2 comments

1. 
   

   The end of the statist “Economics of the Colour Bar” (as W.H. Hutt rightly called it) was certainly a good thing.

   And it should be remembered that the ANC DELAYED the end of apartheid for many years – with the insanity of the collectivist “Freedom Charter” of the 1950s – which proclaimed (in practice – not by actually using the word) SOCIALISM as the only alternative to apartheid (thus alienating non socialist people in South Africa – and driving them to support the National Party which many of them did NOT wish to do).

   However, I am not as optimistic as the writer of the article – not about the near future. Although not for (absurd) Paul Ehrlich reasons

   The “Public Services” (in their current, EVER EXPANDING, form) are financially unsustainable (not just in South Africa – but just about everywhere), fiscal breakdown is going to come.

   Also the monetary and financial system (again not just in South Africa – but just about everywhere) is credit bubble insanity (an effort to have “capitalism” without capitalists – i.e. without REAL SAVERS at least to have lending vastly greater than real savings).

   Both the fiscal and the monetary situation is unsustainable – and what can not stand, eventually, falls.

   The only questions are…..

   When exactly will the present farce come to an end?

   And.

   What will emerge from the period of chaos after the present farce comes to an end?

   Certainly technology marches on – and this is a good thing.

   But it should be remembered that the present fiscal (“Public Services”) and monetary (financial services) situation is unsustainable.

   And I think it might be better to be (say) in Australia or New Zealand (rather than in South Africa) when the real crash does come.

   Loading...

   Reply
   • 
     

     Excellent comment, Paul Marks. I disagree, however, about the popular interpretation of the Freedom Charter as being socialistic. It was stressed by virtually everyone involved, both then and since, that is was never intended to be socialistic. I wrote an extensive analysis of the meaning of the Freedom Charter in a response to the ANC Youth League’s argument that the FC is socialistic and justifies nationalisation. Here it is in full:

     ANALYSIS OF THE ANC YOUTH LEAGUE’S
     NATIONALISATION PROPOSALS

     Executive Summary

     WHY NATIONALISE?
     The main reason for the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) wanting to
     nationalise mines (followed by banks, big business generally, and much
     else) is its view that (a) nationalisation is required by the Freedom Charter
     and (b) the Freedom Charter is binding ANC policy.

     SECONDARY REASONS
     Secondary reasons are advanced, but not accompanied by a clear causal
     nexus between nationalisation and intended benefits. They rely on
     unsubstantiated assertions regarding the expected efficacy of
     nationalisation, whereas economic theory and empirical evidence suggests
     (a) that nationalisation is likely to be ineffective or counter-productive,
     and (b) that there are proven alternatives.

     OBJECTIVES
     Stated obectives are:

     1. Implementing the Freedom Charter.
     2. Increased fiscal capacity.
     3. Better working conditions.
     4. Industrialisation and job creation.
     5. National sovereignty.
     6. Transformation of the “accumulation path”.
     7. Transformation of “spatial development patterns”.

     WHAT IS TO BE NATIONALISED
     The ANCYL proposal is more far-reaching, ambitious and ideologically
     radical than has been apparent from media coverage. A great deal more
     than mines is to be nationalised: banks, ‘strategic’ industries (essentially
     all big business), secondary and tertiary beneficiation industries, aspects
     of trade (especially international trade), financial institutions, energy
     (electricity, petroleum, gas), property development (new towns, cities
     and development areas), etc.

     THE FREEDOM CHARTER
     Assumptions – The ANCYL proposal acknowledges that the relevant
     words (“the mineral wealth … banks and monopoly industry shall be
     transferred to the people as a whole”) may not mean nationalisation, and
     presents arguments to the effect that they do. Although the argument is
     elaborate and documented, it is ahistoric in that it overlooks core aspects
     of the historical context, particularly:
     – The author of that clause in the Freedom Charter, Ben Turok,
     says it has never meant or implied nationalisation.
     – The words “the people as a whole” have never been a recognised
     synonym for “government”. The terms are, in certain contexts,
     juxtaposed (as in the idea that democracy is a system whereby
     governments are not manifestations of “the people” but are subject
     to “the will of the people”).
     – The vexed question of why, if intended, the word “nationalise” was
     studiously avoided in the Freedom Charter despite nationalisation
     at the time being commonplace and popular (the policy of, inter
     alia, the national socialist apartheid regime, of all other socialistic
     governments, of most nominally capitalistic governments, and of
     virtually all prominent intellectuals). The word “privatisation” did
     not exist until three decades later.
     – The world’s negative experience with nationalisation during
     subsequent decades (which, when it manifested itself, became the
     decisive factor that persuaded Mandela and other ANC luminaries
     to replace nationalisation with privatisation, albeit cautiously and in
     limited contexts).
     What “the people as a whole” means – The evidence suggests that it
     can safely be assumed that the phrase on which the ANCYL relies does
     not imply nationalisation. Free market liberalism envisages ownership of
     wealth by the people as a whole (directly and through market institutions).
     Mandela said at the time that the Freedom Charter was not a “blueprint
     for a socialist state” and that dispossession of white “mining kings” and
     “land barons” would, instead of leading to socialism, “open … fields for
     … a prosperous non-European bourgeois class” where “for the first time
     … the non-European bourgeoisie will have the opportunity to own in
     their own name … mills and factories … and private enterprise will
     boom and flourish as never before” (author’s emphasis). Blade Nzimande
     (SACP General Secretary) sees no inconsistency between the Freedom
     Charter and Minister Susan Shabangu’s statement that “We are definitely
     not going to nationalise mines.” His view is that the Charter and related
     documents (NRT, NDR, Morogoro Declaration, Green Book, etc)
     envisage a “capitalist system”.
     Ends and means – The Freedom Charter, like subsequent ANC
     documents (RDP, GEAR, AsgiSA, et al), is about means, not ends –
     policy objectives not specific policies – leaving questions of how best to
     achieve those ends to democratic contestation. In rare cases where
     government as a means is intended, the Charter says so unambiguously
     (as in “the aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared for
     by the state”). Such welfare happens to characterise all capitalistic
     economies where welfare is one of the compromises made by all economic
     liberals (except pure libertarians). Government welfare in capitalistic
     countries far exceeds what governments provide in non-market economies.
     This is in addition to (a) generous private charity and philanthropy, and
     (b) for-profit welfare, both of which are more affordable to more people
     in market economies. Typically, countries with more nationalisation beg
     for “aid” from countries with less.

