Litnet

Jan, ek gaan probeer om die positiewe in jou 'n verdere hupstoot te gee. Daar is 'n produk op die winkelrakke wat ek nooit sal koop nie, naamlik Koo se gebakte boontjies. Die rede hiervoor is die deels Afrikaanse advertensie op RSG: "Koe baked beans". 

Johannes Comestor

Mooi skoot, Jan Rap!

Hello,

Dit het lank gevat, maar duideliker as die volgende kon Jan Rap se "argumente" nie gestel word nie.

Nou weet die lesers dat Jan Rap "weet":

Dat die soort 'apartheid' (Jan Rap se diskwalifikasie) nooit bestaan het nie.

Die 'apartheid' (Jan Rap se diskwalifikasie) waarvan hulle praat is die wrede en sinnelose onderdrukking van mense deur die Afrikaner (nooit bestaan het nie).

Verder, dat die vorige bedeling al hoe meer verbooslik word as regverdiging vir die wat hulle vir die huidige bedeling beywer het. (Hierdie is nie 'n argument maar 'n verweer)

Die teenargument hier sou wees om my te oortuig dat die beleid van afsonderlike ontwikkeling wel mense onderdruk het.

Ook dat ek verkeerd is oor die huidige stand van sake in die land; dit gaan klopdisselboom hier. (Hierdie is nie die argument wat gemaak word nie)

Tot sover het dit nog nie gebeur nie.....

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Daar is dus geen bewyse wat gelewer kan word om Jan Rap anders te oortuig nie.

Van my kant is die onderneming gemaak, so paar weke terug om nie meer te argumenteer met die wat bogenoemde "weet" nie.

By daardie onderneming bly ek en is dit wat volg, slegs vir die wat dit wat gaan erken as die waarheid. Diesulkes wat bogenoemde "weet" sal nie oortuig word nie en is hierdie nie 'n poging om so te doen nie, maar slegs vir die wat belang het in hoe erg die geskiedenis werklik was en hierdie een van die beste opsommings is wat ek daarvan kon vind.

Dit het begin met Max Du Preez se nuwe boek getiteld, "A Rumour of Spring". In die inleiding sonder Max twee boeke uit wat hy eerder sou wou geskryf het en is die een se titel, "South Africa pushed to the limit The political economy of change" deur Hein Marais. (Hein Marais is a writer and journalist. He is the former deputy editor of Work in Progress magazine, South Africa, and former chief writer for the Joint UN Programme on AIDS.)

Ek het die boek onmiddellik gaan koop. Dit is 'n briljante boek en alles wat hiervandaan volg is Hein Marais. (verskoning, dit wat volg kan redelik lank wees maar is lengte nodig om die volledige prent te skets - dit is ook volkome in Engels) Here goes:

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The mould is cast:

The origins of South Africa’s systematic polarisation lie in the late nineteenth century where business would be based on the exploitation of a low-wage, highly controlled, expendable African work-force that was to be reproduced in a system of ‘native reserves’ at minimal labour cost.

Definitive and systematic divisions were imposed on society:

A racial division of labour was imposed in urban centres, separating skilled white labour from unskilled African labour. African societies were fiercely marginalised.

Not only were they transformed into reserve armies of labour, but they were burdened with the principal costs of reproducing that labour supply. Often deprived of their means of production (land), they were barricaded into ‘native reserves’ outside the mining and industrial zones, where they were denied access to the types of health, education, welfare and recreational networks introduced in the urban centres. Measures such as the pass law system regulated the flow of labour into the cities and deflected the cost of reproducing labour to the periphery.

Afrikaner nationalism’s triumph:

The pattern of South Africa’s ‘development’ hardened radically when the white supremacist NP achieved a surprise victory in the 1948 election under the banner of Afrikaner nationalism. The margin of victory was a slim, five-seat parliamentary majority (won with a minority of votes cast). But the NP immediately set about implementing a rigorously codified racist project.

Henceforth, race would become the definitive criterion for South Africans’ access to privilege and opportunity, further restricting the social and economic mobility of black South Africans through a battery of legislative, administrative and other coercive measures.

Hardest hit was the African population.

Deprived of political rights and full citizenship, they would eventually be decreed to belong to specific ‘nations’ in assigned homelands on the 13% of land assigned to Africans.

While the National Party intensified levels of oppression and dispossession, they proceeded along paths staked out over the preceding half-century.

