South African Communist Party Provincial Statements During September 2015
17 September 2015
The Provincial Executive Committee of the SACP in Free State, blessed by the presence of a fully-fledged Central Committee deployees, met on 13 September 2015 at Bram Fisher Building in Bloemfontein in the Caleb Motshabi District. This PEC observed a moment of silence to honour the communist revolutionary Caleb Motshabi District Chairperson, Comrade Mojela “Scara” Maswabi who passed away last month.
Quality into Quantity: Developing the SACP as the vanguard party of the working class for socialism
September is the vital month in the organisational calendar of the SACP. The Party is marshalling all its structures, leadership, programmes and membership drive quantitative and qualitative growth in building the capacity if the SACP to advance and deepen working class hegemony in all key sites of struggle.
During this month the SACP is renewing its annual cycle of membership recruitment. This is steeled in political education and ideological training intensified to develop and enhance the political, ideological and technical capacity of party activists, thereby transforming quantity into quality.
As the Party programme the South African Road to Socialism states, the unfolding and future historical periods require the SACP to become a large, independent working class vanguard party which is qualitatively different from a mass organisation. This is the precondition for the Party to engage in and build our alliance to become strong, and to be everywhere the class struggle takes place and lead the working class in alliance with democratic strata of our society towards the achievement of socialism!
Advancing the party of action!
The growth of the SACP did not come out of natural reasons, but through grounded and relevant campaigns which are meant to be change the lives of the workers and the poor for the better as opposed to crises they are continuously being plunged in by capitalism.
The SACP calls on all its members, leaders, structures and supporters in Free State province to strengthen the campaigns. We are forging ahead in deepening our Party’s Financial Sector Transformation Campaign. We will fight against corruption, patronage and all the tendencies of self-enrichment!
Distortions about the SACP and its decisions
Endless distortions against the SACP have failed dating back to their origins in colonial and apartheid propagandas there were meant to serve selfish interests of private wealth accumulation. They are bound to fail, again and again! This includes the distortions that are launched from within our own movement – not a new phenomenon. The Communist Party has seen a lot and the worst in its 94 years of existence and struggle.
As the province, we want to clarify those that distort the outcomes of the 13th Plenary Session of our Party’s 13th Congress Central Committee:
The Central Committee was resolute that all tendencies that seek to or have the effect of weakening our movement, the alliance and its support base, such as corruption, patronage, gate keeping, premature opening of succession debates long before congresses, manipulation of membership forms and data, buying of votes in the run up to and at congresses, etc.; all attempts at factional, corrupt and corporate capture of our movement must be dealt with decisively. The Central Committee, both in its political report and concluding press conference never identified any names of individuals or the positions that they hold.
The SACP never coined the label “premier league”. Neither did the party use such a lousy label.
On the contrary, the Central Committee made it clear that for the programme against attempts at factional, corrupt and corporate capture of our movement to succeed, anyone involved in such reactionary activities must be confronted at all levels without fear or favour for who they are – counterrevolutionaries who will destroy our movement. There is no turning back from this programme!!
As the SACP, arising out of our Special National Congress, we will forge ahead with our strategic priority to unite the working class, our communities, and our movement!!
As we approach local government elections in 2016 and incoming regional conferences, we appeal to the ANC leadership, membership and structures here in the province of Free State to be vigilant of destructive and divisive tendencies. Short-cuts on democracy have proven to be dangerous!
Misdirection about cause of South African Crisis
Convergence of the liberal ideas, reactionaries and opportunists including their like in the commentarian to suggest that the causes of inequality, unemployment and poverty are the ANC-led alliance and President Jacob Zuma has no basis in fact – it is only counterrevolutionary.
This converged-blog does not exist for anything progressive but to ferment doubt among the people about the ANC-led Alliance.
Class inequality, unemployment and poverty affecting many people in our country are the necessary conditions, the results and levers of the accumulation of wealth on a capitalist private basis. In South Africa, their racial impact in terms of which Africans in particular and black people in general are the worst affected is a direct result of colonial and apartheid, racist national oppression. The system made use of sexism, involving racist male domination as part of its levers to maximise profit, divide and rule.
The mineral resources and primary goods that should have been processed in South Africa to manufacture finished products were simply extracted and exported by colonial design. This is how instead of developing our country’s productive capacity to its full potential through industrialisation real jobs were exported along with the exports of raw materials. The persisting class inequality, unemployment and poverty in South Africa is therefore a reflection of the legacy of the imperialist development of productive forces mainly in Europe and North America at our country and people.
The historical mission of our alliance is to roll back the structural inequality behind the multiple crises of high levels of unemployment and poverty as well as volatility to economic changes taking out of our country.