     OTHER OBJECTIVES
     Fiscal capacity – The ANCYL assumes that nationalisation will increase
     the state’s “fiscal capacity” without saying why. Economist Dawie Roodt
     suggests that nationalisation will make things worse for the government.
     He points out that around 50% of mining profits already accrue to
     government (through direct and indirect taxes), which is achieved (a)
     without diverting a cent from more pressing social needs and (b) at zero
     risk. Conversely, owners (private and, more commonly, government) often
     incur losses. The ANCYL implies that nationalised shares will be bought
     (nationalisation, not confiscation), but provides no estimate of (a) what
     this will cost the fiscus, (b) which government budgets should be sacrificed
     to that end, (c) the cost to the country of foreign exchange diverted to
     acquiring foreign-owned shares, or (d) the implications for international
     anti-nationalisation treaties.
     Better working conditions – There is no motivation for the idea that
     nationalised mines are likely to have better working conditions than private
     mines. The world’s experience suggests the opposite, which explains, in
     part, why mine workers migrate (often risking and losing their lives) in
     only one direction: from countries with nationalised mines to ones where
     they are privately owned.
     Industrialise and create more jobs – It is assumed, without explanation,
     that nationalisation would promote industrialisation and employment,
     whereas the opposite has been the world’s experience. The document
     discusses nationalisation of resources and nationalisation of mines as if
     they are synonymous. Its authors appear not to know that the former has
     already happened and that it failed to achieve their objectives, and that
     there is no reason to expect the latter to succeed where the former has
     failed.
     Safeguard sovereignty – There is ambivalence about foreign investment:
     on the one hand it is presumed to compromise sovereignty (without saying
     why this should be so); on the other it is assumed that nationalisation will
     (for unstated reasons) attract foreign investment. Since government is
     envisaged as being responsible for the plethora of secondary and tertiary
     industries suggested, it is unclear in what foreigners might be investing, or
     why they might want to invest in a nationalising country.
     Transform the accumulation path – What is meant by “accumulation
     path”, except to the extent that it appears in the context of antiquated
     Marxist terminology, is that South Africa is a case of “CST” (which
     presumably means “Colonialism of a Special Type”) with “total
     dependence on … mining-energy-finance monopoly capital”.
     Nationalisation will somehow “provide a viable case and space for
     economic diversification”. In this section the ANCYL discloses its full
     agenda of comprehensive nationalisation (government “control and
     ownership of the strategic sectors of the … economy”).
     Transform South Africa’s unequal spatial development patterns –
     That “26 locations represent the engines of the South African economy,
     home to 77% of all people living under minimum living level in the country,
     84% of the total population and generating 95% of the national Gross
     Value Added (GVA)” is presumed to be self-evidently reprehensible and
     in need of “transformation”. The suggested alternative is extreme social
     engineering with apartheid-like relocation of many South Africans to new
     cities, towns and development areas (with the people employed in
     countless new and unfamiliar industries), funded by government from no
     disclosed source.
     Patronage – Given the overwhelming evidence against nationalisation,
     one of the most common questions is “why?”. The official reasons are
     supported by little or no motivation, which raises the obvious possibility
     that proponents of nationalisation may have undisclosed vested interests.
     Protagonists of policies are usually enriched by the “empires” they create.
     They, along with supporters, friends and family, tend to gain substantial
     wealth, power, influence and status at the expense of “the people as a
     whole”. Given the extreme degree of arbitrary power, wealth and
     patronage the proposal envisages, there will be patronage opportunities
     and other benefits not just for advocates of nationalisation, but many
     others, including owners of ailing mines.

     End of Precis – Main text
     ==============================
      
     ANALYSIS OF THE ANC YOUTH LEAGUE’S NATIONALISATION PROPOSALS

     WHY NATIONALISE?
     The primary source of the contentious proposal that mines,
     followed by banks and other companies, should be
     nationalised is an ANC Youth League (ANCYL) document
     entitled Towards the transfer of mineral wealth to the
     ownership of the people as a whole: A perspective on
     nationalisation of mines published in February 2010 (the
     Basic Document). This has to be read with the ANCYL’s
     Response to a Component of the ANC Discussion
     Document on Economic Transformation (the
     Supplemental Document). Other ANCYL documents
     dealing with its nationalisation proposal do not add anything
     distinctive so are not included in this analysis.
     It is widely and mistakenly assumed that
     nationalisation has been proposed to address the country’s
     most pressing economic problems, such as poverty and
     unemployment. The main justification, however, is that
     nationalisation is the ANCYL’s view that (a) it is required
     by the 1955 Freedom Charter, and (b) all provisions of the Charter are
     binding on the ANC.
     The prevailing public discourse revolves around the ANCYL’s call
     for nationalising mines, whereas what the Basic Document proposes is
     more far-reaching, ambitious and ideologically radical than has been
     apparent from media coverage. What is to be nationalised after mines
     includes banks, “monopoly” and “strategic” industries (essentially all big
     business), secondary and tertiary beneficiation industries, aspects of trade
     (especially international trade), financial institutions, energy (electricity,
     petroleum, gas), property development (new towns, cities and
     “development” areas), and more. Reminiscent of the homeland policy of
     old is the extensive social engineering that is envisaged, which includes
     resettling millions of people into currently impoverished areas that are
     intended to be new growth points, and the substantial increase in antimarket
     regulation and intervention.
     This section of the study analyses the ANCYL Basic Document
     and related considerations, including whether:
     1. Nationalisation really is a Freedom Charter imperative.
     2. The supposed “nationalisation clause” is binding on the ANC or
     the Alliance.
     3. Nationalisation, if it were indeed ANC policy at the time, should
     still be regarded as such.
     4. ANCYL arguments are sufficiently coherent or compelling to be
     adopted.
     5. The ANCYL Basic Document addresses the country’s leading
     problems adequately or at all.
     6. Nationalisation is likely to achieve stated and implied objectives.
     7. Alternative policies are more likely to do so.
     It is disingenuous to criticise a proposal made in good faith without
     suggesting alternatives. Accordingly, some alternatives are suggested or
     implied within the analysis of the ANCYL Basic Document, and more
     substantial constructive and concrete suggestions are covered elsewhere
     in this study.
     The most compelling aspect of the Basic Document is the debatable
     view that the Freedom Charter espouses nationalisation of mines and
     other assets. On the other hand, the Basic Document includes proposals
     and objectives that most South Africans would consider objectionable,
     sometimes in the extreme, such as the mass relocation of urbanised blacks
     back to rural areas, especially former homelands. Some objectives appear
     to have no rational connection with related policies, and some would be
     countermanded by what is proposed. The Basic Document is surprisingly
     ahistoric despite the Marxist rhetoric in some passages. It is as if it were
     drafted by authors unfamiliar with the Freedom Charter’s historical
     context and subsequent history.

