Part 6 (1/2)

I went to South Africa in 2005 to try to understand what had happened in the transition, in those key years between 1990 and 1994, to make Mandela take a route that he had described so unequivocally as ”inconceivable.”

The ANC went into negotiations with the ruling National Party determined to avoid the kind of nightmare that neighboring Mozambique had experienced when the independence movement forced an end to Portuguese colonial rule in 1975. On their way out the door, the Portuguese threw a vindictive temper tantrum, pouring cement down elevator shafts, smas.h.i.+ng tractors and stripping the country of all they could carry. To its enormous credit, the ANC did negotiate a relatively peaceful handover. However, it did not manage to prevent South Africa's apartheid-era rulers from wreaking havoc on their way out the door. Unlike their counterparts in Mozambique, the National Party didn't pour concrete -their sabotage, equally crippling, was far subtler, and was all in the fine print of those historic negotiations.

The talks that hashed out the terms of apartheid's end took place on two parallel tracks that often intersected: one was political, the other economic. Most of the attention, naturally, focused on the high-profile political summits between Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, leader of the National Party.

De Klerk's strategy in these negotiations was to preserve as much power as possible. He tried everything-breaking the country into a federation, guaranteeing veto power for minority parties, reserving a certain percentage of the seats in government structures for each ethnic group -anything to prevent simple majority rule, which he was sure would lead to ma.s.s land expropriations and the nationalizing of corporations. As Mandela later put it, ”What the National Party was trying to do was to maintain white supremacy with our consent.” De Klerk had guns and money behind him, but his opponent had a movement of millions. Mandela and his chief negotiator, Cyril Ramaphosa, won on almost every count.9 Running alongside these often explosive summits were the much lower profile economic negotiations, primarily managed on the ANC side by Thabo Mbeki, then a rising star in the party, now South Africa's president. As the political talks progressed, and it became clear to the National Party that Parliament would soon be firmly in the hands of the ANC, the party of South Africa's elites began pouring its energy and creativity into the economic negotiations. South Africa's whites had failed to keep blacks from taking over the government, but when it came to safeguarding the wealth they had ama.s.sed under apartheid, they would not give up so easily.

In these talks, the de Klerk government had a twofold strategy. First, drawing on the ascendant Was.h.i.+ngton Consensus that there was now only one way to run an economy, it portrayed key sectors of economic decision making- such as trade policy and the central bank-as ”technical” or ”administrative.” Then it used a wide range of new policy tools-international trade agreements, innovations in const.i.tutional law and structural adjustment programs- to hand control of those power centers to supposedly impartial experts, economists and officials from the IMF, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the National Party-anyone except the liberation fighters from the ANC. It was a strategy of balkanization, not of the country's geography (as de Klerk had originally attempted) but of its economy.

This plan was successfully executed under the noses of ANC leaders, who were naturally preoccupied with winning the battle to control Parliament. In the process, the ANC failed to protect itself against a far more insidious strategy-in essence, an elaborate insurance plan against the economic clauses in the Freedom Charter ever becoming law in South Africa. ”The people shall govern!” would soon become a reality, but the sphere over which they would govern was shrinking fast.

While these tense negotiations between adversaries were unfolding, the ANC was also busily preparing within its own ranks for the day when it would take office. Teams of ANC economists and lawyers formed working groups charged with figuring out exactly how to turn the general promises of the Freedom Charter-for housing ament.i.tes and health care -into practical policies. The most ambitious of these plans was Make Democracy Work, an economic blueprint for South Africa's postapartheid future, written while the high-level negotiations were taking place. What the party loyalists didn't know at the time was that while they were hatching their ambitious plans, the negotiating team was accepting concessions at the bargaining table that would make their implementation a practical impossibility. ”It was dead before it was even launched,” the economist Vishnu Padayachee told me of Make Democracy Work. By the time the draft was complete, ”there was a new ball game.”

As one of the few cla.s.sically trained economists active in the ANC, Padayachee was enlisted to play a leading role in Make Democracy Work (”doing the number-crunching,” as he puts it). Most of the people he worked alongside in those long policy meetings went on to top posts in the ANC government, but Padayachee did not. He has turned down all the offers of government jobs, preferring academic life in Durban, where he teaches, writes and owns the much-loved Ike's Bookshop, named after Ike Mayet, the first non-white South African bookseller. It was there, surrounded by carefully preserved out-of-print volumes on African history, that we met to discuss the transition.

