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Volume 11, No. 1, 12 January 2012 |
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Red Alert Civil Society, NGOs, and the Public Sphere |
by Emir Sader
The great turning point in Marx`s work is his discovery that class relations traverse the whole capitalist society. After working with categories he inherited from liberalism, such as the state and civil society, he made what he called an "anatomy of civil society" and therein encountered classes and class struggle.
In the last several decades, as democratic struggle gained weight again -- after being underestimated, generally speaking, by the Left -- the category of civil society reappeared. By its very nature, it is opposed to the state and displaces class relations. It is a return to classical liberalism, in parallel to the turn to liberalism on the economic front under the name of neoliberalism.
In the framework of this category, organizations of a distinct type came to take shelter, ranging from those closely tied to social movements and other forms of resistance to military dictatorship, to others that are very much ambiguous. This amalgamation is possible because the category of civil society lends itself to it. It means "what is not the state," including, under this broad umbrella, agribusiness associations and rural workers` associations, bank owners` associations and bank employees` associations, private school operators` associations and student associations -- even aside from other yet more problematic expressions of "civil society," like drug traffickers, militias, etc., all of whom belong to "civil society."
What all of them have in common is the lack of transparency: they proclaim themselves to be representatives of civil society, but they tend not to be transparent in elections of their leaders, origins of their funds, and forms of their decision-making. Suffice it to see how easy it is to found one or more NGOs and file applications to receive public funds or simply to cover up shady business deals.
Besides ambiguity -- not to mention bad faith -- the definition of "non-governmental" is itself a problem. This anti-government position easily joins neoliberal positions. It has no limits in relation to "partnerships" with major private corporations and their foundations, while defining its frontier limits against the state.
With the reappearance of liberalism came the powerful resurgence of its vision of democracy and the state. Democracy came to mean the limitation of and external control over actions of the state, which was said to be, by definition, the central enemy of democracy, whose constitutive elements were made out to be individuals congregated in civil society.
Then the question would be how to control the state by civil society, to guarantee democracy. The more state, the less democracy, which is how neoliberalism sells its theory of the minimal state. Limit the state, so that the market may assume centrality. In theory, the central role would be played by civil society, which, in reality, barely masks the market.
This negative conception of the state abandons the path of democratization of the state. It is a liberal conception, reactivated by the idea of control over the state by civil society -- represented by NGOs and other associations that seek to play the role of representing it.
The most advanced policy for democracy building in Brazil was participatory budgeting, which strengthened the public sphere from within the state itself, to the detriment of commercial interests. Democratic struggle is not external to the state but traverses it. Within the state, distinct, even contradictory, interests are represented, the same contradictory interests that cut across society.
Separating the two, in liberal fashion, misses this fundamental aspect of the reality: everything is traversed by social determinations. Civil society is a fiction, just as the state that is put in opposition to it -- all without class determinations in liberal theory.
To democratize is to decommodify, to affirm the public sphere to the detriment of the commercial sphere. To democratize is to strengthen the role of citizens to the detriment of the role of consumers. To democratize is to bring democratization into the very heart of the state.
** Emir Sader is a Brazilian sociologist. The original article "Sociedade civil, ONGs e esfera publica" was published by Carta Maior on 20 November 2011. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.
Remembering Joe Slovo in the year of Build Working Class Power for a Solidarity Economy: The SACP and the ANC Centenary
Blade Nzimande, General Secretary, SACP
6 January 2012, Avalon Cemetery
We gather here today again to commemorate and remember our hero, Cde Joe Slovo, on the 17thanniversary of his passing away. We are also gathering on the eve of the Centenary of the African National Congress, and during the 90thanniversary of the SACP â organizations that Cde Slovo served with distinction and flying colours.
Of course, many things we are going to say about Cde Slovo today, if he were alive he would not allow us to say. This is because Cde Slovo never expected to be praised for the role he played in our national liberation struggle and the struggle for socialism in our country. Instead the sacrifices he made were not for his personal glory or benefit, but for the benefit of the overwhelming majority of our people, the workers and the poor. This is of course one of the major lessons and values that we respectively must learn from and preserve.
As we celebrate the ANC Centenary this weekend, we are also pleased to say that next month, on the 12thof February we shall be celebrating the 100th birthday of Mrs Kotane, the wife of our late and longest serving General Secretary of the SACP, Cde Moses Kotane, uMalume. Mam`Kotane is only exactly one month younger than the ANC!