     THE CASE FOR NATIONALISATION
     The ANCYL Basic Document suggests seven reasons for nationalisation:
     1. Required by the Freedom Charter (ownership by “the people as
     a whole”).
     2. Increased fiscal capacity.
     3. Better working conditions.
     4. Industrialisation and job creation.
     5. National sovereignty.
     6. Transformation of the “accumulation path”.
     7. Transformation of unequal spatial development patterns.
     The first reason dominates the Basic Document, whereas the rest are
     not just secondary, but appear in some cases to have been added as an
     afterthought. Other arguments for nationalisation of mines and other
     sectors, of course, are typically advanced in the context of other countries
     and times, but they are not addressed here because the ANCYL did not
     introduce them to the discourse.
     The first forty-six of the Basic Document’s ninety numbered
     paragraphs argue for nationalising mines by virtue of the Freedom Charter.
     The next seventeen paragraphs (forty seven to sixty four) advance
     additional arguments, mostly too briefly for substantial analysis, and the
     remaining paragraphs cover “What is to be Done”, “Potential Challenges”,
     “Objectives”, and the “Conclusion”. Analysis of the Freedom Charter
     and the ANCYL’s conceptions regarding it are therefore accorded most
     attention.
     The ANCYL is explicit about what should happen:
     “NATIONALISATION OF MINES means the democratic
     government’s ownership and control of Mining activities, including
     exploration, extraction, production, processing, trading and
     beneficiation of Mineral Resources in South Africa.”

     THE FREEDOM CHARTER
     ANCYL Assumptions and Perspectives
     Since the ANCYL is satisfied that (a) the Freedom Charter demands
     nationalisation, (b) the nationalisation it demands includes mines, (c) the
     ANC is bound by the Freedom Charter, and (d) nationalisation is
     therefore ipso facto ANC policy, it regards nationalisation as a settled
     and virtually non-debatable imperative. According to the ANCYL, “Since
     1991, the ANC compels all its members to sign a declaration … to ‘abide
     by the aims and objectives of … the Freedom Charter’” which means
     that “all members of the ANC currently joined the ANC to amongst other
     things, fulfil the principles of the Freedom Charter”. The Basic Document
     adds that the “1994, 1997, 2002 and 2007 Constitution re-affirms the
     principles of the Freedom Charter as aims and objectives of the ANC
     and obliges all members to abide by the Charter upon joining the African
     National Congress”.
     The ANCYL Basic Document relies primarily on and repeats a
     popular belief that the following words in the Freedom Charter
     unambiguously espouse nationalisation of, inter alia, mines:
     “… the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly
     industry shall be transferred to the people as a whole …”
     What mitigates against the ANCYL’s interpretation, perhaps fatally, is
     that the words “nationalise”, “nationalisation” and “mines” neither appear
     in the quotation nor anywhere in the Freedom Charter. Also, none of the
     ANC luminaries whose quotations the ANCYL presents as evidence
     supposedly supporting their interpretation, have ever claimed them to be
     the meaning of the phrase.
     These facts alone could be regarded as settling the matter
     conclusively, but it would be a disservice to the ANCYL not to interrogate
     the meaning of this pivotal phrase more thoroughly, or not to analyse
     other aspects of its proposals such as for nationalisation far beyond mines,
     for extreme social engineering and for soviet-like central planning.
     The ANCYL, having concluded, it seems erroneously, that the
     Freedom Charter calls unambiguously for the nationalisation of mines
     and other assets, assumes that the world’s half-century of failed mine
     nationalisation since 1955 should have no bearing on how to interpret the
     Freedom Charter in this, the twenty first century. It ascribes to the
     Charter a questionable original meaning, on the one hand, and a static
     meaning unaffected by time and experience, on the other. It is assumed
     that ideas regarded as credible, albeit contentious, fifty years ago should
     remain so and be forever mandatory. No reasons are advanced for these
     assumptions.
     There is also no acknowledgement of, or significance attached to
     the fact that the drafters of the Charter studiously avoided the word
     “nationalisation” despite its near-universal legitimacy and popularity at
     the time. The evidence presented in this analysis suggests that they did so
     by virtue of (a) substantial disagreement within the anti-apartheid
     movement on the matter, and (b) the ANC not – as the ANCYL
     acknowledges – regarding itself as socialistic or communistic then or since.
     The extent to which the ANC and those to its left had divergent
     ideologies was stressed by Nelson Mandela during his speech at the
     relaunch of the SACP in 1990. He described the ANC as consisting of
     “people with different ideological views, who are united by the common
     perspective of national emancipation represented by the Freedom
     Charter”. Making the point that the Charter embraced diverse
     perspectives within a broad opposition to racial domination. The SACP,
     which, unlike the ANC, was for nationalisation, he said, had “fought side
     by side with the ANC for the common objective of the National Liberation
     of people, without seeking to impose its views on our movement.” He
     spoke of the parties having “separate perspectives” and the SACP as
     having “fought to uphold the character of the ANC as the Parliament of
     the oppressed, containing within it people with different ideological views.”
     Another problem in the ANCYL’s Basic Document is that there
     appears to be a fundamental confusion regarding what precisely is to be
     nationalised. It calls, for instance, for the “mineral wealth beneath the
     soil” to be nationalised, despite the fact that this has already been done. It
     also either fails to distinguish between minerals and mines, or regards
     them as synonymous.
     In support of the view that the relevant words espouse
     nationalisation by implication or inference, the Basic Document cites rare
     examples of ANC luminaries, including Mandela, endorsing the transfer
     of assets to “the people as a whole”, but it does not mention (a) the
     significance of how resolutely, though not absolutely, ANC representatives,
     including the drafters of the Freedom Charter, have avoided the word
     “nationalisation”, and (b) how rarely they mention “mines” explicitly as a
     target for transfer or transformation.
     Would they, it should be asked, have avoided the word
     “nationalisation” if that was what they intended, or the word “mines” if
     that was what they wanted to nationalise? Why would they resort to
     circuitous ways of saying what they supposedly meant? More
     fundamentally, why should the term “the people as a whole” be presumed
     a synonym for government? It has been observed by many leftist critics
     of “state capitalism” that government ownership is not synonymous with
     broad-based ownership by “the people”. This is one of the few points of
     general agreement amongst leftist and liberal intellectuals.
     Did the ANC or Mandela Call for Nationalisation?
     Since the ANCYL’s Basic Document and the League’s leader, Julius
     Malema, make much of Mandela’s supposed espousal of nationalisation,
     it is worth noting the extent to which they err factually and contextually,
     and the greater significance of what they omit than what they cite. It is
     “most egregious” according to Alistair Sparks (Malema, Mandela and
     Nationalisation, Daily Sun, 7 March 2010) that this has “been allowed
     to go unchallenged”. Sparks quotes Malema as saying, “In his first public
     address after release … Mandela said ‘Nationalisation of the mines, banks
     and monopoly industry is the policy of the ANC and a change or
     modification of our view in this regard is inconceivable’.” “In truth,” writes
     Sparks, “Mandela ‘rejected nationalisation … a full two years before
     becoming President’. Malema’s quote is ‘factually wrong in the first
     instance, and elliptical beyond that for it omits Mandela’s change of mind
     …’. Mandela made ‘no mention of nationalisation … in his first public
     address’.”
     According to the late Anthony Sampson, Mandela’s authorised
     biographer, he admitted to not having been aware of the world’s unhappy
     experience with nationalisation until he had been briefed by leaders from
     China, Vietnam and Holland, and leading experts, especially at Davos.
     He had, for instance, been unaware of Zambia’s nationalisation debacle.
     Despite some 1960s Marxist rhetoric, which seems curiously out
     of place, the Basic Document is, as mentioned above, strikingly ahistoric.
     It does not attempt an explanation of why the Freedom Charter and
     ANC leaders such as Mandela refer to “the people as a whole” wherever
     the word “nationalisation” would have been more apposite had it been
     intended. Nor does it mention concerns expressed at the time by prominent
     ANC Africanists, liberals and luminaries such as Albert Luthuli about
     whether the Freedom Charter had socialistic undertones that could be
     misinterpreted. It is one of history’s anomalies that it took fifty years for
     the words in question to be misinterpreted.
     It is hard to think of anyone better placed to speak authoritatively
     about what the words mean than the person who drafted them, Ben Turok.
     He is one of the few experts to have addressed the matter directly. Turok,
     apart from being one of the architects of the substance and form of the
     Freedom Charter, as head of the Congress of Democrats and reputedly
     a communist, whilst he, like Luthuli and others, may personally favour (or
     have favoured) nationalisation, had this to say (Calm down. The ANC is
     not about to seize mines, The Times, 19 July 2009) about what the
     words mean:
     “… the word ‘nationalisation’ does not appear in the clause [which]
     states, ‘The national wealth shall be restored to the people’, and, ‘The
     mineral wealth beneath the soil shall be transferred to the ownership
     of the people as a whole’. (Note: ‘beneath the soil’).”
     “What was in our minds … was to emphasise that white economic
     power had usurped the historical legacy of the indigenous people
     whose ownership had to be restored. It was the colonial aspect that
     the charter sought to reverse, not private ownership of property. It
     has never been the intention of the ANC to create a command economy
     by nationalisation, either then or now.”
     Regardless of what the words might mean, Ben Turok says:
     “… is our mining industry a candidate for nationalisation? … mining
     companies are now international and can easily shift capital abroad
     … while Cuba and the Soviet Union were able to nationalise without
     compensation, our prospects of doing so would be nil, and payments
     would be huge … the case for nationalising the mines has yet to be
     made convincingly … ”

