9 February 2003
The SACP Central Committee met on the 7th and 8th February, and the agenda included:
Stop the War
The SACP is calling on all SACP members and on all concerned South Africans, regardless of political affiliation, to support the call of President Thabo Mbeki to oppose war in Iraq. Let us build the broadest united front in action to Stop the War.
Already the global response by many concerned governments, progressive political parties, multi-lateral forums and social movements in the North and South, has forced the US militarists to hesitate, just a little, in their headlong rush into a unilateral war to grab oil resources.
For the first time in more than a decade, there is a very wide international unity. When Bush senior invaded Iraq, the SACP was one of the few voices within our country to express outrage at the unilateralism of the US, emboldened by what was then its new status as the single global super-power.
The SACP has consistently mobilised against US-led imperialist unilateralism, and its unceasing attempts to impose “regime change” in the Balkans or Afghanistan, or to arm regional gendarmes, as in Israel, and generally to shape the world according to the interests of a few hundred, US corporations.
In 2003, diverse forces, world-wide, are now finding each other united around the struggle for peace, for multi-lateralism in addressing security, economic, social and environmental challenges, and for the harnessing of global resources to address the crisis of underdevelopment.
This significant groundswell of popular global concern is exposing the hypocrisy of those who have hidden narrow interests behind the cloak of mythical “third ways”, or “benign Washington-consensus globalisation”. It is exposing the hypocrisy of those who openly, or tacitly, support US militarism in Iraq in the name of “human rights”, while they are silent about the systematic ethnic cleansing being undertaken in Palestine by the Bush-Sharon axis.
The Stop the War campaign is not a campaign of support for Saddam Hussein. The alternative is not either uncritical support for Saddam Hussein, or uncritical support for US militarism. The alternative is peace, development and international multilateralism.
On Tuesday 11th February, the SACP will be joining its allies and a broad front of other formations to announce the details of the Stop the War programme of action.
Growth and Development Summit
The CC also discussed in the detail the forthcoming Growth and Development Summit, receiving a report on Alliance preparations. As an Alliance we believe that the Summit must focus on five core themes – investment and productivity; job creation – including extended public works programmes and labour intensive approaches; social equity – including a comprehensive social security system; local economic development – including cooperatives; and price stability and inflation.
The SACP believes that the over-riding theme of the Summit should relate to the struggle to roll back the frontiers of poverty in our country. We believe that the Summit must set social development goals that enjoy as much (and more) national profile and priority as our growth, inflation and budget deficit targets. The Summit and the programme of action that must emerge from it can mark a major chapter in our nation-building process, on a par with CODESA, constitution making and the TRC.
Outstanding issues that can detract from and undermine success must be settled effectively and expeditiously. In particular, the SACP calls on the partners at NEDLAC to ensure that agreement on a decisive response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is reached. We see absolutely no reason why all parties should not sign the NEDLAC framework agreement. This should be settled without delay. It will give hope to millions of people with HIV in South Africa.
The SACP’s own specific focus in the run-up to the GDS will be to ensure that the range of social movement participants in our Financial Sector Campaign, and the co-operative movement network, are actively involved in the Summit, and that the Financial Sector Summit resolutions are strategically carried through.
Communal Land Rights Bill
At the request of the CC, we received an extensive briefing on the Communal Land Rights Bill from the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, cde Thoko Didiza. The SACP has, in principle, welcomed this important progressive legislation which will help to empower hundreds of thousands of poor households and communities in the former Bantustans.
The CC expressed two basic concerns. The debate around the Bill has, so far, been dominated by the concerns of traditional leaders. The SACP and the Minister agreed that hundreds of thousands of poor rural households need to be mobilised around their own aspirations. While the concerns of traditional leaders and others must be factored in, we cannot allow the shaping and implementation of such potentially progressive legislation to be dominated by the concerns of those who have the most capacity to articulate their perspectives. The SACP warns traditional leaders not to place their narrowinterests above the development needs of communities. In the coming months, the SACP will be working with its alliance partners and government to ensure that the full potential of restoring communal land rights is realised.
The second concern of the SACP has been that conferring of land rights to individual families and the commodisation of land might have the rapid but unintended consequence of increasing inequality and landlessness in rural areas. The danger is that impoverished households will simply sell land as soon as they can. The Minister reassured the CC that government is deeply concerned about this possibility and the Bill will not allow individual selling of communal land. Government will also ensure that the new legislation will also be accompanied by intensified measures to ensure agricultural extension programmes, and other developmental assistance.
World Cup Cricket
As a party of internationalism, the South African Communist Party sends to the organisers, the ICC, to all participating teams, and to visitors to our country our best wishes for a successful tournament. As the South African Communist Party, we will, of course, dialectically combine our internationalism with our especial wishes for success to the Proteas.
CONTACT
Mazibuko K. Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information & Publicity
South African Communist Party
Tel - 011 339-3621/2, Fax – 011 339-4244, Cell - 083 651 0271
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za