Padayachee entered the liberation struggle in the seventies, as an adviser to South Africa's trade union movement. ”We all had the Freedom Charter stuck on the back of our doors in those days,” he recalled. I asked him when he knew its economic promises were not going to be realized. He first suspected it, he said, in late 1993, when he and a colleague from the Make Democracy Work group got a call from the negotiating team who were in the final stages of haggling with the National Party. The call was a request for them to write a position paper on the pros and cons of making South Africa's central bank an independent ent.i.ty, run with total autonomy from the elected government-oh, and the negotiators needed it by morning.

”We were caught completely off guard,” recalled Padayachee, now in his early fifties. He had done his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He knew that at the time, even among free-market economists in the U.S., central bank independence was considered a fringe idea, a pet policy of a handful of Chicago School ideologues who believed that central banks should be run as sovereign republics within states, out of reach of the meddling hands of elected lawmakers.3110 For Padayachee and his colleagues, who strongly believed that monetary policy needed to serve the new government's ”big goals of growth, employment and redistribution,” the ANC's position was a no-brainer: ”There was not going to be an independent central bank in South Africa.” For Padayachee and his colleagues, who strongly believed that monetary policy needed to serve the new government's ”big goals of growth, employment and redistribution,” the ANC's position was a no-brainer: ”There was not going to be an independent central bank in South Africa.”

Padayachee and a colleague stayed up all night writing a paper that gave the negotiating team the arguments it needed to resist this curveball from the National Party. If the central bank (in South Africa called the Reserve Bank) was run separately from the rest of the government, it could restrict the ANC's ability to keep the promises in the Freedom Charter. Besides, if the central bank was not accountable to the ANC government, to whom, exactly, would it be accountable? The IMF? The Johannesburg Stock Exchange?

Obviously, the National Party was trying to find a backdoor way to hold on to power even after it lost the elections-a strategy that needed to be resisted at all costs. ”They were locking in as much as possible,” Padayachee recalled. ”That was a clear part of the agenda.”

Padayachee faxed the paper in the morning and didn't hear back for weeks. ”Then, when we asked what happened, we were told, 'Well, we gave that one up.'” Not only would the central bank be run as an autonomous ent.i.ty within the South African state, with its independence enshrined in the new const.i.tution, but it would be headed by the same man who ran it under apartheid, Chris Stals. It wasn't just the central bank that the ANC had given up: in another major concession, Derek Keyes, the white finance minister under apartheid, would also remain in his post-much as the finance ministers and central bank heads from Argentina's dictators.h.i.+p somehow managed to get their jobs back under democracy. The New York Times The New York Times praised Keyes as ”the country's ranking apostle of low-spending business-friendly government.” praised Keyes as ”the country's ranking apostle of low-spending business-friendly government.”11 Until that point, Padayachee said, ”we were still buoyant, because, my G.o.d, this was a revolutionary struggle; at least there'd be something something to come out of it.” When he learned that the central bank and the treasury would be run by their old apartheid bosses, it meant ”everything would be lost in terms of economic transformation.” When I asked him whether he thought the negotiators realized how much they had lost, after some hesitation, he replied, ”Frankly, no.” It was simple horse-trading: ”In the negotiations, something had to be given, and our side gave those things-I'll give you this, you give me that.” to come out of it.” When he learned that the central bank and the treasury would be run by their old apartheid bosses, it meant ”everything would be lost in terms of economic transformation.” When I asked him whether he thought the negotiators realized how much they had lost, after some hesitation, he replied, ”Frankly, no.” It was simple horse-trading: ”In the negotiations, something had to be given, and our side gave those things-I'll give you this, you give me that.”

From Padayachee's point of view, none of this happened because of some grand betrayal on the part of ANC leaders but simply because they were out-maneuvered on a series of issues that seemed less than crucial at the time- but turned out to hold South Africa's lasting liberation in the balance.

What happened in those negotiations is that the ANC found itself caught in a new kind of web, one made of arcane rules and regulations, all designed to confine and constrain the power of elected leaders. As the web descended on the country, only a few people even noticed it was there, but when the new government came to power and tried to move freely, to give its voters the tangible benefits of liberation they expected and thought they had voted for, the strands of the web tightened and the administration discovered that its powers were tightly bound. Patrick Bond, who worked as an economic adviser in Mandela's office during the first years of ANC rule, recalls that the in-house quip was ”Hey, we've got the state, where's the power?” As the new government attempted to make tangible the dreams of the Freedom Charter, it discovered that the power was elsewhere.