     Historical Context
     The Freedom Charter was written when nationalisation was such a
     popular concept that it was not espoused only by the “left”. It was
     commonplace in nominally “capitalist” countries, practised by the apartheid
     regime and its predecessors, and endorsed by most recognised
     intellectuals. It was widely regarded as the only way to generate sufficient
     capital for large-scale projects. The word “privatise” did not even exist
     because there was no need for it for another three decades. Marginalised
     “classical liberal” intellectuals propagated “denationalisation” in obscure
     and largely ignored texts.
     In other words, failure to use the word at a time when it was a part
     of popular culture and the prevailing policy of most countries, was
     probably deliberate. An established thesis at the time was that it was
     avoided in order to accommodate the wide range of philosophies and
     ideologies within the “broad church” of the anti-apartheid movement.
     The ANC went to great lengths then and throughout its existence to be
     the natural home for all opponents of apartheid. Its leadership actively
     sought support and membership of advocates of non-racial capitalism.
     Oliver Tambo occasionally said the ANC was for “capitalism”. He, like
     many other ANC representatives, denied the apartheid regime’s allegation
     that the ANC was communist or socialist.
     The drafters of the Basic Document were selective in their quotation
     from the Freedom Charter. The quotation on which the Basic Document
     relies (“The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly
     industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.”)
     can be regarded as implying some form of nationalisation only if read out
     of context, especially disregarding the unambiguously capitalistic nature
     of what follows. The questionable assumption that belonging to “the people
     as a whole” is a synonym for nationalisation is rendered all the more
     dubious by the resounding pro-market proposition that follows, namely
     that “all people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to
     manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions”. What these
     words mean is, unlike those which precede them, as clear as language
     gets. This is an unambiguous call for enterprise, including industry, to be
     private and free. These words coincide with the freedom-to-trade clause
     (§23) in our Bill of Rights, according to which “Every citizen has the
     right to choose their trade, occupation or profession freely …”. Like
     many others in the Freedom Charter and the Bill of Rights, what we
     have here is consistency with, and only with, a market economy
     characterised by privatisation rather than nationalisation.
     Apart from observing that there was every reason to be explicit –
     to use the “n” word – drafters and supporters of the Charter did not
     have the knowledge of history that is available now. They did not know,
     for instance, that experiments with nationalisation would have ghastly
     consequences and virtually all countries that tried it, including those best
     placed to do so efficiently, such as Britain, East Germany and various
     Central European countries, would abandon the idea.
     The extent to which things have changed is reflected in the response
     of a foreign academic contacted for this study who stated, “I’m surprised
     that anyone is still interested in nationalisation. I thought it had been
     committed to the trash-heap of history.”
     When the Charter was drafted, countries such as the Soviet Union
     had not yet shown that assets owned by government are not in any
     intelligible sense “owned” by the people, and that “the people” are
     conspicuous victims of nationalisation according to virtually every quantified
     criterion.
     The Charter’s drafters did not know that the people of the Soviet
     Union, China, Vietnam and other formerly communist countries would
     lose liberty directly (through government being their primary source of
     employment) and indirectly (through government being their primary source
     of welfare). They also did not know that nationalisation would be
     characterised by corruption, patronage, nepotism and inefficiency. They
     also never knew that “the people” as consumers would have fewer choices
     and inferior products and services. And they never suspected the
     emergence of a “nomenklatura” with special “hard currency” shops
     stocking luxuries unavailable to “the people”. The use of the term “hard
     currency” was an extraordinarily shameless admission that their own
     currencies and economies were inferior. Since the drafters of the Charter
     knew none of this, they can be forgiven for contemplating nationalisation
     as an idea to be taken seriously, and are to be complimented on not
     succumbing to the temptation to recommend it as formal ANC policy.
     This analysis is confirmed by Ben Turok in The Times article dated
     19 July 2009:
     “The state was everywhere seen as the primary instrument. In the
     UK, the Labour Party introduced … some nationalisation; Latin
     America nationalised many industries. … Tanzania nationalised many
     industries, Zambia took over the copper mines and so on. …
     nationalisation of major industries was a well-known phenomenon …
     as the ANC moved to a negotiated settlement, there was no suggestion
     of taking over major industry, and this continues to be the formal policy
     position.”

