SACP May Day Message
1 May 2019
Last Saturday, 27th April marked the 25th anniversary of our achievement of universal suffrage in our country. South Africans aged 18 years and older were, regardless of race, for the first time allowed to exercise their right to vote in the general election held on 27th April 1994. The right to vote did not go alone. It went together with the right to stand as a candidate for all legislative bodies, and the right to take part in governance, in the administration of the country. Before 1994, the black majority were colonially oppressed, excluded from and deprived of the exercise of all these and other rights.
The liberals opposed the right to vote for all and instead pushed the discriminatory qualified franchise. If we did not defeat the liberals and apartheid conservatives, our people would still be deprived of the right to vote and to stand as candidates in elections. Today marks the 25th anniversary of May Day since our April 1994 democratic breakthrough, and this month we will hold our sixth democratic general election. It is therefore befitting to take a moment to reflect on the progress we have achieved as a people after defeating the apartheid regime - the highest stage of colonialism of a special type in terms of which our country was ruled in the interests also of imperialism.
Our society was divided mainly between the white minority supremacist oppressors and the colonially oppressed black majority living within the same territory. The country was systematically segregated in terms of colonial land dispossession, racial discrimination and associated class exploitation and inequalities. The first step in implementing our national democratic revolution through state power, after defeating the apartheid regime in April 1994, was therefore to recognise human rights for all regardless of race and gender in our country’s new Constitution.
Notably the Bill of Rights as enshrined in the Constitution had to include workers rights. The recognition of human and workers rights in the Constitution was buttressed by our just national democratic revolutionary programme to systematically dismantle all state organs of white minority supremacist rule and replace such racist institutions with democratically elected legislative bodies and executives.
Accordingly, our country’s Constitution was adopted by a democratically elected Parliament. The Constitution, which includes socio-economic rights, enabled the adoption and implementation of the democratic social transformation programmes by democratically elected successive ANC-led governments since 1994 to improve the quality of life of our people. By the way the liberals opposed the inclusion of socio-economic rights in the Constitution. The progress we have achieved would therefore not have been possible if we did not defeat the liberals and apartheid conservatives.
To mention but a few successes:
Housing
Since 1994, over 14 million people have benefitted from houses built by democratically elected successive ANC-led governments and allocated for free of charge.
Household electrification
The broad masses of our people were excluded from electrification for hundred years up to 1994. Household electricity connection in our country was therefore primarily meant for a few on a racial basis. As a result, in 1994 only 36 per cent of our population, and only 12 per cent of our people living in rural areas, had access to electricity. The democratically elected successive ANC-led governments massively expanded household electricity connection since 1994. Subsequently, today eight out of 10 South Africans, including in rural areas, have their homes connected to electricity.
Clean drinking water
Before 1994, the broad masses of our people were excluded from clean drinking water. Only six out of 10 South Africans had access to clean drinking water. The democratically elected successive ANC-led governments progressively eradicated the exclusion from clean drinking water. As a result, today nine out of 10 South Africans have access to clean drinking water.
Health
Before 1994, many communities that were deliberately disadvantaged, especially rural areas, did not have clinics. Hospitals were too far away, and there were virtually no access roads. Consequently, there were deaths which could have been prevented. Infant mortality rate was very high. As Chris Hani explained in one of his interviews, three of his siblings died young due to the absence of heath facilities in the remote rural village where he was born. A family was lucky to have all its children reach adulthood. The story of Chris Hani’s family is actually the story of many black and working class families.
After 1994, democratically elected successive ANC-led governments changed the situation by building clinics across the country, expanding primary healthcare. Roads in rural areas were built. This infrastructure development assisted by enabling easy access for ambulances and mobile clinics, and served other important social and economic needs.
More South Africans are now living longer as a result of these and other democratic social transformation and infrastructure development interventions implemented by democratically elected successive ANC-led governments. Average life expectancy rate increased to 64 years in 2018. HIV treatment contributed significantly to the turnaround in the falling life expectancy rate of South Africans.