The National Party pledged to advance and guard the interests of the Afrikaners by restructuring the economy in their favour.

Key to the development of South African capitalism was the dependency of the mining, agriculture and industries on a guaranteed supply of cheap, controlled African labour.

This intense exploitation of labour tenants and the increased mechanisation of agriculture, forced increasing numbers of African men and women to seek work in urban areas.

A growing, semi-permanent African proletariat settled in ‘shantytowns’ in the country’s cities and major towns.

Exploitation intensified and rates of profit increased; the apartheid state ensured that benefits were distributed intensively among whites. In fact, a distorted and hyper-exploitative developmental state was created.

Formidable hegemony was achieved among white South Africans, but it would never be extended further beyond the white South Africans.

Through a concerted affirmative action programme it augmented the Afrikaner capitalist class and advanced Afrikaners in all spheres of public life. Government bank accounts were moved to an Afrikaner-controlled bank, government contracts were handed to Afrikaner-owned firms and Afrikaners were appointed to top positions in state departments, the military, official boards and commissions.

Cultural production by Afrikaners was supported and widely promoted through a range of cultural bodies, festivals and publishers.

The state bureaucracy was expanded and made to absorb huge numbers of Afrikaner workers who thereby gained access to soft loans, housing bonds and other benefits ? ?‘a parasitic layer’ subsidised by the state.

From that platform an increasingly affluent Afrikaner middle class quickly emerged.

The NP’s victory and defence of state power boosted the status, sway and wealth of Afrikaners to unprecedented levels.

White workers were guaranteed access to jobs, enjoyed rising wages and were cushioned by a wide-ranging social-security system.

In African communities, the effects were the reverse, with the great majority of Africans ruled out of these circuits of production, distribution and consumption.

Access to skilled jobs was severely restricted, through discrimination in the workplace and an education system that, until the early 1970s, was explicitly designed to equip Africans with only the rudiments required for entry into the lower ranks of the labour market.

The state had closed off access to most business activities to Africans and continued to drive black entrepreneurs from central business districts. Wealth creation could therefore not occur under the black population.

At the same time, the weight of the apartheid system was distributed unevenly among Africans, coloureds and Indians, as state budget allocations to housing, education and health departments showed.

Apartheid’s ‘golden age’ lasted from the early 1960s to early 1970s.

Living standards of whites kept rising and concerted anti-apartheid resistance seemed a thing of the past.

The rigid racial structuring of production and consumption patterns made whites (and, to a much smaller extent, the coloured and Indian minorities) the core market for the manufacturing sector.

Destitution in the homelands, increased mechanisation in agriculture and the expulsion of labour tenants from ‘white’ farms forced more of the huge labour surplus to seek salvation in the urban centres.

The state continued to fiercely apply influx-control measures and introduced a variety of grandiose schemes (including very costly efforts to redirect these economic refugees into new ‘economic growth zones’ set up inside or on the borders of homelands).

The idea of blockading Africans in literal peripheries was in crisis. The reality of an exponentially growing, permanent, urbanised African population had become irreversible.

Meanwhile, it was not salvation that awaited Africans in the cities and towns. Work was scarce, wages remained low and the state continually harassed residents.

Unemployment kept rising among black workers. In the lived experience of Africans (and many coloureds and Indians) the struggle to survive became couched increasingly in political terms.

A new wave of resistance:

Late 1971 a renewed wave of resistance by the black population started. Low wages and rising prices of basic consumer items provided the initial trigger for the strikes, but workers’ demands grew to include the legal right to organise. Strike actions continued until 1976. The strike wave announced the end of apartheid’s ‘golden age’: for the first time in almost 25 years, a class struggle was re-emerging in ways that could unsettle the order of the day. Soon the Soweto uprising would rock the country. Unexpectedly, and within a few years, the entire system was tumbled into damage control mode. The easy ride of the 1960s was over. In the economic sphere, the apartheid growth model was decaying. As a reply to this wave of resistance, the 1979 Riekert Report proposed that Africans be divided into two categories: ‘qualified’ urban dwellers and the ‘disqualified’ rest, who would be confined to the homelands. After forcefully compressing classes within African townships, the apartheid state was now relaxing some of that pressure.

