Adopting Liberal Reasoning

A liberal governmental rationality, Foucault argues, has to address the question of

“where exactly…the principle of the limitation of government” is to be located, and “how…the effects of this limitation [are] to be calculated” (1979, p. 20).⁶² This feature is related to liberalism’s emergence as a critique of the ‘unlimited’ objectives of the authoritarian police state, especially in Europe. Leveled against the illiberal rationality of the apartheid state in South Africa, liberal reasoning required that apartheid legislation such as the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act of 1950 should be replaced with a legal framework that would provide for an alternative limitation of government. Such thinking gave impetus to the deliberation of a new Constitution – adopted in 1993, and officially promulgated in 1996 – which represented a legal break from apartheid’s qualified view of human rights. A Bill of Rights, said to be among the most liberal in the world, was adopted in which discrimination based on age, disability, language, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation, was outlawed

61 Also see Christie (1999) and Mc Lennan (2009).

62 Quote taken from footnote.

83 (RSA 1996a). Equality before the law was considered as the foundation upon which the long- held vision of a ‘non-racial’ society could be built.

The concept of non-racialism gained popularity in the late 1980s and was employed by mass mobalisation organisations such as the UDF to unite communities and organisations which had been long divided by the logic and practices of apartheid. During the negotiations, social division functioned as one of the myths that “competed in the attempt to re-suture the dislocated structure of the old, dying [apartheid] imagination” (Norval 1996, p. 275). However, the ideal of non-racialism within a racially divided and unequal society was not without tensions of its own. These were discernable in the Freedom Charter of (ANC 1955)⁶³ which proclaimed “that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief”, while also claiming that,

“[t]he national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people” (ibid, my emphasis). Norval points out that during the struggle to end apartheid,

“[n]on-racialism was constituted on the basis of creating equivalence between different oppressed ‘groups’ in order to foster a common opposition to apartheid articulated around the people” (1996, p. 295, my emphasis). So, even if legal equality between races was realised, as the formulation of a new Constitution sought to achieve, without social and economic equality between them, the ideal of non-racialism could not be achieved.

As a result, economic redress was vital for the enhancement of post-apartheid freedoms.

Just as the market had functioned as the site in which the transformations towards modern governmentality had occurred in Europe, so the conditions for freedom were conceptualised in terms of economic interest by South Africa’s post-apartheid liberal rationality. This is reflected

63 The Freedom Charter was adopted by the ANC and its alliance partners under the banner of the South African Congress Alliance in 1955 at a meeting termed ‘The Congress of the People’ in Kliptown. This set out the demands of the ‘people’ oppressed by the apartheid system.

84 in Section 9 of the Bill of Rights which offers the protection and advancement of the rights of citizens who had been “disadvantaged by unfair discrimination” (RSA 1996a). The open-ended nature of this clause facilitated the adoption of an ‘equality of outcome’ approach to address the protection and advancement of the economic rights (read interests) of previously disadvantaged citizens by the incoming government (Jeffery 2010, p. 150). Within countries with market-led economies, an ‘equality of opportunity’ approach is often adopted to formulate public policy.

This approach focuses on ‘inputs’ to ensure equal access to education and training and other services to enable citizens to compete for jobs and opportunities on a ‘merit’ basis (ibid). In contrast, the post-apartheid equality of outcome approach was concerned with achieving certain

‘outputs’ or ‘outcomes’ through the use of quotas and the policy of Affirmative Action with the goal of ensuring that certain positions, contracts and promotions benefit previously disadvantaged citizens (ibid). This approach can be attributed to the pressing need, following the 1994 election, to deliver tangible redress for apartheid. Considering that race was the chief signifier of inequality during apartheid, an equality of outcome approach to ensure the redress of past injustices would, according to the ANC, necessarily be based on racial categorisation and prioritisation (Jordan 1997, p. 8).

The ANC subsequently adopted The Employment Equity Act in 1998 with the goal of creating “demographic representivity at all levels of the workplace” (Jeffery 2010, p. 151). This required that public and private sector employers give preference to Black people (defined in the Act as Africans, Coloureds and Indians) with regard to appointments and promotion on condition of such candidates possessing the necessary qualifications, experience and skills.

This approach to redress, however, appeared to stand at odds with the free market reasoning which was espoused two years earlier in the form of a macro-economic policy called GEAR.⁶⁴

64 Argued later in this Chapter, Affirmative Action policies in post-apartheid South Africa have mostly benefitted the Black middle class – those citizens who possess the necessary skills, qualifications and

85 This policy emphasised the need for human resources development through better education and training, with minimal intervention by the state in the economy (National Treasury 1996, p.

2). Although GEAR was informed by market economics, and the adoption (alongside the aforementioned liberal rationality) of a neo-liberal mentality of rule, it departed from an earlier left leaning economic strategy known as the RDP (Redistribution and Development Programme), which had been adopted by the GNU in 1994. To understand why this happened, we must look closer to its development and logic – to this task we will now turn.