ANC Today -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 8, No. 19, 16-22 May 2008 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Electricity Summit: Towards a national consensus on energy * Zimbabwe: Democracy is not a privilege -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRICITY SUMMIT Towards a national consensus on energy In the early 1990s the electricity crisis was the most discussed subject in South Africa. The focus was on two areas: the fragmentation of the distribution industry with the various municipalities having their own tariff structures; and the need for electrification moving towards the universal access to electricity as the most efficient source of energy. At the time we described the crisis in generation as the crisis of oversupply. This was an efficient description of having surplus capacity in electricity generation. We had enough for our own consumption and for export to the region. New power stations like Majuba. Lethabo, Matimba and Kendal represented the latest coal power generation technology. The older power stations like Camden, Grootvlei and Komati were mothballed and others like Ngagane were closed. At the time we were boasting of having the third lowest cost of electricity in the world, with New Zealand and Canada being the only economies that had lower cost electricity than South Africa. These two countries took a decision at the time to move systematically towards globally competitive prices. We took a deliberate decision to maintain our low cost electricity policy and use it as a competitive advantage to attract investment in our economy. Again we took a deliberate decision to compete for the development of aluminium smelters and intensive electricity consumption sectors on the back of cheap electricity prices. We continue to subsidise these smelters, with Eskom being able to foot the bill and still generate a surplus. We even used the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to co-fund these smelters to reduce the risk taken by the investors. All these incentives looked like what sociologists describe as the race to the bottom for developing economies, wherein they give incentives to investors that are not sustainable in the long term. At the time Eskom could even afford commodity price-linked electricity prices for sectors like chrome mining. These decisions were not necessarily wrong, as they were part of the industrialisation programmes. We must bear in mind that we were coming out of the period when the South African economy was totally isolated and import substitution industrialisation was the only option left. End of surplus capacity As early as 1994, and more vocally around 1996, Eskom projected that the surplus capacity would end by the year 2007. This was clearly communicated to government. At the time privatisation was seen as the panacea to all the economic problems of the world driven by the neo-liberal economic framework, which was dominant and triumphalist at the time. We got caught in the crossfire. We must today face the consequences of the decisions we took at the time. The question that we must answer is whether it is appropriate and prudent to tax the citizens of South Africa, both individuals and corporate citizens for these decisions. When Eskom, supported by government, proposed a 53% increase in electricity tariffs for the current financial year and a further 43% increase in the next financial year we were convinced that the economy could not afford such a sharp spike. We got attracted to the Canadian and New Zealand approach of smoothing out the price over a particular time. In our view this approach would give the various sectors of the economy time to adapt and adjust budgets. We also believed that the state should fund the costs of the accelerated demand side management interventions. Lastly we need to engage the coal mining industry for a pricing structure that will be supportive of the programme to resolve the current crisis that is based on the principle of special domestic prices beyond the contract allocation. These special arrangements should not push these companies into loss making situation nor should they be about profit maximisation. The combination of these interventions will reduce the need for steep tariff increases. South African society can then be mobilised to accept paying a premium on the annual tariff increases. We must engage robustly on the need for the tariff to be at a particular level by a specific year and the underlying reasons for such a prescription of timelines. The emphasis on encouraging the private sector to get into the electricity generation sector should be debated within the context of the state having the primary responsibility of providing affordable energy to the nation - the principle of universal access to energy. These two principles will force us to deal with the contradictions between accessibility and affordability of electricity on the one hand, and a profitable sector on the other. Central to this debate is whether electricity is a public good or not. The answer to this question will inform our approach. If we are only focusing on creating a conducive environment for the private sector to enter the industry the preoccupation will be on reaching a particular profit margin of the tariff level without serious consideration of the socio-economic status of our country. Having engaged government on these matters we have reached a stage where we thought the debate must be focused towards the achievement of national consensus. The Electricity Summit is about hearing the ideas that reflect the diversity of our society and come up with what we think can work for South Africa. From here moving forward we should revisit our energy policy. We need to keep society engaged in policy debate so that we can continue to access the body of knowledge located outside of government. ** Gwede Mantashe is Secretary General of the ANC. This is an edited version of his contribution to the National Electricity Summit, Johannesburg, 16 May 2007. