By Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

This last weekend (14-16 November, 2003) the SACP Central Committee
held its last plenary session for the year. This was an augmented meeting,
attended by district secretaries from 42 districts countrywide. It was
a truly historic meeting since it was the first of its kind since the
1970 augmented Central Committee in the underground. The ANC Secretary
General, Cde Kgalema Montlathe, ANC national elections co-ordinator,
cde Mannie Dipico; and ANC NEC member, cde Joel Netshitenzhe, also attended
the session dealing with the forthcoming 2004 elections.

The primary aim of the meeting was to assess the year ending and discuss
and adopt a medium term strategy for our Party. Most importantly it was
to adopt the 2004 SACP programme of action, with the main goal being
to prepare the SACP for an overwhelming ANC victory in next year’s elections.

By all accounts the augmented CC was a great success, characterized
by a Party growing in confidence, its understanding of the short-term,
medium and long term tasks of both the national democratic revolution
and itself. It is a party that has also developed a middle layer cadre
that not only understands the tasks of the Party in the present and medium
term, but is also deeply committed to the struggle for socialism and
the building of a strong SACP. It is this cadre, that has never wavered,
even in the wake of setbacks to the international communist movement,
in its understanding that indeed capitalism is no solution to the problems
facing humanity and our country today, and therefore the need to build
a strong SACP to lead a struggle for socialism.

Our district secretaries reflect a cadre that has never lost faith in
the working class and its struggles, and understand that no other layer
of society is best capable of leading our national democratic revolution
other than the working class! It is a cadre that has grown the Party
during the first decade of our freedom, despite enormous challenges and
various offensives by our enemies and detractors. These district secretaries
are indeed the backbone of our Party. The augmented CC was indeed an
expression that the SACP is an integral and indispensable contingent
of the forces for transformation in our country.

Socialism is the future build it now

Our augmented CC, upon extensive reflection, reaffirmed the correctness
of our strategic slogan “Socialism is the future, build it now”.

Our theoretical, political and programmatic anchor to defend, consolidate
and deepen the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) during the first
decade of our freedom has been through our strategic and programmatic
slogan “Socialism is the Future, Build it Now”, adopted at our 9th Congress
in 1995. This strategic slogan has enabled the Party to creatively connect
the struggle to advance the NDR and the struggle for socialism. Through
this anchor, our Party has made some important advances during the first
decade of our freedom.

This strategic slogan enabled our Party to positively engage with the
political space opened by the 1994 democratic breakthrough, whilst simultaneously
advancing the necessity for socialism in our country. Through implementing
programmes under this slogan our Party has come to understand better,
has concretised the dialectic of an NDR that is the most direct route
socialism, which, at the same time, for its consolidation, requires socialist
perspectives and strategies.

Our slogan has enabled us to enrich our dialectical perspectives on
the connection between the national and the class questions, by firmly
connecting these to the gender contradiction in our society. This has
been our contribution to enriching Our Marxism – Marxism in a developing
African country – as a well as a contribution to Marxist theory generally.
We have managed to anchor our Party during the first decade of our freedom
as an important component of the Alliance without, at the same time,
surrendering the independence of our Party and the working class. This
has been at the heart of our strategy and tactics during this period,
directly guided by, and anchored in, our strategic slogan.

Through this strategic perspective we have also come to have a better
grasp, through practice, of the fact that defending and jealously guarding
the independence of our Party and the working class is a necessary condition
for building a strong alliance. Even some of the weaknesses in the Alliance
are largely a reflection of the failure to sufficiently build independent
working class power as a glue of the alliance – a key challenge for the
second decade of our freedom and the central objective in our medium
term vision.

It is also this strategic and programmatic anchor that has produced
an increasingly campaign-oriented and programme-driven Party, through
our programme adopted at our 10th Congress. Our 10th Congress Party programme
directed us to embark on major independent mass campaigns led by the
Party, thus practically proving that there is no inherent contradiction
between governance and mass action, and in many respects setting important
precedents in this regard. Some of the breakthroughs we have made through
our campaigns have shown that, indeed, mass action and activism are necessary
components of, rather than diversions from, democratic governance. Between
the 10th and 11th Congresses, Party activism rose to new heights – through
participation in two ANC election campaigns, the launch of annual Red
October campaigns, the financial sector campaign, hundreds of Party activists
directly involved in the building of co-operatives and the co-operative
movement, and activist-driven commemoration of national events and key
dates – the most notable being the institutionalisation of the memory
and legacy of Chris Hani through the high profile Chris Hani month.

In other words, we are assimilating critical lessons for building a
legal vanguard Communist Party with a mass character in the context of
post-apartheid reconstruction and transformation challenges and struggles.
As a result, we have begun to consolidate a core of communist activists,
as reflected in the depth of discussions and understanding of the key
strategic and tactical questions by the augmented CC.

