13 July 2004 - Durban
Introduction
On behalf of the SACP, let me take this opportunity to congratulate SACP KZN and their NUMSA counterparts for organising this political school. This is a truly historic event as it is the first time that such a school is held between the two organisations. This marks the deepening of the relationship between communists and metalworkers in our province, and an acute awareness that the future of the working class and the struggle for socialism lie in the forging of deeper relations between communists and the labour movement. Each on its own and without the other is doomed to fail.
Your political school takes place at an important juncture in the history of our revolution. This year we are celebrating 10 years of our freedom. There can be no better celebration than deepening relations between communists and workers, and through the realisation that a working class without political education is bound to lose its political direction. You are celebrating 10 years of our democracy by concretely implementing a key aspect of Lenin’s maxim: there can be no revolution without a revolutionary theory, and that there can be no revolutionary theory without concrete struggles of the working class.
However this political school also takes place against the backdrop of an overwhelming ANC victory nationally, and most importantly the first ever electoral victory of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal . Whatever you are teaching each other in this school has to be located in this context, and be seen against the background of the tasks of the working class in KwaZulu-Natal in the wake of this all-important ANC victory.
It is for this reason that my speech today will focus on some of the key challenges facing the ANC-led Alliance in general, and the working class in particular, in this province. The second part of the speech will focus on the need to deepen the strategic relationship between communists and the labour movement in our country. Lastly, I will raise the question of the importance of comprehending the economic challenges in our country and the role of political education in this regard.
1. Some of the key challenges facing the ANC-led Alliance and the working class in KZN
Let me start by congratulating the SACP, NUMSA and COSATU in this province for the very critical role they played in ensuring the first ever ANC electoral victory in KwaZulu-Natal . Without the self-less dedication of SACP and COSATU cadres in the 2004 election campaign, we would not have secured this sweet victory. We particularly wish to salute those SACP and COSATU cadres who bravely went to previously “no-go areas” in Northern KwaZulu-Natal (like Ulundi, Nongoma, Mahlabathini, Phongolo, etc) as ANC party agents. It was this bravery which, for the very first time, ensured that there were no stuffed ballot boxes, and led to a result that it a true reflection of the electoral strength of all political parties in this province. Even more significantly in many of these voting stations it was for the first time ever that the ANC had party agents. We salute you as true heroes of our revolution – AMADELAKUFA!
It is the SACP’s view that the ANC’s victory represents an electoral mandate from the workers and the poor of our country. It is a mandate to deepen democracy, and address the triple challenges facing our country and this province – joblessness, poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. During this election campaign the ANC increased its votes both in the major urban areas, particularly eThekwini, and in some of the key rural areas that were previously in the hands of the IFP. This therefore means, amongst other things, prioritisation of poverty eradication in both the urban and rural areas, and a conscious effort to bridge the socio-economic and political urban-rural divide in this province.
It is in the light of these advances that the key challenges facing the ANC-led Alliance and the working class in particular include the following:
1.1 The workers and the poor must take responsibility for this victory
It is not enough just to celebrate this victory, but the workers and the poor of our country must make sure that they are in the forefront of the implementation of the Election Manifesto of the ANC. This means we must immediately go back to the mass of our people on the ground not only to thank them for their support, but to concretely take up the many problems that they raised with us during the campaign. These include issues of provision of basic service, creation of work opportunities and empowerment of our people to be their own self-liberators. This political school should therefore help to deepen our insights into the many problems facing our people, and fine-tune our strategies in dealing with these. Fundamentally this means the mobilisation of our people to make full use of the opportunities created by the ANC victory. We must not allow this victory to be stolen by class forces who do not have the interests of the workers and the poor at heart.
1.2 Developing a comprehensive and co-ordinated Alliance strategy to transform KZN
One very important message from the ANC’s electoral victory was that at the centre of our transformation must be a united ANC-led alliance. Not only did our co-ordinated campaign showed this, but our people sent a very clear clarion call: Let the Alliance be the leader of our transformation process and let it remain united.