Intensify the fight in all terrains of struggle
Cde Slovo, like a true communist, spent all his life fighting in all terrains of struggle to advance the national liberation struggle and for the reconstruction of our country after 1994. One lesson we must learn from this that communists must be in all terrains of struggle!
In the lead up to the Second World War, Cde Slovo, as part of the then CPSA and the YCL, was part of the anti-fascist movement in our country. Not only that, but when the Communist Party in our country, and the entire international communist movement, decided to directly participate in the war in the early 1940s after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Cde Slovo went and served in the war as part of the Allied forces.
When the ANC and the entire Congress movement, embarked on mass action and the Defiance Campaign in the1950s, Cde Slovo was in the trenches, building on the very successful mass work of the Communist Party in the 1940s, mass activism that produced communist heroes like Dora Tamana.
When our movement decided to embark on the armed struggle in 1961, by the way a decision of both the ANC and the SACP, Cde Joe Slovo - like Chris Hani and many other communists â was amongst the first not only to join, but to plan and recruit for MK.
In 1990, when our movement took a decision to enter into negotiations with the apartheid regime, Cde JS became one of the leading negotiators in both the Codesa and the early stages of the Constitutional Assembly negotiations.
After the democratic breakthrough of 1994, Cde JS - then the National Chairperson of the SACP and a member of the ANC National Executive Committee - joined parliament and became the first Minister of Housing in a democratic South Africa.
There are a number of lessons we need to learn out of this. Firstly, that communists must be in all terrains of struggle, just as the SACP today is pursuing its strategic and programmatic objectives through building working class power in all key sites of power, both within and outside the state. The second lesson is that whilst participating in all key sites of power we must always keep our eyes on the ball. This means that we must at all times understand the strategic and tactical priorities of our movement in each and all key terrains of struggle. This is the difference between being in all terrains of struggle and being all over the place! Being all over the place is like shooting in the dark, hoping that you will find your target, usually characterized by the lack of appreciation of the strategic and tactical priorities of our movement. Being all over the place is to confuse the radical sounding noises of populists and demagogues with the interests of the workers and the poor of our country!
What does the above mean in the current conditions? For instance it means that being in an alliance does not mean sacrificing the independent identity of our Party, just as retaining the identity of our Party, does not mean one should and cannot enter into alliances. In fact it is independent parties that enter into alliances!
Cde Slovo was a member and a leader of both the ANC and the SACP. He was an exemplar par excellence of the revolutionary notion of dual membership. In fact `dual membership` is a revolutionary innovation of the South African Communist Party in the South African conditions. It simply means good communists must also be in the ANC and, if they are employed workers, they must also be in COSATU as well. Being in the ANC does not diminish your role as a communist! That is why the (neo) liberals, the ultra-left and demagogues all equally attack the notion of dual membership, because their aim is to break our Alliance, and particularly isolate the communists, as part of an attempt to defeat the national democratic revolution. Let us be like Joe Slovo and serve all our Alliance formations with distinction. In fact dual membership is the very condition for effective communist participation in all terrains of struggle!
Celebrating the life, struggles and sacrifices of Joe Slovo also means working even harder to preserve and strengthen our Alliance. Despite the many challenges, difficulties and, sometimes, serious tensions within our Alliance, communists must never make the mistake of losing faith in, and abandon the task of, strengthening our Alliance. Even in the past when we were provoked to walk out of the Alliance, as the SACP we never stopped seeking to work with the ANC and fully supporting it in the elections, because we always have a broader picture of the revolutionary tasks of our Alliance and the continued necessity of its existence and unity. The SACP wishes to state that under the current leadership of the ANC, led by Cde Zuma, there has been significant improvements in the relations within the Alliance at national level, despite the many challenges that face us, especially at sub-national levels. That is why the SACP wishes to express its confidence in the current leadership of the ANC especially on its commitment to the strengthening of the Alliance!
The ANC Centenary: Let`s keep the eye on the ball
As the Communist Party in South Africa, now in our own 90th year of unbroken struggle, we take special pride in the fact that for over 80 years, communists have served in the ranks of the ANC. Shoulder to shoulder with other patriotic revolutionaries, communists have helped to build and sustain the ANC. But also, through their activism within the ANC, communist cadres have carried over into the SACP a deeper appreciation of the centrality of the national question within our struggle, and of the power vested in a majority`s sense of collective national grievance and of mass-based, national capacity. Our shared history is a history of continuous cross-fertilisation.