Social welfare
Democratically elected successive ANC-led governments increased social grants provision, from 3 million in 1994, to 17.5 million in 2017. It is a verified fact that social grants alleviate hunger and poverty. Given that there is a link between hunger and poverty on the one hand, and poor health on the other hand, there can be no doubt that social grants have made a positive contribution towards health.
Education
Democratically elected successive ANC-led governments have hugely improved access to education since 1994. Then there were only 347 thousand students enrolled in universities. The number was increased to 1 million students in 2017. We have now achieved a near-universal access to basic education, and nine out of 10 schools are no-fee paying schools. Massive progress has been made towards free education. This was achieved through a combination of the policy of no-fee paying schools, school nutrition schemes and the transformation of the Tertiary Education Fund of South Africa into the National Student Financial Aid Scheme and its expansion.
A revolution is a process, rather than an event.
Just outlined are some of the many achievements realised under the leadership of democratically elected successive ANC-led governments since 1994. It is important to underline the reality that democratic social transformation, especially a national democratic revolution and the achievement of its goals, is not an event but a process. This is partly why, as the SACP, we characterised the April 1994 transition from colonial rule, including the apartheid regime, as a democratic breakthrough towards complete freedom, rather than as an end in itself, the achievement of complete freedom at a stroke.
Despite the progress millions of our people have realised since 1994 under democratically elected successive ANC-led governments, our freedom will remain incomplete for so long as the system of capitalist exploitation of labour by capital has not been overcome. The critical task we are facing, that of continuing our work by building on the progress we have made, by defending and deepening the advance, therefore includes intensifying the struggle to rollback capitalist exploitation. The fact is that complete freedom will be possible under socialism, when the exploitation of labour by capital is abolished and systematically dismantled. Related to this, it is important to appreciate that the national democratic revolution, the basis for an advance to socialism in our country’s historical conditions, does not take place in a vacuum, in a place where there is no resistance and contestation by other class forces.
While we are advancing to move at a faster pace and achieve greater progress, others are resisting and blocking the forward national democratic revolutionary momentum. The reactionary forces comprise not only the unrepentant apartheid beneficiaries but also powerful imperialist forces. The world capitalist system, as well as its regime of imperialism and its neoliberal globalisation, is part of the underlying reality of the line up of forces acting against our national democratic revolution.
Related to the imperialist reality we are faced with, the negative impact on our country of the global capitalist system crisis that erupted in 2008, and its persisting aftermath, can only be denied by fools. According to their manufactured version of history, the problems experienced by South Africans were created by the ANC after 1994, and therefore the legacy of colonial rule, including apartheid, as well as imperialist domination, does not persist. As if that were not enough, we have an additional problem of former revolutionaries who have gone rogue. This is the context in which corporate state capture and other forms of corruption have found their way into the ranks of our movement and the state post-1994.
There is therefore increased responsibility on our shoulders to act, and to act radically in a decisive and revolutionary way. This brings us to the standing question once posed by Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
What is to be done?
The immediate critical task we are faced with is to secure a decisive victory for our people in the May 2019 general election under the leadership of the ANC in alliance organisationally and politically with the SACP, Cosatu and Sanco. Decisive victory in the forthcoming sixth democratic general election is crucial for defending the gains realised by our people under democratically elected successive ANC-led governments since 1994. The decisive victory we need to secure is important for moving the national democratic revolution on to a second radical phase through legislative means and government policy, and for defending, advancing and deepening the revolution towards its logical completion. We therefore must pull out all stops in the remaining days. We must labour everywhere across the country to achieve the much needed decisive electoral victory.
No blank cheques: A vote for the ANC, a vote for the re-election of President Cyril Ramaphosa, must never be a blank cheque. Through our vote, through our ongoing organisation and mobilisation, through continuing vigilance let us clearly say:
2.1. An election victory for the ANC on 8th May 2019 must be the basis on which the fight against corruption and state capture is intensified both inside of the ANC and government itself, and in society at large. Complacency, false unity, unprincipled deal-making will be a betrayal of the hopes that millions of voters will, once more, place in the ANC.