A key challenge therefore is to ensure that the Alliance develops a common programme for transforming this province and act as a united force to implement it. The glue that must hold this alliance together is a politically conscious and independent working class. This means we must go and build Alliance structures at all levels, particularly from branch level. Even more important this means that organised working class formations must be strengthen. This political school must empower workers to be at the forefront of our transformation struggles. The alliance principally rests on politically conscious working class cadres, as it is only workers who belong to the three formations. Without an ANC-led, but working class driven transformation programme, we might lose the strategic and tactical upperhand, and ultimately sacrifice this province. We must never allow this province to get of our hands ever again! We are the only force capable of addressing the needs of the ordinary people of this province!
It is for these reasons that we use this opportunity to call upon our brothers and sisters in the IFP to come and join the African National Congress as the only political vehicle best placed to meet their needs. Let us use this ANC victory to close our ugly past of division and violence, by uniting behind the ANC and its allies.
1.3 Defeat politically inspired violence
One of the most critical challenges facing this province is to ensure that we end, once and for all, the violence that has wrecked this province for two decades. Indeed we have made major strides in this regard. We however need to ensure that never should anyone intimidate, assault or kill another in pursuit of political objectives. It is the workers and the poor who have suffered most from this political thuggery. It is therefore the task of the workers and the poor to ensure that never should our province return to its violent past.
In order to achieve this we need to use this ANC-led government to ensure that we deepen institutions and culture of democratic and open electoral contest without use of force. In addition we should mobilise our people to ensure that any perpetrator of any kind of violence is swiftly brought to book. However, what is most critical is to ensure that the police force and institutions of justice in this province are transformed. As the SACP we are deeply concerned that this transformation has been too slow, and we cannot be secured by elements of the apartheid regime and KwaZulu bantustan who were deeply involved in the war against the people and the liberation movement.
The formations of the organised working class needs to take up this campaign in earnest, through amongst other things, building effective community policing forum and expose all those elements in the police force and in the justice system who tolerate any form of violence. Truly speaking, we should not be having any of the elements of the apartheid security forces, who have not shown any remorse, in strategic positions of our criminal and justice system!
1.4 Local economic development strategies to create work and fight poverty and HIV/AIDS
A key challenge is to mobilise our local communities to benefit from the opportunities created by an ANC government to create work and fight poverty. I hope this political school will also deepen our insights into coming up with local development strategies that truly empowers the workers and the poor in their own communities.
The critical challenge in this regard is to ensure that we have integrated development programmes (IDPs) at local level that favour the interests of the workers and the poor. These IDPs must be premised on fighting poverty and the HIV/AIDS scourge. One of the critical areas in this regard is that of provincial and local procurement strategies. We need to ensure as the working class that these procurement strategies must place the building of co-operatives at the centre of our development strategies. The question of tenders must be earnestly taken up, such that they do not benefit an elite, usually already rich, but must benefit the ordinary people on the ground. This is truly broad-based black economic empowerment. We must also mobilise to fight corruption that is sometimes found with these tenders.
In order to achieve these goals it is therefore important that we build local mass organisations that genuinely represent the interests of the overwhelming majority of our people. We must go out and rebuild a working class led civic movement, strong school governing bodies, community policing forums and strong ward committees.
A critical challenge within these struggles is to build a progressive women’s movement, led by the working class, that is able to be at the head of gender transformation. I hope you are devoting some attention to the question of transforming gender relations, as this is one of the most pervasive contradictions in our society. Without women’s emancipation there can be no genuine freedom and democracy in our country.
The trade unions in general, particularly public sector workers, have an urgent responsibility to cultivate the culture of service to our people. We have inherited a province that has got a deep culture of bantustan corruption and lack of service to our people. Let the workers lead the Batho-Pele campaign and ensure that we expose all those civil servants who take bribes from our people and generally not performing their duties.
1.5 The challenge of land and agrarian reform and the role of traditional leaders and rural communities
Another key challenge facing this province in particular is that of addressing rural poverty. Any outsider not familiar with South Africa, and watching the news would think that the two key challenges facing South Africa’s countryside is that of violence against white farmers, and the erosion of rights of traditional leaders. This is because these are the only major voices heard from our countryside. Yet the fundamental problem facing our rural areas is grinding poverty facing millions of rural South Africans. Even the most pervasive form of violence in our rural areas is that perpetrated by white farmers against black workers.
