Privatization, Neoliberal Development, and the Struggle for Workers' Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa

THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS' LONG STRUGGLE AGAINST APARTHEID RAISED expectations considerably for political liberation as well as economic and social transformation among the working classes and poor communities in South Africa. The African National Congress (ANC) bad mobilized by embracing the Freedom Charter, with its populist and socialist slogans such as "The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth" and "The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It" (Suttner and Cronin, 1985). ANC rule since 1994 has not translated organically into a full realization of these expectations. This article describes the main elements of workers' struggles for collective bargaining rights, racial equality, and social justice. The central findings are that the struggles for collective bargaining rights were quite successful, as were struggles for political inclusion and formal racial equality. The struggles for substantive racial equality and social justice were not as rewarding. In the arena of macroeconomic policy, the ruling ANC has foregone redistributive nationalization and needs-based growth in favor of a neoliberal economic agenda that prioritizes fiscal constraint, lower inflation, trade liberalization, and creating conditions favorable to domestic and foreign capital investment. Neoliberal macroeconomic policies led the state to attempt privatization of state-owned corporations, while the private sector has downsized under pressures to increase its global competitiveness. Both processes led to job losses. At the level of local government, cities and metropolitan areas increasingly subjected their basic needs, infrastructure, and operations to the principles of cost recovery. Cost recovery requires that service providers recoup costs by passing them on to consumers. To a certain degree, local government provisioning of water, electricity, sanitation, and waste management have all been subject to the cost recovery process; consequently, poor communities are increasingly unable to receive basic needs services. Neoliberal state policy has not been implemented without resistance. Because of the relative success of worker struggles for collective bargaining rights and their institutionalization in national corporatist institutions, workers slowed the pace of private and public-sector retrenchments. Under pressure from unions, the state has expanded the social wage package to include formerly excluded farm, domestic, and public-sector workers. And it has implemented a labor-intensive public works program to address unemployment. A host of newly formed community groups emerged at local levels to oppose the implementation of cost recovery of municipal services. Among the many organizations are Electricity and Water Crisis Committees, Concerned Residents Committees, and the nationally organized Anti-Privatisation Forum and Anti-Eviction Campaign. Together, these community groups and unions mobilized against neoliberalism, and the state has responded with ever-greater repression. The article concludes with a short discussion regarding strategies for creating greater social justice in South Africa. The Workers' Struggle for Union Recognition One of the areas of greatest worker success has been in the establishment of collective bargaining structures and economic corporatism. Until 1979, the South African labor regime had a dualistic structure: it provided a legal and formal guarantee of industrial rights to whites, Coloureds, and Indians, but a labor-repressive exclusionary structure without rights for Africans (Webster, 1988: 176).African unionism dates back to the 1920s and peaked in the 1950s, when the unions became involved in the national liberation struggle in the ANC-aligned South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). The mass strikes of the 1950s that were associated with the liberation struggle served as an effective recruitment tool, until the apartheid state banned the ANC and forced the movement underground, while SACTU became defunct. …