The hares, the hounds and the African National Congress: on joining the Third World in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

The utility of framing questions of global inequality in relation to a ‘First World’ and a ‘Third World’, a North and a South, or developed countries and developing (or underdeveloped) countries, has been much debated since the end of the Cold War. This article addresses the issue of the perceived weaknesses and possible continued strengths of the notion of the ‘Third World’ in general terms, and then grounds such a discussion through an analysis of the way that the African National Congress (anc) government in post-apartheid South Africa has approached the question of global inequality. Since its election in 1994, and more particularly since Thabo Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela as president, the anc has presented itself as having an especially important leadership role on behalf of the Third World. The profound contradictions inherent in the anc's effort both to retain its Third Worldist credentials and to present itself as a reliable client to the Bretton Woods institutions and foreign investors provides insights into how to design alternative strategies for overcoming world-wide poverty, strategies which might be more effective than those chosen by the anc. Since the anc was elected to government in 1994 it has pursued a brand of deeply compromised quasi-reformism, analysed here, that serves primarily to deflect consideration away from the options presented by other, much more meaningfully radical international and South African labour organisations, environmental groups and social movements. At the present juncture a range of increasingly well-organised grassroots movements in South Africa find that they have no choice but to mobilise in active resistance to the bankrupt policies of the anc. The increasing significance of these efforts points to the possibility that they might eventually be able to push South Africa—either through a transformation of the anc itself or through the creation of some new, potentially hegemonic, political project in that country—back into the ranks of those governments and groups that seek to use innovative and appropriately revolutionary approaches to challenge the geographical, racial and class-based hierarchies of global inequality.

Notes

John S Saul is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at York University. He can be reached at 17 Kendal Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 1L5. Email: [email protected].

For more detailed versions of some of the general arguments advanced here, see JS Saul, ‘Globalization, imperialism, development: false binaries and radical resolutions’, in L Panitch & C Leys (eds), The Socialist Register 2004, London: Merlin Press, 2003; and JS Saul, ‘Identifying class, classifying difference’, in L Panitch & C Leys (eds), The Socialist Register 2003, London: Merlin Press, 2002.

MT Berger, ‘The end of the “Third World”?’, Third World Quarterly, 15 (2), 1994, p 258.

A Hoogvelt, Globalization and the Post-Colonial World: The New Political Economy of Development, London: Palgrave, 2001, p xiv. See also BJ Silver & G Arrighi, ‘Workers North and South,’ in L Panitch & C Leys (eds), Socialist Register 2001: Working Classes, Global Realities, London: Merlin Press, 2000, pp 56–57). Hoogvelt's use of the term ‘social’ is misleading: the geographical hierarchy of nations that they themselves continue to emphasise is, of course, also a social relationship. Nonetheless, what Hoogvelt is here seeking to underscore is important.

Berger, ‘The end of the “Third World”?’, p 260. This is also true of some of the variants of neoliberalism, that now ubiquitous ‘ultra-modernist’ take on development (as Fred Cooper and Randall Packer term it in their edited volume, International Development and the Social Scientists, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, p 2). But note that some of the crustier architects of the neoliberal counter-revolution in development studies (like Peter Bauer) have turned this argument inside out: they also professed to see ‘the Third World’ as being a Western artifact, but this time as the artifact of ‘“Western guilt” and the politics of foreign aid’—which holds, erroneously in their view, that ‘the West is responsible for the poverty of most of Asia, Africa and Latin America’! See the summary of this position in J Toye, Dilemmas of Development: Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in Development Economics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, pp 25–26.

Berger, ‘The end of the “Third World”?’, p 270.

Ibid, p 258.

BS Smith, Understanding Third World Politics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996, p 29.

G Arrighi, ‘World income inequalities and the future of socialism’, New Left Review, 189, 1991.

G Arrighi, BJ Silver & BD Brewer, ‘Industrial convergence, globalization and the persistence of the North–South divide’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 38 (1), 2003.

In the same issue of Studies in Comparative International Development (38 (1), 2003) that carries the Arrighi et al article, there is also a critique of their position by Alice Amsden entitled ‘Good-bye dependency theory, hello dependency theory’, as well as a response to her by the original authors. This stimulating exchange merely serves to reinforce the latter's case, in my opinion.

As Toye has written, ‘The Third World is not...a figment of our imagination ready to vanish when we blink’! Toye, Dilemmas of Development, p 31.

S Booker & W Minter, ‘Global apartheid’, The Nation, 9 July 2001.

R Biel, The New Imperialism: Crisis and Contradiction in North/South Relations, London: Zed Books, 2000, pp 131–132.

A Dirlik, ‘The postcolonial aura: Third World criticism in the age of global capitalism’, in A McClintock, A Mufti & E Shohat (eds), Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, p 502. In sharp contrast Robert Young (in his Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) has attempted more recently to defend postcolonial theory from these kinds of criticisms by asserting that ‘many of the problems raised can be resolved if the postcolonial is defined as coming after colonialism and imperialism, in their original meaning of direct-rule domination, but still positioned within imperialism in its later sense of the global system of hegemonic economic power’ (p 57). This may be somewhat disingenuous. For even Young professes his own unease with the term, suggesting his actual preference for the notion of ‘tricontinentalism’ as capturing even more directly ‘a theoretical and political position which embodies an active concept of intervention within such oppressive circumstances’. Nonetheless, he claims that ‘postcolonialism’ as he defines it can still serve the purposes he has in mind, capturing the ‘tricontinental’ character of Southern resistance to imperialism while remaining sensitive to the sheer diversity of the settings in which such resistance occurs.

