South Africa has had at least two decades of heated arguments between proponents and opponents of a basic income grant. Most recently, particularly since 2020, trade unions, social movements and non-governmental organisations have amplified renewed calls for a basic income grant to help millions struggling to make ends meet. Basic income grant campaigners hope that such a grant will bring much needed relief to the victims of the misery and disasters that this system of minority wealth accumulation, dispossession and exploitation breeds.
Advocates for a basic income grant have asked government to implement their demands. These appeals have been backed up with facts about chronic unemployment, widening inequalities and a free fall in living standards to motivate why a basic income support package must be introduced immediately. This reasoning looks flawless and convincing: if opponents of basic income assistance fail to refute these gruesome and well-known facts, then implementing this demand should be beyond dispute. They have also appealed to socioeconomic rights clauses in South Africa’s constitution in the hope that the state will heed its pro-poor obligations outlined in the supreme law of the land. Section 27 of the Bill of Rights says that the state must, subject to available resources, take actions to progressively realise ‘appropriate social assistance for those unable to support themselves and their dependents’ (SA Constitution, Chapter 2, Section 27(1)-(3)).
Attacks on Minimum Livelihood Assistance
The social development ministry, overseeing and delivering state-funded welfare relief and social safety nets, commissioned research into the feasibility of a basic income support package. Speaking at a webinar to launch this study in December 2021, the Minister of social development, Ms Lindiwe Zulu, spoke about the need to expand social protection (https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-lindiwe-zulu-basic-income-support-webinar-13-dec-2021-0000). To lift a ‘large number of South Africans out of poverty’, Minister Zulu inspired her online audience, it is crucial to ‘revolutionise our social assistance landscape’. Whilst basic income support for those aged 18-59 was put forth as an instrument in the envisioned ‘social assistance revolution’, the minister was silent on how this will be done in practice.
In the meanwhile, President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted a high-level briefing with NGO leaders who have been advocating for the urgent introduction of a basic income grant. Beyond the promise of a follow up meeting at an undefined date, this meeting delivered nothing new. Several months before meeting these NGOs, Ramaphosa had thorough discussions with his economic advisors about the basic income grant based on studies the president had asked them to do. Thus, through sleight of hand or a surprise attack, Ramaphosa pitted the NGOs basic income proposals against the brutal assault on the basic income idea that his economic advisors have unleashed. This episode exposes, once again, the real function of Ramaphosa’s economic advisors: they are smug apologists for capitalism to help mystify its crimes against society.
The aggressive onslaught of Ramaphosa’s economic advisors on the basic income proposals has emboldened the attacks on social assistance from another stronghold of neoliberalism: national treasury (or finance ministry). Under the tutelage of imperialist financing agencies, like the World Bank and IMF, national treasury persistently recycles and recites false assumptions to sabotage campaigns for a basic income. They are at the forefront to justify and impose social spending cuts and other austerity measures that global and local neoliberal ideologues dictate.
These opponents of a basic income falsely argue that the lack of a “willingness to seek work”, lies at the root of the call for a basic income. This false assumption is promoted to hide why unemployment continues to grow. In fact, unemployment is grounded in capitalist greed for profit (or the ‘logic of wealth accumulation through exploitation’) rather than whether workers are willing to search for jobs. Millions of the unemployment are searching for work but the economy increasingly fails to absorb them. Like labour market flexibility, a central pillar of the neoliberal orthodoxy, unemployment is a weapon that capitalists use to depress the wages and living standards of all workers. Expanding the reserve army of labour (joblessness) is intrinsic to the workings of capitalism.
They further strengthen their anti-basic income onslaught by paying lip service to reducing the economic role of the state. This recycles a worn-out and flimsy excuse that the government cannot afford to expand social assistance. Yet the bourgeois state is an active economic agent, but at the behest of the capitalists. How are the capitalists able to protect their control of economic wealth (private property), suppress workers and redistribute state budgets to themselves (through privatisation, subsidies, tax cuts and debt repayments) without a state? They tailor public budgets for the upkeep of the repressive machinery of the state and for transferring lucrative corporate welfare handouts. State functionaries routinely mismanage public finances and looting is rife. Clearly, ‘job search discouragement’ and ‘zero fiscal space’ are very bad pretexts for their multifaceted anti-basic income crusade. The value of the proposed basic income is so low, it will not be enough to assist a family buy the food it needs for one month.
Beyond defensive battles
Many in the pro-basic income movement harbour great expectations in government’s promised social protection reforms. However, neither the president’s 2022 State of the Nation speech nor the finance minister’s budget speech indicated whether, when or how the state intends to introduce a basic income grant. This silence from the powers that be, means that the introduction of a basic income grant is neither immanent nor on government’s agenda for the foreseeable future.
As an all-round cost of living crisis drives more people into the depths of extreme misery and despair, winning a basic income safety net will be an important victory. However, with the capitalists and their neoliberal henchmen determined to defeat the movement for a basic livelihood lifeline, how do progressive activists in this arena prepare for tougher battles ahead? In other words, how do we turn a defensive economistic battle into an anti-capitalist revolution? Social movements and trade unions that defend the labouring majority can only ignore such questions at the peril of millions trapped in destitution. Acting on lessons from decades of anti-poverty and anti-neoliberal protests is now more urgent that ever. Relying on the neoliberal constitution which subjugates human rights to capitalist growth is bound to repeatedly run into the limits and loopholes of the constitution. For this constitution is structured against the demands and interests of the oppressed and exploited majority. As a minimum, socialising the battle for a basic income demands the highest levels of self-organisation, principled unity across progressive forces and a clear anti-capitalist political programme.