2.2. On 8th May 2019 let us vote ANC in our overwhelming majority in order to reject the parties that sow anarchy, that mobilise on the basis of racism, right-wing nationalism and ethnicity.
2.3. We call on workers in shops, factories, warehouses, in mines and on farms, in our overwhelming majority, let us VOTE ANC! Let us reject anti-worker, anti-union parties. Let us reject those who work to undermine and divide our unions. Working class solidarity is the bed-rock on which the future must be built.
2.4. The fight against corruption and corporate and mafia state capture is however, while essential, alone not enough. We need to ensure that an ANC election victory is not a narrow organisational victory but a victory to lay the basis for a clear advance towards a people’s economy, with decent work and a comprehensive social security system. Let us ensure the full implementation of the entire progressive thrust of the ANC’s 2019 general election manifesto as endorsed by the Alliance and other progressive forces and citizens.
2.5. This includes advancing and intensifying the decent work agenda, and based on the decent work agenda creating more jobs to grow employment and thus radically reduce unemployment. The advance requires a skills revolution to adapt to the deepening application of science and technology increasingly becoming ubiquitous in production and product innovation, research and development. Particularly the current era of deepening digitalisation, artificial intelligence and development of quantum computing requires a clear response, a robust digital industrial strategy and national production development and diversification to expand productive work.
Revitalise public entities and state-owned enterprises: All major public entities and state-owned enterprises must be revitalised. This is an essential component of what we mean when we say: Let us turn South Africa around! We want a turnaround strategy covering all public entities and state-owned enterprises that were plunged into governance decay, mismanagement, maladministration and financial crisis. South Africa needs a vibrant, efficient and thriving productive sector of the state in order to meet our national transformation and development imperatives, the strategic objectives of the second radical phase of our national democratic revolution. In other words the productive sector of the state, the state-owned economy sector, should be revitalised as well as expanded and diversified.
Develop the co-operative sector: State participation in production, as well as state ownership, should however not be regarded as an end in itself. It should properly be programmatically implemented to develop socialisation and therefore the co-operatives sector. The importance of co-operatives development, and the expansion and diversification of the co-operatives sector, cannot be overemphasised.
In order to achieve our aims as the proletarian movement in alliance with progressive forces, we should deepen our class, and consequently political organisation, unity, hegemony and power. We need to continue to build and further develop all our unions into ever stronger militant trade unions, and the Communist Party into an ever larger vanguard Party. We should cement the bond between our trade union organisations and the Party at all levels. We need increased emphasis on industrial organisation while at the same time strengthening and further expanding our organisation in the public service. The workplace is however, while important, not the only front of our struggle.
6. An equally important part of our organisational tasks, particularly political organisation, is to continue advancing the programme to achieve a reconfigured Alliance. It is important to appreciate that, as things stand, the only way the Alliance can sustainably hold together the motive forces of our struggle, survive going forward and fulfil its historical mission is through reconfiguration. There will be serious consequences without a successful reconfiguration of the Alliance. As such, while intensifying our work to reconfigure the Alliance, it is equally crucial to simultaneously build a progressive left front movement for the dual purpose of: i) pushing the national democratic revolution on to a second radical phase, deepening, advancing and defending the revolution and; ii) securing our future as the working class on all key fronts of class struggle.
Justice for Chris Hani and all revolutionary martyrs
While it was indeed through the first non-racial, one-person, one-vote general election that we at last achieved our democratic breakthrough in April 1994, the fact is that the transition did not come cheap. Neither is the struggle over.
A year before the April 1994 general election we lost Chris Hani, SACP General Secretary, uMkhonto weSizwe Chief of Staff and ANC National Executive Committee member. Hani was assassinated in cold blood on 10 April 1993. The assassination drove the country to the brink of a racial civil war. The war was averted - thanks to the sterling intervention of our leadership and the increased confidence of the masses in the leadership. The demand for the first non-racial, one-person, one-vote general election to be held was instead intensified, resulting in the subsequent April 1994 date being set.