E Shohat, ‘Notes on the “post-colonial” ’, Social Text, 31–32, 1992, p 111. As she adds, ‘the “neo-colonial,” like the “post-colonial” also suggests continuities and discontinuities, but its emphasis is on the new modes of and forms of old colonialist practices, not on a “beyond” ’ (p 106). See also, in the same issue of Social Text, A McClintock, ‘The angel of progress: pitfalls of the term “post-colonial” ’.'

Berger, it should be noted, cites several related arguments in his own article. Berger, ‘The end of the “Third World”?’, p 258.

Shohat, ‘Notes on the “post-colonial” ’, p 110. As she further suggest, ‘a celebration of syncretism and hybridity per se, if not articulated in conjunction with questions of hegemony and neo-colonial power relations, runs the risk of appearing to sanctify the fait accompli of colonial violence’ (p 109).

Smith, Understanding Third World Politics, p 24.

F Cooper & R Packer, ‘Introduction’, in Cooper & Packer (eds), International Development and the Social Scientists, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, p 4.

As quoted in an article entitled ‘Mandela poses hard questions about reach of globalization’, in The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 30 January 1999, p A19. Of course, this statement must be compared with his 1994 affirmation to the US Joint Houses of Congress that the free market was a ‘magic elixir’ that would produce freedom and equality for all. Cited in A Nash, ‘Mandela’s democracy', Monthly Review, 50 (11), 1999, p 26.

This is from a speech by Mbeki at the opening of the ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, Durban, August, 1998.

Thabo Mbeki speaking at the 12th heads of state meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in South Africa, 3 September 1998, quoted in R Wade & F Venerosa, ‘The gathering world slump and the battle over capital controls’, New Left Review, 231, 1998, p 20.

R Ajalu, ‘Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance in a globalising world economy: the struggle for the soul of a continent', Review of African Political Economy, 87, 2001, p 36.

Ibid, p 35. In an alternative reading I have described the domestic collapse of the notion of an ‘African Renaissance’ into a rationale for the self-aggrandisement of a black petty bourgeoisie. JS Saul, ‘Cry for the beloved country: the post-apartheid denouement’, Monthly Review, 52 (8), 2001. For its degeneration continentally into the New Partnership for African Development (nepad) project, see below.

Ajalu is also referencing an Mbeki speech to the Non-Aligned Summit when he cites him as stating that the process of globalisation ‘ineluctably results in the reduction of the sovereignty of states, with the weakest, being ourselves, being the biggest losers—those who are already the worst off, suffer losses of the first order as a result of a marginal adjustment by another’. Ajalu, ‘Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance', pp 35, 37.

See Saul ‘Cry for the beloved country’, but also, inter alia, H Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transformation, London and Cape Town: Zed Books and University of Cape Town Press, 1998; and P Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa, London: Pluto Press, 2000.

T Mbeki, ‘The Fatton thesis: a rejoinder’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 18 (3), 1984, p 609.

See, among others of his numerous writings on these matters, P Bond, Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, imf and International Finance, London: Zed Press, 2003.

A Roy, ‘When the saints go marching out’, ZNet (www.zmag.org), 2 September 2003.

These quotes are cited in P Bond, ‘South Africa’s agenda in 21st century global governance', Review of African Political Economy, 89, 2001, p 416.

C Leys & JS Saul, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa within global capitalism’, Monthly Review, 51 (3), 1999, pp 17, 25.

As cited in D Keet, South Africa's Official Position and Role in Promoting the World Trade, Cape Town: Alternative Information and Development Centre (aidc), 2002.

Ibid, p 4. See also P Bond's chapter on ‘The Doha trade “agenda”: splitting Africa to launch a new round’ in his newest book, tentatively entitled Sustaining Global Apartheid: South Africa's Frustrated International Reforms (in manuscript, forthcoming).

Here, too, one of Bond's chapters, entitled ‘Washington renamed: a “Monterrey Consensus” on finance’ in his Sustaining Global Apartheid is particularly useful; more generally, in this book and its predecessor (Against Global Apartheid) Bond provides much the richest and broadest analysis of South Africa's deeply compromised post-apartheid global positioning.

For a critique, detailed and powerful, of nepad along these lines see P Bond (ed), Fanon's Warning: A Civil Society Reader on the New Partnership for Africa's Development, Trenton, Ontario and Cape Town: Africa World Press and aidc, 2002. As Bond documents, a wide range of organisations drawn from South African civil society, as well as from elsewhere in Africa, has been among the most articulate and assertive critics of nepad. See also, in this regard, T Ngwane, ‘Should African social movements be part of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (nepad)?', notes from a speech given by Trevor Ngwane to the African Social Forum's African Seminar at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2 February 2002.

For Bond's argument, with several useful citations from Mbeki, see, once again, his Against Global Apartheid, p 139.

T Mbeki, ‘Statement at the 35th Ordinary Session of the oau Assembly of Heads of State and Government’, Algiers, 13 August 1999, cited in Ajalu, ‘Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance'.

As Albo continues, more positive outcomes ‘can only be realized through re-embedding financial capital and production relations in democratically organized national and local economic spaces sustained through international solidarity and fora of democratic co-operation’. G Albo, ‘A world market of opportunities? Capitalist obstacles and left economic policies’, in L Panitch (ed), Socialist Register 1997: Ruthless Criticism of All that Exists, London: Merlin Press, 1997, p 30.

Bond, ‘South Africa’s agenda', p 416.

JS Saul, ‘Starting from scratch? A reply to Jeremy Cronin’, Monthly Review, 54 (7), 2002.

Much of the spirit and thrust of such initiatives are captured in A Desai's recent We are the Poor: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002. See also the important contributions of N Alexander, Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa, Pietermaritzsburg: University of Natal Press, 2002; and G Hart, Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Pietermaritzburg and Berkeley, CA: University of Natal Press and University of California Press, 2002.