12 December 2003
Keynote address to the Re-establishment Congress of the Young Communist League, Vaal Triangle Technikon, Vanderbijlpark
By Blade Nzimande, General Secretary, South African Communist Party
1. Historic nature of this Congress
We are gathered here today as young South African communists to make history. As Marx would have said, people make history by not under circumstances of their own choosing, yet history is indeed made by people themselves. We are gathered here almost exactly 54 years since the dissolution and subsequent banning of the Communist Party of South Africa by the apartheid regime. This also marked the end of the Young Communist League in our country. When the South African Communist Party (SACP) was reconstituted underground in 1953, the YCL was never reconstituted. We are indeed making history, relaunching this important communist organisation, exactly in the year we are commemorating 50 years of the reconstitution of our Party underground in 1953.
You are also making history by today declaring to all that capitalism has no future for the youth, and the future for the youth is being destroyed by capitalism. Only under socialism can the youth be able to realise its aspirations. By what you are doing here today, you are re-shaping your own future. We are also saying today to those who thought by banning our Party in 1950 they are destroying communist ideas in our country, you are mistaken, there can be no democratic South Africa without communists and the Communist Party . They used repressive legislation to ban us, but here we are growing stronger, and it is them instead who are being banned and banished, not by the ANC-led democratic government, but by history. Anyone who might still harbour the illusions of a South Africa without communists and a strong Communist Party will also be defeated.
You are further making history today, by practically demonstrating that, contrary to our enemies and detractors, communist ideas are not outdated, but provide the only hope for the youth of our country. Eradication of poverty, exploitation, all forms of inequality cannot be achieved under a capitalist dispensation. Yes we can make a lot of advances towards eradication of poverty, but it is only a socialist dispensation that will finally eradicate poverty.
You are also launching the YCL during the 21st anniversary of the cowardly assassination of that communist hero, Ruth First, who was a member and militant of the Young Communist League in the 1940s. Because of all this there is a very heavy responsibility on your shoulders, to carry on the proud tradition of Ruth First, and indeed all other communists, particularly those who perished in their youth struggling for the ideals of national liberation and socialism. These include communist heroes like Johannes Nkosi, gunned down by colonial police in Durban in 1930, the Lion of Chiawelo, who died in combat in a brave confrontation with the apartheid security forces in Soweto, Chule “KK” Papiyana, and Smiso Nkwanyana. Joe Slovo himself, Esther Barsel, Brian Bunting and many others joined the Communist Party via the YCL. There also could have been no better commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the assassination of our late General Secretary, Cde Chris Hani, than through this historic launch of the YCL. You have a responsibility to act like Chris Hani – by becoming dedicated and disciplined communist cadres.
2. The nature, role and immediate political tasks of the YCL
Gathered here in fact is the future leadership of the Party itself. Make sure you act very consciously understanding this reality, that you are indeed shaping the very future of the South African Communist Party .
The YCL is a structure of the SACP which will however have its autonomy and adopt and implement its own programmes, within the overall programme and perspectives of the Party. Without pre-empting any debates at this Congress, this YCL is not a communist Party, only the SACP is vanguard Party for the working class! The YCL by its very nature should be a mass organisation that aims to draw in thousands of youth into its ranks as a school for communism and communist leadership. The YCL should aim to train its members in socialist theory, ideology, morality and participate in concrete programmes in support of working class struggles.
The YCL must also, at every available opportunity, carry out socialist propaganda and strive towards reaching the widest sections of our youth through such propaganda. We are a democratic country now, which the Party has been a very integral part, in bringing about such democracy. Let us fully use this democratic space to advance communist ideas and the ideal of socialism, unashamedly, unapologetically and very energetically! The re-establishment of the YCL should herald enhanced socialist debate in our country!
The Party and the YCL
In its activities the YCL should also act to strengthen, build and defend the Party and its ideals. Without a strong Party there can be no strong YCL, and without a strong YCL there can be no strong Party. You must also ensure that your Party, the SACP, must be defended at all costs, you should not allow it to be ridiculed, belittled or attacked from whatever quarter. But in doing this we do not expect you to act like a loudhailer, to simply magnify what the Party says. We expect you to nurture and promote the culture of open debate, engagement, criticism and self-criticism.
