4 February 2013
The SACP in the Brian Bunting District (Cape Metro) notes the pronouncement made by the City Mayor Patricia De Lille on Thursday, 31st January 2013 that the DA led City of Cape Town has declared 2013 as the year of honoring Tata Madiba. The SACP views this as yet another desperate attempt by the liberals to use our heroes to advance their narrow political agendas. This is not a genuine recognition of his role in the struggle for national liberation but an opportunistic use of his international image that was built by our struggle for national emancipation. This is an insult to him, his comrades in the ANC, alliance partners and the national liberation movement as whole. Nelson Mandela is a heroic symbol of our struggle against race tyranny. It is for these reasons that we as the SACP have been advocating correctly and consistently that the global status of comrade Madiba must never, ever be isolated from the struggle that was waged by the ANC and its partners. Madiba`s revolutionary commitment to liberate the Black majority and fight against all forms of colonialism, discrimination, chauvinism must at all times be highlighted and defended from the liberals like the DA and the mainstream liberal media. These are the struggles and gains of a broader movement that should be defended at all times
Any recognition of Madiba should go with a clear programme that seeks to inculcate his conviction of working class emancipation from capitalist domination. Mandela believes in a society with harmony and equal opportunities, where human beings are treated as equals. Cape Town is well known of a heaven for class exploitation and racial domination. The wider gaps between the poor and rich, which are stimulated by the Western Cape government policies, continue to threaten the developing of the working class as it is continuously treated as secondary citizens. The working class in the metro continues to be at the receiving end of poor service by the City of Cape Town whilst it is portrayed by the main stream liberal media as the best City in the world. Our people in the African and Coloured communities continue to live in squalors without sanitation, safe drinking water, electricity and properly resourced schools in the informal settlement that make it impossible for ambulances, police and fire fighters to get into the area during emergencies.
It is within this background that as the SACP we believe the DA led City of Cape Town is not qualified to honour comrade Mandela in any way. We appeal to the DA not to provoke the working class by trying to project itself in good image of Madiba for narrow class interest and to garner support for the 2014 general elections. The DA as an organization has actually made it a culture to always opportunistically isolate cde Nelson Mandela from the congress movement, the ANC and its alliance and this time they will get a serious resistance from the broader working class.
For Information contact:
District Secretary Benson Ngqentsu
0827966400