Want to redistribute land? Impossible -at the last minute, the negotiators agreed to add a clause to the new const.i.tution that protects all private property, making land reform virtually impossible. Want to create jobs for millions of unemployed workers? Can't-hundreds of factories were actually about to close because the ANC had signed on to the GATT, the precursor to the World Trade Organization, which made it illegal to subsidize the auto plants and textile factories. Want to get free AIDS drugs to the towns.h.i.+ps, where the disease is spreading with terrifying speed? That violates an intellectual property rights commitment under the WTO, which the ANC joined with no public debate as a continuation of the GATT. Need money to build more and larger houses for the poor and to bring free electricity to the towns.h.i.+ps? Sorry-the budget is being eaten up servicing the ma.s.sive debt, pa.s.sed on quietly by the apartheid government. Print more money? Tell that to the apartheid-era head of the central bank. Free water for all? Not likely. The World Bank, with its large in-country contingent of economists, researchers and trainers (a self-proclaimed ”Knowledge Bank”), is making private-sector partners.h.i.+ps the service norm. Want to impose currency controls to guard against wild speculation? That would violate the $850 million IMF deal, signed, conveniently enough, right before the elections. Raise the minimum wage to close the apartheid income gap? Nope. The IMF deal promises ”wage restraint.”12 And don't even think about ignoring these commitments-any change will be regarded as evidence of dangerous national untrustworthiness, a lack of commitment to ”reform,” an absence of a ”rules-based system.” All of which will lead to currency crashes, aid cuts and capital flight. The bottom line was that South Africa was free but simultaneously captured; each one of these arcane acronyms represented a different thread in the web that pinned down the limbs of the new government. And don't even think about ignoring these commitments-any change will be regarded as evidence of dangerous national untrustworthiness, a lack of commitment to ”reform,” an absence of a ”rules-based system.” All of which will lead to currency crashes, aid cuts and capital flight. The bottom line was that South Africa was free but simultaneously captured; each one of these arcane acronyms represented a different thread in the web that pinned down the limbs of the new government.

A longtime antiapartheid activist, Ra.s.sool Snyman, described the trap to me in stark terms. ”They never freed us. They only took the chain from around our neck and put it on our ankles.” Yasmin Sooka, a prominent South African human rights activist, told me that the transition ”was business saying, 'We'll keep everything and you [the ANC] will rule in name. . . . You can have political power, you can have the f.a.gade of governing, but the real governance will take place somewhere else.'”3213 It was a process of infan-tilization that is common to so-called transitional countries -new governments are, in effect, given the keys to the house but not the combination to the safe. It was a process of infan-tilization that is common to so-called transitional countries -new governments are, in effect, given the keys to the house but not the combination to the safe.

Part of what I wanted to understand was how, after such an epic struggle for freedom, any of this could have been allowed to happen. Not just how the leaders of the liberation movement gave up the economic front, but how the ANC's base-people who had already sacrificed so much-let their leaders give it up. Why didn't the gra.s.sroots movement demand demand that the ANC keep the promises of the Freedom Charter and rebel against the concessions as they were being made? that the ANC keep the promises of the Freedom Charter and rebel against the concessions as they were being made?

I put the question to William Gumede, a third-generation ANC activist who, as a leader of the student movement during the transition, was on the streets in those tumultuous years. ”Everyone was watching the political negotiations,” he recalled, referring to the de Klerk-Mandela summits. ”And if people felt it wasn't going well there would be ma.s.s protests. But when the economic negotiators would report back, people thought it was technical; no one was interested.” This perception, he said, was encouraged by Mbeki, who portrayed the talks as ”administrative” and of no popular concern (much like the Chileans with their ”technified democracy”). As a result, he told me, with great exasperation, ”We missed it! We missed the real story.”

Gumede, who today is one of South Africa's most respected investigative journalists, says he came to understand that it was in those ”technical” meetings that the true future of his country was being decided-though few understood it at the time. Like many people I spoke with, Gumede reminded me that South Africa was very much on the brink of civil war throughout the transition period-towns.h.i.+ps were being terrorized by gangs who had been armed by the National Party, police ma.s.sacres were still taking place, leaders were still being a.s.sa.s.sinated and there was constant talk of the country descending into a bloodbath. ”I was focusing on the politics-ma.s.s action, going to Bisho [site of a definitive showdown between demonstrators and police], shouting, 'Those guys must go!”' Gumede recalled. ”But that was not the real struggle-the real struggle was over economics. And I am am disappointed in myself for being so naive. I thought I was politically mature enough to understand the issues. How did I miss this?” disappointed in myself for being so naive. I thought I was politically mature enough to understand the issues. How did I miss this?”