     What “the People as a Whole” Means
     Given the centrality of the Freedom Charter in the ANCYL’s case for
     nationalisation, analysis of the proposal should include analysis of the
     ANCYL’s assumptions regarding it. The ANCYL does acknowledge
     fleetingly that its assumption of synonymity between “ownership by the
     people as a whole” and “nationalisation” is debatable. It does so in a
     section on “Nationalisation vs. Ownership by the people as a whole”.
     Given the history of (a) the nationalisation debate, (b) the Freedom
     Charter, (c) the ANC, (d) the broader anti-apartheid movement, and
     (e) the ensuing world’s experience, the ANCYL has a heavier burden of
     proof than it acknowledges in this section or the balande of its documents.
     The Basic Document includes words that follow the supposed
     nationalisation quotation without interrogating their significance as an aid
     to determining the meaning of “the people as a whole”. The paragraph
     continues with “… all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist
     the well-being of the people; all people shall have equal rights to trade
     where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and
     professions”.
     A striking feature of these words contained in the paragraph on
     which the call for nationalisation hinges is either their liberalism, or, at
     least, their ambiguity. They are words that resonate with, and only with,
     pro-market liberals. The Free Market Foundation, for instance, has, for
     its thirty-five years of advocacy, espoused everyone enjoying (in the
     Freedom Charter’s words) “equal rights to trade where they choose, to
     manufacture and enter all trades, crafts and professions”. Regarding
     control, the classical pro-market position articulated by the eminent South
     African academic, William Hutt, and by his protégé, Raymond Ackerman,
     espouses the “sovereignty of the consumer”, according to which paradigm
     industry and trade should be controlled directly by consumers in the
     perpetual democracy of the free market (where every Rand spent is a
     vote for consumer preference). Economic liberals see free markets as
     power exercised continually and directly by and for “the people”. In this
     capitalistic world view, producers and suppliers are controlled most
     effectively for the benefit of the people by “market forces”.
     The Free Market Foundation has long propagated the “big
     giveaway” implemented in some Central European countries as they
     moved away from communism. “Peoples privatisation” transfers stateowned
     monopoly capital directly to “the people as a whole”. In those
     countries formerly nationalised enterprises were restored to “the people”,
     that is to all citizens or employees, turning them into truly empowered and
     emancipated consumer-owners and worker-owners. Unlike
     nationalisation, such “ownership by the people” would be in unambiguous
     accord with the spirit and letter of the Freedom Charter, whereas
     ownership by government would be monopolistic ownership in the
     extreme, where de facto owners would be a tiny cabal of omnipotent
     elites.

     Land in Context
     As with mines, banks and other industries, the ANCYL interprets what
     the Freedom Charter has to say about land as espousing nationalisation.
     Yet land nationalisation and dispossession in South Africa, Zimbabwe
     and elsewhere provides a conclusive refutation of that notion. The
     apartheid regime acquired land from whites and relocated, some would
     say herded, blacks to such nationalised land into “locations” and
     “bantustans”. Blacks in “black” areas never owned their land – it was
     never transferred to them – and they were condemned to being tenants
     or vassals of the state on nationalised land. Notwithstanding this undebated
     fact, the mistaken consensus of the apartheid regime and its critics was
     that blacks “had” 13% of the land (which curiously included “homelands”
     and excluded “townships”). In truth, blacks had no land.
     It is worth observing that this is precisely what has happened in
     Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe government, like the apartheid regime,
     acquired land from white farmers and relocated blacks there in forced
     removals where they live on, but do not own, nationalised land. What the
     apartheid regime called “homeland development”, the Mugabe regime
     calls “rural development”. Differences are cosmetic and rhetorical, not
     substantive or intrinsic.
     There may be legitimate disagreement about who should own land,
     but there can be no credible disagreement about the obvious fact that
     land owned by governments is not land owned by those who occupy or
     work the land. There is, accordingly, neither in the words concerned, nor
     in their historical context, a basis for interpreting the Freedom Charter
     as contemplating land nationalisation. Nationalisation of land owned by
     black people, not just in “white group areas” and “black spots” outside
     the homelands, but land within homelands, was, after all, the purpose of
     the loathsome “land acts”.

