Build Street Committees, Build People`s Power For A Radical National Democratic Revolution and Socialism!

SACP 87th anniversary message

3 August 2008

1. The state of the SACP

We are this weekend officially celebrating our 87th anniversary of this glorious political party of South Africa`s working class. Throughout all these 87 years we have, with total dedication, devoted all our energies to the struggle for national liberation and socialism. We have also been a dependable ally of the ANC and the progressive trade union movement in our country, sometimes even in the face of extreme provocation from some of those within our ranks who wants to sideline the allies of the African National Congress.

We are also proud of the fact that our Party continues to grow and now has a membership of some 67 000, the highest ever in the entire history of our Party. We have managed to grow because we have been in the forefront of the struggles of the workers and the poor of our country, and we have led many mass struggles in the financial sector, for land and agrarian transformation, for safe and healthy communities, and have been part of the many struggles of the organised working class of our country.

We remain committed to be part of the Alliance that leads a radical national democratic revolution, and for us this is our most direct route to socialism. Current global and domestic developments continue to show the extent to which capitalism is incapable of resolving problems facing humanity. Instead it is a system that continues to benefit a narrower circle of the rich, whilst throwing the majority of humanity into hunger, poverty, disease and subhuman standards of living. It is only socialism that will be able to create a more egalitarian society, in which all can be able to realise their dreams of a better life.

2. The current global capitalist crisis and international solidarity

As the SACP had predicted in our July 2007 strategic programme ("The Road to South African Socialism"), the global capitalist system is now enmeshed in a deep-seated and systemic crisis. This does not mean that capitalism is about to be destroyed or destroy itself, or that a socialist future will automatically arise. It does mean, however, that more and more capitalism reveals itself as a barbaric system without answers to the challenges of our time.

There are many dimensions to the current crisis, among them the very high but unsustainable consumption levels in the US which have seen US debt (government, corporate and household) soaring to $48 trillion while US GDP only stands at around $13trillion. It is these levels of indebted consumption that have helped to sustain record levels of Chinese growth and indeed much of global capitalist growth in general. The "American dream" has been built on the myth of everyone becoming a suburban home-owner and car commuter. The housing mortgage crisis in the US and soaring fuel prices are striking at the heart of the dream.

We are living in a period, possibly a relatively long period, in which the US increasingly loses its dominant economic position within the world capitalist system. It has fallen behind in terms of productivity in virtually all sectors, with the notable exception of military weaponry. And therein lies another grave threat to humanity. More and more the US will be inclined to assert its dominance through armed intervention. This is notably the case in regard to energy.

In 1998 shock waves reverberated through US ruling circles when the country began for the first time to import more than 50% of the petroleum it consumed. At the same time, many analysts and scientists began to confirm what had previously been regarded only as something remote – global oil production was in fact fast approaching a peak. The strategic decision to intensify US military, political and economic hegemony in oil producing regions, particularly the Middle East, was taken.

The September 11 terrorist attacks simply became an excuse for the implementation of a decision already taken - the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and (possibly a planned attack) on Iran. No less an authority than the former Federal Reserve Bank chairperson, Alan Greenspan has written in his recent memoirs: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: that the Iraq war is largely about oil."

It is for some of these reasons above that the SACP remains deeply committed to working class international solidarity and the building of a strong, progressive peace movement in the world, opposed to war and plunder of the planet`s resources.

It is also for these reasons that the SACP remains committed towards the building of a progressive movement for peace, democracy and socialism on the African continent. During this anniversary we also wish to re-affirm our commitment to solidarity with the struggling and peace-loving people of Zimbabwe.

The SACP welcomes the relatively modest breakthrough towards finding a lasting (negotiated) solution to the Zimbabwean crisis. We condemn all the violence directed at the ordinary people of Zimbabwe, and wish to say to ZANU-PF, that what it is doing in Zimbabwe is not in line with the values of the national liberation struggles in our region and continent. It is also for this reasons that the negotiations underway by Zimbabwean political parties must take the mass of the Zimbabwean people along and not merely lead to an elite pact that will sideline the people.