That is why the SACP is immensely proud of the ANC Centenary. Very few, if any, liberation movements have reached this milestone. This is simply because the ANC is a people`s movement, whose values and objectives represents the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of our people. It is the only organization, together with the Alliance it leads, that has the programme and policies that are be stable to advance the interests of the workers and the poor of our country. Its strength also precisely lies in being a multi-class formations that also represents a wide variety of other social components of our society: the workers, the youth, the women, the progressive middle classes and both black and white of our society.
The strength of the ANC also lies in the fact that from the very beginning the founders of the ANC critiqued and denounced narrow tribalism, and launched an organization to forge in struggle a new African identity. In so doing they were advancing a revolutionary understanding of identity â not something fixed biologically at birth, not something cast in stone by language, or religion, or culture - but rather a complex process of becoming, shaped by social interaction and active organization. This radical approach to identity also lies at the heart of the ANC`s longstanding and remarkable espousal of non-racialism. This inclusive and open-ended approach to national identity is one of the great, world-historical contributions of the ANC and of the struggle it has led. There are many parts of the world today, both developed and undeveloped, that could benefit from this foundational principle of the ANC.
Indeed we all need to remain vigilant against the ever present dangers of bureaucratism, organizational and political stagnation, and distance from the masses â a fate that has befallen may a liberation movement or communist party in power.
The best way to celebrate the ANC Centenary is to be like Joe Slovo, to fight in all sites and terrains of struggle whilst simultaneously being focused. What does this mean? It means a principled commitment to the objectives of the national democratic revolution. It means avoiding populist and demagogic approaches to the solution of our problems, and avoid exploiting the poverty and unemployment situation of our people for opportunistic or short term gains or to seek cheap publicity. Keeping our eye on the ball means focusing our attention on the unity of movement and alliance.
Keeping our eye on the ball also means intensifying the struggle for the battle of ideas and consistently expose, in our current situation, the ideological bankruptcy and political intentions of both the white liberal offensive against the majority character of our democracy AND demagoguery and tenderpreneurship.It means understanding the political agenda of the liberal offensive for what it is, that of using the courts and our other institutions supporting democracy to frustrate government decisions and undermine our sacrosanct principle that THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN. The liberal offensive wants to decide for a President mandated by a popular organizational and electoral mandate, who to appoint as Chief Justice or Public Prosecutor. This liberal offensive seeks to win through our courts and other institutions supporting our democracy what they have failed to win through the vote!
The tenderpreneurs seek to steal our organizations for purposes of personal and private accumulation of wealth. Often they seek to use the `slogans` of the left in order to hide their accumulation agendas.
Let us use the Centenary year of the ANC to intensify ideological work both inside and outside our movement. That is what Joe Slovo would have expected us to do in this period. Let us keep our eye on the ball by thoroughly implementing a programme to realize the five priorities of our movement: decent work, access to education and health, fight against crime and corruption and rural development. This requires that we effectively combine both our power inside and outside the state to defend our gains and deepen the national democratic revolution as our most direct route to socialism!
Keeping our eye on the ball, also means an unwavering and principled commitment in the implementation of the SACP`s 2012 programme of action:
Remember Joe Slovo in 2012: The Year of Building Working Class Power for a Solidarity Economy
Cde Slovo would today be very pleased at the growth of the SACP both in its membership as well as its stature amongst our people. For instance over the past ten years the membership of the SACP has grown from 20 000 members in 2002to 146 000 by January 2012. We must indeed grow our Party even further so that our presence can be effectively felt throughout all key sites of power and society. However, as Joe Slovo often emphasized, we must also seek to grow the quality of our membership so that we retain the legacy of our Party as a party of revolutionaries.
Our Party has grown largely because of our own campaigns, but also through our ability to be in all sites of struggle. Through this growth we must be able to take our campaigns to higher levels, and intensify our participation and presence in all key sites of power and influence, both inside and outside the state.
It is for this reason that our December 2011 Central Committee adopted a very focused programme of action to intensify Party activism. The main goal of our PoA is to increase communist activism on the education front, by focusing on improving the functionality of our schools and with intensified focus on skills development, especially the skilling of the working class. We will engage all our communities, teachers, school governing bodies, pupils and government to improve the quality of education in our country and also pay increased attention to closing the infrastructural gap in our education system and the ideological orientation of our curricula.
We will also use 2012 to take forward our campaign for the transformation of the financial sector. We will be seeking to convene a second financial sector summit, involving both the public and private financial sectors, in order to ensure that resources in these sectors are used for developmental purposes. In addition, as we join the COSATU struggle for a living wage and the fight against the labour brokers, we will also focus on the increase of the social wage for the working class, especially for affordable housing, transport, a national health insurance and access to higher education for the children of the workers and the poor.