This year, our Red October Campaign is going to focus on demands from agricultural capital to make more land available for small-scale and household farming as part of addressing rural poverty. We have to ask the corporate and other big landowners what are they doing to provide land for the workers and the poor. We are also going to be demanding an end to all forms of violence in the farms, an end to the impounding of livestock of workers and the poor by white farmers, right to access to organise farmworkers, and calling upon traditional leaders to join us in the struggle to make productive land available for rural masses. This campaign aims to buttress government’s efforts to speed up land and agricultural reform in favour of the workers and poor of our country. We call upon the mass of the workers and the poor of our country and in this province to join us in this campaign, as an important offensive against poverty.
With the new political dispensation in this province, we also call upon traditional leaders to reposition themselves as champions of development for their communities. The new political situation demands of traditional leaders in this province to be partners of democracy, partners of development and champions to create work and fight poverty.
The biggest threat to the role of traditional leaders is not the ANC or our constitution – as some political leaders claim - but the high levels of poverty in the rural areas. It is only by addressing poverty that traditional leaders will be respected, not by boycotting their seats in municipalities that are committed to eradicating poverty. Let the traditional leaders follow in the footsteps of Ingonyama, by focusing their attention on poverty eradication and fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic! Traditional leaders can only achieve this if they act together with our democratic institutions. It is time traditional leaders in this province realise that they should never again allow the institution of traditional leadership to be used as a bulwark against democracy. This institution can best operate in a democratic environment where there are clear roles for respective institutions in a democratic environment.
However, the most critical challenge in the countryside is that of the mobilisation of rural communities to drive change and transformation to fight poverty. One of the aims of our Red October campaign this year is to lay a basis for building of viable rural mass organisation, including co-operatives and people’s land committees to fight for access to productive land. Our country, and this province in particular, needs to hear the organised voice of rural communities themselves. We call upon the mass of our rural people to join us in their numbers in our 2004 Red October Campaign.
2. The great economic debate
We can only be able to achieve all the above tasks and challenges if we locate them within the overall challenge of growth, development and economic transformation of our country as a whole. Our President, Thabo Mbeki, has, in his budget vote debate in Parliament, called for a discussion on the nature of our economy and strategies for economic transformation to create work and fight poverty. We welcome this debate.
The working class has been in the forefront of this debate, and we shall continue to do so. Our point of departure is that whilst capitalism has benefitted immensely from our democracy, capitalism has failed our democracy dismally. As the government’s Ten Year Review points out, it is only in those areas where the state has played a leading role (provision of housing, electricity, water, education opportunities, telephony, social security, etc) that we have improved the lives of our people.
What has capitalism and its so-called free market done over the last ten years? We have seen massive retrenchments of workers, no support for small businesses or co-operatives, no investment in our townships and rural areas to develop infrastructure and virtually nothing to support low-cost housing. This is despite the fact that the capitalist class has made huge profits over these last ten years, and currently having very high levels of liquidity. We have had relative industrial peace, yet the response of private capital has been a huge assault on the working class.
It is for these reasons that socialism is the only alternative to capitalism. There can be no genuine political freedom, without economic emancipation. We are pleased that this school is deepening your knowledge on the evils of socialism and the necessity for socialism.
We are however not naïve as to think that socialism is around the corner, it is still going to be a protracted struggle. However, our task now is to struggle for elements of socialism – rolling back the capitalist market in the provision of basic services and strengthening the role of the state in development. We can only succeed in rolling back the frontiers of poverty if we deepen socialist strategies now, as this is the only route to fight poverty in a capitalist society. Hence our strategic slogan ‘SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE, BUILD IT NOW’.
3. The fundamental importance of Marxist-Leninist education
None of these tasks outlined above can be achieved without an organised working class schooled in Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is the only correctly ideology of the working class. It is through a common Marxist-Leninist approach that we will deepen the strategic relationship between communists and workers, thus strengthen the capacity of the working class as the main motive force of our revolution.
The challenge therefore is to replicate this school in our districts, regions, locals and branches. We must go out to establish socialist forums to continue socialist debate and analysis of our challenges thus building a politically conscious working class.
A related challenge is for the working class to ensure that its own institutions (workers’ colleges and research institutes) are in the hands of those who are part of the progressive left forces of the Alliance . These institutions must act to support the struggles of the workers and the poor in line with our Marxist-Leninist outlook.
With these words let this school be a success!
SACP General Secretary
Blade Nzimande