South Africa’s failure to reform – and save the country, and especially its immiserated poor, from joblessness, stalling growth and widespread governance failure – can be pinned on the ruling party’s ‘unwavering determination’ to pursue the socialist-inspired National Democratic Revolution (NDR).
In this way, the ANC seeks to ‘take the country by incremental steps from capitalism to socialism’.
This is the core theme of a new book, COUNTDOWN TO SOCIALISM – The National Democratic Revolution in South Africa since 1994 (Jonathan Ball Publishers), by head of policy research at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), Dr Anthea Jeffery.
The first of two official launches takes place in Cape Town this evening, at Exclusive Books at the Waterfront. A second launch will be held in Johannesburg, at Exclusive Books in Rosebank, on 2 August. (See below for more details)
COUNTDOWN TO SOCIALISM, described as an indispensable primer on the NDR and its role in the progression towards socialism in South Africa, argues that while the NDR is the key to understanding ANC rule over some 30 years, it earns little attention, and is poorly understood.
Jeffery points out that, despite the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the ANC/SACP alliance still sees the NDR as offering the ‘most direct route’ to socialism in South Africa – and hence as its bedrock strategy.
Her new book reveals the scale and reach of NDR precepts in South African policy-making since 1994. By way of example, NDR interventions have already made millions of people unemployable and the mining sector largely ‘uninvestable’. These policies now aim at land expropriation without compensation (EWC) and the effective nationalisation of private healthcare and pensions.
Jeffery, who holds law degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cambridge and has a PhD in law from London University, has written 11 books, including BEE: Helping or Hurting? and People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa. She has also written extensively on property rights, land reform, the mining sector, the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) system, and a growth-focused and non-racial alternative to BEE.