Panic attack: from resistance to ‘revolution’ (1980 to 1989):

The insurrectionary challenge was defeated, but the same could not be said of the democratic movement in general and the trade-union movement had emerged as the most powerful, organised component of the antiapartheid forces inside South Africa. The fortitude, determination and sacrifice of millions of South Africans carried traumatic costs. Thousands had died and countless more bore the physical and psychological scars of conflict and repression.The economic crisis dragged on, exacerbated by increased international isolation. All this registered in grim terms: formal-sector unemployment hovered around 30%; services in most townships had collapsed; violent crime boomed; balance-ofpayment problems worsened; the far right (exploiting the economic and physical insecurities of rural and working class whites) was maturing into a potential political threat. (Konserwatiewe Party)

Stalemate:

A stalemate had been reached. One option for the apartheid state was to resort to an indefinite period of unmitigated totalitarian management of society? ?basically a tactical response awaiting the emergence of an alternative strategy. Another was to extend political reform. State analysts had viewed the political crisis in two complementary ways: as a security issue and, at a deeper level, as a symptom of socioeconomic dysfunction. The absurd duplication of state institutions (three chambers of parliament, dozens of government departments performing the same tasks for racially defined sections of the population, expensive homeland administrations), as well as the cost of the Namibian occupation and the war in Angola, a symptom of socioeconomic dysfunction.Internationally, the main Western powers had since the early 1980s successfully pushed for and facilitated a series of transitions to democracy in efforts to achieve deep social transformation. Formal ‘talks about talks’ began in 1990.

Contours of the transition:

Intense violence provided the backdrop to these "talks". On average, 86 people were killed each month during the uprisings of the mid-1980s; in the early 1990s, as negotiators haggled behind closed doors, 250 people were dying each month in political violence. Between Nelson Mandela’s release in February 1990 and the democratic elections in April 1994, 14 800 people were killed, compared with 5 400 from 1985–89 (Hamber, 1998). The message rang loud: moderation, stability and compromise might avert a cataclysm.

Salvaging the economic system:

While politicians haggled over the terms of a political settlement, a proverbial elephant lumbered around the room. South Africa entered its historic transition hauling along a bedraggled economy. Mainstream economists sought solace in ephemeral cyclical upswings, but the economy was bedridden.

GDP growth was feeble, and had fallen from a 5.5% average during the 1960s to 1.8% in the 1980s, eventually plunging into the negative range (–1.1%) in the early 1990s.

Personal savings were unusually low, as a proportion of disposable income they had shrunk from 11% in 1975 to 3% in 1987.

The economy was marked by industrial decay.

Manufactured products’ share of total exports declined steadily from 1960 (31%) to 1988 (12%)

Rates of gross fixed investment had fallen, leading to under utilisation of manufacturing-plant capacity (dropping from 90% in 1981 to 78% in 1993)

Unemployment levels kept rising and the economy was patently unable to create enough new jobs to absorb new entrants into the labour market.

Industrial relations were conflict-ridden and destabilised.

ANC economic policy in the early 1990s:

The ANC was hardly the first liberation movement to encounter obstacles once it assumed office; limits to change were not novel. But in South Africa’s case, the idealism that had fuelled the struggle against apartheid dissipated with disarming ease. By 1994, economic policy had been emptied of heterodox content. Orthodoxy had acquired the status of self-evident ‘truth’.

On the job front, performance was abject. More than half a million (non agricultural) jobs were lost between 1994 and 2000 in a trend that dated back to the 1980s.

Driving it was the introduction of labour-saving technologies, increased outsourcing and a determined shift toward casual and contract labour. Some 200 000 more jobs were lost on the country’s farms, as farmers mechanised production and retrenched workers to pre-empt the effects of new labour legislation aimed at improving farmworkers’ job security and working conditions.

There was a shortage of skilled and a surplus of unskilled, poorly educated and low-productivity labour the cumulative result of business treating ‘black workers as a replaceable factor of production rather than as a human resource’

Rewind: South Africa’s economic makeover:

South Africa’s economy was derelict and misshapen in the early 1990s. The cardinal economic legacy of post-apartheid economic policies has been the facilitation of capital flight and divestment, the globalisation of South Africa’s largest corporations and corporate unbundling and restructuring.

The quid pro quo for the ANC was the prospect that large-scale unbundling would open opportunities for an emerging black or ‘national’ bourgeoisie whose wealth-making ambitions presumably would be shaped by a nationalist commitment to aid social transformation.

