19 August 2007
The incoming SACP Central Committee elected at the 12th National Congress in July met for the first time over the weekend of 17th and 18th August 2007. The main items on the agenda of the CC were the election of a Political Bureau, a report and evaluation of the 12th Congress, and preparations for our 2007 Red October campaign.
In addition to our elected officials, the new PB of the SACP is: Solly Mapaila, Joyce Moloi, Yunus Carrim, Lindelwa Dunjwa, Ben Martins, Nozizwe Madlala, Fikile `Slovo` Majola, Chris Matlhaku, Dipuo Mvelase, David Masondo, and Senzeni Zokwana.
The CC also co-opted into its ranks four veterans of the SACP, Eric Mtshali, Ronnie Kasrils, John Nkadimeng, and Kay Moonsamy.
The CC affirmed that the 12th Congress was a resounding political landmark, the largest Congress in the history of the SACP. The Congress, meeting under the theme "Communist Cadres to the Front", was a powerful indication of the growing influence, capacity and commitment of the more than 51,000 members of our Party. In the month since our Congress, a further 2,500 members have joined the Party.
2007 Red October Campaign for a well-resourced and effective public health-care system
The CC has resolved to take up the crisis in our public health-care system as the central focus of this year`s Red October campaign. The SACP has been active on this front since the early 1990s, with our "Triple H" campaign that focused on housing, hunger and health-care. In the course of this year, the SACP was in the forefront of support for public sector workers, not least health-care workers, in their protracted strike that highlighted wage demands, but also the often impossible conditions under which many of our public sector workers are compelled to work.
The CC received reports from many CC members who are active in various capacities in the health-care system. While we are spending R25-billion on the Gautrain, and R9-billion on 2010 stadia, many of our hospitals, especially those serving the workers and the poor, do not have even the minimum health-care infrastructure budgets that were theoretically allocated to them for this budgetary year. We have not obtained any clear explanation for this crisis. The CC heard reports of massive staff shortages in many public hospitals, and of rural clinics that simply do not function. Comrades reported cases of patients having to purchase basic pain-killers like Panados.
In the coming weeks the SACP will be preparing for an effective campaign on this front, and we will be consulting actively with our alliance partners and with workers and professionals and their organisations in the sector. We will also engage actively with social movements and communities.
The crisis in Khutsong
Among the urgent matters discussed at the CC was the deepening crisis in Khutsong. The crisis is the direct consequence of high-handed bureaucratic diktat and a cynical pretence at community consultation. It has been further exacerbated by subsequent buck-passing and a failure of political leadership. The CC saluted the role that local, district, provincial and national structures of the SACP have been playing in seeking to provide guidance to a community that feels betrayed and abandoned.
The SACP supports the community`s demands that their democratic wishes be respected and we identify with their anger at the cynical betrayal of their freely expressed views. Without abandoning these demands and perspectives, the time has now come for a comprehensive intervention in order to normalise the situation. Even at the height of apartheid oppression we always understood that the popular weapon of a mass boycott was a tactic not a principle. Contrary to some contemporary misrepresentations, we never, for instance, advanced the slogan "No education before liberation". Schooling must be resumed in Khutsong. Normal life must, as best as possible, be allowed to proceed. Community activists must appreciate that the very same cynical forces whose high-handedness precipitated this crisis in the first place, are now quite content to sit back and let matters stew. They are quite prepared to let conditions deteriorate and for tensions to develop and deepen within the community.
The CC has mandated Party structures to reinforce our engagement with the people of Khutsong. We will also be taking up our concerns in our forthcoming alliance meetings. We hope to work closely together as an alliance in this regard.
The current post-TRC processes
In noting the current and likely further prosecutions arising out of the post-TRC process, the SACP reiterates the basic principle that there is no comparison between the criminality of the apartheid regime and the legitimate struggles of our people. The UN correctly declared apartheid a crime against humanity and the TRC itself found that gross human rights abuses were a systemic feature of apartheid, while the liberation movement had conducted a fundamentally just war.
The SACP expects that more will still come out in regard to the nature and extent of the crimes committed by the apartheid regime and its supporters. In this regard we once more reiterate our demand that an active inquest must be opened into the assassination of our late general secretary, cde Chris Hani.
As the post-TRC prosecutions process proceeds we need an above-board process. Plea-bargaining must not be used as a new form of cover-up. The SACP will also certainly be extremely vigilant that prosecutions are not used to settle factional scores within or without our movement. Where we pick up such patterns we will raise them forthrightly.
The SACP further believes that there has been relatively weak political leadership in this entire process, particularly from the side of the Justice Ministry. Neither our alliance forces nor the general public have been adequately enlightened about the broad objectives and character of the current judicial proceedings. This is not to say that judicial independence should not be respected, but the public is totally confused about the whole matter. We call for effective political oversight, not least from the side of parliament, guided by the general principle that we are not dealing with "conflicts of the past" in which two more or less equally culpable forces were lined up against each other. If this latter view were to prevail, it would be a travesty of justice and a betrayal of the findings of the TRC itself.
On the Special Browse
The CC noted the response by the security agencies to the `Special Browse`. The CC expressed concerns that the response of the security agencies leaves more questions than it provides answers. Some of the very serious concerns expressed by the CC was around the role of private intelligence agencies and their intersection with state security agencies, including the role of former apartheid operatives. It is startling that in the response there is an implicit admission on these private elements lurking within, if not actively sometimes working with, state organs.
Some weeks backs we formally wrote a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence (JSCI) to give effective oversight to the investigative processes underway on this matter. We hope the JSCI will give urgent attention to this matter and revert back to the public.
African challenges
The CC also discussed a range of current international challenges. In particular, a report was tabled on United States moves under way to set up AFRICOM, a Military Command centre focused on our continent and designed to support a range of "US government departments and agency initiatives in Africa". This is an extremely worrying but under-reported development. It needs to be grasped within the context of the Bush administration`s "National Security Strategy", and its determination to unabashedly project US "imperial" (it is a word that they are not shy to use) military force to all corners of the globe. The National Security Strategy proclaims: "America is at war…We choose leadership over isolationism and the pursuit of free and fair trade and open markets…We fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to arrive in our country…We seek to shape the world…We must maintain a military without peer…"
Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the US will seek to use Africom to impose its own economic interests on our continent. As in Iraq, this will simply serve to create further breeding grounds for terrorism, conflict and instability. Africa needs peace and development, not a US military presence. The AU, democratic sovereign governments and the people of Africa need to take the leading role in establishing peace and fostering development on our continent. Africans need to unite to resist the imposition of Africom on to our continent.
Issued by the SACP.
For more information Contact:
Malesela Maleka
SACP Spokesperson
0822261802