The SACP will also this year pay closer attention to the building of the motive forces for rural development, especially to build a rural progressive women`s movement serving the interests of the rural poor. We also wish to warn the right-wing Afri-Forum and organizations of their ilk that the SACP will defend the progressive orientation of the Land Reform Green Paper and that we shall not allow the beneficiaries of the apartheid land grab to frustrate access to land and food security for the overwhelming majority of our people. We urge the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development not to be diverted by the forces of reaction in leading government`s efforts towards provision of land for the people.
Our 2012 PoA aims to continue the struggle to roll back the greed of the capitalist economy and seek to build an economy and set of values based on solidarity instead of the dog-eat-dog mentality of the barbaric capitalist system.
In doing all of the above, we will intensify the struggle against corruption. This is also a year for the Congresses of all our three Alliance formations. The SACP will seek to use these major events to deepen the unity and coherence of our movement and fight against all tendencies that seek to undermine this.
We shall do all this in honour and memory of Cde Joe Slovo!
Message on the occasion of the commemoration of the life and legacy of Joe Slovo
Cde David Makhura, ANC Gauteng Provincial Secretary
6 January 2012, Avalon Cemetry, Soweto
Programme Directors Comrades (Cdes) Joyce Moloi and Joe Mpisi; Cde Helena Dolny and other members of the Slovo Family; South African Communist Party (SACP) General Secretary Cde Blade Nzimande and Members of the Central Committee, Acting Provincial Secretary Cde Jacob Mamabolo and Members of the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC); National and Provincial Leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO); Veterans and the leadership of the African National Congress Women`s League (ANC WL), ANC Youth League, Umkhondo weSizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) and the Young Communist League (YCL); Comrades, Compatriots and fellow South Africans:
We bring you fraternal greetings from the PEC and entire membership of the ANC in Gauteng province on this special occasion that comes once in a lifetime. This year`s commemoration of the life of Cde JOE SLOVO takes place on the eve of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the ANC, your most dependable ally, the premier national liberation movement in the African continent which is an integral part of the world progressive forces.
As we celebrate the Centenary of the ANC, it is fitting and proper to pay tribute to the distinct contribution of Cde JOE SLOVO to the theory and practice, as well as the strategy and tactics of the struggle for national liberation and socialism in our country and continent. On this occasion, we are indeed called upon to reflect on the profound impact of his ideas and actions on the struggles of the people of Africa and the world.
Indisputably, Cde JOE SLOVO was a distinguished African revolutionary who was part of all the historical contours of the African revolution. The virtues of the struggles of the African revolution ran through his veins, while its vices gave him sleepless nights. He dedicated his entire life to finding radical and sustainable solutions to the problems of the African masses. This is one of the reasons he chose to be buried at among the African masses at Avalon cemetery in Soweto.
He had deep and consummate interest in the form and content of the struggle for independence in Africa and paid particular attention to the social forces that are driving and shaping the anti-colonial struggle in different parts of the continent.
For Cde SLOVO, the underdevelopment of the working class was of great concern for the future of the African revolution. The strategic position and level of development of the South African working class gave him hope that the South African national democratic revolution held better prospects for an uninterrupted advance to socialism. He was sharply critical and deeply sceptical of the idea that the African revolution can succeed without an identifiable motive force that is politically conscious and organisationally developed, the working class.
With specific reference to the South African national democratic revolution, he was its pre-eminent theoretician and most articulate spokesperson for more than four decades. Between 1950 and 1995, Cde JOE SLOVO`s theoretical and ideological footprints could be found in all major ANC and SACP documents of strategic and political significance:
- The Freedom Charter (1955);
- Operation Mayibuye document (1961);
- The Road to South African Freedom (1962);
- Strategy and Tactics of the ANC (1969);
- The Green Book (1979);
- The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution (1988);
- The ANC Constitutional Guidelines (1988);
- Harare Declaration (1989);
- Has Socialism Failed (1989);
- Negotiations: What room for compromise (1992);
Cde JS (JOE SLOVO) contributed immensely to political diction and concepts of our struggle that we, today, take for granted. He did this in the context of a very vibrant political culture of robust debate within the ANC and SACP and this enriched his own ideas, values and political thought.