The SACP also wishes to express its solidarity with the struggling and oppressed people of Swaziland, the Western Sahara and Palestine, as well as solidarity with the Cuban people who are facing an unjust, criminal blockade by the United States.

3. Happy 90th birthday Madiba, and let`s reclaim Madiba`s revolutionary legacy and build people`s power!

This weekend, together with our allies, we were also celebrating the 90th birthday of Cde Nelson Mandela. As the SACP we are proud to be a party that has long been an ally of Cde Mandela`s own organisation, the African National Congress (ANC), that glorious movement of the overwhelming mass of the ordinary people of our country.

We should welcome the fact that people from various social classes and ideological orientations, including those that in the past had regarded Mandela as a `terrorist`, not only now respect Cde Mandela, but have come to associate themselves with some of his ideals.

However, the SACP and our alliance have a duty to ensure that in all this the true legacy and contribution of Cde Mandela in South Africa and the world is not lost. We need to ensure that Mandela`s legacy is not owned and interpreted by celebrities and elites.

For us as the SACP one of the most decisive and more lasting contributions that Madiba made to our revolution, together with Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and other leaders of the youth league in the 1940s, was to transform the ANC from an organisation of `petitioning` elites into a mass organisation centred and driven by the mass of the people on the ground. It transformed the ANC into an organisation that it never had been before. The SACP is also proud that the many mass and trade union struggles led by our Party in the 1940s, notably the Great 1946 Mineworkers` strike, contributed immensely towards the radical transformation of the ANC. It is this transformation of the ANC that laid the basis for the mass struggles that were to follow in the 1970s through into the 1990s, and were crucial in the final defeat of the apartheid regime.

Even Mandela`s incarceration on Robben Island became a platform for deepening mass mobilisation inside South Africa and beyond. The mass of the people were at the centre of the revolution and the struggle against colonialism of a special type. It is the masses of the people of our country, with the organised working class at the head, that released Mandela and other political prisoners and defeated the apartheid regime. The SACP is completely convinced that Madiba would agree with us that his 90th birthday must simultaneously be a celebration of the role of the workers and the poor of our country in the struggle for national liberation and reconstruction of our country.

It is important that we continuously emphasise the role that Mandela played in building our Alliance as part of deepening our offensive against the apartheid regime. It is very sad that nowadays, and especially since about 1996, the role of, and relationship between, the SACP and the ANC has been deliberately downplayed as part of an elite agenda (both inside and outside our movement) to belittle if not wipe out the role of communists and our party in particular in the national liberation struggle and reconstruction of our country.

We salute Cde Mandela for his unwavering commitment to the workers and communists of this country from the 1950s till today. He understood, just like Oliver Tambo and current ANC President Jacob Zuma, that the alliance is not something to be used by elites and other similar social classes to access state power, business opportunities and win electoral majorities, but only to be dumped thereafter.Madiba knew that the alliance is something that must be nurtured, treasured and strengthened as an enduring force for deepening and consolidating our national democratic revolution.

Some of the elite ideologues today try to project the masses and their centrality in the struggle as `populism`, and deliberately counter-pose this to the rationality of a seamlessly moral leader like Mandela, someone `above the masses`. It is an attempt define Madiba outside of, and separate from, the mass of the people that he was in the trenches with. We are curtained that Madiba is pained by these elitist agendas to try and separate Mandela from, and place him above, the people he dedicated his entire life into liberating.

It is our duty as a movement to ensure that the revolutionary legacy of Mandela is not co-opted by elites, whose aim is to capture the NDR and redirect it towards their own narrow objectives. In celebrating Madiba`s 90th birthday let us recommit ourselves to the mobilisation of the masses so that they become masters of their own destiny.