This is why, as the SACP we say:
Forward to the second, more radical phase of our democratic transformation!
Along with industrialisation and other structural transformation measures, as the SACP in Free State province we believe that agriculture and farming and the development of their entire agro-processing value chain will take our country forward in the right direction. We are, in strongest terms, opposed to the ongoing irresponsible tendency of farming giants prioritising game-farming over food-production. The SACP stands for food security!!
As the SACP we are calling on the working class and the poor in general to support and the implementation of Agro-parks programmes and be vigilant against corruption. This programme is meant to address fundamental challenges faced by the poor and working class, not individuals who are greedy.
Our immediate international struggle
We note all the political developments including the increasing militarisation of politics taking place in Lesotho. This impacts negatively on ordinary people on the ground.
As the SACP in Free State, charged with the responsibility, we will urgently support the Communist Party of Lesotho as our reliable ally to unite, lead and educate the people on the ground, and to safeguard the development of democracy in that country that is neighbouring our province and with which we share a common language, culture and a people.
Provincial Alliance Summit
We note with great anticipation that the spirit and decisions of the recent national alliance summit will cascade down to the provinces as an effort to build and encourage the necessity of a functional and strong alliance to lead the poor and the working people. This requires unity in action, therefore a programmatic alliance that shares a common perspective: the national democratic revolution!
Issued by the SACP Free State Province
Contact:
Bereng Soke – Provincial Secretary
Mobile – 082 455 2713
SACP Mpumalanga September PEC Statement
15 September 2015
Asserting the Party as a vanguard of the working class and the poor.
The SACP in Mpumalanga Province convened its ordinary plenary session on Sunday, 13 September 2015 at eMalahleni. The meeting dealt with contemporary political developments provincially, nationally and international.
The meeting acknowledged the strength and growth of the SACP in this 94th year of its unbroken service of struggle for our people, the majority of whom is the working class.
The province will launch its membership recruitment drive on Sunday, 20 September 2015 in Gert Sibande District. This will be steeled in a thoroughgoing process of renewal through the launch of a new cycle of annual political education and ideological training process to continuously upgrade the quality of our Party’s membership.
State of the alliance in the province:
The SACP remains committed to a united and coherent alliance. However, the Party will never succumb to the dictatorship of the lumpen-tenderpreneurs who disregard the importance of this alliance and are dedicated at liquidating it by their agenda to liquidate its other components. The lack of political will to resolve the current challenges in the alliance in Mpumalanga province and in our communities has created unnecessary doubts at the grassroots and needs to be dealt with decisively.
The starting point is for the national alliance summit declaration for provinces to convene provincial alliance summit and Mpumalanga must now move into practice. The unity of the alliance is sacrosanct with a mutual respect for all components.
The calls for the release of the report commissioned by the ANC Veterans’ on the KaNyamazane attacks. We are not going to rest until the hooligans who assaulted our comrades are exposed and brought to book.
On the National Democratic Revolution
The theory of the national democratic revolution has been at centre of what unites and directs our revolution and the components that form part of the revolutionary alliance. The national democratic revolution is under threat from an emergence of opportunist groupings that that undermine the unity and cohesion of the liberation alliance. This will never, be left, unchallenged!
The groupings united in the agenda to undermine the unity of our alliance are motivated by self-serving interests of private accumulation of wealth using control over public service opportunities and state tenders.
There is a symbiotic relationship between institutionalised factionalism, corruption and attempts at corporates capture of our movement as a gateway to the capture of the state. Factions exist in order to gain access to state resources.
The state is seen as a tool to be captured to feed the narrow economic interests of the leading factionalists and to feed their patronage networks to build their support base. This agenda, left unchallenged, will bring down our movement and depose it from its leadership position in our society!
Political Killings in the province:
The PEC reiterated its call to the relevant authorities and law enforcement agencies to speedily deal with the investigations and release of the reports on political killings executed in Mpumalanga province. The SACP believes that, these killings are linked with the corruption that is ravaging our provincial government, municipalities and government entities and undermining service delivery. The PEC reaffirmed its commitment to fight against rampant corruption and political killings in the province.
We appreciate the good work done by the NPA re-instating the Bomber Ntshangase case which is scheduled to continue on 14 October 2015 at Bethal Magistrate Court. We are calling upon our structures to come in numbers and demand for the kingpins who are responsible for this killing to be arrested as soon as possible.
On Police Killings:
The PEC is deeply concerned with the growing killings of police. More than 60 police officers have been killed this year alone. Most of these killings happen when police are responding to the needs of the public.
Government must develop a clear long-term plan to combat these acts - which undermine the authority of the democratic developmental state that the national democratic revolution seeks to build.