In your relationship with the Party, you must also jealously guard against using the YCL as a springboard for factionalist battles in the Party or for opportunistic advancement of individual interests in the Patry. You must not use the YCL as a battleground for leadership positions and contests in the Party or in any other allied structure. You would kill both the YCL and the Party. Communists hate opportunism, careerism and factionalism.
The YCL, the working class and the ANC Youth League
The bedrock of the YCL should be young workers working in alliance with students and young unemployed workers, both in the urban and rural areas. With regards to young workers, the YCL structures should immerse themselves in struggles to defend jobs and to fight retrenchments and to struggle for workplace skills development for young workers. Young workers are the most vulnerable when it comes to retrenchments. You must engage with the SETAs to ensure that young workers benefit from skills development funds, and that individual employers do provide training for young workers. This is a very important dimension of building working class power in the place of production, which is one of the key components of Party programmes.
The YCL must also work to ensure that addresses the needs and interests of marginalised youth – in rural areas, in informal settlements, unemployed youth, youth outside of educational institutions, youth involved in crime and so on.
You should also pay particular attention to recruitment of young women workers, and be the primary training ground for young women communists. The struggle for gender transformation cannot be advanced, unless we strengthen the organisation of women. Communist women form an important component of the broader women’s struggles and the struggles for gender transformation. You must lead campaigns to defeat sexist ideas and stereotypes both within the Party and in broader society. You must be the youth of today and tommorrow, not the youth of yesterday which believes in inferiority of women. It is only by recruiting much more young women into the Party that we can achieve this.
An important part of the struggle for gender equality, is a critical examination and engagement with activities, TV or radio programmes, and other forms of entertainment liked by the youth today. You should closely examine the extent to which these activities continue to foster and reproduce women’s inferiority, young women as objects of pleasure for young men, and the whole ideological underpinnings of these activities. This means work where the youth is and seek to influence them in the very areas and activities that they like in order to defeat sexism and gender inequality. This is by the way not a licence for endless jorling in the name of taking forward the work of the YCL!
Your launch significantly takes place just as we end the 16 Days of Activism of no violence against women and children. We must take this as symbolising a commitment by this YCL to be in the forefront of the struggle to end all forms of violence and abuse against women and children. Be smart communists, defend the dignity and security of women and children!
The YCL must also act in the true tradition of the Party, as a pioneer and promoter of non-racialism. In this regard the YCL should properly grasp the interrelationship between class, the national question and gender in our revolution. As the Party programme says, the only way to deepen and consolidate the national democratic revolution, is by seeking to tackle these three contradictions, as interrelated contradictions, that cannot be isolated from each other. For instance, the YCL must be in the forefront in taking forward the struggles to address the national question, by giving its correct class and gender content.
The YCL should also seek to work with all progressive youth formations in our country, region, continent and globally. Principal amongst these organisations is the ANC Youth League. You must ensure that all communist youth join and actively participate in the structures and programmes of the ANC YL. We must never act in a competitive manner to this formation, instead we should seek to strengthen it. We must ensure that the voice of the communist youth is felt within the ANC Youth League, and assist it in ensuring that it draws into its ranks the widest possible sections of youth in our country.
Rebuilding and strengthening a progressive student movement
One of the biggest challenges that will face the YCL is that of working to rebuild the progressive student movement in our country. It is true that since the 1994 democratic breakthrough our progressive student structures have become weaker. There is no reason for such state of affairs. The immediate task therefore is that of ensuring that we establish YCL branches in every institution of higher education in our country. The immediate platform of struggle in this regard is to ensure that SASCO and the YCS are strengthened to effectively participate in the enormous task underway to transform the landscape of higher education. Related to this is the task of building strong institutional forums as sites for debate and advancing progressive transformation of higher education institutions.
