The broad church of the ANC once entertained Thabo Mbeki’s GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) policy, which focused on an outward-facing economy, market-led growth, and fiscal/monetary discipline. It concentrated on the balance of payments, inflation and foreign direct investment — the stuff of conservative neoliberal policies that chime with those of Rodrigo Paz Pereira, who has ousted the Movement for Socialism (MAS) in the recent Bolivian elections, with his slogan, “Capitalism for All”.
There are clear lessons for the Left from this defeat, whatever the protestation — be they foreign interference or internal sedition — but valid allegations against MAS, involving corruption, the misuse of state contracts and patronage clearly contributed to the erosion of credibility and the ensuing defeat at the polls. For many Bolivians, MAS had come to look like the old order it had replaced — much like SA, where, the Eastern adage — “Same-same, but not same-same” — applies.
Evo Morales, the movement’s founder, had attempted to accelerate an economic model based on huge gas extraction and exportation in an effort to reduce poverty, but comparisons with SA’s energy mafia — poised like vultures to eat off the carcass their incompetence had created — are not unwarranted.
Similar to SA’s ANC, Bolivia’s MAS has wielded power for decades — shared between Morales and Luis Arce. A recent fallout between the two — not unlike the Jacob Zuma-Cyril Ramaphosa split — contributed to the implosion of MAS, while a worsening economic debacle unfolded.
Morales pioneered agricultural industrialisation — worsening deforestation and affecting the balance between the land and Bolivia’s indigenous peoples. This was not lost on aboriginal groups, specifically two of the largest — the Quechua and Aymara.
The country’s turn to the right comes as it is experiencing the worst economic crisis in years, with shortages of fuel, foreign reserves and food items, with high inflation and debt. The production of gas has fallen, with revenue down to $1.6bn, from a high of $5.5bn, and the use of roadblocks by Morales’s supporters to prevent fuel and food reaching Bolivia’s capital to force his return from temporary exile, about five years ago, will not have been forgotten.
Why is it that so often many champions of the Left in developing countries fail to learn, and regularly tarnish the image of socialism? Do those who assume the socialist mantle, draped in the national flag — who wear these accoutrements, paradoxically similar to Frantz Fanon’s description of postcolonials as having Black Skins, White Masks — simply feign a passage through the paces without the requisite application, except regarding self-enrichment?
The comparison therefore between SA’s crises and the political economy of resource abuse and dependence is hardly surprising.
Corruption apart, the lesson to be learnt is that resource-led growth without diversification is a short-lived strategy. Add to that the collapse of coal-fired Eskom, the energy mafia’s beady eye on opportunities in gas and the fat renewables chequebook, and you can see how the elites gorge off the fuel crisis while ostensibly trying to fix it.
Both countries involve elites weaponising a strategic resource sector. Both risk creating “enclave economies” in which wealth is concentrated among a few, while the broader economy remains stagnant. Both undermine long-term development by postponing diversification.
The implications for SA are stark: resource dependency is not a growth model; mafia capture forecloses reform; and policy credibility suffers as investors and citizens lose faith when they witness “crisis profiteering” — all of which erodes fiscal space and social cohesion.
There are paths to success — not least, a socialist one — but first, the mafia capture must be broken. Let’s hope these lessons will not be lost on the Left.
• Cachalia is a former DA MP and public enterprises spokesperson.
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