosesale reorganistion of the movement in a difficult global context dominated by Cold War considerations. The West provided little support for the ANC, while offering considerable financial and political support to the apartheid regime. The role of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in tipping off the South African authorites about Nelson Mandela's whereabouts, which led to his arrest near Howick, Natal, in August 1962, has been well documented. The US Consul in Durban, Donald Rickard, was the CIA operative who provided the information. The arrest had the effect of seriously setting back the struggle against the apartheid regime (Garcia 2016: n.d.). In London, Oliver Tambo secured a base for the ANC, from which it could begin the massive task of raising funds, developing new political strategies and growing international support under Cold War conditions. And in Lusaka, the ANC began, with limited resources, to establish a rudimentary living and working base, as well as the elaborate machinery and structures, to wage the military and propaganda campaign against the apartheid state (Macmillan 2013). In all this, the role of its (acting) president, Tambo, loomed large. But we begin this chapter on an island within view of Cape Town’s Table Mountain, which used to be a leper colony and is today one of the wonders of the new world.

    ROBBEN ISLAND

    The winter of 1964 on Robben Island, when Mandela and six other Rivonia prisoners arrived there, was the coldest that anyone could remember. So fierce were the Atlantic winds sweeping across the island that prisoners working in the quarries were numbed to the bone, hardly able to raise their picks … [The cell of the man who would forever be remembered as the world's most famous prisoner] was so cold he slept fully dressed in prison garb. Outside the cell was fixed a white card giving his name and identification number: 466/64 (Meredith 1997: 281).

    While robust, organised discussions occurred on matters of political economy and strategies of political liberation, very little of what we could describe as economic and social policy debates occurred within ANC or other circles on Robben Island.

  • Chapter 9 - Interpretation and Conclusion

  • Vishnu Padayachee, Robert Van Niekerk
  • Book:
    Shadow of Liberation
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 January 2022
    Print publication:
    01 October 2019, pp 227-234

  • Summary

    Ruling national liberation movements‚ not least in southern Africa‚ were stagnating partly as a result of internal weaknesses and largely as a result of horrific apartheid destabilisation. The social democratic tradition was a pale and rather cynical shadow of its former self. Neo-liberalism appeared to be the only show in town. Thabo Mbeki bought into it‚ and it bought into him. There was an affinity in temperament. Shock therapy was the recipe. Out of the blue‚ zap the economy with undebated‚ written in stone‚ macro policy. What's the point of policy debate when all the answers are pre-given and managerial in character? All the old isms (as someone put it) had now become wasms. Ideology was dead‚ history had ended (Cronin 2016: n.p.).

    Our interpretation

    Evidence from three years of research on this project leads us to argue that the narrative and the subsequent explanations for the compromises of the 1990s are far more complex than most monocausal explanations suggest. Some nascent ideas about economic and social policy can be traced back to African Claims (1943) and the Freedom Charter (1955), and to the Morogoro Conference (1969). But the intensity and contestation over such policy escalated considerably as democracy neared. As we have shown, economic and social policy debates in the transition era occurred at formal constitutional negotiations as well as through a variety of research think tanks, such as the Macroeconomic Research Group (MERG), within institutions of the state, in and through the progressive union movement and in business through various scenario-planning exercises.

    So as to avoid any misunderstandings, we stress that our conclusions are based only on the areas of the research we have chosen to investigate – that is, on aspects of economic and social policy debates from 1943 to 1996. As far as formal constitutional negotiations are concerned, from Mac Maharaj, Ronnie Kasrils, Pallo Jordan and Jeremy Cronin, among others, we came to hear that other policy debates, especially over constitutional principles, security and defence, were very different and we have no reason to doubt their versions. In these (mainly political) areas, the ANC negotiating teams were better prepared and clearly emerged as ‘winners’.

  • Chapter 5 - On the Way to GEAR, 1994–1996

  • Vishnu Padayachee, Robert Van Niekerk
  • Book:
    Shadow of Liberation
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    20 January 2022
    Print publication:
    01 October 2019, pp 109-142

  • Summary

    READY TO GOVERN

    Surprisingly little is known about an important and official ANC document that addressed economic policy. This was the Ready to Govern (RTG) document approved at the ANC's May 1992 policy conference. In order to make more sense of the path to the ANC-led government's Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme in 1996, we need to backtrack a little in time to the 1992 policy document. Tito Mboweni makes no reference to RTG in his paper on formulating policy for a democratic South Africa, though he does observe that ‘formulating economic policy has been one of the most difficult and challenging tasks confronting the democratic forces’ (Mboweni 1994: 69). This echoes a comment he made in a letter to the Macroeconomic Research Group (MERG) director, Vella Pillay, in November 1993 (Letter in Vishnu Padayachee private archive).