It was within the above context that the augmented CC reaffirmed that
our strategic slogan of “Socialism is the future, build it now”, remains
as relevant as ever, and is our fundamental point of departure in approaching
the second decade of our freedom.

Our strategic slogan captures both the long-term goal of a socialist
South Africa and the current challenges and struggles for communists
and the working class, and dialectically links the two. It is our theoretical,
strategic and programmatic approach to consolidate and deepen the NDR
and struggles for socialism. It is our long-term goal of a socialist
South Africa that informs our current struggles, and the concrete struggles
are in turn guided by the long-term goal. This relationship and dialectic
is expressed through our struggle to build capacity for, momentum towards
and elements of socialism.

Our Medium Term Strategy

Perhaps what has been missing in concretising our strategic slogan is
a compass and a set of intermediate objectives and concrete targets between
“the now” and our long term goal. This is what the Medium Term Vision
seeks to do! It is a concrete guide on whether we are advancing or regressing.
It anticipates very concrete outcomes in the course of our struggle,
and seeks to consciously build independent working class power to attain
elements of socialism, capacity for, and a momentum towards socialism.
It seeks to advance from the current challenges closer to our long-term
goal based on very clear and specific outcomes as part of the struggle
against capitalism.

To this end the augmented CC adopted a medium term strategy to realise
our medium term goals of a transition centrally dominated by the weight,
perspectives and needs of the workers and the poor, as the platform to
deepen our democracy and create a better life for all. The medium term
strategy adopted by the augmented CC seeks to stamp the political authority
of the working class as the principal motive force of our democratic
revolution.

The augmented CC adopted the following as the key six stands of the
SACP during the second decade of our freedom:

• Building the Party
• Strengthening the Alliance at all levels, with
  a particular emphasis on building it from below
• Rolling Back the Capitalist Market: Building Working Class Power for
  Sustainable Livelihoods through the Transformation of the Current
  Accumulation Regime in favour of the Workers and the Poor. This includes the
  key task
  of building strong public sector and a developmental state as key
  strategic leverage to transform the economy and the lives of our people
• Winning the war of ideas and values: Engaging in a Systematic and Concerted
  Battle of Ideas in order to advance the Ideological Hegemony of the
  Workers and the Poor
• Implementing our Annual Programmes of Action
• Working with other progressive forces locally and globally in the struggle
  against neo-liberalism and imperialism

This essentially constitutes the six key tasks of every communist over
the next 10 years!

Our Red October Campaign

The augmented CC also reflected on our annual
Red October campaigns, particularly focusing on evaluation of the 2003
Red October Campaign.
In reviewing the year, we noted considerable advances in the Financial
Sector Campaign, launched by the SACP in October 2000, and joined by
over 50 other organisations. Following the Financial Sector Summit in
August last year, government has published draft regulations to govern
credit bureaus. Cabinet is engaged in developing a new Co-operatives'
Bill and Community Reinvestment legislation; the Reserve Bank and government
have begun to look
at access to credit for the poor; several private banks have introduced
positive changes. AVBOB has announced that it will now remove any discrimination
against people with HIV/AIDS in its funeral insurance policies following
mass pressure; and the Financial Sector Agreement was incorporated into
the GDS agreement. The recently released financial sector charter itself
is directly an outcome of these struggles. However the CC noted that
much still needs to be done to ensure that the financial sector is transformed
to serve the workers and the poor.

Our 2003 Red October Campaign has also given us some insights, particularly
from KZN, of the actual class content and emerging class alliances
between the IFP elite and the white farmers on the countryside. In Bergville,
the IFP controlled municipality prevented us from marching through the
centre of the town so that that activity will not draw the attention
of the people and farmworkers of Bergville. At the same time the local
farmers’ association instructed all their members to ensure that workers
on that day are at work from 05h00 to 17h00, as part of preventing the
workers from participating in our activity.

There was clearly a collusion between the IFP elite controlling the
municipality and white farmers, despite the fact that many farmworkers
belong to the IFP and suffer the same humiliation, oppression and exploitation
as all other farmworkers. In addition there is very close collaboration
between IFP-aligned chiefs in neighbouring areas – which continue to
be the reservoir for cheap African agricultural labour - and white farmers.
This gives us a glimpse of the real class content of the “Coalition for
Change” between the IFP and DA, that it is essentially an anti-worker
and anti- working class coalition. Many of the white farmers have also
shifted their past allegiance from the NNP to the DA in many parts of
KZN, and possibly in many other parts of the country. The IFP continues
to be the vehicle to deliver vulnerable African workers to the white
farms, as well as produce and reproduce the conditions of exploitation
in the countryside.

