Many catchphrases have become popular in the wake of the Covid19 crisis. ‘Saving lives and protecting livelihoods’ ranks high on the list. South African government officials have embraced it, taking their cue from President Cyril Ramaphosa and echoing UN agencies like the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Reasons for decoding this new stream of catchphrases are wide-ranging. Catchphrase decoding is ultimately about winning the battle for political ideas. It represents a decisive battleground to defeat misguided political influences in progressive struggles and to consistently advance the programmatic demands and aspirations of anti-capitalist movements.
What does ‘saving lives’ mean when more than 25,000 people have died as a direct result of Covid19 in South Africa? What the death tally excludes, reports from hospitals and mortuaries reveal, is the surge in “excess deaths” which are more than double the official Covid19-related mortality count.
How does the tail-end of the anti-pandemic catchphrase, ‘protecting livelihoods’, compare with what is happening in reality? In what ways have the state protected the livelihoods of workers and peasants since the onset of this health, economic and social disaster? The pandemic crises, engulfing society like wildfires, are destroying the livelihoods of the most destitute social classes in our society. Instead of protecting livelihoods, the state has been complicit in the brutal assault on the oppressed and exploited who have been forced to fend for themselves in order not to become another nameless victim of the crisis.
Onslaught On Oppressed And Exploited
The promise to ‘protect livelihoods’ features in almost every anti-pandemic announcement of the government. When the armed forces were given the freedom to impose a reign of terror on township residents during the lockdown, ‘protecting livelihoods’ was the justification. This same double-dealing has been encrypted into government’s Solidarity Fund, Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) and Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Plan – to only mention their much vaunted ‘livelihood protection’ projects. All are premised on Section 25 of South Africa’s Constitution: protect investors and profiteers (capitalists) first and foremost! Throughout the pandemic the billionaires who control this country’s wealth have exponentially multiplied their wealth, similar to capitalists elsewhere. This rapaciousness is global headline news according to one British online newspaper: ‘Ten billionaires reap $400bn boost to wealth during pandemic’ (The Guardian, 19 December 2020). Without shame the wealthiest classes have been exploiting the pandemic to grow wealthier at the expense of the rest of society.
Workers who produce society’s wealth with their labour power have been reduced to beggars as a careful look at the livelihoods’ protection programmes reveals. Ramaphosa’s Solidarity Fund, to begin with, has set aside a derisory pittance to cushion the oppressed and exploited majority against the harshest blows of the economic slump. But it is not enough to fault it just on its woefully insufficient budget. What makes their Solidarity Fund a farce is the foundational principle which governs it: assistance to people in dire need depends on ‘crumbs’ (donations) that the class with insatiable greed (the capitalists!) throws away. Since its launch in late March 2020, the value of the Solidarity Fund has reached slightly more than R3,2bn (https://solidarityfund.co.za/), which is miniscule when compared with the paltry R70bn in their scandal-ridden Economic Stimulus Package earmarked to support employed and unemployed victims of the socioeconomic disaster. Government’s start-up donation to the Solidarity Fund was R50 million, with two of South Africa’s wealthiest families (Oppenheimer and Rupert ‘corporate philanthropy’) jointly donating a maximum of R1bn with instructions on how government should spend it.
The Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme takes these emboldened attacks on workers to shocking levels of ruthlessness. Three months after closing ‘non-essential sectors of the economy’, workers forced into unemployment continued to battle to claim some wage support from a labour relations monstrosity, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), set up against them. One local newspaper summarised the horrors workers have been enduring: “Workers who have been put on leave, laid off temporarily or whose employers can’t afford to pay full salaries are entitled to the Covid-19 Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme pay-outs. The delays in the payments of the UIF have also angered unions, who blame employers for dragging their feet in assisting employees.” (Mail & Guardian, 26 June 2020)
Pitched as an employment-oriented crisis response, their “Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Plan” (ER&RP) stands diametrically opposed to what the oppressed and exploited need to survive during this deep and long recession. Like other plans concocted from the same bankrupt ideology, the ER&RP paves the way to acute hardships in the months ahead. As part of its “employment stimulus to create jobs and support livelihoods” a Social Employment Fund is to be set up at an unknown future date. With millions of the workforce dumped into joblessness, the ER&RP targets the creation of ‘800,000 job opportunities’. How different is a ‘job opportunity’ from the wage-slavery of labour brokers? This runs counter to guaranteed employment at a living wage, which is what the unemployed and employed need now! Instead, government merely hopes to allocate ‘R100 billion over three years through public and social employment’. “Nothing is guaranteed”, their arrogant Finance Minister rants, as everything will be subjected to ‘reduced fiscal space (meaning austerity) and revenue leakages (meaning rampant corruption)’.
Politics Of Anti-Capitalist United Action
Resistance has erupted on multiple fronts, invariably to stem the further depression of the living standards of workers. Without any wage incomes, families are struggling to secure enough to eat from unreliable food relief agencies, all heavily dependent on private donors. In addition to the battles for food, resisting housing evictions gained momentum alongside protests around healthcare (PPEs; community health worker rights; etc), education and police brutality.
With isolated exceptions, progressive organisations struggle to maintain themselves let alone mount organisationally coordinated fightbacks against misinformation, impoverishment and repression. Well-resourced trade unions and NGOs not totally disoriented by the crisis, stood at the forefront of fragmented and sporadic protests. Trade unions battled formidable obstacles to operate and recruit more members. Company bosses, for instance, used anti-Covid19 physical distance strictures as a pretext to prevent union organisers from carrying out their standard economistic defence of rank-and-file members. In a rare display of united action around reformist demands, trade unions staged a one-day stayaway in early October, handing memoranda to provincial politicians. However, organised mobilisation with an anti-systemic vision was completely absent from this strike. Self-styled leftist NGOs engaged in charity campaigns typical of liberal do-gooders yet parade themselves as the political leaders of social movements in the absence of an anti-capitalist force with a revolutionary programme.
Among the strategic political questions that these defensive struggles pose, two stand out. First, how can ad hoc single-issue revolts grow into a social revolution against the entire system? Second, how can unity on a principled political basis be constructed? Answering these questions calls for a transitional programme bound together with a unifying political demand. It also calls for the oppressed and exploited, organised in their own organisations, including a principled political organisation, to seize political power.