The past week the DA adopted a new Economic Justice policy. However, rather than a substantive debate on the policy itself, many commentators and political analysts chose instead to engage in often self-referential and always wrongheaded excoriation of ideas and imagined consequences, none of which appear in or flow from the policy itself.
Let us then work through all those myths and misdirection, and set out what in truth is not an old guard regression of the party, but the fruition of the hopes and ambitions of a younger generation in the DA determined to steer the country into an inclusive and nonracial future.
How? Our answer is to focus on the drivers of economic inequality. Current economic empowerment policy diagnoses the root of the problem as ‘white monopoly capital’. The unwritten but often articulated assumption is that the reason more South Africans are not included in the economy 25 years after apartheid is due to the recalcitrance of white executives and white owners of capital, and hence the persistent urge for corporate South Africa to do more. Corporate SA can indeed play a role as a partner to economic inclusion efforts, but it should not play the role of scapegoat. Our analysis is driven by the economic evidence, key drivers of economic exclusion include:
- Poverty
- Poor educational outcomes
- Inadequate public healthcare
- High mobility costs
- Malnutrition
- Spatial inequality
- Unstable family environments and the unequal sharing of childcare responsibilities
- Low savings and savings in low return vehicles
- An incapable state, too incompetent and corrupt to make a material difference to the conditions described above.
The Economic Justice Policy proposes interventions and invites us to focus on these issues. Any policy concerned with how we can build an economically inclusive society should set its sights on the drivers of inequality. Yet one would be hard-pressed to find any of these factors feature in a discussion on empowerment currently. Empowerment has become a feeding frenzy for elites, measured using criteria that could not possibly tell you anything about the plight of the majority.
It is possible for all management positions, all ownership of listed companies, all contracts to be in the hands of black owned companies and for the majority to still be trapped in the same cycle of deprivation. There are many countries in which the wealthiest and the poorest are from the same racial group. Thus, the racial demography of the wealthiest cannot distract us from the goal of broad-based economic inclusion.
Therefore, the first hurdle is to convince more and more South Africans that the material conditions which people face on a daily basis should be the primary focus of empowerment policy, not the share ownership of specific companies. That recognition alone turns the current empowerment approach on its head.
Who would be the primary beneficiaries of disadvantage-based policies? The majority of South Africans, not an elite few. In particular, the majority of South Africans who would have been classified as black under apartheid. Some, like Stephen Grootes, believe that because the majority poor are black therefore it makes no sense not to use race.
He argues, “The simple fact is that the majority of South Africans believe that race indeed is a proxy for disadvantage. They believe, with firm evidence, as well as their lived experience, that white people are rich and poor people are black.”
It is precisely because the majority of poor South Africans would have been classified as black under apartheid that it is possible to just use means as a metric. There should be no concern that a poor focused policy would yield primarily white advantaged beneficiaries. Yet we can be absolutely assured that a policy which uses race as the metric will continue to enable the capture of empowerment resources by the already empowered.
Race matters for many people, but that alone is no reason to argue it should form the basis of policy. Religion is equally important to many South Africans, yet a decision not to include religious considerations in policymaking would not be taken to mean that religion does not matter. It just does not matter to achieve certain policy aims, as apartheid race classification is not necessary to achieve economic inclusion.
Lastly, the real nub of the problem appears not to be a genuine flaw in the policy approach itself but a concern for the DA’s electoral prospects.
This means that what is still the official opposition gets weaker.- Stephen Grootes
Many people will be looking for that new home after this past weekend.- Peter Bruce
Pulling together critiques of cronyism, corruption and elite patronage – and thus punting inclusion – the DA hopes its race blind spots will appeal to voters… It’s a gamble.– Mariane Merten
In truth it is not a particularly risky gamble from the perspective of prevailing South African attitudes. Our own research, corroborated by others, indicates that most South Africans would be open to nonracial economic empowerment. It is the commentators who are out of touch with South Africans.
The South African Reconciliation Barometer, a survey by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, shows that although there has been a gradual increase in support of racial categories for transformation purposes, from 40.1% in 2007 to 48.5% in 2013. However, SARB data has never indicated that a majority of South Africans are in favour of the continued use of race as a measure of transformation.
Thus, there are a substantial number of South Africans who already reach the same conclusion as the DA, and yet more who would be open to persuasion. What is true is that voter behavior is not directly correlated to support of policy positions.
A parting thought, by way of perspective.
Newspapers and political parties share something in common: they both sell ideas. A newspaper has an editorial line, political parties have their values and principles. In turn, their respective success or failure at winning hearts and minds can be quantified: in readership numbers and votes.
Ironically, given how strident and moral sure editorial commentators seems to be about offering the DA advice, take a step back and South Africa’s mainstream newspapers are in decline. Not just any decline, a profound one. In some cases, total. Never mind the DA’s hyper-exaggerated 1.7 percentage point loss in 2019, name any newspaper and, if it has not been shut down already, it has lost at least 50% of its readership over the last decade. That is a general truth.
And yet, here you have these ostensibly wise elders, pontificating to the DA about how to win over the public. The DA, with four million votes. In comparison, every day their own houses shrink and wither away. Makes you think, doesn’t it? It is all upside down. It is perhaps the DA who should start offering newspaper some advice, about winning support. They are the ones who really need it.