As part of this mass mobilisation the SACP calls upon all our formations and people on the ground to positively respond to the ANC call to form street, block and village committees as part of our offensive against crime. Building of such committees must be part of rebuilding people`s power to drive a progressive developmental agenda in our country.

The SACP will be using its 2008 Red October Campaign to undertake door-to-door work, convening local people`s forums as a basis for re-building street, block and village committees. We will also use our Red October Campaign to campaign for an overwhelming ANC victory in the 2009 elections.

4. We need revolutionary changes, including in our economy!

There is currently an intense campaign to make it unthinkable for there to be any alteration in prevailing economic policies. Liberal and bourgeois commentators warn the new ANC leadership not to become "hostage" to the "populism" of their SACP and COSATU backers. If they do, they will face abject failure they are told. Part of the campaign is, precisely, to suggest that there are "only two alternatives":

• GEAR type, neo-liberal policies – perhaps, with "a little fine tuning" here or there; or
• Wild macro-populist policies that call for unsustainable budget deficits and that are completely reckless about rising inflation or current account deficits.

This is indeed a completely false picture, but one that hopes to shut down any progressive debate about economic policy. Fortunately, all Alliance partners and, indeed, increasingly comrades in government are united in rejecting this false choice.

There has to be change in economic policy, but it needs to be strategic, sustainable and democratically debated and continuously evaluated. We also have to break down the divisions typical of bourgeois "economic and social sciences". This means, amongst other things, the following:

• Refusing to isolate macro-economic issues from micro-economic policies like industrial policy, for instance. The GEAR policy package elevated macro-economic policies into the be-all and end-all of economic policy. But you cannot have a meaningful debate on inflation in South Africa by simply having a macro-economic discussion about Reserve Bank policy and the merits or demerits of inflation targeting. Inflation targeting is relatively powerless in the face of surging, externally-driven food and oil prices.
• The policy of inflation targeting has to be reviewed, and we ensure that the band of 3-6% is revised. To address these major drivers of inflation, we have to develop micro-economic sectoral policies that look at rural development and national food security, or trade, transport, spatial and mobility policies that lessen our dependence on imported oil. And THEN we need to return to the macro-economic and ask what kinds of macro-economic policies will support these sectoral interventions.
• We also need to debate and review the merits and demerits of running a budget surplus or deficit, especially in the light of the major problems of the erosion of the standard of living of the workers and the poor due to high food and energy prices. There is nothing inherently progressive or reactionary about a budget deficit – it all depends upon what we are trying to achieve within a specific reality.
• Equally, we must resist the bourgeois tendency to divorce "social" transformation issues like health-care, education and training, an expanded public works programme, or a social security net, from "economic" policy. Our economic and social policies must be integrated and mutually reinforcing. For the bourgeoisie, only profit-making activity for themselves qualifies as "economic". For us, all productive activity that produces wealth for the majority of the people is "economic".
• The SACP supports government`s intention to fast-track the appropriation of land for agricultural production. The SACP calls for a rural, land and agrarian transformation strategy that must place food production and security at the centre of our economic transformation. We are also calling for a debate and review of whether we should not also make land and agrarian reform a responsibility for local government, especially at district level, and not merely be national and provincial competence. This may go a long way towards fast-tracking land and agrarian transformation and bringing this closer to the people. For the SACP this must also be accompanied by the building of People`s Land Committees, especially in the rural areas. For this reason we call upon for the swift implementation of the Polokwane resolution for a moratorium on selling of municipal land, and that such selling must be linked to building houses and release of land for sustainable food production.
• We need a complete review of the current model of Black Economic Empowerment. We need to ensure that BEE does indeed benefit the ordinary workers and the poor of our country. We also need to ensure that we liberate our revolution from the corruption in the awarding of tenders. There is lots of evidence to the effect that at all levels the awarding of tenders tend to benefit the same circles of people. The SACP should mobilise and monitor very closely the processes of awarding tenders and all levels and ensure that this is done transparently and in a manner that will benefit the majority of our people. Let us prevent developmental package to be always turned into tenders for a few, whilst marginalising communities from driving such developmental projects.
• Central to driving through a transformation agenda is the transformation of our state. This is a reality increasingly agreed upon throughout our Alliance and within government. This growing consensus is embodied in the commitment to building a progressive developmental state that is capable of active, strategic intervention into the economy. The consolidation of a democratic, developmental state with real capacity and coherence – this includes:
  • developing a serious planning capacity at the highest level within the state,
  • the appropriate reconfiguration of departments (as raised by SACP at Alliance Summit)
  • evaluation of the three spheres of government and the future of provinces;
  • strengthening local government, including through deepening participatory activism using the Municipal Structures Act (see more below)
  • evaluation and transformation of developmental finance institutions
• Strengthening and transforming parliament to ensure greater democratic debate and transparency, especially on major government spending, by, amongst other things:
  • Passing legislation this year to enable parliament to amend money bills as required
• Taking forward the industrial policy process with a particular focus on job creation, including
  • Ongoing transformation of the financial sector
  • Developing a coherent and sustainable approach to national energy security – SASOL, Eskom, etc.
• We reiterate our call for the renationalisation of SASOL as a national strategic entity that cannot be left in the hands of private interests. Selling shares to individuals is not alternative to nationalisation, so that this asset is able to serve the interests of our people as a whole.
• We call upon the banks and other financial sector institutions to negotiate with labour and community in good faith towards the gazetting the Financial Sector Charter and to stop behaving petulantly in trying to dodge the alignment of the Charter to the BEE codes. The SACP will renew its mobilisation to ensure that this sector is transformed to serve the developmental priorities of our country.

