Name: Phoebe Kitchin
Position: SAAPAWU President
Workplace: Agriculture Department, North West Province
Name: Phoebe Kitchin
Position: SAAPAWU President
Workplace: Agriculture Department, North West Province
This dynamic thirty-something mother of two portrays a strong mixture of passion, humility and drive. Having grown up and been politically active in the former Bophuthatswana, Phoebe Kitchin is all too familiar with working in an anti-union environment. This is surely part of the reason why she has so quickly risen to leadership in the agricultural and plantation workers' union. "We are organising an extremely difficult sector. There are farmers who really hate the unions and have trespassing signs which prevent us from going to organise their workers," muses the newly elected national president of Saapawu.
Before the 1994 elections, Kitchin was part of the campaign to integrate Bophuthatswana into South Africa. She says the campaign snowballed until thousands of people had gathered to hand over a memorandum to the authorities.
"Even the police came over to our side. We won lots of support because we were also demanding concrete things, like pensions. We told people they should just imagine what it would be like to be able to vote (in Bop only Mangope supporters used to vote) and what it would be like to be called South African."
In the Mangope era there were no unions as only staff associations were allowed. Kitchin was one of the key people who negotiated for union recognition. At first they were organised by Fawu and then, in 1995, Saapawu was launched and she was elected regional treasurer. At Saapawu’s national congress in 1997, she was elected national treasurer of the organisation.
Kitchin says one of the most difficult aspects of her work is her employers’ attitude. She works for the North West Department of Agriculture and says the acting chief director has made it difficult for her to concentrate on union work. "He does not support union activities. There are people who still do not want to accept changes," she says. She has had problems negotiating time off, for example, but says the union is firmly behind her, which makes it easier.
And how does she find being a woman leader? Kitchin says the biggest difficulty for her is leaving her children when she goes off to meetings. However, she says a very supportive husband makes this a little less painful. Her husband is a Nehawu member and understands and fully supports her trade union work. "He takes care of the children and often plays the role of father and mother," she smiles.
Kitchin attributes much of her political development to male comrades in the union. "They built and protected me. They treated me like their sister. I have never had any problems being a woman leader." She says this may be because these comrades come from the farms "where traditional norms are respected". But, she adds, "We’ll put that to the test with my position as President though!"
Although she admits to feeling insecure about her new position, she is excited about the challenges it presents. Kitchin says she fears she does not have enough experience to lead the organisation, after only one year on the Saapawu national executive committee. Since many constitutional meetings didn't sit, she also missed out on that learning experience. "I am relying on the support of comrades to build me," she reveals, "It is a challenge to be the only woman president in the federation. You need to be confident."
Kitchin says Winnie Madikizela-Mandela used to be her role model, but she now has "some reserved comments about her". "I think it is problematic to publicly criticise your organisation in a way that will damage it," she explains. She has great respect for health minister Dr Nkosazana Zuma although "it hurts that she is not given support, especially after all she has done for our nation".
Kitchin is quite frank about weaknesses facing Saapawu and what needs to be done to strengthen it. She says the union has had financial problems since its inception and the leadership has failed to effectively implement NEC decisions to rectify this. For example, it was agreed that each organiser should recruit 2000 members, but this has not been strictly monitored. This means that people are paid to bring in more resources into the organisation in the form of subscriptions, but are not doing this. "Some people are enjoying the benefits of the organisation at the expense of workers on the ground," she says angrily.
She talks about the difficulty in servicing members when there is no money to pay organisers to go out to farms. "We are relying on subs but most of our members only earn R200-R250 a month. The subs are R6. What can we do with that?"
She believes Cosatu has not done enough to assist Saapawu. She says there were expectations that the federation would fundraise to assist the union, but this hasn’t happened. Poaching has also weakened Saapawu, with unions like Fawu and Nehawu recruiting members who fall under Saapawu’s scope.
Kitchin says Saapawu is seen as a weak, poor union and is never given a hearing "even by the Cosatu leadership". "You are only heard if you are a big union like Numsa or NUM. They make jokes about Saapawu which really hurt." Kitchin says this attitude of ridiculing Saapawu makes it difficult to participate in Cosatu’s executive committee meetings.
The irony, according to her, is that farmworkers should be a key priority for the federation to prioritise. "We are recruiting a sector that is the most disadvantaged. We want to see our people living a better life but we don’t get any assistance from Cosatu affiliates."
She describes her recent trip to Denmark as the highlight of her union career. "It brought hope to me that our union will never die. The support given by the Danish people showed that the world really cares about farmworkers." She was also inspired by how well-organised their unions are. "They don't know what unemployment is. There is an unemployment fund and also training for the unemployed," she says.
Kitchin believes the South African government should "change its focus and give priority to farmworkers". "Saapawu needs the support of government because if they can deal with evictions our people won’t be so afraid to join trade unions."
She stresses that she hasn’t lost hope in Cosatu’s ability to assist the farmworkers union. She believes the task team which has been set up will be a turning point for the union.
