Mangaung, 8 January 2023

We salute the ANC on the historic milestone of its 111^th founding anniversary. We are looking forward to the January 8^th Statement. The majority of our people are the workers and poor facing inequality, exploitation, unemployment and poverty in the economy. There can be no doubt. We will be inspired by revolutionary content in the measures the ANC will outline in its January 8^th Statement regarding the necessity to change the material conditions of this majority of our people for the better.

Our message today covers a few areas, through summaries.

1. Renewal and unity of the ANC, the entire movement and reconfiguration of the Alliance.

• This requires dealing decisively with factionalism without fear or favour, openly confronting neo-liberalism, dismantling the networks of state capture, clamping down on corruption, and building collective leadership of, and accountability on the content, direction and execution of the national democratic revolution.
• As President Cyril Ramaphosa correctly said in the Political Report he delivered to the 55^th National Conference of the ANC last month, the renewal and unity of the ANC will be incomplete without the reconfiguration of the Alliance. We cannot agree more.
• However, if we were to add, we would emphasise that the renewal and unity of the ANC will be incomplete without the renewal, unity and ever-growing support from the motive forces of the national democratic revolution and the people at large. Without the people, there can be no revolution. Let us remember. The revolution is not an end in itself. It is a means of an end. For the revolution to be a people’s revolution, it must be embedded in and serve the people.
• The national democratic revolution must lift the people out of poverty, replace unemployment with the right of all to work, bring down inequality—which is still racialised and gendered, complete the cause of liberation and socially emancipate the people, the majority of whom are the workers and poor. This is our immediate challenge, which requires success in overcoming other immediate challenges.  

2. The immediate challenges facing not only the ANC but also the Alliance and the entire country include stopping load-shedding as a matter of urgency, overcoming the overall energy production and supply security crisis, and moving forward to ensure a just transition in all respects—including in the sphere of finance. State power has a crucial role to play. We want to use this opportunity to underline the following points.

• A transition that will lead to the destruction of work through retrenchments and condemning active towns in energy producing areas into ghost towns will be unjust.
• South Africa must therefore move more decisively in advancing carbon capture and sequestration regarding coal as an input in energy production given our massive national endowment of the resource. This must form part of our mixed energy policy and just transition programme, which must include new publicly owned power stations to build self-sufficiency in electricity generation and supply.
• The imperialist powers of Western Europe, which have been pressuring South Africa to abandon the use of coal in energy production, have in contradiction rapidly increased their imports of our coal in the face of the stinging impact they experienced after their unilateral sanctions as part of the US-dominated NATO against Russia. Let us not forget. The economies of the Global North are cumulatively the worst polluters in historical context.
• A transition that will involve financial exploitation of our country through loans and subordination of our national democratic sovereignty through loan conditionalities will be unjust. The developed Global North—by far, historically, the biggest polluters and main causers of human induced climate change—must provide resources to the Global South to support both mitigation and adaptation. It is unjust for loans denominated and repayable in foreign currency to form the bulk of the “package” the developed Global North countries want Global South countries, South Africa included, to accept.

3. Overcoming the energy crisis and stopping load-shedding will play an important role towards tackling the persistently high levels of inequality, unemployment, and poverty. This requires other measures, however. The measures required include the following.

3.1. Developing total productive forces as rapidly as possible: not least through industrialisation, a thoroughgoing skills revolution, an adequately supported research and development agenda, transformation of the mining sector—with localising the beneficiation of our mineral resources a top priority, and transformation of the agricultural sector, linking agriculture to manufacturing by developing large-scale food processing, also known as agro-processing, the beneficiation of primary materials and intermediate goods from the agricultural, fisheries and forestry sectors.  

3.2. A coherent and high-impact industrial policy adequately supported by a new macroeconomic framework, particularly fiscal and monetary policies, as well as, equally important, international trade policy, must emerge as an overarching priority to tackle the persisting crisis-high unemployment through large-scale employment creation.

3.3. The macroeconomic framework must be redesigned to support the development, diversification and growing the levels of national production. Needless to mention industrialisation, with large-scale sustainable employment creation, an apex priority. This must explicitly be added to the mandate of, and accountability by, the Reserve Bank. Since the adoption of our constitution in 1996, the Reserve Bank has failed to deliver on its constitutional mandate of exercising its powers and functions in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth. Besides making it truly the central bank of the republic in terms of ownership, the Reserve Bank must be moved from its failed conduct of monetary policy to play a developmental role.

3.4. Instead of being relegated to a function of one government department and deprived of adequate funding through austerity, which involves either curtailments of growth or outright cuts in budgetary support for industrial development and incentives, industrialising the economy with the overarching, coherent and high-impact industrial policy adequately supported by macroeconomic policies must be elevated to a whole-of-government priority. There must be greater co-ordination of industrial policy with a decisively supportive macroeconomic policy and other policies

3.5. A stronger anti-monopoly, anti-concentration and anti-dumping legislative and regulatory framework vigorously enforced should more decisively form part of our industrial transformation and development imperative, including localisation and ownership transformation. While still on this score, the property question, ownership transformation must not be locked into an exclusive preserve of elitist groupings through their capitalist schemes, including wheeling and dealing, state capture and other forms of corruption.

• As the ANC correctly declared in its Strategy and Tactics adopted in 1969 in Morogoro, Tanzania, “…our nationalism must not be confused with chauvinism or narrow nationalism of a previous epoch. It must not be confused with the classical drive by an elitist group among the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so that they can replace the oppressor in the exploitation of the mass”.
• The “N” in the National Democratic Revolution does not stand for the word “national” devoid of content. It stands for the word national with revolutionary nationalism as its theoretical content as opposed to narrow nationalism. It is important we underline this point from our shared theory of struggle on this occasion of the ANC’s 111^th founding anniversary.
• As Vladimir Lenin has correctly said, “Without revolutionary theory, there can be no real revolutionary movement”. The ANC was therefore absolutely correct in the Morogoro Strategy and Tactics when it made clear the correction of our centuries-old economic injustices lies at the very core of our national aspirations.
• In summing up the way forward, the ANC underlined that “…one thing is certain—in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals be they White or Black.” We have no doubt that the ANC will rebound and regain its lost ground by reasserting this revolution content, including through mass empowerment covering the workers and poor in terms of ownership

4. Reasserting rural development as an apex priority, to eliminate under-development systematically. Directing investment into rural areas will go a long way in developing production and expanding opportunities in the rural areas. 

5. Advancing and deepening the transformation of the financial sector to serve the people. In line with the Freedom Charter, financial sector transformation must include building a developmental public banking system and a thriving co-operative banking sector.

6. Tackling the rising costs of living and advancing a caring social policy, not least maintaining the Social Relief Distress Grant and improving it as a foundation to move towards a Universal Basic Income Grant. 

7. Eliminating racial inequality and advancing gender equality as indispensable components in every policy and dealing more decisively with gender-based violence. We want to take this opportunity to reiterate our unwavering condemnation of the racist behaviour by the white men who have been charged with crimes, including attempted murder, after allegedly assaulting black teenagers trying to use a resort swimming pool at the Maselspoort resort in the Free State Province last month. 

8. To achieve the historical mission of the national democratic revolution, working together, we must intensify our anti-imperialist struggle. We are looking forward to the ANC’s contribution in taking forward this international struggle for a just and peaceful world characterised by equal development and common prosperity.

Together, let us serve the people.