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The Premier University of
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Focus: Xenophobia in South Africa
Reasons for the crisis
by Patrick Craven
The recent shocking spate of murderous attacks on foreign residents has rightly dominated both the media and the academic world. IOLS Research has already made an important contribution to the debate around the causes of this outbreak of violence.
What is becoming clear is that there is no consensus on the underlying reasons for the problem and the debate will doubtless continue.
I would like to focus on one particular attempt to identify the reasons - an article on 30 May 2008 in Independent Newspapers by veteran journalist Allister Sparks. He puts the blame on the interaction of two failed government policies - one caused by the old ANC leadership and the other, as
he puts it, at least partially by the new.
The first is one with which I would agree: "the failure over eight years
to develop a foreign policy to prevent the implosion of neighbouring Zimbabwe, and to deal with its inevitable consequences as millions of destitute refugees have poured into our society. For that the Mbeki administration,
particularly the president himself, must take full blame".
COSATU has also been saying for years that Zimbabwe has been undergoing a massive crisis as a result of the Mugabe regime's failed policies and has highlighted the serious impact of the flood of political and economic refugees into South Africa.
The second reason, on the face of it, is equally uncontroversial: "the failure over the past 10 years of unprecedented economic growth to ensure that more was done to reduce unemployment and close the wealth gap, so that we did not develop such a tinderbox of disadvantaged groups struggling to
survive on the margins of our big cities - the very areas where the refugees land up to intensify competition for the meagre opportunities available".
"It should always have been obvious," he adds. "that when the
rapid increase in the influx of desperate Zimbabweans hit that tinderbox, there would be an explosion".
But bizarrely Sparks seeks to place responsibility for these continuing high levels of unemployment "on the new leadership of the ANC - particularly
its Cosatu members". (My emphasis).
He justifies this with the sweeping statement that "the trade unionists.
are part of the so-called first economy, not the second. Cosatu's commitment is to protect its members, workers with jobs, and part of that protection involves preventing them from being undercut by cheap labour drawn from that large pool of unskilled, unemployed and mostly young people".
I totally disagree with this argument. COSATU has never accepted the concept of a 'first' and 'second' economy. We have one capitalist economy in which there are huge inequalities - from the long-term unemployed at one extreme to the top company executives at the other.
COSATU members are all situated at the lower levels of this economy. They are categorically not a privileged elite. Most work for very low wages, in insecure jobs, with no guarantee that they will keep those jobs in the future.
Nor are the employed, including COSATU members, living in a separate economy from the unemployed. Most employed workers have to use their wages to support an extended family of unemployed relatives. Any cut in workers' wages leads therefore to a cut not just in their own standard of living, but in that of many of those in Sparks's 'second economy'.
The thinking behind Sparks's analysis becomes clearer when he refers favourably to proposals put to the 2005 ANC National General Council from Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi for 'a dual labour market', an idea that thankfully was firmly rejected by the NGC and again at the ANC's
National Conference in Polokwane.
This was an idea to allow employers to employ young workers - who Sparks correctly says are by far the largest group in the ranks of the unemployed - on lower wages and worse conditions. "Moleketi suggested this was because employers were reluctant to hire youths seeking jobs for the first time because they feared the labour laws would make it difficult to dismiss those who proved unsatisfactory. He proposed amending the labour laws "to make
it easier for employers to hire such first-time workers more cheaply and fire the non-performers more easily".
COSATU, and all other union federations, have totally rejected this idea. It would open the floodgates of mass retrenchments, as employers rushed to replace older workers with cheap younger ones, whom they would then get rid off as soon as they were about to reach the upper age limit. It would lead to wages falling overall, more unfair dismissals, and more dangerous and
unhealthy working conditions.
Nor would it do anything substantial to reduce unemployment. What few new jobs might be created would be largely casual, unskilled, low-paid and insecure. It would certainly not reduce poverty but expand the already huge numbers of the working poor, most of who would still have to spread their
meagre wages amongst their extended families. And because workers would have lower wages they would have less to spend, and thus reduce demand for goods and services, slow down economic growth and put more jobs in jeopardy.
Most of all it would do absolutely nothing to change the conditions of unemployment, poverty and deprivation which are the breeding grounds of xenophobia and it is utterly irresponsible to put it forward as a serious proposal to deal with thee problems.
COSATU has for years been waging a real campaign to create jobs and eradicate poverty. We have fought to ensure that this remains at the centre of the national agenda. We have spoken out against the intolerable levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality in South Africa, and to set out the policies we need to deal with the problem.
As part of this campaign we have always insisted that human rights are not just for South Africans but for all people, regardless of where they have come from. Many of the pioneers of the South African trade unions were migrant workers from all over Southern Africa and led our movement in its early days.
We continue to unite workers against unscrupulous employers on the farms, in security firms and other sectors, who are exploiting desperate foreign workers by employing them on lower wages and benefits than they could get away with paying South African workers. They have effectively created
precisely the sort of 'dual labour market' that Moleketi wants, though based on nationality rather than age. And the consequences are just as bad. It drives down wages overall and foments division among the workers.
These employers, and not their desperate, exploited workers, must take the blame for the situation, and we are fighting a daily battle to force such employers to comply with fair labour standards for all workers. We are building a united front in the battle to win minimum standards of pay, benefits and health and safety protection for all workers, and to resist the attacks on living standards being proposed by Moleketi and Sparks.
Patrick Craven is the National Spokesperson of COSATU. He writes here in his personal capacity.
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