    In late May 1992, the document that came to be titled Ready to Govern was debated and adopted by the ANC. A section of the document was labelled ‘Economic Policy’. An economics commission attended by about 100 delegates (including Mboweni, Alec Erwin and Ben Turok) gave careful attention to a draft document entitled ‘The Growth Path for the New South Africa’, prepared by Mboweni. A vigorous debate ensued about matters centred around the absence of the word ‘development’ in the title of the paper (Turok 2003: 261) and about nationalisation and privatisation. Nelson Mandela himself entered the debate, warning the conference that nationalisation would meet much opposition in the West. Turok claims he opposed any attempts to rule out the option of public ownership, and the matter was only resolved after the conference ended with a watered-down commitment to the public sector’s role within a mixed economy (Turok 2003: 262). Neverthless, it would appear as if RTG was the first official policy document adopted at a full conference by the ANC since the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1956. For this reason, its significance cannot be underestimated, though its contents were rather vague and its line some-what populist. RTG was essentially an ANC document, driven by the Department of Economic Planning (DEP), and in which the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) were more minor players.

  • Quality, Equity, Autonomy: Malaysia's Education Reforms Examined

  • Hwok Aun Lee
  • Book:
    Quality, Equity, Autonomy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    31 January 2020
    Print publication:
    26 September 2019, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    • The Pakatan Harapan (PH) government promised education reforms before getting elected in 2018, and presently grapples with the complexities of making good on those pledges while seeking to negotiate continuity and change with regard to the previous administration's Malaysian Education Blueprint launched in 2013.

    • This article situates the education reforms in the context of Malaysia's highly centralized administration, embedded practices and policy initiatives of recent years. Discussion focuses on three areas—quality, equity, autonomy—where PH has more distinctly differentiated itself from its predecessor.

  • – On the quality of national schools, efforts to alleviate teachers’ bureaucratic work load and enhance the schooling experience mark a positive start. However, transforming mindsets and practices will require more systemic changes, critical self-reflection, and sustained efforts on difficult matters, particularly in basic schooling and technical and vocational programmes.

  • – On equity, the government's consistent attention to Bottom 40 (B40) households progressively allocates opportunity, and continual need to address ethnic concerns poses steep challenges. However, policy responses tend to unfold in an ad hoc manner, and the balancing of ethnic interests lacks clarity and coherence.

  • – On autonomy, at the institutional level, legislative overhaul in higher education is in the works, while at the personal level, academic freedom clearly thrives more under PH administration. Meaningful and effective reform will hinge on devolution of power away from central government, institutionalization of autonomy, and depoliticization of the system.

  • Quality, Equity, Autonomy: Malaysia's Education Reforms Examined

  • Hwok Aun Lee
  • Book:
    Quality, Equity, Autonomy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    31 January 2020
    Print publication:
    26 September 2019, pp 1-36

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Reforming the education system is arguably Malaysia's most paramount development challenge, and also one of the most daunting and difficult for the still fledgling Pakatan Harapan (PH) government. The menu of areas earmarked for reform is comprehensive, encompassing early (pre-primary), primary, secondary and higher levels of education, and covers policy questions from lofty philosophical heights down to ground-level operational concerns. A non-exhaustive list includes the enjoyment of education, quality of public schools, multiple secondary school certification and university entry systems, teachers’ bureaucratic workload and other morale- and efficacy-inhibiting issues, diffused and underperforming technical and vocational institutions, financing of the system and financial aid for students, serious allegations of misconduct and fraudulent practices in higher education institutions, and quotidian matters such as the weight of school bags and the colour of school shoes. Adding a further layer of complexity, PH inherited from its predecessors an ambitious education agenda, and has yet to clarify which plans will be continued, altered, or jettisoned. PH has repeatedly committed to modify, not overhaul, ongoing reforms, and to focus on more effective implementation. Hence, it is pertinent for us to review the Malaysian Education Blueprint (MEB) to set the context for this article.

    The pre-election promises and post-election commitments are too broad-ranging for this article, requiring a selection of key issues. Merely cataloguing the programmes would also fail to do justice to the dynamic process that has unfolded. In the first year of PH's administration, some issues less salient or even absent in PH's manifesto have risen to the fore, while some seeming priorities in the manifesto have taken a relative back seat (Lee 2018). This article evaluates the reform agenda—based on emergent priorities, initiatives and pressures—arranged under three themes: quality, equity, autonomy.

    The emphasis on quality, the first overarching theme, follows on policy priorities in recent years, and applies foremost to primary and secondary schooling, as well as technical and vocational education which spans secondary and post-secondary levels. The new government arrived with expectations that deep-seated problems of the previous regime might finally be fixed. Questions of access, largely resolved for primary and secondary schooling, amplify in post-secondary and higher education. The second theme thus revolves around equitable opportunity, particularly among ethnic groups’ advancement to university.