     Afrikaner Nationalism, African Nationalism and Nationalisation
     One of the most obvious reasons for African nationalists (ANC) to avoid
     words connoting nationalisation in the Freedom Charter could have been
     that nationalisation was the policy of Afrikaner nationalists (National Party/
     apartheid regime). The anti-apartheid movement would have had a natural
     aversion to whatever the apartheid regime espoused, and would not have
     wanted to appear to share its vision on such a crucial issue. Furthermore,
     the movement cared about the plight of labour, especially mine workers
     and wanted improved wages and working conditions for them. It
     recognised that the way to achieve this aim was by increasing rather than
     decreasing the demand for labour, that is, the size, resources and number
     of employers competing for it. Nationalisation would have the opposite
     effect; it would reduce competition for labour to a monopsony (a single
     buyer), in this case, the government, which, pending liberation, was the
     dreaded apartheid regime.
     A single State-Owned Mining Company (SOMC) such as that
     proposed by the ANCYL, would be a mine labour monopsony. As such,
     it would be less directly accountable to voters and labour than, say, a
     government department or municipality. Unlike private mining companies,
     it would face neither pro-labour and pro-efficiency competition from other
     mines, nor the benefits of exacting and perspicacious investors.
     Bearing these considerations in mind, and the likelihood of the
     Afrikaner regime remaining in power for many years, meant that the ANC
     was unlikely to have propagated a policy that would encourage its
     adversaries to convert ominous talk of nationalising mines into reality. It
     made more sense to envisage its constituency participating directly as
     share owning mine owners or indirectly as members of mine owning trusts
     and cooperatives.
     If, as Mandela and others pointed out, there were to be any
     nationalisation at all, it would be a temporary measure to “smash” what
     was perceived to be over-concentration pending redistribution to “the
     people”. The ANC would be more true to the tradition and values of the
     Freedom Charter and the struggle against oppression if it left existing
     mines in the hands of competing private owners, encouraged more private
     investment in and ownership of mines, endorsed and supported the
     impressive rate by which black participation in mine ownership is
     increasing, sold existing government owned mines, and redistributed the
     “mineral wealth beneath the soil” it nationalised a few years ago into broadbased
     mostly black private ownership.
     The ANC’s elders were aware of the violent battles of white mine
     workers, a powerful constituency within the regime, supported by the
     Communist Party, against the advantageous employment of blacks by
     mining companies. In the circumstances, it would have made more sense
     to want black ownership than government ownership. They would also
     have been mindful of the adverse impact on “the people” of the
     nationalisation by successive white governments of broadcasting, airlines,
     the steel industry, electricity companies, SASOL, railways, schools,
     chemicals, water and gas companies, and the like. They lamented the
     cost-raising impact on low-income communities of the de facto
     nationalisation of agricultural processing and marketing. Mindful of the
     extent to which the regime had already nationalised competitive private
     companies in “strategic sectors” and consolidated them into state-owned
     “monopoly industries”, and the extent to which it had created state-owned
     mining, industrial, financial and other enterprises, the ANC is unlikely to
     have wanted to support the omnipresent threat of mine nationalisation.
     One of the strategies adopted by private mines, perceived to be
     Anglo-Saxon or Jewish, to avoid nationalisation was the Afrikaner
     equivalent of BEE, especially the creation of an Afrikaner mining house,
     Gencor, and the promotion of Afrikaner investment in mining companies
     through such emerging Afrikaans financial institutions as Sanlam, Santam
     and Volkskas. Such institutional ownership is the principal means by which
     black ownership of mines has been growing under the ANC. Black direct
     and indirect ownership of locally listed mines is already conservatively
     estimated at over 25 per cent, and may be as much as 50 per cent. At
     present rates, the goal of the Freedom Charter, ownership by the people
     as a whole, will have been reached within a generation of transition
     provided, paradoxically, mines are not nationalised. If mines are
     nationalised, the Freedom Charter’s vision of broad-based ownership
     by black South Africans will be defeated.
     All things considered, it would have been conspicuously anomalous
     for the ANC to be advancing what was essentially the policy of its principal
     political adversary, and would destroy what it has achieved for its
     constituency were it to resurrect archaic and anachronistic policies now.
     Contemporary Context
     Writing about “new faces of militancy in Cosatu”, Matuma Letsoalo (Mail
     & Guardian, 20 November 2009) cites as an example Irvin Jim
     (NUMSA), a “hardcore communist”, who “lashes out at senior ANC
     leaders” (including Deputy President Motlante, unionist Gwede Mantashe
     and Mathews Phosa) regarding their non-socialistic interpretation of the
     Freedom Charter.
     He quotes Jim as saying, “I don’t know what Freedom Charter
     people are reading” or “which conference of the ANC has changed it”.
     “The Freedom Charter we know says the people shall share in
     the country’s wealth. The national wealth, the heritage of our country
     shall be restored to our people. The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the
     banks and monopoly industries shall be transferred to the hands of the
     people. All other industries and trade shall be transferred to assist the
     wellbeing of our people.” He concludes, “In a country where
     unemployment is so high, you must tamper with the current macroeconomic
     policies. The government must ensure that the Freedom Charter is
     executed.”
     Here we see one of many examples of the ahistoric and
     unsubstantiated assumption that the government is the people.
     Ex-post Dogma or Original Intent
     Since there is virtually nothing in the Freedom Charter that is
     unambiguously socialistic and much that is exclusively capitalistic, how
     has the myth that it is socialistic become axiomatic truth? Its tones are
     perhaps left-of-centre, but that does not make it socialistic or communistic,
     a point on which virtually all scholarly commentators agree regardless of
     their personal persuasions. Part of the explanation for it being presumed
     hard left may be that the anti-apartheid movement was regarded in some
     circles, especially the apartheid regime, as a radical ‘left-wing’ revolutionary
     movement. Additionally, communistic and socialistic governments provided
     most support for the anti-apartheid movement.
     An obvious flaw in the idea that opposition to apartheid was
     socialistic is that it fails, inter alia, to reflect that apartheid was more
     inconsistent with classical liberalism (including free market capitalism) than
     all schools of socialistic, fascistic and communistic thought, from ‘leftwing’
     democratic socialism through ‘right-wing’ national socialism to
     despotic communism. Apartheid was characterised, above all, by extreme
     government ownership and control of human and non-human resources,
     especially for black South Africans.
     In its opposition to apartheid, the Freedom Charter can be seen
     as a call for extending the liberty (including capitalism) enjoyed by whites
     to blacks, or the subjugation of whites to the authoritarian socialism applied
     to blacks. Palo Jordan, one of the ANC’s leading intellectuals, cites with
     approval the ANC’s 1923 African Bill of Rights as a call for the “extension
     to blacks of the rights enjoyed by whites”. It included no suggestion of
     “radically restructuring the economy”. He adds that in the same vein the
     Freedom Charter “is not a socialist document”. Even so, his view is that
     it “entails” nationalisation without saying what leads him to that conclusion.
     Whilst not specifically calling for it, the Freedom Charter will, he suggests,
     “go a long way towards removing the commanding heights from … private
     ownership”. In other words, the Freedom Charter does not itself call
     for this, but will contribute to what he regards as a separate and subsequent
     goal. Nationalisation is, as he sees it, a personal aspiration not demanded
     by the Freedom Charter.
     One of the most conspicuous aspects of the Freedom Charter is
     that virtually everything in it is sufficiently ambiguous – for important
     historical reasons it was deliberately so – to allow for alternative ideological
     interpretations. Accordingly, both doctrinaire socialists and liberals can
     read and agree with virtually everything in it. Much of it is, for instance,
     self-evidently more consistent with capitalism and libertarianism than with
     socialism or communism. Peter Hudson (Transformation 1, 1986), a
     socialist, regards the Freedom Charter as “notoriously ambiguous”. He
     agrees that it is not a socialist document. Instead it demands a “classical
     bourgeois democracy” (democratic capitalism). That it “invokes neither
     the socialisation of the means of production nor the establishment of a
     dictatorship of the proletariat … has never prevented it from being
     construed as ‘socialist’ or at least ‘anti-capitalist’,” he concludes.
     A 1985 ANC article draws attention to the rare but important
     distinction between the Freedom Charter and the ANC. In it, it says
     “founders were radical liberals rather than socialist egalitarians” and
     emphasises that the ANC “is not a workers party with a socialist
     programme. The liberation struggle is directed against white domination
     …”.

     The Preamble
     The celebrated opening line of the Freedom Charter is that “… South
     Africa belongs to all who live in it … and no government can justly claim
     authority unless it is based on the will of all the people”. At the outset this
     tells us two things: that South Africa should be democratic, and that what
     is in it should belong to those who live in it. Wealth belonging to people as
     opposed to governments is more consistent with democratic capitalism
     than any other system. Here too the notion that whatever belongs to the
     government belongs to its subjects is neither justified by the wording
     concerned nor the historical context.
     The second proposition is that “… people have been robbed of
     their birthright to land, liberty and peace …”. Land rights and liberty are
     central tenets of classical liberalism and democratic capitalism, and are
     inconsistent with socialism and communism. The call for “peace” has two
     possible contexts: domestic and international peace. Maintaining peace
     (law and order) domestically coincides with the classical liberal idea that
     policing and justice are amongst government’s few “core” functions. To
     the extent that interventionistic governments divert resources from
     maintaining peace and security to countless non-core functions, they are
     less liberal. Although the maintenance of international peace can be seen
     in various ideological contexts, wars and colonialism are, by their nature,
     government rather than market activities. Convoluted “neo-colonial”
     theories are necessary to suggest that they can be regarded as activities
     undertaken by private people in free and privatised capitalistic markets.
     That free trade has been labelled “neo-colonial” does not detract from
     the fact that it entails mutually volitional parties taking advantage of their
     “rights and opportunities”.
     The Freedom Charter’s third idea is that “… our country will
     never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood enjoying
     equal rights and opportunities”. Here again we have a statement that is
     more capitalistic than socialistic. Socialism and communism espouse
     equality of outcomes as opposed to equality of opportunities. Equal
     opportunities necessarily lead to inequality of condition (whatever, if
     anything, that might mean). More “rights and opportunities” exist in an
     unimposed market order of free individuals than in an imposed dirigiste
     order (centralised control) or regulated subjects. Not only is prosperity a
     core objective of market capitalism, but that there is more prosperity (by
     all recognised indicators) when rights and opportunities are maximised is
     no longer subject to informed debate.
     Given the primacy of rights and opportunities instead of controls
     and obligations in classical liberalism, the idea of people living in
     “brotherhood” (especially voluntarism) is profoundly consistent with it.
     Socialism is associated with statism, including opposition to “unbridled”
     freedom and a corresponding appetite for anti-liberty control over
     consensual social and economic human action.
     The preamble’s next proposition is that “… therefore … ” South
     Africans of all races adopt the Freedom Charter, which suggests that
     the entire document should be interpreted in accordance with these tenets.
     In other words, ambiguous wording should probably be interpreted in
     accordance with a classical liberal paradigm.