That being said, it is important to underline that there was a wider context to the assassination than just the two assassins who were convicted. However until today the whole truth and circumstances surrounding the assassination have not been disclosed. What we want is the whole truth and only the truth to be fully disclosed. We want justice to be done. We remain resolute that Janusz Walus, the unrepentant, unremorseful murderer who pulled the trigger does not deserve parole.
We should in fact make use of the 25th anniversary of our April 1994 democratic breakthrough, the 25th anniversary of May Day since then, to reflect on progress with regard to course of justice, among others. We lost countless stalwarts of our struggle for liberation and social emancipation. Others were hanged or killed by other means by the apartheid regime through its security branch. There was torture and imprisonment. To this day it is not known what happened to other victims. They have since disappeared as a consequence of the actions of the security branch of the apartheid regime.
There are many cases where there has been no closure. This cannot be left unattended. There must be closure. The sooner we move and open official inquests - on all cases - where there has been no closure and hold those responsible to account the better. Apartheid was declared by the United Nations as a crime against humanity. All those who were responsible for its atrocities must be held to account without exception.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
FOR GENERAL ENQUIRIES ON SACP STATEMENTS CONTACT:
Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo
National Spokesperson & Head of Communications
Mobile: +27 76 316 9816
Skype: MashiloAM
CIRCULATION & MEDIA LIAISON SERVICES
Hlengiwe Nkonyane:
Communications Officer - Media Liaison Services, Digital and Social Media Co-ordinator
Mobile: +27 79 384 6550
OFFICE, WEBSITE, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, USTREAM TV CHANNEL
Office: +2711 339 3621/2
Twitter: SACP1921
Website: www.sacp.org.za
Facebook Page: South African Communist Party
SACP Ustream TV Channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sacp-tv
Last Saturday, 27th April marked the 25th anniversary of our achievement of universal suffrage in our country. South Africans aged 18 years and older were, regardless of race, for the first time allowed to exercise their right to vote in the general election held on 27th April 1994. The right to vote did not go alone. It went together with the right to stand as a candidate for all legislative bodies, and the right to take part in governance, in the administration of the country. Before 1994, the black majority were colonially oppressed, excluded from and deprived of the exercise of all these and other rights.
The liberals opposed the right to vote for all and instead pushed the discriminatory qualified franchise. If we did not defeat the liberals and apartheid conservatives, our people would still be deprived of the right to vote and to stand as candidates in elections. Today marks the 25th anniversary of May Day since our April 1994 democratic breakthrough, and this month we will hold our sixth democratic general election. It is therefore befitting to take a moment to reflect on the progress we have achieved as a people after defeating the apartheid regime - the highest stage of colonialism of a special type in terms of which our country was ruled in the interests also of imperialism.
Our society was divided mainly between the white minority supremacist oppressors and the colonially oppressed black majority living within the same territory. The country was systematically segregated in terms of colonial land dispossession, racial discrimination and associated class exploitation and inequalities. The first step in implementing our national democratic revolution through state power, after defeating the apartheid regime in April 1994, was therefore to recognise human rights for all regardless of race and gender in our country’s new Constitution.
Notably the Bill of Rights as enshrined in the Constitution had to include workers rights. The recognition of human and workers rights in the Constitution was buttressed by our just national democratic revolutionary programme to systematically dismantle all state organs of white minority supremacist rule and replace such racist institutions with democratically elected legislative bodies and executives.
Accordingly, our country’s Constitution was adopted by a democratically elected Parliament. The Constitution, which includes socio-economic rights, enabled the adoption and implementation of the democratic social transformation programmes by democratically elected successive ANC-led governments since 1994 to improve the quality of life of our people. By the way the liberals opposed the inclusion of socio-economic rights in the Constitution. The progress we have achieved would therefore not have been possible if we did not defeat the liberals and apartheid conservatives.