Since then, Gumede has been making up for lost time. When we met, he was in the middle of a national firestorm sparked by his new book, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. It is an exhaustive expose of precisely how the ANC negotiated away the country's economic sovereignty in those meetings he was too busy to pay attention to at the time. ”I wrote the book out of anger,” Gumede told me. ”Anger at myself and at the party.” It is an exhaustive expose of precisely how the ANC negotiated away the country's economic sovereignty in those meetings he was too busy to pay attention to at the time. ”I wrote the book out of anger,” Gumede told me. ”Anger at myself and at the party.”

It's hard to see how the outcome could have been different. If Padayachee is right and the ANC's own negotiators failed to grasp the enormity of what they were bargaining away, what chance was there for the movement's street fighters?

During those key years when the deals were being signed, South Africans were in a constant state of crisis, ricocheting between the intense exuberance of watching Mandela walk free and the rage of learning that Chris Hani, the younger militant many hoped would succeed Mandela as leader, had been shot dead by a racist a.s.sa.s.sin. Other than a handful of economists, n.o.body wanted to talk about the independence of the central bank, a topic that works as a powerful soporific even under normal circ.u.mstances. Gumede points out that most people simply a.s.sumed that no matter what compromises had to be made to get into power, they could be unmade once the ANC was firmly in charge. ”We were going to be the government-we could fix it later,” he said.

What ANC activists didn't understand at the time was that it was the nature of democracy itself that was being altered in those negotiations, changed so that-once the web of constraints had descended on their country-there would effectively be no later. later.

In the first two years of ANC rule, the party still tried to use the limited resources it had to make good on the promise of redistribution. There was a flurry of public investment-more than a hundred thousand homes were built for the poor, and millions were hooked up to water, electricity and phone lines.14 But, in a familiar story, weighed down by debt and under international pressure to privatize these services, the government soon began raising prices. After a decade of ANC rule, millions of people had been cut off from newly connected water and electricity because they couldn't pay the bills. But, in a familiar story, weighed down by debt and under international pressure to privatize these services, the government soon began raising prices. After a decade of ANC rule, millions of people had been cut off from newly connected water and electricity because they couldn't pay the bills.33 At least 40 percent of the new phones lines were no longer in service by 2003. At least 40 percent of the new phones lines were no longer in service by 2003.15 As for the ”banks, mines and monopoly industry” that Mandela had pledged to nationalize, they remained firmly in the hands of the same four white-owned megaconglomerates that also control 80 percent of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. As for the ”banks, mines and monopoly industry” that Mandela had pledged to nationalize, they remained firmly in the hands of the same four white-owned megaconglomerates that also control 80 percent of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.16 In 2005, only 4 percent of the companies listed on the exchange were owned or controlled by blacks. In 2005, only 4 percent of the companies listed on the exchange were owned or controlled by blacks.17 Seventy percent of South Africa's land, in 2006, was still monopolized by whites, who are just 10 percent of the population. Seventy percent of South Africa's land, in 2006, was still monopolized by whites, who are just 10 percent of the population.18 Most distressingly, the ANC government has spent far more time denying the severity of the AIDS crisis than getting lifesaving drugs to the approximately 5 million people infected with HIV, though there were, by early 2007, some positive signs of progress. Most distressingly, the ANC government has spent far more time denying the severity of the AIDS crisis than getting lifesaving drugs to the approximately 5 million people infected with HIV, though there were, by early 2007, some positive signs of progress.19 Perhaps the most striking statistic is this one: since 1990, the year Mandela left prison, the average life expectancy for South Africans has dropped by thirteen years. Perhaps the most striking statistic is this one: since 1990, the year Mandela left prison, the average life expectancy for South Africans has dropped by thirteen years.20 Underlying all these facts and figures is a fateful choice made by the ANC after the leaders.h.i.+p realized it had been outmaneuvered in the economic negotiations. At that point, the party could have attempted to launch a second liberation movement and break free of the asphyxiating web that had been spun during the transition. Or it could simply accept its restricted power and embrace the new economic order. The ANC's leaders.h.i.+p chose the second option. Rather than making the centerpiece of its policy the redistribution of wealth that was already in the country-the core of the Freedom Charter on which it had been elected-the ANC, once it became the government, accepted the dominant logic that its only hope was to pursue new foreign investors who would create new wealth, the benefits of which would trickle down to the poor. But for the trickle-down model to have a hope of working, the ANC government had to radically alter its behavior to make itself appealing to investors.