     “The People as a Whole” or the Government?
     The balance of the Freedom Charter is divided into ten sections, all of
     which invite the preceding interpretation. By way of example, according
     to the third section “national wealth … shall be restored to the people”.
     That assets nationalised by the apartheid regime should “restored to the
     people” is a classical liberal idea. Nationalisation is ownership by
     government; privatisation is ownership by people. Unless the Orwellian
     assumption is made that the government is the people.
     What follows in the Basic Document is one of the few statements
     from which the notion is derived that the Freedom Charter is socialistic.
     It reads: “The mineral wealth … banks and monopoly industry shall be
     transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole”. Apart from the
     obvious fact that it does not say that they should be transferred to the
     government (nationalised), under free market capitalism such assets are
     owned by ordinary people directly and through market institutions.
     Contrary to popularised mythology, large private sector enterprises are
     the subject of widely dispersed ownership by “the people as a whole”
     mainly through insurance policies, pension schemes, medical aids, cooperatives,
     trade unions, savings and so forth.
     Had nationalisation been what the authors of the Freedom Charter
     had in mind, they would have said so and they would have used the
     word. Nationalisation was, after all, so globally popular at the time – the
     “n” word was an “in” word – that they would have used it at least once,
     and, where they did not use it, they had no reason not to recommend
     nationalisation unambiguously. That the word and the idea were so
     studiously avoided is instructive and, according to some accounts, was a
     deliberate means of reconciling the “broad church” of anti-apartheid
     activists in the struggle, including liberals.
     Nationalisation and centralised control (dirigisme) were so popular
     and commonplace that they were widespread even in nominally capitalist
     countries. Modern everyday words like “privatise”, “liberalise”,
     “corporatise”, “commercialise” and “public-private partnerships” (PPPs)
     did not exist until the 1980s. Pure liberalism had become so rare that the
     word for it, “libertarianism”, had fallen into disuse and had to be revived
     when the idea became respectable again.
     If these words do not imply nationalisation, what do they mean?
     Obvious possibilities are widespread ownership (a) of the kind achieved
     when shares in privatised government enterprises are transferred directly
     to the general public, or (b) of the kind achieved through publicly owned
     financial institutions such as the Public Investment Corporation (PIC).
     Ownership implies the right of disposal, so that people who own such
     assets are free to dispose of them. There is nothing in the Freedom
     Charter to suggest a prohibition on the right of disposal.
     The reference to “monopoly industry” is presumed by the ultra-left
     to refer to large-scale private industries. However, since industries not
     protected, created or owned by the government are in no sense
     “monopolies” (sole suppliers), a more plausible interpretation would be
     that the term refers to the only true monopoly industries in South Africa at
     the time, state-owned enterprises or “parastatals”. Various industries had
     been, and were being nationalised or considered for nationalisation, and
     run as patronage monopolies by white regimes at the time in such areas
     as mining, railways, airlines, steel, chemicals, infrastructure and the like.
     Since the apartheid regime was a protagonist of monopoly industry, it
     would have been anomalous for the Freedom Charter to espouse more
     of it. It would make more sense to call, as the Free Market Foundation
     has been doing for thirty five years, for such monopoly industry to be
     transferred to “the people as a whole” by giving or selling them shares
     directly or through institutions.

     Freedom Charter Liberalism
     What of provisions in the Freedom Charter that do not refer specifically
     to ownership of mines, banks and industry? Do they, as many assume,
     suggest a socialistic or communistic paradigm according to which socialism
     or communism should be read into the provisions examined above? Much
     of the Charter is consistent only with liberal democracy and democratic
     capitalism. Conversely, virtually none of it is consistent only with socialism
     or communism. The general tenor of the Charter implies liberal democracy
     or democratic capitalism. One of the few provisions which seems to be
     an exception is the fascistic proposition that “the state shall recognise the
     right and duty of all to work … and draw full unemployment benefits”
     (author’s emphasis). In a free society, there should, of course, be no duty
     to work, and unemployment benefits should be available only when strict
     conditions are met.
     Provisions normally presumed to be socialistic regarding access to
     education, housing, healthcare and the like are not necessarily so. None
     say that there must be government provision. The Freedom Charter
     leaves open the vexed question of which system is most likely to deliver
     such blessings most bountifully. If governments fund delivery, they do not
     need to produce it. On the contrary, as with pensions, computers and
     roads, more desired benefits are acquired with government funding when
     competing private suppliers undertake production and delivery than where
     governments fund and deliver, as with electricity, education, healthcare
     and policing. Since government budgets tend to deliver more where
     governments confine themselves to being funders of last resort,
     nationalisation should be regarded as the enemy of the Freedom Charter
     and “the people”. Would the Charter’s and the ANCYL’s health care
     objectives, for instance, be met more satisfactorily if the government runs
     nationalised hospitals or if it provides health care insurance (funding alone)
     for the poor to purchase healthcare from private providers?
     Even if a socialistic interpretation might have seemed appropriate
     at a time when there was little or no empirical evidence on which to settle
     the debate, recent decades have settled the matter as conclusively as
     social science permits. As stated above, freer economies (with less
     nationalisation, especially of mines, banks and industry) are characterised
     by superior outcomes according to all recognised criteria and published
     indices. It is therefore no coincidence that the world’s poor flee, often
     risking and losing their lives, in only one direction, from less free to more
     free economies – always from Cuba to America, never from America to
     Cuba; from North to South Korea, never the reverse; from the former
     East Germany to West Germany; from Zimbabwe to Botswana; from
     Indonesia to Singapore, and so on. Market economies use police to keep
     people out, and non-market economies use police to keep them in. It is
     as if the world’s destitute masses know something those who purport to
     care for them do not, namely, that the best place to go if you are destitute
     is from countries with more nationalised and controlled enterprises to
     ones with less.
     One of the many anomalies of the public discourse on social benefits
     is the assumption that the desire for “houses for all” or “jobs for all” is
     socialistic. It is as if their critics think capitalists derive sadistic thrills from
     having homeless and jobless compatriots. At the time of the Freedom
     Charter, before the overwhelming evidence now at our disposal, people
     could be excused for assuming that the best way to provide houses and
     jobs would be for the government to be the primary provider. But decades
     of subsequent experience the world over shows that adequate and decent
     housing is overwhelmingly more common in market economies. In other
     words, the world’s experience is such that deliberately ambiguous
     provisions in the Freedom Charter can now be regarded as clarified,
     regardless of what the dominant view might have been then.