Quality, Equity, Autonomy
  • Malaysia's Education Reforms Examined
  • Hwok Aun Lee
  • Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    31 January 2020
    Print publication:
    26 September 2019
  • The Pakatan Harapan (PH) government promised education reforms before getting elected in 2018, and presently grapples with the complexities of making good on those pledges while seeking to negotiate continuity and change with regard to the previous administration's Malaysian Education Blueprint launched in 2013. This article situates the education reforms in the context of Malaysia's highly centralized administration, embedded practices and policy initiatives of recent years. Discussion focuses on three areas-quality, equity, autonomy—where PH has more distinctly differentiated itself from its predecessor. On the quality of national schools, efforts to alleviate teachers' bureaucratic workload and enhance the schooling experience mark a positive start. However, transforming mindsets and practices will require more systemic changes, critical self-reflection, and sustained efforts on difficult matters, particularly in basic schooling and technical and vocational programmes. On equity, the government's consistent attention to Bottom 40 (B40) households progressively allocates opportunity, and continual need to address ethnic concerns poses steep challenges. However, policy responses tend to unfold in an ad hoc manner, and the balancing of ethnic interests lacks clarity and coherence. On autonomy, at the institutional level, legislative overhaul in higher education is in the works, while at the personal level, academic freedom clearly thrives more under PH administration. Meaningful and effective reform will hinge on devolution of power away from central government, institutionalization of autonomy, and depoliticization of the system.

  • Foreword

  • Hwok Aun Lee
  • Book:
    Quality, Equity, Autonomy
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    31 January 2020
    Print publication:
    26 September 2019, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

    The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

    THE EDITORS

    Series Chairman:

    Choi Shing Kwok

    Series Editor:

    Ooi Kee Beng

    Editorial Committee:

    Su-Ann Oh

    Daljit Singh

    Francis E. Hutchinson

    Benjamin Loh

  • 6 - “This Is Essentially a People’s Contest”

  • Alin Fumurescu, University of Houston
  • Book:
    Compromise and the American Founding
    Published online:
    28 August 2019
    Print publication:
    05 September 2019, pp 174-216

  • Summary

    Embarrassing as it is to acknowledge, the issue of slavery was initially largely perceived as an economic rather than a moral one. The main cause of division was the proper interpretation of the Constitution and, implicitly, of what people’s sovereignty actually entailed: who were the much-invoked “people”? It took decades for the practice of deferential politics to disappear and for politicians to abandon the rhetoric of an aristocracy of merit in favor of a more egalitarian one. The rapid disappearance of property requirements and the ensuing expansion of electoral franchise to all white males marked the beginning of mass politics and the emergence of the first mass party system. Yet these democratic developments came with a price—the emergence of identity politics. The idea of a political people, encompassing all other identities, came under attack. Threats of secession ensued. When the Civil War erupted, it was, in Lincoln’s words, “essentially a people’s contest.” Once the war was over, no one questioned any longer if there was one American people. Nevertheless, the quest for the elusive American people’s two bodies was – and still is – far from over.

  • 2 - The Uncompromising Puritans

  • Alin Fumurescu, University of Houston
  • Book:
    Compromise and the American Founding
    Published online:
    28 August 2019
    Print publication:
    05 September 2019, pp 27-65

  • Summary

    Each group of Puritans and Pilgrims arriving on the shores of the New World actually created new theologico-political “peoples” through the express consent of individuals to found both a church and a political community. They were covenanted people, and covenantal theory permeated their entire Weltanschauung despite, or precisely because of, its sophistication.Two covenants proved to be long-lasting: the horizontal church covenant, among the members to form a church and a political community, and the vertical covenant between each church and God, that was politically reflected in the covenant of the newly created people with their elected leaders. The American Puritans, unlike their English counterparts, distrusted forum externum, for, like the French, they suspected it of being tainted with hypocrisy. Nor did they trust forum internum, as the French did, for, as the English, they believed it was deceitful, easy prey to devil’s tricks. As a result, they rejected both the British centrifugal individualism and the French centripetal form of individualism, embracing one of their own, which I labeled, for lack of a better word, “purged individualism.”

  • 3 - The Uncompromising Patriots

  • Alin Fumurescu, University of Houston
  • Book:
    Compromise and the American Founding
    Published online:
    28 August 2019
    Print publication:
    05 September 2019, pp 66-104

  • Summary

    By making salvation a personal matter, the Great Awakening ended up effectively destroying the former theologico-political communities. New political identities were needed. In the process, thirteen new political peoples were forged, one for each colony. The elected colonial assemblies became the primary bond holding together these peoples. But the idea that their elected representatives constituted a natural aristocracy of the wise and virtuous was never abandoned by the colonial Weltanschauung. From this perspective, the Patriots proved quite versatile, making appeals alternatively to both the social and the political compacts, pending on the circumstances. Once they realized that even an actual representation in the British parliament would have done them no service, since their representatives would have always amounted to an insignificant minority, they abandoned entirely any pretense that the British legislative could possibly represent them, and claimed that the only connection with Great Britain was through the political compact of each colonial people with the king. When King George refused to side with the colonies, the political compacts with him were declared void, and he became, in the Declaration of Independence, the perfect scapegoat.

Page 137 of 819