The question of widening access to higher education by the majority of the students of our country is a priority, including the question of very high fees in our institutions of higher education. In fact this is one of the first issues that must be taken up by the YCL, working together with other progressive student and youth formations. As the Party we are deeply concerned about these hefty and unaffordable increases by many of our universities next year which will mean the exclusion of poor and working class students. These increases are a grim reminder of the urgency and necessity to ensure that public funding of tertiary education must be defended and advanced. We call on the YCL to work with SASCO and other relevant organisations to campaign for improved public funding of tertiary education.
But we must also not leave the private sector, the capitalists, alone in this battle. Much as many companies today find it fashionable to talk about black economic empowerment, they must put their money where their mouths are by investing in the higher education of our youth. Within the context of the Growth and Development Summit agreements and the numerous BEE charters doing rounds, there must be increased provision of bursaries for poor students by the private sector. Investing in skills development also means investing in ensuring that poor students are not excluded because of lack of funds. It might be interesting to check how much money are some of the big companies in this country spend on higher education for poor black students, and campaign frontally for them to increase this. Otherwise they would be paying lip-service to BEE. The YCL must take up this struggle within the context of higher education.
A related challenge in this regard is that of fostering socialist debates, and ensure that socialist ideas become part of the curricula and syllabus in the institutions of higher education. Frankly speaking our higher education institutions, like the rest of society, is suffocating under neo-liberal ideas and ideology. Our aim should be to ensure that socialist debates and ideas thrive in institutions of higher education. We should seek to struggle for Marxism as a respectable and the only discipline best capable of understanding the current challenges facing our country today.
The YCL, working together with COSAS, should seek to recruit high school students into the build its structures in schools. We just cannot accept that it is fine for business economics to be taught at schools but shut out socialist ideas. For example we need to check whether the history, role and contribution of the Party to bringing about this democracy is being adequately taught at school. My sense still tells me that socialism is still being presented in a negative light, and there is silence about the role of our Party in our revolution. Specifically, we call on the YCL to use this Congress to launch a campaign on the increase in school fees as announced in the last few weeks. The goal of our education system should be to provide universal education to all South African children irrespective of whether they can pay school fees or not. The announced increases are an affront to all poor and working people. We call on this Congress to ensure that during January when the next schooling year opens, mass meetings are held with parents, students and communities to discuss and mobilise against increases in school fees. This action must be used by the YCL as a start of a longer-term struggle for universal access to education.
These are some of the key challenges with regard to strengthening the progressive student movement in our country.
The challenge of the HIV/AIDS pandemic
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the YCL is to join with all other forces in society to fight and defeat the scourge of HIV/AIDS. This is the single biggest challenge to your future. To protect your future, and to protect the struggle for socialism, and a socialist future, the YCL must throw its full weight behind the struggle against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
This Congress takes place at a time when our government has adopted a comprehensive programme on HIV/AIDS, including prevention, awareness and treatment. There is no better platform on which to take forward this struggle. Our nation is now more united than ever on a common approach to dealing with this pandemic. But government alone will not be able to deal with the pandemic. This requires the mobilisation of all our people, in particular the youth, to support this programme.
In the same week that this YCL Congress is being held, we have witnessed the rolling back of the logic profit maximisation through the agreement signed at the Competition Commission by several drug companies. This is an important landmark and achievement. We must use this as a basis for ensuring that as many of our people as possible have access to life-saving medicines but also to ensure that local production capacity is enhanced.
But as communists we should go beyond just supporting the programme. We should be in the forefront in home-based care, participating in hospital boards and forums for local clinics in order to ensure that HIV/AIDS programmes are a living reality on the ground. We expect this Congress to take specific programmatic resolutions in this regard.
3. Communist Youth and the struggle against imperialism
One of the key challenges facing communist and progressive youth throughout the world is the struggle against US-led imperialist. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were one of the most aggressive and militaristic adventures by imperialism. Thousands of Afghanis and Iraqis have been killed in these wars. But much more serious about these wars is that imperialism is killing the future of the youth!