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ZIMBABWE Democracy is not a privilege Speaking in parliament during the budget debate of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2003, amongst other things I said: "Like peace and stability, democracy and good governance are developmental issues. Africa waged a century-long struggle against colonialism and apartheid precisely to establish the principle that governments should derive legitimacy through the consent of the governed. Democratic institutions are therefore not privileges that may be extended or withheld at the discretion of those who wield power. They are an entitlement; a right that the people of this continent waged struggle to attain and won at great cost! "In the ANC's continuing interaction with the political parties in Zimbabwe, we have warned against the subversion the rule of law as we have about the heightening of tension. "We have also warned against the temptations of recklessness that could easily precipitate armed conflict. We have consistently appealed to the values and norms that the national liberation movement in Zimbabwe waged struggle to attain - the values of democracy; accountable government; the rule of law; an independent judiciary; non-racialism; political tolerance and freedom of the media. Not a single one of these values was observed under British colonial rule, let alone under the UDI regime of Ian Smith and his cronies. We consider it a scandal that they are now being undermined by the movement that struggled to achieve them." Consequently I was deeply shocked, if not alarmed, by an article on Zimbabwe from the pens of Eddie Maloka and Ben Magubane carried in City Press on Sunday 4 May 2008. I was shocked by the suggestion of the two authors that the criteria we normally employ in judging the behaviour of governments are extremely flexible and are so malleable that what we judge as criminal in one instance we should find quite acceptable, even defensible, in another. I thought it was common cause, within the ranks the ANC that the legitimacy of a government derives from the mandate it receives from the people. That mandate is usually expressed through free and fair general elections. The record will show that the ANC has consistently adhered to these principles since its inauguration and re-affirmed them in "The African Claims" of 1943; the Freedom Charter of 1955, the Strategy and Tactics document adopted at Morogoro and in every subsequent document setting out its aims and principles, including the 1987 "Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa". What is more, we have also insisted that these are principles applicable to all countries, including Zimbabwe. Anyone familiar with the history of European colonialism in Africa and Asia knows that at the core of the colonialist project was seizure and control over the natural resources of the colony. In the white settler colonies of Africa, like Kenya, Zimbabwe and Namibia, seizure of the land was invariably the means of acquiring such control. The reproduction of the long quotations from The Guardian in the City Press article thus serves no other purpose but to remind the forgetful of that reality. But, the information they contain adds neither light nor weight to the principal thrust of the two authors' line of argument. Opposition as counter-revolution Underlying the line of argument which the two authors advance is the suggestion that since the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) came into existence after independence, that political formation is necessarily suspect. They try to buttress this by suggesting that given that, like Britain, the revanchist "Rhodesian" whites, the USA and the European Union, the MDC is not happy with the ZANU (PF) government, there is an indissoluble link amongst them and they all must be pursuing the same agenda. Proceeding from these highly flawed premises, they go on to argue that it is therefore incumbent on anti- imperialists to support ZANU (PF). There are disturbing parallels between these two writers' line of argument and the all too familiar ones emanating from former US Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and, in our day, George W Bush. Step back a little, invert the names, and the line of reasoning can be seen for what it is. Justifying unqualified US support for right wing dictators in Latin America, Teddy Roosevelt declared:" Somoza (the former banana-republic dictator of Nicaragua) is a bastard, but he is our bastard!" The authors also deploy the same guilt by association, so loved by anti-Communists and other rightists when they repress dissent. Virtually echoing the sentiments of Senator Joe McCarthy: "If someone sounds like a duck, associates with ducks, and walks like a duck, can it be unfair to infer that he is a duck!" But perhaps the most alarming suggestion of all is that opposition to ZANU (PF), irrespective of its merits, is ipso facto illegitimate and necessarily counter- revolutionary, and therefore pro-imperialist. This curious line of reasoning dominated in the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and other east European countries. When workers complained about the conditions of work (as they did in Poland) that was characterised as counter- revolution. If intellectuals complained about rigid censorship and the repression of the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge, that was counter-revolution. Even youth, yearning to enjoy rock and other forms of popular music produced in the rest of the world, that was counter-revolution. Is it any wonder that those countries are now governed either by right wing coalitions or by anti-Communist liberals who want to hitch their countries firmly to the EU or to US-led alliances like NATO? Proceeding from the tried and tested principles of our liberation movement, I contend that democracy is not a luxury, perhaps affordable in a few rich countries, but far too expensive for peoples and countries emerging from decades of colonial domination. What is more, I insist that democracy is not merely the right to participate in elections every few years; it is a complex institutional framework that serves to secure the ordinary citizen against all forms of arbitrary authority, whether secular or ecclesiastical. It is an undisputed historical fact that colonialism denied the colonised precisely these protections, subjecting them to the tyranny, not only