The SACP will work closely with the progressive trade union POPCRU to develop awareness in our communities about the implications and dangers of police killings and the need to stand together to fight crime and corruption.
2016 Local Government Elections:
The SACP in Mpumalanga province has launched its elections campaign for the 2016 local government elections on 23 August during the party’s 94th anniversary rally. Next month the SACP will launch the Red Brigades as part of our alliance electoral machinery.
The SACP in Mpumalanga province has however noted with concern the disregard of processes for councillor nominations to be halted.
The elections campaign and process must be guided by a clear framework and principles for comrades who their communities want as councillors are not marginalised on the basis of factionalism and patronage.
International Context:
On Swaziland:
The Swaziland’s absolute monarchy has entrenched itself through culture and religion. It has deepened its control over the cabinet, legislation and judiciary. The Southern African Development Corporation (SADC) has not played a vital role to intervene in the Swaziland question.
We condemn the inhumane behaviour by King Mswati, who continued with the reed dance despite the truck accident which claimed about 38 innocent girls and ultimately 65. We cannot imagine the year that the tyrant ascended as the head of SADC region with this kind of character that undermines human rights.
We will strengthen our campaign to call for the unconditional release of political prisoners, unbanning of political parties and ultimately democracy in Swaziland. We reiterate our call for the South African government to give the Swaziland political exiles a permanent asylum status.
On the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK:
The U.S. led imperialism use South Korea to advance its agenda of aggression. Although, DPRK and South Korea averted a full-scale military confrontation and agreed to improve ties after a rare exchange of artillery fire over their heavily fortified border, tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high. We will continue with our solidarity programmes we historically shared with the DPRK Embassy.
On China:
This past week, China celebrated and commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of what it calls the People’s War on Resistance against Japanese Aggression to mark the end of its involvement in the Second World War.
China remains a strategic and tactical country for South Africa to strengthen its trade relations with.
Issued by SACP Mpumalanga
Enquiries:
Bonakele Majuba - Provincial Secretary
Mobile: 082 968 4877
Lesetja Dikgale - Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: 076 869 4360
SACP Gauteng Provincial Lekgotla Declaration
14 September 2015
The SACP Gauteng Province held its PEC Lekgotla on the 11-13 September 2015 hosted by the Dr. Yusuf Dadoo District of the SACP, in the municipality of Merafong, Carletonville, South of Johannesburg, under the theme, "SACP Gauteng at the centre of working class revolutionary processes" Our alliance partners Provincial Secretaries addressed the meeting. Merafong can remembered as the base for militant community social struggles and campaigns, led in part by SACP cadres and militants. It is out of this influence that the Lekgotla convened in the district, with a deep focus on the mining sector in our country and globally.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
On the international front, the lekgotla reaffirmed our solidarity with Cuba and committed our party to an engagement with our alliance counterparts, to intensify our solidarity campaign for the lifting of the economic blockade against Cuba. The Lekgotla notes the endurance of subversive attempts by imperialism directed at the Mandela-Castro medical practitioners training program in Cuba. We commend the Cuban people for their unbroken solidarity with Africa during the outbreak of Ebola in three countries in West Africa, and support the Cuban Medical Brigades nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The SACP Lekgotla expressed serious concern about the forced migration flows out of Africa and the Middle East of thousands of refugees, mostly induced by wars of imperialism led by NATO alliance. The political regime change projects and invasion of countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, steamrolled the rise of fundamentalist religious outlooks in the Middle East and elsewhere. We extend solidarity to the refugees and support all actions in solidarity with them.
The Lekgotla also honoured Cde Patrick Baleka who was our member and dedicated his life to the liberatory cause of the Saharawi people. The SACP will continue with its campaign on the referendum for self-determination against Morocco’s colonial occupation of Western Sahara.
We will also prioritise solidarity work against the impervious King of Swaziland King Mswati III and deepen our campaign for the country’s democratisation and release of political prisoners.
THE SACP LEKGOTLA FOCUS ON MINING TOWNS
The Executive Mayor of Merafong Municipality Comrade Maphefo Mogale-Letsie delivered a welcoming address in which she stressed the significance of the year of the Freedom Charter. The Mayor underlined teething problems faced by the mining towns in the district, a common trend in mining communities across the country. She underscored municipality serious decline of revenue, lowering of the productive base, the near collapse of some mining operations within the municipal jurisdiction. The mayor also pointed to huge inequalities in the town including job losses, serious poverty and inequality.
The municipal infrastructure is withering away with declining revenue income streams. Mining towns are generally beset by manifold environmental problems. Merafong area is burdened by sink-holes and dolomitic grounds due to previous years of deep mining. The municipality is encountering precarious water supply and about two of its reservoirs had to be decommissioned.