And what is the presidents dream for her union? "Our sector has about one million potential members. I dream of recruiting all those workers and seeing them living a better life where they all have running water and their children go to school."
Naledi’s Liesl Orr argues that government’s macro-economic framework, Gear, entrenches women’s disadvantaged position in the economy
More than two years after the introduction of GEAR, the government is far from meeting the targets it has set itself, and poverty, inequality and unemployment are worsening. The GEAR framework is not only class-biased but is also gender-blind.
Most economic policies are gender-biased and are often blind to the roles that women perform in the economy. The concept of GDP (gross domestic product) reflects this bias: unpaid labour is excluded from the figures, and the role of the informal sector is not accurately captured. GEAR relies heavily on GDP as an indicator of economic growth. This has serious implications for women since the valuable roles they perform in the economy are made invisible.
This article focuses on Gear’s impact on women in reproductive labour and in the formal and informal sectors of the economy and argues for an alternative, gender-sensitive approach.
Women (particularly black women) perform the bulk of reproductive labour in South Africa. Reproductive labour includes childcare, household production and maintenance, informal education, home health care and looking after the sick and elderly. Reproductive labour tends to be unpaid, invisible and unrewarded, yet the economy and our society rely heavily on this work.
GEAR is premised on rolling back the state through cutting back the public sector and privatisation. Increasingly, services are available for those who can afford to pay for them and the poor are not subsidised through the state. The result is that additional social costs and responsibilities are transferred from the state to women. Gear therefore leads to an increase in unpaid labour and increases womens’ burden.
South Africa’s patriarchal capitalist system ensures that childcare and domestic labour remain a private responsibility which is unpaid and unrecognised. This unpaid labour also allows employers to escape paying higher wages to cover the cost of a family.
Although reproductive labour is largely unpaid it is actually very costly — costs which fall mainly on women. Several aspects of GEAR increase the costs of reproductive labour. For example, high interest rates make it more expensive to buy on credit. Housing loans, hire purchase etc. cost more, leaving less money for the costs of reproductive labour.
Cutbacks in state expenditure on social welfare and services lead to poor families having to bear additional costs of living. Gear’s rigid budget deficit targets mean that government spends less on social infrastructure and providing basic services. Moves to privatise water and electricity provision will make these service inaccessible to many, particularly the poor. All of this means that women will have to continue to perform additional labour, such as fetching wood and walking long distances to fetch water.
In South Africa, over 70% of informal sector workers are women. The informal sector is characterised by high-risk, unstable employment, low pay, a lack of regulation and low levels of organisation. In addition, women have little or no access to education, training and financial resources.
Despite the importance of the informal economy for women, GEAR says little about this sector. While GEAR engages in highly technical exercises to develop economic models on the formal sector of the economy, there is no attempt to rigorously analyse the impact of its policies on the informal sector. The GEAR framework, by contributing to the invisibility of this sector, contributes to the economic oppression of women.
One of GEAR’s main pillars is job creation. If women in the informal sector can find well-paying jobs in the formal sector, their welfare could be improved. GEAR’s employment creation record, however, has been dismal. In 1996 and 1997, the formal sector has actually destroyed jobs. The elimination of jobs from the formal sector will tend to push more women into the informal sector, increasing competition and economic risk as the ranks of those informally employed swells.
Women are marginalised in the formal labour market. They face wage discrimination, receiving lower pay than men for equivalent work. Women also face substantial labour market segmentation. They are mostly confined to jobs that are lower-paid, less secure, and characterised by poor working conditions. And they have little access to better jobs.
Unemployment is far higher among women, particularly African women, half of whom are unemployed. While South Africa’s overall unemployment is estimated to be 29%, the unemployment rate for women is 38% compared to 22% for men.
The GEAR policy is gender-blind, and it will have a gendered impact due to the disadvantaged structural position of women in the economy. GEAR’s export-oriented focus will lead to an emphasis on sectors where men predominate. Trade policies and tariff reductions have negatively affected the clothing and textile industry, where women predominate. GEAR promised to create jobs, but has in fact led to jobless growth — giving women even less access to jobs. GEAR argues for labour market flexibility. This will affect women, particularly because of their vulnerable position in the labour market. Cutbacks in public sector employment will mean massive job losses for women.
The GEAR policy does not take account of gender and will effectively perpetuate and entrench the gender division of labour and women’s disadvantaged position in the economy. The challenge is to develop a gendered economic analysis and gender-sensitive economic policies. These policies should recognise and value women’s contribution to the economy and extend and deepen services to address women’s needs.
In developing gender sensitive policies, a holistic and integrated approach is critical, since it is women’s position in society and structural inequalities in the economy that disadvantage them. Strategies that simply try to alleviate the position of women without fundamentally challenging the source of their oppression are bound to fail.
"Gender-blind" policies do not openly discriminate against women. But their impact tends to be biased against women because of women’s structural positions in the economy and in society. Government should assess the impact of policies on women, for example, the effect of rapid trade liberalisation, which has led to massive job losses for women.