The mid-2000s marked the zenith of the post-apartheid economic growth, achieved largely on the back of a global commodity boom and characterised especially by a red-hot real-estate sector and credit-financed consumption.South Africa had spent 15 years trying to ingratiate itself with international markets and investors, and integrate deeper into the global system an economy that was still heavily reliant on commodity exports.

The reward was a decade of modest economic growth that scarcely outpaced the global average and which lagged behind many other middle-income economies. The average annual rate of GDP growth was 2.8% between 1994 and 2003 (Gelb, 2005) and approached 5% between 2004 and 2007. Annual per capita income growth ran at under 2% in 1994–2003 and then increased to 3–4% (various SARB Quarterly Reports).

At its most robust, GDP growth ran below the average for upper-middle-income countries and far below the average for lower-middle-income ones. In short, the celebrated-spurt of growth in South Africa during the 2000s followed a global trend for middle-income countries, yet ran well below the average.

Explaining the ‘jobs bloodbath’

Most explanations for South Africa’s high unemployment levels point to a cluster of factors: low rates of economic growth, restructuring of production in an increasingly globalised economy, skills shortages, a misshapen manufacturing sector, the increased entry of women into the labour market and population growth.

These factors doubtlessly feature, but alone they neglect the subjective dimension of conscious choices that are aimed at shifting the balance of power further in favour of employers (Mohammed, 2009). This counter offensive intensified from the mid 1990s onwards, as progressive labour laws appeared on the statute books.

Also circulating are familiar complaints about wages (too high), productivity (too low) and red tape (too much).

The facts do not support those claims. The average working week increased by 1.5 hours to 49.1 hours and women were working two hours longer in 2005 compared with 2000. Nor can so-called ‘wage push’ be blamed for the unemployment levels. In little more than a decade, wages as a share of total output shrank from 57% to 51% (1990–2002), while profits grew from 43%to 49% (Gelb, 2003). The upshot is that the wage share of national output has been falling rapidly throughout the transition, while the profit component has been increasing.

The big picture:

The reality is that wages and salaries are the main source of income for only 5.9 million (57%) of the 10.3 million African households, while pensions, grants and remittances are the main source of income for a further 3.9 million (38%) African households (Statistics SA, 2008c). For a very large proportion of society, job creation, achieved along the current development path, is not a viable basis for social inclusion and livelihood security. Having a job is not a solid hedge against oblivion. The quest for more jobs is crucial, but it has to occur as part of the wider realisation of social rights. Poverty and inequality in the post-apartheid years: Although classified as a middle-income country, South Africa’s harshly skewed allocation of income, resources and opportunities means that close to half the population lives in poverty (Meth, 2008; UNDP, 2006 &2003), which is inordinately concentrated among Africans. Against a backdrop of modest economic growth, infrastructure development and service delivery benefiting poor households have improved, but at rates too slow to match mushrooming needs and generally on terms that follow market logic. Overall, the country’s unequal social structure continues to be reproduced, with inequalities still exhibiting strong racial and spatial patterns (UNDP, 2003).

Slow harvest: land reform:

Land reform has been slow and skimpy. Government’s target, set in 1994, is to redistribute 30% of agricultural land by 2014, a deadline it almost certainly will have to extend. By late 2009, only 5.2 million of the 24 million hectares of land earmarked for redistribution had been handed over to Africans. In total about 18% of South Africa’s land was in the hands of Africans, ie an increase of about 5% since 1994.

That hollow feeling: food and hunger:

The most unforgiving indicator of wellbeing is a household’s ability to eat regularly and healthily. Here, the latest trends seem promising: hunger appears to be a less commonplace experience than in the 1990s. If one accepts the Statistics SA data as the more accurate, some 2.5 million children in African households went hungry at least some of the time in 2007 (Statistics SA, 2008c)?an unconscionable reality in a wealthy country that considers itself food secure and that is a net exporter of food.

Crime, violence and justice:

Some 2.1 million serious crime cases were registered with the police in 2008/09, of which one third were ‘contact crimes’ that involved physical assault against victims (ranging from murder and attempted murder to sexual assault, aggravated robbery and much in between). These, along with the high rates of burglaries and house robberies, stoke fear and loathing. The personal agonies defy description. They also register on the larger fields of politics and society? ?for the trauma of crime and violence undermines many of the rudiments of healthy social relations, both between people (as individuals or groups) and between citizens and the state.

Policing in South Africa is inconsistent, ill disciplined and lacking in confidence and skill. Consequently, it is marred by arbitrariness and an inclination to violence.

