Mar 7, 2018
If you want economic change in South Africa, create a crisis—then stand by to negotiate a way out of it.
The country’s current debate over land expropriation without compensation, which has now been endorsed by Parliament, is important. Not because, as some fear, it will radically change the constitution. Rather, it tells South Africans how, in the economy and other spheres, the country deals with its minority ruled past: by crisis followed by compromise.
Crises are the only way change happens because, since the 1970s, the goal of the minority which has called the shots in the society for decades has been to ensure that changes alter as little as possible. Which, of course, means clinging to many of the inequalities which existed before all adults were allowed to vote in 1994.
So most businesses, and professional practices and places of learning, do not change until a crisis forces them to look again at what they need to give up to keep things as much the same as possible. Because this means keeping black demands for change at arm’s length, the crises always happen when black people get angry with current arrangements and make demands which force a reaction.
The negotiations which produced the 1994 constitution began because the costs of black anger at apartheid were growing. They followed reforms to labour law, which were triggered when angry strikers in Durban demanded pay increases in 1973, and the end of curbs which kept black people out of the cities, a reaction to the anger of the 1976 Soweto protests and the refusal of angry migrant workers in the same year to live in single-sex hostels.
Recently, it took angry protests on campuses to trigger discussions at universities on how to change to meet the needs of black students. Race is debated seriously only when black people get angry over racial prejudices in advertising or company behaviour or on social media.
The crises always end in compromises because none of the country’s key interests can impose what they want on the others without severely hurting themselves. This is particularly so in the economy: forcing change on the owners of capital will kill investment and growth – ignoring demands for reform will trigger costly resistance.
Agency