Women should be actively targeted for job creation. Employment creation schemes must take into account the position of women in the economy, their reproductive role and the need to combine employment opportunities with training and skilling for future employment.
The present trend of privatisation and public sector cutbacks as envisaged in the GEAR framework goes against the vision of the RDP, which bases economic development on the meeting of basic needs. The state needs to provide these services to poor people, and women in particular, as a means of redistribution which will lead to economic growth and development.
The long-term goal is to transfer the responsibility for reproductive labour from women to society as a whole. This involves the state providing social support, facilities and social services such as education, health care, housing, transport and other basic infrastructure (water, electricity etc.). Employers should also take responsibility for childcare facilities and parental rights such as maternity pay and parental leave. In addition, there should be equal sharing of family responsibilities.
Employment equity legislation and affirmative action measures can help to break down the occupational segregation in the labour market. Unions must monitor and play an active role in implementing this legislation and take up strong campaigns around giving women access to ‘traditional male’ occupations and eliminating wage discrimination.
Contrary to the global trends and the GEAR framework, which pushes for increased labour market flexibility, there is a need for legislation which protects women, since they are subjected to high levels of insecurity and vulnerability in the labour market. Measures are also needed to protect women in the face of increasing trends of casualisation, part-time and home-based work, which are unregulated and erode the gains that have been made in worker rights and benefits.
Government should develop strategies to ensure that women gain access to land, natural resources, credit, capital, infrastructure, technology and skills.
A central element of an integrated strategy is the empowerment of women to participate in decision-making and policy development at all levels.
This article is based on a Naledi discussion document. It is available from Naledi, phone number: (011) 403-2122.
Our last article in the popular economics series examined the characteristics of a capitalist economy. In this article, we take things further and look in more detail at how a capitalist economic system works.
The figure below illustrates the flow of resources in a capitalist economy. Suppose you are a capitalist wanting to start your own business. What is the first thing that you would need? You would need some money to get started. This money is often called finance capital (in the figure below, finance capital is represented by the single "R" for rands).
Once you have the money you need, you will need to purchase those things which will allow the business to produce its goods and services. You will need a building or factory, perhaps some land, and some machinery and equipment (we can call these items physical capital or the means of production). You will also need raw materials — petrol, paper, iron, agricultural products, etc. Finally, you need to buy some labour. One feature of capitalism is that workers do not own the means of production and they must sell their labour in order to survive. A capitalist can purchase the needed labour in a labour market.
Now production can take place. Labour, capital, and raw materials are combined using a particular technology and commodities are produced. A commodity is anything which is produced for exchange, not for direct use. Capitalists sell commodities in a product market in order to realise a profit. In the figure below, the amount which the capitalist receives from selling the commodity is show by "RR". Notice that the capitalist receives more money — the profits — at the end of the cycle than the amount at the beginning.
In order to keep this simple capitalist economy going from day to day, month to month, and year to year, some of the money received from the sale of the commodities must be put back into the system. If the exact same amount of money is used in each cycle, then the economy will reproduce itself without growing or shrinking. If the capitalists decide not to put money back into the system (we can call this dis-investment), then the economy will become smaller.
In a capitalist economy, however, businesses tend to put increasing amounts of money into the system to buy additional means of production, raw materials, and labour. This process is called accumulation. Why would capitalists accumulate? One obvious answer is to get more and more profits. A second important factor is competition. In order to compete with other businesses, a capitalist tries to become bigger and better by accumulating more and more. The drive to accumulate causes a capitalist economy to grow.
A growing economy, however, does not mean a more equal one. As the economy grows, capitalist profits also expand and inequalities can increase. The benefits of growth are often not shared equally. In many cases, the rich get richer faster than the living standards of the poor improve.
In our description of a capitalist economy so far, everything has run relatively smoothly. In reality, however, capitalist economies do not run smoothly and can encounter many points of crisis as the cycle proceeds.
One important crisis of capitalism is a crisis of production. This occurs when the process of production breaks down. If the price of raw materials increases dramatically, if the workers strike to improve their conditions of employment, or if the production technology is out of date, the process of capitalist production can slow down or stop.
Another area of crisis is a crisis of consumption. What happens if the capitalists cannot sell the commodities they produce? For example, perhaps workers are paid too little to buy the commodities or perhaps people buy inexpensive imports instead of domestic products. If a capitalist cannot sell their goods and services, they cannot realise a profit and the system breaks down.
A third area of crisis is a crisis of accumulation. If the capitalists decide not to re-invest in the system, then the system cannot grow and will begin to stagnate.
In each of these cases, a capitalist crisis can have devastating social effects. Unemployment can increase, living standards can fall, and the economy can begin to collapse. Even when the system is running relatively smoothly, vast inequalities and poverty can be sustained or even expanded. Therefore, there are many problems with the functioning of a capitalist economy. In future articles in the popular economics series, we will begin to focus on alternatives to the capitalist cycle of profits, accumulation, inequality, and crisis.