The collapse of the Soviet Union has set the world on a dangerous course of US unipolar domination of the world. As pointed out above, imperialism is taking an ugly turn, that of increased militarism and abrogation to itself the right to pre-emptive strikes and attacks anywhere in the world where its interests are perceived to be threatened.
The imperialist, global domination of the world is exercebating the global inequalities between the North and South and also widening poverty within the countries of the South. It has imposed a neo-liberal ideology as the only form through which development must take place in the world.
Yet, in recent times, we have seen an increase in global and domestic struggles, against neo-liberalism. This is because the promise of a better world after the collapse of the Soviet Union has not materialised. The capitalist market has continued to do what it always does best, enrich the rich, and further impoverish the poor. The hope that the end of a bipolar world will deliver a better life for the poor is increasingly being exposed for what it is – a lie to the peoples of the world.
It is therefore absolutely critical to ensure that the YCL, in conjunction with other communist and progressive world globally, must join these battles against imperialist globalisation. The starting point comrades is to build relations with youth formations within our own SADC region. Our trip to Zimbabwe has underlined the importance of solidarity between youth of our country and youth in the region. The YCL will also have to take up and intensify the struggle for democratisation in Swaziland. We need to actively work with youth structures there to ensure that that country becomes democratic. The Party has been doing a lot of work in this front, and we hope the YCL will add further impetus to this struggle.
It is also important that the YCL enters the debate and struggle around the NEPAD programme. The YCL should seek to advance progressive and socialist perspectives around NEPAD that aim to benefit the poor and working youth of our continent. We must not adopt an infantile and extreme attitude towards NEPAD. Yes NEPAD has weaknesses, but our approach should be to critical engage with those weaknesses, seek to influence it towards the direction of the workers and the poor, use it to open further spaces for progressive advances, and that it is not hijacked by imperialist forces and local elites to advance their own interests. We should not be surprised to find that powerful forces internationally, much of the media (including within our country), and the local conservative liberal opposition political parties, are working full-time to hegemonise and interpret NEPAD for their own purposes. This Congress will have to adopt important resolutions in this regard.
4. Socialism is the future, build it now – The tasks of the YCL in this regard
What is the guide to the YCL for all the tasks outlined above? In all its work the YCL should be guided by our strategic slogan “Socialism is the future, build it now”. The PARTY has managed to anchor itself during this first decade of our freedom through this strategic slogan. This slogan has defined the character of the Party we need in this period into the future, the role of the PARTY in the NDR, and the linkages between the NDR and the struggle for socialism.
What is the content of this strategic slogan. The main content of this slogan is that much as we are not on the eve of a transition to socialism, but building socialism is not a task for tomorrow or the next day, it is today’s task. We must seek to build elements of, capacity for, and momentum towards, socialism in the here and now. This is also because the very deepening of the NDR requires socialist ideas, perspectives and organisation. This is based on the reality that the colonialism of a special type we seek to defeat was premised on capitalist exploitation and cheap labour for capital accumulation in our country.
Since 1995, at the 10th Congress, and lately at our 11th Congress we have elaborated our strategic slogan to define the four stands representing what the Communist Party in South Africa stands for in the current period:
Consolidating democratic, worker-led popular power Rolling back and transforming the capitalist market Socialisation of the ownership function; and Moral renewal of society based on solidarity and the building of sustainable households and sustainable communities, with and for the workers and the poor.
Our financial sector campaign for instance is an important example of struggling for elements of socialism now. When we say everbody who requires a bank account must have it, we are beginning to roll back the capitalist market and advancing perspectives of a socialised, people-owned financial sector, a crucial element of socialism!
Our strategic slogan, contrary to what our detractors sometimes claim, is not a parallel programme to the NDR, but it is directly a perspectives at deepening the NDR and ensuring that it reaches its logical destination – socialism. This slogan remains as relevant as ever as we enter the second decade of our freedom, and is the guideline to the programme of the YCL. It is therefore important to ensure that the YCL structure study very closely the Party programme, as one of the first tasks to be driven by your leadership at all levels! Also in order to ensure that we move together in our strategic and programmatic perspectives, without undermining your autonomy, as the Secretariat we will recommend to the Central Committee that 2 representatives (possibly secretary and chair) must sit in the Party Central Committee as ex-officio members with full rights to participate. We also look forward to the rejuvenation of our CC by the young communists!