Twee hoofstukke wat ek uitlaat handel oor "social grants" en die effek van HIV, AIDS en TB. Dit word aanvaar dat die goeie en die slegte vir die ingeligte leser bekend is. Die volgende wat aangespreek word is onderwys.

Worlds apart: the new education system:

The design and rationing of education was one of the cornerstones of the apartheid system. Particularly after the introduction of ‘bantu education’ in 1954, the education system was intensively racialised and shamelessly racist. Education was extended to larger numbers of African learners, but it was designed primarily to serve as a tool of state control and to ‘prepare’ learners for their respective roles in society. Across the board teaching was highly authoritarian, with rote-learning the method of choice. For Africans in particular, the type and quality of education provided was both limited and limiting. It was students subjected to this system who later pushed resistance to new levels in the 1970s and 1980s and who put radical visions of democratic, people’s education on the agenda. The doors of learning open: Education is now more widely available, but the quality of schooling is poor and the level and variety of skills being taught has not improved significantly. The education bureaucracy, according to Freund (2007:174), is ‘spectacularly inefficient by comparative standards’. For impoverished learners ‘the system offers neither equality of opportunity nor significant redress to compensate for the injustices of apartheid education’ (Lemon, 2004:269).

The best education money can buy:

Notwithstanding the best of intentions, inequalities are being reproduced. The racially fragmented system is gone, but in its place a two-tier school system has emerged (Bloch, 2008). Not only are overall education performances poor, but the prospects of receiving a good-quality education are distributed along highly discriminatory class and racial lines. Unequal resourcing is reflected in school facilities. More than three-quarters of public schools do not have libraries and 60% lack science laboratories. As a general rule, the worst-resourced and worst-performing schools are in the poorest areas, especially those once bundled into Bantustans. More than half the 1 000 schools without sanitation facilities in 2007 were in Eastern Cape province, as were almost half of 1 100 schools that lacked running water and one third of the 3 700 that somehow functioned without electricity. South Africa’s education system is failing in complex ways and no one remotely familiar with the sector claims to have pinpointed any easy fixes. This points to a reinforcing cycle in which an unequal society generates an unequal education system that helps reproduce inequalities. Surveys show very low percentages of learners from the bottom household-income quintiles scoring above the national average on reading and other basic indicators.igh dropout rates in conjunction with high unemployment levels, even among learners who complete Grade 12, suggest that those returns are very tightly rationed in South Africa. Simply put: the rich have both greater means and incentives to push on toward higher levels of education than do the poor. Inequality is reinforced.

Hiermee sluit ek die bespreking soos geneem uit die boek af.

Om te bevestig die hooftrekke van dit wat ek as mees verteenwoordigend van die skrywer se argumente is geneem uit Hoofstukke een tot sewe. Dit wat nie uitgelig is nie, is die omvang van die "social grants", HIV, TB en VIGS en daarmee ook die ontwikkeling van 'n gemeenskaplike gesondheid stelsel, soos die VK se NHS.

Daar is slegs bolangs aandag gegee aan onderwys.

Die res van die boek gaan oor die wapenskandaal, Zuma versus Mbeki, en dan verdere toekomstige rigtings waarin Suid-Afrika kan ontwikkel en dan daarmee te same die debatte oor wat die aard van die sosiale-ekonomiese-politieke bestel kan wees.

Ek herhaal ook dat dit waardevol is om na die Goldman Sachs verslag van 2013 ook te verwys as 'n manier om Hein Marais se boek op datum te bring.

Volgens my moet die twee saam gelees.

Wat hierdie presies egter bevestig is dat 'n Jan Rap met sy kritiek, niks bring wat die ingeligte leser alreeds nie weet nie en ook nie 'n perspektief wat toelaat om die land se geskiedenis en die verloop daarvan en die gevolge en uitdagings wat bied in geheel sien nie.

Jan Rap laat soveel uit, dat dit beide die toets van kritiek, kommentaar en billike geskiedenis faal.

Dit is dus nie 'n antwoord op enige vlak nie.

Jan Rap bring niks tot die gesprek nie.

Daarom dan my besluit om nie met 'n Jan Rap verder te argumenteer.

Die ingeligte en regverdige, burger weet beide van die verlede en die hede en die kompleksiteit wat daarin verweef is.

Dat hierdie land uitdagings het is nie te betwyfel nie.

Baie dankie

Wouter