Editorial

South Africa is not immune to food riots

      By Azad Essa

The latest fad doing the rounds these days: hints on how cash strapped South Africans ought to save, well, cash. In these particularly harsh economic times where $1 will buy you up to three loafs of bread in Harare, but just one loaf and a couple of Chappies' bubble gum in Durban - even Black Economic Empowerment candidates have asked their rock star wives to take it easy on the SUV pedals.

Of course, if you read between the lines, measures reveal a dogma that hints towards a calamity of potentially biblical proportions.

Buy bulk! Use candles! Save the whales!

To survive today - along with your spouse, two kids, their school fees, health insurance and their mxit addiction - driving your car without passengers, dining without food, and using government sponsored condoms at your next birthday party is the way to go.

So has the meltdown finally begun?

Not really. But let us put things into perspective.

South Africa's Consumer Price Index (CPIX), used to measure inflation moved up to 9.4% in February 2008. With higher interest rates, municipal rates, electricity, fuel and food costs, this year's planned wage negotiations between evil employers and working class heroes promises to be nothing more than a pie-throwing contest. The impeding will either represent the (aptly named) violent security strike of 2006, or the long drawn public sector strike of 2007 that lasted more days than most learners can count. Only time will tell.

According to the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (Naledi), workers agreed to an average of 7.5% wage increase in 2007. With the crest of our inflationary wave still to take shape, there is no way that unions will agree to a wage increase of this sort this year. 

Already the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) have asked South African Airways (SAA) for an unprecedented 18% increase, with SAA offering a laughable 6.5%.  SATAWU argues that workers are entitled to a real increase as opposed to the proposed offer, since the union did not demand a wage increase last year when the company experienced a rough economic patch. This period of mercy has since passed and SAA needs to play ball.

Knowing that the cost of living has increased exponentially over the past two years, how dare SAA offer a Mickey Mouse figure of 6.5%? At the same time, what exactly does SATAWU hope to achieve by demanding an outrageous 18% increase?

What will follow is nauseatingly predictable.

If SATAWU are adamant in their demand for a double digit increase, a deadlock will be the inevitable result causing further mayhem to our economy. At some point, a figure around 9% will be agreed upon, but this will result from the exertion of a lot of energy for poppycock gain.

So what exactly is going on?

Surely negotiations of this sort needs to be objective rather than ego driven. However, contemporary negotiations are reminiscent of a couple of irate captains' egos trying to prove their manliness with a couple of coins (read workers livelihoods) at stake! Did the public sector strikes not illustrate beyond any doubt that strikes are meant to be the least desirable expression of discontent and not to be a vehicle to advance personal vendettas, ego-trips and fashionable conflict resolution documents?

These farcical games accomplish nothing for worker morale, productivity or employee relations, especially in the face of Executives and Directors and other such Spongebobs receiving hefty packages and bonuses. Teachers, who legitimately demanded higher salaries commensurate with the important role they play in the development of our future, are still paying the price for their part in the public sector strike of 2007, with continued salary deductions for time lost in the classroom.  Teachers, like the rest of the public sector, fought for better compensation. But whether they were more than pawns, used by their irate government employers and union representatives in a politically charged exhibition of power, is anybody's guess.

Nevertheless, with prices so high and inequality so deeply embedded in South African society, wage negotiations are a mere façade to a system that shows no intention to alter the status quo.

The solution lies somewhere else.

It is necessary that the South African government plays a more interventionist role in the economy, ensuring that basic essentials are subsidized, and that basic commodities do not float above the economic reach of the common man. More than this, to tangibly address income inequality, is it not a consideration to legislate ceilings on the salary levels of CEO's and Directors in the public and private sector so that the top rung never earns a ghastly 50 times more than the lowest poor sod on the shop floor?

What is this developmental agenda that the South African government speaks about, if it does little to address the huge gaps between the amounts earned by different strata of the economically active? Without being burdened with ideology, why are we so scared to think creatively in attempting to solve our socio-economic issues?

The degree of income inequality and the current climate of severe price hikes shall continue to bring about interminable sagas driven by unreasonable worker demands of 18% versus sadistic employer offers of 6.5%. This process is a waste of time for all involved, except the negotiators and external consultants hired to drag out the process.

If inequality is left to be solved by the partially invisible hand of the market and its cronies, we are refusing to accept that our economy and society desperately needs guidance, experience and guile to remove the stains of historical inequality. If left unchecked, we walk the path of a number of African states that have dared to perennially provoke their electorate, with disastrous consequences.

South Africa is not immune to food riots.

And when the patience of the workers and poor wears out...

Azad Essa is a researcher & journalist at IOLS-Research, UKZN 

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