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Ecological issues, as integral parts of the social and economic spheres, are increasingly being placed on the world’s agenda, particularly in parts of Latin America. For example, the 2010 election campaign in Colombia placed an explicitly Green candidate, Anatanas Mockus, the former mayor of Bogota, in a strong position to become the first Green Party president in the world (Financial Times 30 May 2010). Radical attempts to transcend capitalism are being embraced in countries like Bolivia under Evo Morales, who is pursuing an explicit green socialist development strategy (Morales 2009). The financial and ecological crisis has spurred on greater awareness about the need for fundamental alternatives among activists in social movements and trade unions around the world (Ransom and Baird 2009; Angus 2009).

In South Africa, a new mood is slowly awakening as it becomes clear that the ANC’s ‘national democratic revolution’ (NDR) is little more than a ‘national tender revolution’ (NTR), where new or aspiring members of the black elite fight furiously among themselves for the spoils of state patronage in the form of state tenders at local, provincial and national levels. Black economic empowerment, instead of tackling the roots of class power and social inequality, is designed to facilitate the entry of black elites into the world of white economic power and hyper-consumption.

Nevertheless, there are countervailing tendencies in government. In May 2010, the government convened the Green Economy Summit, attended by a range of ministries and the presidency, and driven in large part by the new minister of economic development and former unionist Ebrahim Patel. It seems that much was achieved to address criticism that government efforts have been ad hoc, piecemeal and incoherent across government. According to Mark Swilling, who attended the gathering ‘this Summit reflects a significant sea change... There [was] unprecedented cooperation between several ministries and the presidency on the need for a green economy and a resource-perspective on future growth’.⁵ Whether this positive development translates into meaningful action, whereby powerful vested interests within government and the minerals-energy-financial complex are tackled head-on, remains to be seen.

Even though the biggest labour formation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is enmeshed in the NDR/NTR through its alliance with the ruling party, it is increasingly posing critical questions related to corruption, social inequality, growth priorities and, amongst some affiliates, the ecological limits to growth. There are also signs of such shifts in thinking within the South African Communist Party (SACP) (Cronin 2009 and Bond 2009). Outside the ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance, there are embryonic moves to build an alternative pole of attraction, through the Conference for a Democratic Left (comprising former ANC and SACP leaders, as well as Cosatu members and activists from a broad spectrum of left groups around the country). The CDL explicitly pose the possibility of a ‘grassroots democratic, eco-socialist, feminist political programme’ (CDL 2010:2) as an alternative to the crisis of fossil capitalism. The hope is that, sooner rather than later, Cosatu as the leading component of the labour movement will finally realise that the Alliance is a dead end of false promises, and will break away to help build a counterhegemonic alternative that places eco-socialism firmly on the agenda. Such an alternative envisions a society-centric notion of a democratic developmental state, based on a mobilised and empowered civil society, as opposed to the state-centric versions that are vulnerable to capture by dominant elites.

While not necessarily embracing eco-socialist alternatives, the following chapters nevertheless point to the necessity of South Africa’s moving out of its reliance on the minerals-energy-financial complex in order to create jobs on a sustainable basis – socially as well as ecologically. A genuine, coherent and effectively pursued green new deal, given the vested interests lined up against it, would be a radical departure from the country’s current trajectory. Even if it may not address the root causes of the crisis, it could be a stepping stone towards more fundamental options in the longer-term.

The alternative to a green new deal and to eco-socialism is either the earth’s destruction as we know it, or a new form of eco-fascist ‘enclivity’, where a small gated minority enjoys the benefits of green technology, secure employment and comfortable lifestyles, while the majority is locked out through repressive force, to live in polluted squalor. Can the emerging counter-movement, globally and in South Africa, prevent such an outcome? Only time will tell.

NOTES

1 These remarks were made at a Global Labour University workshop in Johannesburg, October 2009.

2 The regular emergence of new competitors to challenge existing dominant firms (or, in South Africa’s case, the break-up of monopolies such as the Anglo-American Corporation during the post-apartheid era), and hence reduce monopolisation, does not contradict the underlying trend towards monopolisation, as new competitors either become absorbed by, or themselves absorb, the dominant firms – or firms such as South Africa’s banks and cellphone service companies collude to keep prices high (hence the need for state regulation, often ineffective, to enforce competition).

3 Ransom and Baird’s People First Economics (2009), contains alternative perspectives that straddle the New Deal and eco-socialist spectrum.

4 A critique of decoupling is offered by Foster (2002: 22–24), who calls it the ‘myth of dematerialisation’. He quotes The Weight of Nations (World Resources Institute, 2000) that concludes, ‘efficiency gains brought about by technology and new management practices have been offset by [increases in] the scale of economic growth’.

5 E-mail to author, 2 June 2010.

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