This was not an easy task, as Mandela had learned when he walked out of prison. As soon as he was released, the South African stock market collapsed in panic; South Africa's currency, the rand, dropped by 10 percent.21 A few weeks later, De Beers, the diamond corporation, moved its headquarters from South Africa to Switzerland. A few weeks later, De Beers, the diamond corporation, moved its headquarters from South Africa to Switzerland.22 This kind of instant punishment from the markets would have been unimaginable three decades earlier, when Mandela was first imprisoned. In the sixties, it was unheard of for multinationals to switch nationalities on a whim and, back then, the world money system was still firmly linked to the gold standard. Now South Africa's currency had been stripped of controls, trade barriers were down and most trading was short-term speculation. This kind of instant punishment from the markets would have been unimaginable three decades earlier, when Mandela was first imprisoned. In the sixties, it was unheard of for multinationals to switch nationalities on a whim and, back then, the world money system was still firmly linked to the gold standard. Now South Africa's currency had been stripped of controls, trade barriers were down and most trading was short-term speculation.

Not only did the volatile market not like the idea of a liberated Mandela, but just a few misplaced words from him or his fellow ANC leaders could lead to an earth-shaking stampede by what the New York Times New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has aptly termed ”the electronic herd.” columnist Thomas Friedman has aptly termed ”the electronic herd.”23 The stampede that greeted Mandela's release was just the start of what became a call-and-response between the ANC leaders.h.i.+p and the financial markets-a shock dialogue that trained the party in the new rules of the game. Every time a top party official said something that hinted that the ominous Freedom Charter might still become policy, the market responded with a shock, sending the rand into free fall. The rules were simple and crude, the electronic equivalent of monosyllabic grunts: justice -expensive, sell; status quo-good, buy. When, shortly after his release, Mandela once again spoke out in favor of nationalization at a private lunch with leading businessmen, ”the All-Gold Index plunged by 5 per cent.” The stampede that greeted Mandela's release was just the start of what became a call-and-response between the ANC leaders.h.i.+p and the financial markets-a shock dialogue that trained the party in the new rules of the game. Every time a top party official said something that hinted that the ominous Freedom Charter might still become policy, the market responded with a shock, sending the rand into free fall. The rules were simple and crude, the electronic equivalent of monosyllabic grunts: justice -expensive, sell; status quo-good, buy. When, shortly after his release, Mandela once again spoke out in favor of nationalization at a private lunch with leading businessmen, ”the All-Gold Index plunged by 5 per cent.”24 Even moves that seemed to have nothing to do with the financial world but betrayed some latent radicalism seemed to provoke a market jolt. When Trevor Manuel, an ANC minister, called rugby in South Africa a ”white minority game” because its team was an all-white one, the rand took another hit.25 Of all the constraints on the new government, it was the market that proved most confining-and this, in a way, is the genius of unfettered capitalism: it's self-enforcing. Once countries have opened themselves up to the global market's temperamental moods, any departure from Chicago School orthodoxy is instantly punished by traders in New York and London who bet against the offending country's currency, causing a deeper crisis and the need for more loans, with more conditions attached. Mandela acknowledged the trap in 1997, telling the ANC's national conference, ”The very mobility of capital and the globalisation of the capital and other markets, make it impossible for countries, for instance, to decide national economic policy without regard to the likely response of these markets.”26 The person inside the ANC who seemed to understand how to make the shocks stop was Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's right hand during his presidency and soon to be his successor. Mbeki had spent many of his years of exile in England, studying at the University of Suss.e.x, then moving to London. In the eighties, while the towns.h.i.+ps of his country were flooded with tear gas, he was breathing in the fumes of Thatcherism. Of all the ANC leaders, Mbeki was the one who mingled most easily with business leaders, and before Mandela's release, he organized several secret meetings with corporate executives who were afraid of the prospect of black majority rule. In 1985, after a night of drinking Scotch with Mbeki and a group of South African businesspeople at a Zambian game lodge, Hugh Murray, the editor of a prestigious business magazine, commented, ”The ANC supremo has a remarkable ability to instill confidence, even in the most fraught circ.u.mstances.”27 Mbeki was convinced that the key to getting the market to calm down was for the ANC to instill that kind of clubby confidence on a much larger scale. According to Gumede, Mbeki took on the role of free-market tutor within the party. The beast of the market had been unleashed, Mbeki would explain; there was no taming it, just feeding it what it craved: growth and more growth.