Monday, March 28, 2016

SACP: "Unite the People`s Camp and Isolate the Enemy"
21 March 2016

The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Eastern Cape convened its ordinary Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) meeting from 18 - 20 March 2016 at Port Elizabeth. The PEC meeting was convened for the leadership of the party to assess the state of our party in the province, organisationally, politically and ideologically and the conditions confronting the working class here at home and abroad.

The PEC meeting considered and adopted comprehensive political and organisational reports, both these reports served as the guide to the meeting in dealing with the organisational and world outlook using the Marxist-Leninist tools of analysis.

The PEC meeting was convened after a successful alliance summit in the province. The meeting appreciated the summit and committed to work with our allies in implementing the resolutions of the summit, including attending to the identified hotspots and strengthening the alliance. The alliance summit committed all of us in the alliance, that we will spare no effort in fighting corporate capture of our structures and factionalism which appeared to have engulf pockets our organisations and found a way of cross pollinating between our organisations thus even creating what appears to be an alliance of factions.

Remembering Chris Hani

In the coming month, we will commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the cowardice assassination of the late SACP General Secretary; African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee member & the Chief of Staff of the people's army, Umkhonto Wesizwe, Cde Chris Thembisile Hani. Cde Chris Hani fearlessly led the fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa in the front line. He spent his life serving the people of our country and their organisations.

As the SACP in the Eastern Cape we join millions of peace loving South Africans in rejecting the parole of the murderer of Cde Chris Hani. We view this as an insult and provocation to the people of South Africa whom Cde Chris Hani has sacrificed his life for their liberation.

We are of the firm view that the truth behind the killing of Chris Hani should be revealed, the first step towards amnesty should be remorse. Whilst we respect the profound principle of the rule of law, we also note that the judicial system in our country is not yet transformed and oriented in the spirit and letter of our country`s constitution. Our judicial system still has a long way to go to internalise and practically give effect to the world renowned values and principles contained especially in the Bill of Rights.

International

As the bourgeoisie mode of production continues to face systemic challenges throughout the globe, it is the working class that bears the burden. The capitalist crisis has made the bourgeoisie to be more aggressive hence the US imperialist invasion of many countries in the name of human rights whilst in essence they want regime change for them to have puppet governments so that they can easily steal with resources.

We re-affirm our solidarity with the people of Palestine who are suffering under the oppression by the apartheid Israel. The oppression of the people of Palestine is the crime against humanity and should be defeated through international solidarity amongst other things. We will continue to lead and participate in campaigns to highlight the plight of the people of Palestine.

The PEC members led a successful picket at Greenacres, Port Elizabeth in pledging solidarity with the people of Palestine and raising awareness on the plight of Palestinians. The party in the province will continue to organise campaigns in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

National

The PEC raised its concerns on the growing corporate capture by the aggressive parasitic bourgeoisie. The corporate capture arrests the capacity of our movement to attend to its strategic objectives. It is therefore imperative for the movement to decisively deal with this phenomenon and work restore the confidence of the people to their glorious movement. We know that there are many business cartels that have captured some pockets of the organisation in our province as well. It is important for the movement and the alliance, as led by the ANC, to take categorical steps to terminate poisonous relationships such as corporate state capture and its twin evil, rent-seeking. It is important for all of us in the movement to "unite the people's camp and isolate the enemy" within and outside the movement.

It is in this context that we appreciate the courageous action taken by Cde Mcebisi Jonas, Deputy Minister of Finance, to come out openly without fear or favour and confirmed on Wednesday 16 March that members of the Gupta family offered him the position of Finance Minister to replace the then Minister of Finance Comrade Nhlanhla Nene. We urge all other comrade who may have similar experiences to come out in the open and defend our movement against corporate capture by aggressive parasitic bourgeoisie.

We reiterate the call by our Central Committee of a fully-fledged Judicial Commission of Enquiry and broad spectrum investigation into the phenomenon and activities of corporate state capture. The investigation must go to the root of the problem and also reveal how offers made by private individuals in violation of the values of our movement and democracy find their way into effect. Proper and thoroughgoing investigations will go a long way in positioning our developing democracy to deal with the problem of corporate state capture and safeguard our democratic national sovereignty, which, if compromised, will result in catastrophic failures.
Provincial.

The meeting expressed its concern on the return of more than half a billion rands of the infrastructure grant allocated to the Provincial Department of Education. The money has been returned for the benefit of other provinces despite the schooling infrastructure backlog in the province. We are more concerned to learn that the money was returned voluntarily as revealed by the Director General of the province, yet you have provincial government leadership acting surprised and asking society questions instead of providing leadership.

We are calling upon the Premier of the Province, Phumulo Masualle to assess the performance of the current infrastructure delivery model in the province as led by the Department of Public Works. The current infrastructure delivery model is centralised at the Department of Public Works and other line departments being the clients. The accountability on infrastructure delivery is not centralised in line with the centralised infrastructure delivery model but scattered across the departments.

We are therefore calling for the line departments to be allowed to focus on their core mandate and not be busy with infrastructure. We are of the firm view that there should be a unit responsible for the delivery of infrastructure in the province; that will help in proper coordination of the infrastructure delivery.

Elections

We reaffirm our principled support for the overwhelming victory of our long standing ally, the African National Congress in the forthcoming Local Government Elections. We have already set up election structure to coordinate our elections work.

We will attend to the hotspots areas in line with the resolutions of the recently held provincial alliance summit. The alliance summit resolved to jointly attend to the regions where there are reports about challenges of non-functionality of the Alliance. This ought to be fast-tracked as in the PEC some of our districts were still reporting manipulation of election processes, use of money, anti-communist tendencies, purging of genuine members of the movement which all lead to no-functionality of the alliance in the respective regions.

Issued by the SACP Eastern Cape.

Contact:
Siyabonga Mdodi
SACP Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: +2783 358 8070
Office: +2740 635 1042/46
Facebook: SACP Eastern Cape
Twitter: @SACPECmedia

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