5. Our medium-term vision and strategy
The Party has adopted, both for debate and as a guide a Medium Term Vision for the working class. This is a vision on what kind of South Africa we would like to see by the end of the second decade of our freedom.
In order to realise our longer term goal of socialism we need to know whether we are progressing or regressing as we wage struggles in the period ahead. The medium term vision seeks to define some key goals we want to attain in our struggle. The fundamental goal of the MTV is that by the end of the second decade of our freedom, the working class must be so strong such that no single centre of power and influence in society – whether it is the state, private capital, mass formations, etc – should be able to take any significant decision without centrally taking into account the interests of the working class. This is a deliberate attempt to seek to build independent working class power in society, so that the dominant interests and orientation of our society is progressively in favour of the class interests of the workers and the poor.
Amongst other things that the MTV states is that by that time we must be having a substantially larger SACP. In addition we need to harmonise this vision with that adopted by COSATU at its 8th Congress, without sacrificing the key elements of each. The formation of the YCL is therefore an important component and weapon in realising the goals of the MTV. All YCL structures must go and study closely and debate the medium term vision!
If we are to realise this vision we need a very clear medium term strategy. Our medium term strategy principally include the following six key pillars:
We therefore see our 2004 programme of action as an important start for our medium-term strategy towards realising our medium term vision. Study these, enrich them and translate them into a vibrant, militant and focused programme of action for the YCL. Key elements of our programme of action for 2004:
Let us get down to communist work.
6. Towards an overwhelming ANC victory
The very first task of the YCL is to effectively participate and earnestly work towards ANC victory in the 2004 elections. The most immediate task is that of preparing yourselves for a massive drive for the second window of voter registration on 25 and 26 January 2004. You couldn’t have relaunched yourselves at a better time, when there is such a clear-cut task and programme in front of you.
As the Party we call upon you to adopt a comprehensive programme in line with the ANC’s election plan and the Party’s election programme. In particular comrades we need to ensure that we go out to mobilise the youth to register and vote for the ANC! The Party’s last central committee of the year resolved to ask the YCL to adopt a clear programme in this regard! The ANC is the only organisation best capable of taking forward the interests and the aspirations of the youth of our country, including communist youth, at this juncture.
7. Conclusion
Indeed there are a number of other key tasks and challenges we might not have touched on. But it is up to you to define those, and refine the ones outlined here in order that you emerge with a programme.
The bigger challenge still lies ahead, that of building strong and vibrant structures of the YCL on the ground. A YCL is an activist organisation, and we must ensure that we train our cadres to be active amongst the people, all the time. A related challenge is that of fundraising so that the YCL becomes self-sufficient as soon as possible. You cannot rely for long on the SACP, instead we should be relying on our youth to bring money into the coffers of the PARTY and its own coffers.
The holding of this Congress is the implementation of our 11th Congress resolution! As the PARTY we are proud of the work you have done to ensure that we do indeed relaunch the YCL. Let us therefore thank all those who have been part of this process, in particular our Deputy National Chairperson and the Steering Committee she was convening, Solly Mapaila our national organiser, all the provincial secretaries for their assistance, and Cde Jacob Mamabolo as full-time co-ordinator, the Provincial and District Steering Committees and the several thousands of young communists that we have been able to reach out to during this last 16 months since that historic 11th Congress Resolution to re-establish the YCL!
This is indeed the second phase and completion of the 11th Congress itself. You must hold this Congress in the same spirit as the 11th Congress – militant, extensive and open debate and full participation by all. Please ensure that you elect a leadership that is best able to carry forward the programme of the YCL. Be open and honest in your discussions and caucusing and identify the right people willing to devote all their time to this organisation.
On behalf of the Central Committee of our Party, and our entire membership we wish you a successful Congress and Congratulations!