To mention but a few successes:
Housing
Since 1994, over 14 million people have benefitted from houses built by democratically elected successive ANC-led governments and allocated for free of charge.
Household electrification
The broad masses of our people were excluded from electrification for hundred years up to 1994. Household electricity connection in our country was therefore primarily meant for a few on a racial basis. As a result, in 1994 only 36 per cent of our population, and only 12 per cent of our people living in rural areas, had access to electricity. The democratically elected successive ANC-led governments massively expanded household electricity connection since 1994. Subsequently, today eight out of 10 South Africans, including in rural areas, have their homes connected to electricity.
Clean drinking water
Before 1994, the broad masses of our people were excluded from clean drinking water. Only six out of 10 South Africans had access to clean drinking water. The democratically elected successive ANC-led governments progressively eradicated the exclusion from clean drinking water. As a result, today nine out of 10 South Africans have access to clean drinking water.
Health
Before 1994, many communities that were deliberately disadvantaged, especially rural areas, did not have clinics. Hospitals were too far away, and there were virtually no access roads. Consequently, there were deaths which could have been prevented. Infant mortality rate was very high. As Chris Hani explained in one of his interviews, three of his siblings died young due to the absence of heath facilities in the remote rural village where he was born. A family was lucky to have all its children reach adulthood. The story of Chris Hani’s family is actually the story of many black and working class families.
After 1994, democratically elected successive ANC-led governments changed the situation by building clinics across the country, expanding primary healthcare. Roads in rural areas were built. This infrastructure development assisted by enabling easy access for ambulances and mobile clinics, and served other important social and economic needs.
More South Africans are now living longer as a result of these and other democratic social transformation and infrastructure development interventions implemented by democratically elected successive ANC-led governments. Average life expectancy rate increased to 64 years in 2018. HIV treatment contributed significantly to the turnaround in the falling life expectancy rate of South Africans.
Social welfare
Democratically elected successive ANC-led governments increased social grants provision, from 3 million in 1994, to 17.5 million in 2017. It is a verified fact that social grants alleviate hunger and poverty. Given that there is a link between hunger and poverty on the one hand, and poor health on the other hand, there can be no doubt that social grants have made a positive contribution towards health.
Education
Democratically elected successive ANC-led governments have hugely improved access to education since 1994. Then there were only 347 thousand students enrolled in universities. The number was increased to 1 million students in 2017. We have now achieved a near-universal access to basic education, and nine out of 10 schools are no-fee paying schools. Massive progress has been made towards free education. This was achieved through a combination of the policy of no-fee paying schools, school nutrition schemes and the transformation of the Tertiary Education Fund of South Africa into the National Student Financial Aid Scheme and its expansion.
A revolution is a process, rather than an event.
Just outlined are some of the many achievements realised under the leadership of democratically elected successive ANC-led governments since 1994. It is important to underline the reality that democratic social transformation, especially a national democratic revolution and the achievement of its goals, is not an event but a process. This is partly why, as the SACP, we characterised the April 1994 transition from colonial rule, including the apartheid regime, as a democratic breakthrough towards complete freedom, rather than as an end in itself, the achievement of complete freedom at a stroke.
Despite the progress millions of our people have realised since 1994 under democratically elected successive ANC-led governments, our freedom will remain incomplete for so long as the system of capitalist exploitation of labour by capital has not been overcome. The critical task we are facing, that of continuing our work by building on the progress we have made, by defending and deepening the advance, therefore includes intensifying the struggle to rollback capitalist exploitation. The fact is that complete freedom will be possible under socialism, when the exploitation of labour by capital is abolished and systematically dismantled. Related to this, it is important to appreciate that the national democratic revolution, the basis for an advance to socialism in our country’s historical conditions, does not take place in a vacuum, in a place where there is no resistance and contestation by other class forces.
