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Le spectre de la dette en Afrique du Sud
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Bassett, Carolyn |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | The paper explores the utilization of a ‘spectre of debt’ discourse to promote neo-liberal restructuring in democratic South Africa. The purpose of the paper is to explore how the ‘spectre of debt’ was deployed to build consensus, explain policies, and eventually even frame alternatives to the government’s economic program. I will argue that the frequently invoked warning that South Africa’s foreign debt would become unsustainable, if not immediately addressed resulting in disastrous consequences, became transformed into a ‘spectre of debt’. This was used to build the necessary consensus among the African National Congress (ANC)’s constituency in support of a neo-liberal restructuring program. The paper employs a neo-Gramscian approach to interpret the importance of debt discourse in framing debates about South Africa’s post-apartheid economic program, suggesting that such discourses were utilized to build areas of common understanding and agreement (“common sense”) while masking the broader objective of enabling capitalist restructuring and renewed profitability. Introduction The paper explores the utilization of a ‘spectre of debt’ discourse to promote neo-liberal restructuring in democratic South Africa. The purpose of the paper is to explore how the ‘spectre of debt’ was deployed to build consensus, explain policies, and eventually even frame alternatives to the government’s economic program. I argue that the frequently invoked ‘spectre of debt,’ warning that foreign debt would become unsustainable if not immediately addressed, was used to build the necessary consensus among the African National Congress (ANC)’s constituency in support of a neo-liberal restructuring program, embodied in the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. Had the ground not been prepared by establishing a perception that the threat of a debt crisis was real, pressing, and one of the most serious threats faced by post-apartheid South Africa, 72 such a program would have faced much stronger challenges within the ANC and among its supporters because it was inconsistent with deeply held liberation movement aspirations. By cultivating the impression that GEAR was about debt reduction, or necessitated by high levels of debt, rather than about capitalist restructuring, the ‘spectre of debt’ played an important role in legitimizing neo-liberalism to a skeptical audience of ANC supporters. However, implied in the ‘spectre of debt’ discourse was the claim that the South African majority would be required to endure only short-term pain because the harsh measures soon would enable the government to introduce new programs that would improve their socio-economic situation – a claim that the government has found itself under increasing pressure to make good. The ‘spectre of debt’ discourse thus has begun to take on new meanings as the government seeks to legitimize its economic program with a broader base of South Africans, which has necessitated modifications in the program itself. The first section of the article presents some of the core assumptions, the post-positivist methodology and the neoGramscian theoretical approach. The second section outlines how supporters of neo-liberal restructuring in the South African business community and their international and governmental allies utilized the ‘spectre of debt’ to convince ANC economic policymakers to introduce an economic restructuring program that met their needs. The third section explains how the ‘spectre of debt’ was then deployed by these policy elites in the ANC to persuade politically active members and allies of the party to accept – or at least not block – the neo-liberal restructuring program. The fourth section shows that the ‘spectre of debt’ also shaped movement politics by framing the discursive space within which alternatives were put forward, at least on macro-economic questions. The paper analyses two such initiatives: South Africa’s Jubilee 2000 coalition and the People’s Budget Campaign (PBC). The final section suggests that the portrayal of the neo-liberal economic restructuring program as a debt-avoidance strategy through the ‘spectre of debt’ discourse eventually offered a route for the government to recast its unpopular policies without fully repudiating them. At a discursive level, this meant claiming that the ‘spectre of debt’ had been defeated through government prudence, which permitted a move to raise levels of government spending and modify monetary policy. These changes have yet to produce the |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://lcs-tcs.com/PDFs/41_2/Bassett.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