To achieve the above requires the consolidation of the ANC and of the ANC-led alliance as a coherent strategic political centre. The series of bilaterals, and alliance policy meetings, the SACP`s special conference, in-depth political education and campaigning, the preparation of an election manifesto, and other activities must all contribute to achieving this key objective

5. Defend our constitution, fight against the violation of the rights of the ANC President

We wish to use our anniversary to reiterate our strongest condemnation of the manner in which the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has violated the rights of the President of the ANC, Cde Jacob Zuma. Cde Zuma has been thrown into the media lynch mob through a calculated campaign by the NPA to destroy his image and dignity. Cde Zuma has now been investigated for 8 years, without the case against him seeing any conviction or convincing charges.

We also wish to condemn failure by government to act against some of these violations, especially failure to act on those responsible for the production of the Special Browse Mole Report. We were promised last year that by now those responsible would have been apprehended, but nothing of the sort has happened.

Supporting and defending Cde Zuma is part of a struggle to ensure that institutions of the criminal justice system are not abused to settle factional scores inside our own movement.

The SACP therefore calls upon all communists to mobilise for the biggest ever demonstration when Cde Zuma appears in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on 4 and 5 August 2008!

The SACP welcomes government`s announcement to look into the problems within our criminal justice system. However we need to ensure that this process is open and transparent and should seek to meaningfully engage the views of our people.

6. Towards an overwhelming ANC electoral victory in 2009

The SACP calls upon all our structures at all levels to fully participate in the ANC`s election campaign for 2009. The SACP, within the context of a reconfigured Alliance, will fully support the ANC and work towards an overwhelming victory.

The SACP will also directly mobilise its own structures for electoral work in support of the ANC and seek to mobilise all the constituencies we have been working with in our many campaigns to vote for the ANC in 2009. To this end the SACP will focus on intense local mobilisation, including developmental issues and the empowerment of our people. We will ensure that we intensify our work at voting district level, in line with the resolution of the SACP to root our Party at voting district levels.

For Information Contact:
Malesela Maleka
SACP Spokesperson - 082 226 1802