He was a true leader who believed in the power of ideas and action, theory and practice. He was always fearless and forthright in putting his views and ideas forward, including the most controversial ones. He did this with passion underpinned by philosophical convictions and strategic considerations, not expediency motivated by the cheap search for popularity or personal survival.
Cde JOE SLOVO was one of the most visionary and courageous leaders our movement has ever produced. His foresight enabled him to see further than most of his contemporaries on many questions. His courage was an important instrument in the battle of ideas as he could put forward even the most controversial ideas without worrying about how this unsettle other influential leaders and thinkers within the national liberation movement.
He was an outstanding leader of our revolution who displayed the finest qualities of leadership. He combined a sharp mind and critical outlook with a big heart and warm personality. His life is clarity, courage, sacrifice and eternal optimism personified. He devoted himself unsparingly to the most sacred and most sublime of all causes â the struggle to free humanity from all forms of discrimination, oppression and exploitation.
Let us not commit the mistake of taking Cde JS out of the context of his time and space. He was not a saint but a revolutionary who learnt from among the finest leaders in his generation. He was a product of a particular historical periodâ twentieth century revolutionary optimism.
He lived among and worked with a special generation of freedom fighters â men and women, black and white, workers and professionals â who were driven by conscience and conviction rather the quest for personal survival. This is the environment that shaped and influenced his ideas and actions.
As we celebrate the ANC Centenary, we also should pay tribute to the Party itself for its role in the struggle for freedom and democracy in our country. The SACP has been the most dependable ally of the ANC for over 80 years.
I`m absolutely convinced that without a principled ally such as the Communist Party, the ANC would either have degenerated into an insignificant nationalist party or it could have completely disappeared from the face of SA politics, especially during the turbulent times of the 1930s and the difficult years of exile and long term imprisonment of its core leadership.
The contribution of Communists is truly remarkable. They occupied the front ranks of the special generation of freedom fighters who transformed the ANC into a revolutionary mass-based people`s movement and agent for change. They were among the most committed, resilient, disciplined, humble and loyal members of the ANC. They approached all problems from the standpoint of principle and brought theoretical depth, foresight and optimism in the most difficult moments during the course of the struggle.
We would not be doing justice to the legacy of Cde JS if we focus only on the past and pay scant attention to the future. We must celebrate the life of this African revolutionary in a way that draws our attention to the critical challenges of the moment and the future. The lessons of history are important in helping us to understand where we come from so that we can handle the uncertainties and complexities of the future with confidence.
The question we need to answer is how we are going to maintain the proud legacy of Cde JOE SLOVO? Faced with new conditions and new challenges at a global, continental and national level, how do we draw lessons from his ideas and actions, his theory and practice, to produce a new generation of theoreticians and practitioners of progressive social change?
The daunting challenges we face demand from us the courage, conviction and clarity that have characterised the life of Cde JS. We need to remain eternally optimistic about the prospects of success and be prepared to make the necessary sacrifices in order to overcome these challenges. We must also be fearless and forthright in putting forward new ideas and radical solutions to resolve humanity`s problems.
One of the issues that warrant our utmost immediate attention, theoretically and practically, is to ponder the future of the ANC. Many of us have been asking ourselves uncomfortable questions about the direction and future of our movement, the ANC. It is possible that this Centenary signifies the end of an era in which the ANC was a genuine people`s movement? What kind of ANC will be there by the Centenary of the Freedom Charter in 2055? For how long will the movement stay in power? What will it take to ensure that the ANC remains the genuine representative and custodian of the best interests of the overwhelming majority of the people in our country and continent?
Today the ANC`s public image is that of an erstwhile glorious liberation movement that is now at war with itself. The incessant factional battles over the control of the state and its resources dominate the public discourse. The overall impression is that, as the movement, we are not focusing single-mindedly on the problems faced by the majority of our people.
Undoubtedly, we must do something to salvage the movement from total degeneration. It is not going to be easy to roll back the negative tendencies and moral decay that have a corrosive effect on the integrity and moral stature of the movement in society. We will need the foresight, courage, sacrifice and eternal optimism of Cde JOE SLOVO.
On their part, the beneficiaries of anarchy, corruption, conflict and a divided ANC will continue to do everything in their power to foster the implosion of the ANC. These beneficiaries range from the historic strategic opponents of the national democratic revolution at domestic and international levels, as well as members of the ANC and Alliance structures who thrive and survive only in chaotic, divisive and conflict-ridden environments.
