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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2001 Oakland, Cal.-Recently the Women of Color Resource Center and others organized a meeting for Serenell Benjamin, a South African activist trying to generate international support for those struggling in South Africa. She showed it is mostly poor women who pay for the unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the globalized economy. When the African National Congress (ANC) won elections seven years ago, there was a promise that all policies would be open to dialogue before they became policies. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was not open to debate before it was announced as the new policy. GATT has meant privatization of basic services such as water and electricity and a sharp decrease in social spending. Many promises were made about how much better life would be when private companies were allowed to compete for the privilege of providing basic services in South Africa. While running water was always scarce in poor communities, and women had to walk a long way to carry water, once they walked to the water, they could get it. Now water is privatized and no source of water is available for free. Poor communities like Soweto are showing their disappointment with the privatization of the basic services. Groups have sprung up who take out the electric and water meters. The police repression against them is getting as bad as it was in the 1980s under apartheid. COSATU, once a powerful trade union, is now part of the government. It permitted a labor relations act that makes it hard for workers to strike. Union activists turned into technocrats to maneuver through the new labor laws. COSATU is now only an incubator for those who want a term in office. Many former trade unionists have become the richest Black men in South Africa. Businesses now can move across the border to Mozambique, where the minimum wage is one-fourth to one-fifth of that in South Africa. Outsourcing is common for all public works, and contractors are free to hire mostly casual workers, who then pay taxes that the employer would have paid. When casual workers struck three weeks ago, protesting reduction in wages by those taxes, the police came out with tear gas and used live ammunition against the strikers. It is very hard to criticize the ANC. People are still in awe that it was able to deliver the democracy South Africa now has. All opposition is painted as anti-nationalist. There is no discussion within the ANC. Benjamin said they had come through a history of extreme exploitation and are now facing exactly the same exploitation. Nothing has happened in the last seven years to reduce the division between rich and poor. When ANC came to power, they did not change the structure of South African society. They just took it over. She said they are trying to start a grassroots movement to support those who are turning off meters. -Urszula Wislanka and John Alan |
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