While we are advancing to move at a faster pace and achieve greater progress, others are resisting and blocking the forward national democratic revolutionary momentum. The reactionary forces comprise not only the unrepentant apartheid beneficiaries but also powerful imperialist forces. The world capitalist system, as well as its regime of imperialism and its neoliberal globalisation, is part of the underlying reality of the line up of forces acting against our national democratic revolution.
Related to the imperialist reality we are faced with, the negative impact on our country of the global capitalist system crisis that erupted in 2008, and its persisting aftermath, can only be denied by fools. According to their manufactured version of history, the problems experienced by South Africans were created by the ANC after 1994, and therefore the legacy of colonial rule, including apartheid, as well as imperialist domination, does not persist. As if that were not enough, we have an additional problem of former revolutionaries who have gone rogue. This is the context in which corporate state capture and other forms of corruption have found their way into the ranks of our movement and the state post-1994.
There is therefore increased responsibility on our shoulders to act, and to act radically in a decisive and revolutionary way. This brings us to the standing question once posed by Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
What is to be done?
The immediate critical task we are faced with is to secure a decisive victory for our people in the May 2019 general election under the leadership of the ANC in alliance organisationally and politically with the SACP, Cosatu and Sanco. Decisive victory in the forthcoming sixth democratic general election is crucial for defending the gains realised by our people under democratically elected successive ANC-led governments since 1994. The decisive victory we need to secure is important for moving the national democratic revolution on to a second radical phase through legislative means and government policy, and for defending, advancing and deepening the revolution towards its logical completion. We therefore must pull out all stops in the remaining days. We must labour everywhere across the country to achieve the much needed decisive electoral victory.
No blank cheques: A vote for the ANC, a vote for the re-election of President Cyril Ramaphosa, must never be a blank cheque. Through our vote, through our ongoing organisation and mobilisation, through continuing vigilance let us clearly say:
2.1. An election victory for the ANC on 8th May 2019 must be the basis on which the fight against corruption and state capture is intensified both inside of the ANC and government itself, and in society at large. Complacency, false unity, unprincipled deal-making will be a betrayal of the hopes that millions of voters will, once more, place in the ANC.
2.2. On 8th May 2019 let us vote ANC in our overwhelming majority in order to reject the parties that sow anarchy, that mobilise on the basis of racism, right-wing nationalism and ethnicity.
2.3. We call on workers in shops, factories, warehouses, in mines and on farms, in our overwhelming majority, let us VOTE ANC! Let us reject anti-worker, anti-union parties. Let us reject those who work to undermine and divide our unions. Working class solidarity is the bed-rock on which the future must be built.
2.4. The fight against corruption and corporate and mafia state capture is however, while essential, alone not enough. We need to ensure that an ANC election victory is not a narrow organisational victory but a victory to lay the basis for a clear advance towards a people’s economy, with decent work and a comprehensive social security system. Let us ensure the full implementation of the entire progressive thrust of the ANC’s 2019 general election manifesto as endorsed by the Alliance and other progressive forces and citizens.
2.5. This includes advancing and intensifying the decent work agenda, and based on the decent work agenda creating more jobs to grow employment and thus radically reduce unemployment. The advance requires a skills revolution to adapt to the deepening application of science and technology increasingly becoming ubiquitous in production and product innovation, research and development. Particularly the current era of deepening digitalisation, artificial intelligence and development of quantum computing requires a clear response, a robust digital industrial strategy and national production development and diversification to expand productive work.
Revitalise public entities and state-owned enterprises: All major public entities and state-owned enterprises must be revitalised. This is an essential component of what we mean when we say: Let us turn South Africa around! We want a turnaround strategy covering all public entities and state-owned enterprises that were plunged into governance decay, mismanagement, maladministration and financial crisis. South Africa needs a vibrant, efficient and thriving productive sector of the state in order to meet our national transformation and development imperatives, the strategic objectives of the second radical phase of our national democratic revolution. In other words the productive sector of the state, the state-owned economy sector, should be revitalised as well as expanded and diversified.
