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February 23, 2002
Dear All,
I have been asked to share news on a monthly basis, which I find
a bit daunting. I have difficulty making the time to sit down
to write a letter a year, let alone once a month! The burdens
have increased substantially here since my (only) colleague in
the South African Council of Churches (SACC) Public Policy Liaison
Office left midway through last year to become director of the
Economic Justice Network for the regional federation of Councils
of Churches. I have also been asked to take on additional administrative
responsibilities for the SACC National Office, so I find that
I am slowly returning to the hours I used to work when I lived
in Washington, D.C. Looking at the list of Public Policy Updates
on our website (www.sacc-ct.org.za), I realise that this has encroached
on the time available to do writing for the SACC’s network,
too. Very bad.
I have been intending for some time to do a letter on HIV/AIDS.
A woman spoke at the SACC National Executive Committee Meeting
at the end of October about her experiences in providing home-based
care for people living with HIV/AIDS in Soweto. I asked her if
I could use some of the material she presented. Her message was
all the more poignant because it coincided with the Treatment
Action Campaign’s (TAC) lawsuit against the South African
government for failing to make anti-retrovirals readily available.
(Earlier in the year, TAC vigorously supported the South African
government in opposing the big pharmaceutical manufacturers’
unsuccessful lawsuit against legislation that would limit their
patent rights.) It was also happening at the time that the United
States was threatening to introduce compulsory licensing of the
antibiotic Cipro to deal with the anthrax scare. Suddenly, the
U.S. was having second thoughts about the rigid application of
TRIPS! (Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, a concept
introduced in the Uruguay Round of talks that spawned the World
Trade Organization. Gives developers of new products and industrial
processes exclusive patent rights to control the production/use
of those goods/processes for 20 years and, hence, the ability
to control global market prices. It has been in an effort to protect
the sanctity of TRIPS that, for example, big pharmaceutical manufacturers
have been fighting to prevent developing countries from licensing
the production of similar—and much cheaper—generic drugs
to fight AIDS and other public health menaces.) Anyway, I thought
that with a bit of work, I could weave these strands together
a little more effectively.
But now it is time for the annual budget ritual once again. This
week began with the launching of the People’s Budget. This
is the second year for this joint endeavour of the SACC, the South
African National NGO Coalition, and COSATU (Congress of South
African Trade Unions, South Africa’s largest trade union
federation and a constituent, with the African National Congress
and the SA Communist Party, of the ruling alliance. Sort of like
the AFL-CIO, only more progressive.) The People’s Budget
sets out an alternative economic vision, in contrast to the neo-liberal
economic assumptions underlying the government’s economic
strategy.* It calls for a modest increase in deficit spending
and taxation to finance key new anti-poverty and job creation
programmes. Top of the list this year are health, education, free
basic services (water, electricity, sanitation to certain levels),
and social security grants. This year, we are also publishing
a complementary study guide to familiarise people with some of
the economic concepts central to these debates.
Then on Wednesday, the Minister of Finance unveiled the annual
national budget. Government spin doctors had been dropping hints
for weeks that this year it would be an "anti-poverty"
budget. Not surprisingly, it failed to live up to the hype. Sure,
it was the first moderately expansionary budget we have had after
five years of fiscal austerity, but where did the money go? Social
grants increased just ahead of inflation by about R2 billion.
But set this off against a whopping R15 billion tax cut (which,
no matter how progressively structured, can never mean benefits
for the vast majority when only 20% of the population is rich
enough to be eligible for income tax in the first place) and a
further R9 billion rise in the cost of South Africa’s misguided
arms deal (money for nothing, thanks to the vendors’ contractual
right to pass on cost inflation coupled with the plummeting value
of the rand). The SACC and a lot of other organisations have been
calling for the introduction of a Basic Income Grant—R100
payable monthly to all South Africans (and reclaimed from the
affluent via the tax system). The Finance Minister has dismissed
it as an unaffordable pipe dream, thereby launching the idea to
greater prominence in national debate. We point out that it could
be financed simply by reversing the tax cuts of the past two years
(let alone the additional R25 billion in tax cuts made in the
four years before that).
So that’s the news from Lake Woebegone, where many local
church leader have recently decamped to our northern neighbour,
Zimbabwe, to take part in monitoring the forthcoming presidential
elections. The news is not especially encouraging, so please keep
the people of Zimbabwe in your thoughts and prayers.
Take care,
Doug
* The government’s macroeconomic strategy is known as
GEAR, "Growth, Employment and Redistribution," adopted
by the SA government in 1996 in a process pretty much devoid of
consultation with the ANC’s branch structure. It enshrines
the free-market and fiscally conservative principles at the heart
of the "Washington consensus" prevailing in international
financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF. Billed
as a "development" of the Reconstruction and Development
Programme on which the ANC was elected in 1994, but widely believed
to represent a retreat from that popular manifesto.
The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 46
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