of imperialist governments, but often to the whims of colonialist settlers and officials. All liberation movements, including both ZANU (PF) and ZAPU, deliberately advocated the institution of democratic governance with the protections they afford the citizen. All liberation movements held that national self-determination would be realised, in the first instance, by the colonised people choosing their government in democratic elections. Hence Kwame Nkrumah: "Seek ye first the political kingdom!" The content of anti-imperialism was precisely the struggle to attain these democratic rights. In the case of Zimbabwe, democratic rights arrived that night when the Union Jack was lowered and was replaced by the flag of an independent Zimbabwe. The questions we should be asking are: What has gone so radically wrong that the movement and the leaders who brought democracy to Zimbabwe today appear to be its ferocious violators. What has gone so wrong that they appear to be most fearful of it? Maloka and Magubane brush such questions aside with a breathtaking recklessness. To invoke the memory of Patrice Lumumba in this context can only be an example of woolly thinking. Lumumba, let us remember, was democratically elected by the majority of the Congolese people. To subvert the will of the Congolese, as expressed in general elections, the imperialists stage-managed Mobutu's coup, kidnapped Lumumba and had his enemies murder him. The same applies to Salvador Allende of Chile. The CIA subverted the expressed will of the Chilean people by staging a coup to overturn the democratically elected government of Chile. Maloka and Magubane want us to ignore the will of the Zimbabwean people, as expressed in elections, and do what the imperialists did in Congo and Chile. Such action, they claim, would be anti-imperialist. In other words, we must behave like the imperialists to demonstrate our commitment to anti-imperialism. 'For us or against us' Rather than raising and attempting to answer such tough questions, they skirt around them by marshalling a mixture of emotive arguments and outright political blackmail, again reminiscent of the far-right and its adherents. You are either with ZANU(PF) in the anti-imperialist camp, or against it (and therefore with Blair, Bush, the DA, etc). If that has familiar ring, it is because the Bush administration has employed it repeatedly in support of its aggressive actions against all and sundry. To quote them: "You are either with us, or against us!" It cannot possibly be right that, while we in South Africa expect our democratic institutions to protect us from arbitrary power, we expect the people of Zimbabwe to be content with less. If ZANU (PF) has lost the confidence of a substantial number of the citizens of that country, such that the only means by which it can win elections is either by intimidating the people or otherwise rigging them, it has only itself to blame. Nobody doubts the anti-imperialist credentials of ZANU (PF), but that cannot be sufficient reason to support it if it is misgoverning Zimbabwe and brutalising the people. Let all recall that the people of Zimbabwe endured a 15 year war of national liberation, during which the colonialist regime employed every device from beatings, to torture, to executions and massacres to repress them. They did not waver. Yet it is being suggested that today, for no apparent reason, they have fallen under the sway of the helpers and agents of that colonial power. I think that betrays a worrying contempt for the ordinary Zimbabwean. A contempt reminiscent of the colonialists' contention that the people rose against them because they had been incited by "outside agitators"! By the Russians! By the Chinese! I do not support the MDC and my track record in the struggle against imperialism speaks for itself, but I differ most fundamentally with Maloka and Magubane. It is precisely my commitment to the anti-imperialist agenda that persuades me that our two comrades are wrong. We will not assist ZANU (PF) by encouraging that movement to proceed along the disastrous course it has embarked on. Offering it uncritical support because it is anti-imperialist will not help ZANU (PF) to uncover the reasons for the steep decline in the legitimacy it once enjoyed. That party would do well to return to its original vision of a democratic Zimbabwe, free of colonial domination and the instruments of that domination - such as arbitrary arrests, police repression of opposition, intimidation of political critics, etc. Given the outcome of the recent elections, ZANU(PF) should surrender power to the party that has won. Another anti-imperialist movement, the Sandinistas of Nicaragua, lost an election in 1991. Today they are back in office having won an election that even the US was unable to subvert. In order to win the Sandinistas had slowly to win back the confidence of the people, who then voted them back into power. Any attempt by ZANU (PF) to cling to power through overt or covert violence will only compound its problems by stripping it even further of the legitimacy it won by leading the Zimbabwean people in their struggle for independence, freedom and democracy! Commenting on the dilemma faced by the Bolsheviks after their victory in October 1917, that great internationalist and Communist, Rosa Luxemburg, wrote: "Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party - however numerous they may be - is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of 'justice' but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when 'freedom' becomes a special privilege." Maloka and Magubane would do well to weigh her remarks seriously. Perhaps, had the Bolsheviks been a bit more attentive to such constructive criticism from an unimpeachable revolutionary, we might not be complaining of the demise of the Soviet Union, but could possibly be celebrating its triumphs. ** Z Pallo Jordan is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC). This article is written in his personal capacity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2008/at19.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html To unsubscribe yourself from the ANC Today mailing list go to: http://lists.anc.org.za/mailman/listinfo/anctoday