Develop the co-operative sector: State participation in production, as well as state ownership, should however not be regarded as an end in itself. It should properly be programmatically implemented to develop socialisation and therefore the co-operatives sector. The importance of co-operatives development, and the expansion and diversification of the co-operatives sector, cannot be overemphasised.
In order to achieve our aims as the proletarian movement in alliance with progressive forces, we should deepen our class, and consequently political organisation, unity, hegemony and power. We need to continue to build and further develop all our unions into ever stronger militant trade unions, and the Communist Party into an ever larger vanguard Party. We should cement the bond between our trade union organisations and the Party at all levels. We need increased emphasis on industrial organisation while at the same time strengthening and further expanding our organisation in the public service. The workplace is however, while important, not the only front of our struggle.
6. An equally important part of our organisational tasks, particularly political organisation, is to continue advancing the programme to achieve a reconfigured Alliance. It is important to appreciate that, as things stand, the only way the Alliance can sustainably hold together the motive forces of our struggle, survive going forward and fulfil its historical mission is through reconfiguration. There will be serious consequences without a successful reconfiguration of the Alliance. As such, while intensifying our work to reconfigure the Alliance, it is equally crucial to simultaneously build a progressive left front movement for the dual purpose of: i) pushing the national democratic revolution on to a second radical phase, deepening, advancing and defending the revolution and; ii) securing our future as the working class on all key fronts of class struggle.
Justice for Chris Hani and all revolutionary martyrs
While it was indeed through the first non-racial, one-person, one-vote general election that we at last achieved our democratic breakthrough in April 1994, the fact is that the transition did not come cheap. Neither is the struggle over.
A year before the April 1994 general election we lost Chris Hani, SACP General Secretary, uMkhonto weSizwe Chief of Staff and ANC National Executive Committee member. Hani was assassinated in cold blood on 10 April 1993. The assassination drove the country to the brink of a racial civil war. The war was averted - thanks to the sterling intervention of our leadership and the increased confidence of the masses in the leadership. The demand for the first non-racial, one-person, one-vote general election to be held was instead intensified, resulting in the subsequent April 1994 date being set.
That being said, it is important to underline that there was a wider context to the assassination than just the two assassins who were convicted. However until today the whole truth and circumstances surrounding the assassination have not been disclosed. What we want is the whole truth and only the truth to be fully disclosed. We want justice to be done. We remain resolute that Janusz Walus, the unrepentant, unremorseful murderer who pulled the trigger does not deserve parole.
We should in fact make use of the 25th anniversary of our April 1994 democratic breakthrough, the 25th anniversary of May Day since then, to reflect on progress with regard to course of justice, among others. We lost countless stalwarts of our struggle for liberation and social emancipation. Others were hanged or killed by other means by the apartheid regime through its security branch. There was torture and imprisonment. To this day it is not known what happened to other victims. They have since disappeared as a consequence of the actions of the security branch of the apartheid regime.
There are many cases where there has been no closure. This cannot be left unattended. There must be closure. The sooner we move and open official inquests - on all cases - where there has been no closure and hold those responsible to account the better. Apartheid was declared by the United Nations as a crime against humanity. All those who were responsible for its atrocities must be held to account without exception.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
FOR GENERAL ENQUIRIES ON SACP STATEMENTS CONTACT:
Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo
National Spokesperson & Head of Communications
Mobile: +27 76 316 9816
Skype: MashiloAM
CIRCULATION & MEDIA LIAISON SERVICES
Hlengiwe Nkonyane:
Communications Officer - Media Liaison Services, Digital and Social Media Co-ordinator
Mobile: +27 79 384 6550
OFFICE, WEBSITE, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, USTREAM TV CHANNEL
Office: +2711 339 3621/2
Twitter: SACP1921
Website: www.sacp.org.za
Facebook Page: South African Communist Party
SACP Ustream TV Channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sacp-tv
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