In many respects the “Coalition for Change” is not in the interests
of ordinary IFP members, but serves to cement the position of elites
from both sides. It shows the extent to which the IFP elite, as opposed
to its ordinary members, remains shackled in the comforts of the bantustan
past, and its dependence on a close relationship with the most backward
elements of the white bourgeoisie, previously represented by the National
Party, and now found in the Democratic Alliance.

White farmers continue to use the excuse of “private
property” to prevent
access by progressive organisations, in particular unions, to white-owned
farms. Even more disturbing is that not only is the land the private
property of these white farmers, but that the workers themselves are
essentially the “private property” of farm-owners, to be accessible to
outsiders at the behest of these farmers. It is also very striking that
because of this these white farms are in all essence unliberated zones
and more like “open air” prisons.

A broader and much more central question raised by all these issues,
is that addressing the conditions of farm workers cannot be isolated
from the broader question of fundamental transformation of the
land and agrarian relations in South Africa. This raises once more the very important
question of organisation of farmworkers, and all other exploited and
oppressed strata in the countryside as motive forces for rural transformation.

Government’s 10 Year Review

The CC endorsed the broad thrust of government's ten year review process,
and acknowledges with pride the very significant advances made in deepening
democracy, unifying our country, and in major resource transfers to the
poorest of the poor. We strongly concur that where most progress has
been made over the past decade is in areas in which the public sector
has a direct role.

The CC also welcomed the frank acknowledgement by our ANC- led government
that, notwithstanding significant progress, the current levels of poverty
and marginalisation are not sustainable. There are many significant challenges,
notably unemployment, poverty, HIV and AIDS - all of which are linked
to the systemic duality of our economy and society. The augmented Central
Committee also welcomed government's Medium Term Budget Policy Statement,
which envisages major infrastructural spending, and a significant focus
on extended public works programmes, learnerships, internships and other
measures to address the unemployment crisis.

In its engagement with the senior ANC delegation, the CC emphasised
the SACP's view that in addition to public works programmes and other
job-creating initiatives, we need to focus on sustainable livelihoods,
households and communities. Realistically, in a capitalist-dominated
economy we will not succeed in approaching anything near full employment
in any immediately foreseeable future. Hence the imperative of complementing
the focus on job creation, with a focus on sustainable livelihoods. This
includes a much greater drive to implement significant land reform that
benefits hundreds of thousands of small family farmers, linked to a vibrant
cooperative movement; food gardens in urban and rural communities. The
CC also emphasised the need for a more effective and comprehensive social
security net that must be implemented not as a dole but as a catalyser
for development; fostering local economies; more coherent housing and
spatial planning to ensure sustainable communities; and micro-finance.

Towards an overwhelming ANC victory in the 2004 elections!

The augmented CC adopted a comprehensive SACP approach to the elections
to complement and strengthen the ANC towards a decisive victory in the
2004 elections. As the 5th Plenary Session of the CC decided, the Party
approach to the 2004 elections must be located within a broader political
framework of evaluating the first decade of freedom as well as planning
ahead for the second decade of freedom. Such an approach has begun to
assist us in identifying priorities for the elections and the kinds of
political, economic and programmatic outcomes needed during and after
the election.

The strategic importance of the 2004 Elections for the working class
resides in the fact that an overwhelming victory for the ANC means the
continuation of the transformation process started in 1994 that is beneficial
to the working class. At the same time we must ensure that the very nature
of the election, the ANC manifesto and conduct must serve to reflect
the working class bias of the ANC.

The augmented CC decided that the SACP will focus on the following areas
in the election campaign.

• Mobilising organised and Vulnerable Workers – through workers’
  forums and assemblies, building workplace units, taking forward our
  own debit order campaign, focusing on the the urban African working
  class
  in KZN and the coloured working class in the Western Cape.
• Using
  the financial sector campaign as a platform – holding the national
  and provincial public hearings on the financial sector charter during
  February and March.
• The 2004 Chris Hani Month: the ‘Chris Hani Election
  Victory Trail’ – to celebrate 10 years of our democracy, as well as
  to intensify the
  election campaign itself.
• Focus on the mobilisation of the youth – Directing the
  YCL ReLaunch Congress in December to adopt a programme at its Congress
  that should include
  intense work in mobilising the youth to go and vote for the ANC.
• Rural mobilisation – rural Party districts must be assisted to focus
  on the mobilisation of rural communities, holding farmworkers forums/assemblies
  organising them into trade unions, mobilisation around issues of
  land reform and the need to build co-operatives.

As South African Communists we are ready for the election battle!

VOTE ANC, WITH AND FOR THE WORKERS AND THE POOR!

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