On our part, we shall use the Centenary as the moment to launch a campaign for the renewal and rebirth of the kind of ANC that is fit and healthy to take us to the long and treacherous journey towards the Second Centenary. At the core of this campaign is to roll back negative tendencies such as ill-discipline, factionalism, corruption, abuse of power and use of money to influence leadership elections.
At the same time, we should vigorously and boldly think of new ways of doing things in areas where our movement needs organisational innovation to keep pace with the changing times and respond to new imperatives of a changed and rapidly changing national and global environment.
We should recommit ourselves to go back to the basics of building grassroots activism in order to ensure popular mobilisation and popular participation in the transformation and development of our society.
As per the resolution of the last Provincial Alliance Summit of September 2011, we shall focus on building grassroots structures of the Alliance so that the movement is rooted in daily community struggles for development and sustainable livelihood.
We shall work hard in the Centennial year to build an activist and campaign-driven Alliance that focuses on campaigns around education, the economy, healthcare, crime and corruption, public transport and food security across the length and breadth of our province.
The Provincial Alliance Summit also called for a greater role on political education across the Alliance structures. This is vitally important to ensure that we have a calibre of cadres who can think critically and strategically when dealing with problems faced by society.
The Alliance summit also agreed that we need to undertake a proper approach to recruitment and induction of new members in our organisations so that they fully internalise the values and principles before they are assigned leadership responsibilities.
We should also fearlessly ask questions about the sustainability of the trajectory we adopted after coming into power in 1994. What kind of South Africa are we building 18 years into democracy? We need to be open to new ideas about how to address the legacy of colonialism of special type. We cannot keep doing the same things and hope to achieve different results.
One of the main issues that require urgent and practical attention is the education of the youth as the centre-piece of youth development and the overall development of our nation. Whenever Matric results are announced, we should be disappointed to see so many young people, especially the Black youth, who fall by the wayside and end up without the education and skills that will enable them to contribute positively to reconstruction, transformation and development of our society.
We should appreciate the fact that education is an inalienable asset the children of the working class and the poor should be given to assist them to break out of the generational poverty, not the false promise of instant money.
We should challenge the dangerous notion that all young people should try and become instant millionaires and entrepreneurs instead of acquiring skills and education.
The state and society should invest more resources in order to ensure that every young person acquires decent education and appropriate skills to play a meaningful and constructive role in society. The youth must learn!
As the Alliance, we must make education of the youth the number one priority among all other priorities. We must take up a massive campaign and put adequate resources to ensure that every young person gets the best possible education, including university education and vocational skills that will enable them to participate constructively in society.
At a global level, we are at a point in history where the crisis of capitalism has reached unprecedented structural and systemic proportions. The USA and Europe, the motherland of capitalism face a historically incomparable financial and economic crisis. For more than two centuries, capitalism promised humanity the best that it was the best civilisation humanity has ever achieved. It certainly cannot sustain this false story in the 21st century.
Even its pundits and ideologues have great difficulty in sustaining the promise. In particular, it cannot promise that it is the answer to humanity`s problems in the developing and peripheral countries when it is facing a moral, political and organisational crisis in its countries of origin and maturity.
You do not have to be a communist or socialist to see that Karl Marx was right in his seminal analysis of the nature and logic of the capitalist social system.
The capitalist civilisation has reached its limits and can no longer provide sustainable solutions to the problems of humanity in the new millennium: it faces a civilization crisis of far-reaching proportions. Climate change and natural resource scarcity, structural poverty and inequalities within and among nations cannot be resolved by the reform of global capitalism.
We certainly need a new human civilisation that goes beyond the current framework of capitalism. As part of the disciplined force of the left, the ANC is compelled by this historical moment to join hands with other progressive forces in the world in search of a more humane and sustainable way out of the current crisis of the capitalist system.
Let us debate new ideas and innovative solutions about the way forward. Let us debate all these issues in a comradely manner, without disrespecting or swearing at each other. In a democratic organisation, disagreement and disciplined dissent should never be demonised.
Let us use the year of the ANC Centenary to build a vibrant and dynamic movement that engages fearlessly in the battle of ideas. Let us use the Centennial Year to rekindle politics and re-affirm the centrality of the battle of ideas. Let us revive the culture of intellectual debate and call upon cadres to put forward their views and ideas in a fearless and forthright manner. We can keep the memory of Cde SLOVO alive by working diligently, fearlessly, honestly and unsparingly to change the quality of life of all our people.
I thank you.
I wish all of you a Happy ANC Centenary!
Forward to the SACP Centenary in 2021 forward!