     Ends and Means
     That anti-market interpretations of the Freedom Charter have been
     largely unchallenged means that pro-market interpretations are likely to
     be met with scepticism. Yet the literal meaning of the words, and their
     probable meaning given their historical context, suggests that populist
     anti-market conceptions should be regarded as more questionable.
     As with the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP),
     the Freedom Charter is primarily about ends, not means, about policy
     objectives rather than specific policies, leaving the matter of selecting
     preferred means to ends to democratic processes.
     Amongst the few explicitly socialistic ideas in the Freedom Charter
     are that “the aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared
     for by the state”. This, as it happens, is characteristic of all capitalistic
     countries, and is one of the compromises made by virtually all advocates
     of capitalism except of course pure libertarians. The absolute amount of
     care provided for such people by governments in capitalistic countries
     far exceeds that provided by governments in non-market economies.
     Greater government-funded welfare in capitalistic countries is generously
     supplement by private charity and philanthropy in cash and kind almost in
     direct proportion to how free a country’s economy is.
     Many of the Freedom Charter’s more ambiguous provisions can
     go either way, such as “Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful
     and no-one shall go hungry …”. Socialists presume this to imply
     government ownership and/or control. Capitalists presume it to imply
     price minimising free competition. They point out that prices are lowest
     and food most plentiful (with fewest people going hungry) when farms
     are privately owned, and produce is processed and distributed by freely
     competing industries and retailers.

     The Freedom Charter and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR)
     In addition to the Freedom Charter, there is reliance on the National
     Democratic Revolution (NDR). Although there is not as much reliance
     on it by the ANCYL as the Charter, it cannot be ignored. As a secondary
     consideration, it does not call for comparably in-depth analysis.
     According to Blade Nzimande, General Secretary of the Communist
     Party (SACP), in “What is the National Democratic Revolution?”,
     the ANC does not share “all the perspectives of the NDR as articulated
     by the SACP”. He describes the “immediate objectives of the NDR” as
     not being socialism, but “the liberation of blacks in general and Africans
     in particular, and the building of a non-racial and non-sexist society”. The
     SACP, rather than the ANC, “had conceived the NDR merely as a
     stepping stone or an ‘instrument’ towards socialism”. For the SACP,
     “especially since the adoption of the Native Republic Thesis of 1928 (‘A
     struggle for a native republic as a stage towards a socialist South Africa’)”
     the NDR was a “route to socialism”.
     The “perspective” of the Alliance, however, was that the NDR
     “was not a socialist revolution, but it was not a struggle for capitalism
     either”, and whilst the Freedom Charter was “not a socialist document
     [it] envisaged a … major restructuring of the capitalist system … in favour
     of the overwhelming majority of our people”. He regards this perspective
     as “strengthened” by the ANC’s Morogoro Conference and the Green
     Book, in accordance with which the government should “manage capitalist
     relations” within a capitalistic economy.
     In other words, Nzimande sees the Freedom Charter, the NDR,
     related documents and events, and the Alliance as implying capitalism.
     Applied to mining, this implies privately owned non-nationalised mines
     within a legal framework that favours “the overwhelming majority”. This
     is a shared perspective, not only within the Alliance, but amongst all decent
     people, notwithstanding substantial differences within a capitalistic
     paradigm regarding the ideal characteristics of the legal framework under
     which private mine owners operate.
     Nzimande suggests that there was no inconsistency between the
     Freedom Charter and Minister of Mining, Susan Shabangu’s declaration
     that “We are definitely not going to nationalise mines … The ongoing
     debate will not change the government’s policy … It must be a concern
     for investors, but I want to assure them that, as government, we are not
     going to go down that route”. This is a stronger statement than the more
     common response to expressions of concern, which is that nationalisation
     is “not government policy”. This diluted response begs the question of
     whether it might become policy.
     The commissioning of research into whether mines should be
     nationalised suggests, despite repeated assurances to the contrary, that
     the government is seriously considering nationalisation. That it is doing so
     may be a needless concession to the ANCYL given the probable meaning
     of the ambiguous wording of the relevant clause in the Freedom Charter,
     the clear meaning of the Charter as a whole, and mounting international
     evidence against nationalisation as an effective means of achieving any of
     the objectives articulated by the ANCYL.
     Two intellectual icons of the left, Raymond Suttner and Jeremy
     Cronin, explained during the struggle that the Freedom Charter was
     neither socialistic nor bourgeois, and that it seeks instead “to win the
     support of all those who oppose apartheid”. It represents “an alliance of
     various … classes and groupings … in the struggle against racial
     inequality”. It was concerned with the struggle against apartheid, not against
     capitalism. Peter Hudson, another left intellectual, laments in his 1986
     Transformation article (cited above) that the view that “the oppressed
     nation needs to reappropriate from the oppressing nation” is not anticapitalist.
     “The resources in question could,” he argues, “be transferred
     into the control of a class of black capitalists and state functionaries”.
     This, according to him, “is precisely what seems to have been envisaged
     by Nelson Mandela in 1956”.
     From all the ink that has been devoted to the discourse on what
     the Freedom Charter means, it is clear that most experts are in agreement
     about it neither being a socialistic document nor demanding nationalisation.

     NATIONALISATION VS. OWNERSHIP BY THE PEOPLE AS A WHOLE (41-44)
     Under this heading, this argument is essentially an elaboration of the
     dominant one derived from the ANCYL’s interpretation of the Freedom
     Charter. It reasserts the view that “transfer of ownership to the people
     as a whole” amounts to government “control and ownership of the
     commanding heights of the economy or nationalisation”. In the six
     paragraphs under this heading, there is, in fact, no further argument
     advanced in favour of nationalisation. The most important aspect of the
     section is the ANCYL’s acknowledgement that there is disagreement on
     whether “ownership by the people” is synonymous with nationalisation.
     Whether or not the ANCYL protests too much, or whether the matter
     really is as free from doubt as it suggests, the ANCYL appears to
     contradict itself by asserting that the matter is free from doubt, yet
     addresses the question as if the matter is debatable.
     In support of its dogmatic interpretation, the ANCYL quotes
     various ANC luminaries including the ANC Secretary General in 1955,
     yet nothing in the quotation is obviously instructive or even relevant. None
     of the ANC luminaries refer specifically or by implication to the wording
     under consideration. The late ANC President, Nobel Laureate Albert
     Luthuli, is quoted as saying in 1956 that “… even amongst the so-called
     capitalistic countries, nationalisation of certain industries and commercial
     undertakings has become an accepted and established fact. Only the
     uninitiated and ignorant

     Loading...

     Reply