The biggest and most pressing challenge facing SA’s transitional democratic government was unacceptably high levels of poverty and inequality inherited from the apartheid government — and which still define SA today.
With government debt above 50% of GDP in 1995 and unemployment of more than 30% (using the expanded rate), macro-economic and fiscal limitations handicapped the post-apartheid government. The mass democratic movements went into the post-apartheid negotiations driven by a high sense of consciousness for social justice.
"No political democracy can survive and flourish if the mass of our people remain in poverty, without land, without tangible prospects for a better life. Attacking poverty and deprivation must therefore be the first priority of a democratic government," the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme document said.
The current level and extent of the social wage package is very redistributive and forms the largest proportion of the national budget, a direct policy response to the debilitating legacy of apartheid. However, for this to remain sustainable, the size of the tax base must increase on accelerating economic growth.
Neither of these conditions has been met for almost a decade.
The policy conundrum arising out of this is that, given the stubbornly high structural unemployment and wealth and income inequality, the economic trajectory we have chosen emphasises high skills and technology rather than the labour intensity needed to absorb the under-educated and unskilled sectors of our population — those hardest hit by unemployment. This capital- and skills-intensive growth has translated into rising wages for the formal and increasingly regulated labour market, and increasing profits for the owners of capital.
The informal labour sector has been decimated by casualisation and decreasing job opportunities, driving growing inequality and poverty.
The central question is why the current political leadership has paid so little attention to obvious strategies that could make a significant impact on employment and growth. Why, for example, has criminal and gross incompetence been allowed to grow and erode the provision of quality education for all and the efficient implementation of the land restitution programme?
The crisis in education is especially worrying as an area of spectacular policy failure. A little less than 50% of the population is under 25 and just more than 20% is between 15 and 24. Various forms of inequalities continue to hobble their opportunities for upward social movement. The barriers created during the apartheid era persists well into the democratic era in education, employment, business opportunities, land and housing.
The strong correlation between wealth and education means that, in general, poorer learners, who typically receive poor quality education, perform worse academically and get trapped in inter-generational poverty. And the painful fact is that the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) is heavily complicit in efforts to undermine the pursuit of accountability in teaching.
Quality education can, indeed, become a revolutionary and transformative force for a society characterised by high levels of income and wealth inequality, and this is true in a democratic transition too. It is therefore not unreasonable to conclude that the disruptive efforts of Sadtu qualify them as a counter-revolutionary force.
This is a very worrying picture, but there is emerging optimism in the fact that the improving level of competitive electoral politics is accelerating and that a new political order may be emerge in the 2019 national elections.
• Motsohi is an organisational strategist at Lenomo Strategy Advisory
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