There’s growth of illegal mining, with many surrounding informal settlements serving as enclaves of illegal mining activities. The SACP is deeply worried by rising crime and sabotage of essential municipal infrastructure.
In this regard the lekgotla agreed on the need for an alternative economy based on the revitalisation of depressed mining towns. The SACP will dedicate time during the Red October month to reconnect with communities and discuss these issues.
We also call for an Alternative economy summit in the province as part of marking the legacy of the late former Provincial Chairperson Cde Nkosiphendule Kolisile. Principal in the campaign should be the focus on mining companies who generally don’t pay their rates and taxes.
CRISIS AND THE STEEL INDUSTRY
The Lekgotla noted a serious downturn of commodity prices affecting precious metals prices and the mining industry. The crisis is accompanied by a silent restructuring both of production and the haemorrhaging of jobs in the industry, resulting in the creation of huge pockets of poverty in society. These developments carry enormous implications for the Gauteng provincial economy.
The lekgotla agreed that our regions will lead mobilisation of the community for the renationalisation of Acelor Mittal and against the extension of bailout packages.
ON THE ENVIRONMENT
The lekgotla underlined the need to draw the working class to the urgency for ecological awareness. As such we received contributions on the measures that should form part of efforts to guarantee secure energy supply and the reduction of Gauteng province reliance on the national grid. As part of this effort we will pay attention to acid mine drainage, the sink-holes and dolomitic parts of Gauteng. We underline once more that these cannot be divorced from decades of deep mining in which imperialist capital was impervious to catastrophic environmental impact in favour of profits.
ON THE ANC
The Lekgotla received an important political message from the ANC and will continuously engage perspectives it advances. We reiterate our commitment to rebuild strong relations with the ANC and also to facilitate sound relations in the district of Tshwane between our party and other alliance partners. We hope to convene bilateral with the ANC and Cosatu in order to develop urgent solutions on areas of controversy on the basis of principles of our movement.
ON COSATU
The Lekgotla congratulates the newly elected provincial leadership of Cosatu.
The party also discussed the need to deepen its influence within the trade unions in the province. The SACP throws its full weight behind the Cosatu national stayaway on the 7th October. Amongst the key issues to be highlighted are Job losses, public transport system and decent work. The campaign will also take up the traditional financial sector demands for community reinvestment legislation, for prescribed assets legislation, low bank charges and limited bond repayment terms so the working class can pay off their properties in not more than 5 years.
Cosatu agreed to be more active in the SACP Know your neighbourhood campaign, in particular through the activism of Cosatu locals. The party will work closely with Cosatu in monitoring the action on labour brokers.
ON THE YCL
The Lekgotla received the YCL organisational report. It welcomed the program of action of the YCL that will see the revitalisation of its structures and decided on extending its principled support.
ON PARTY BUILDING
The lekgotla received a comprehensive assessment of the state of the organisation report mainly focussing on the work of our districts and party branches in the implementation of our program of action and campaigns. A number of challenges could be identified for correction. Principally these challenges relate to weaknesses in ideological training and correlates to the exponential growth of our party. The party, due partly to its financial sector campaign has found itself increasingly in the service of a base much wider than the working class.
The lekgotla is satisfied by enormous progress in the area of party building across the province, although beset by unevenness in the implementation. We agreed to pay greater attention to under-performing party structures and deepen ideological support. We welcomed the newly appointed district organisers across all 5 districts in the province.
CORRUPTION
We will intensify our campaign to combat corruption, corporate capture of our movement and the influence of blood money in our politics.
SACP FINANCIAL SECTOR CAMPAIGN
In the light of the burgeoning of speculative financial activities in international markets, the Lekgotla agreed to engage intensively with the SACP discussion document on Financialisation. We therefore tasked both our structures and the Economic Transformation Commission in the province, to engage communities and make specific proposals on the course of action by the province. Greater attention must be paid to the social necessity for a huge cooperative and strong movement in the province, especially in the banking sector. We have to address the role of Post-Bank in this regard and re-evaluate the gains of the Mzansi account. Despite some victories against red-lining, we are witnessing as a backlash from the capitalist crisis, a strong resurgence of pyramid scheming and mashonisas. Much more disturbing is the malignant anarcho-corruption linked to the financial and property sector in which sophisticated syndicates prey on the working class. They operate through mainly the appropriation of counterfeit judicial and state administrative functions, where fraudulent title deeds, court orders, interdicts, affidavits and other legal documents are produced are used to evict working people families and uproot them from their livelihoods. The syndicates then rely on other arms of the state to see through the fictitious judicial orders, leading to police guaranteed execution of these orders. We have to debate the notion of and implications of the withering away of certain key functions of the state in the light of this growing anti-state anarchic corruption.
The financialisation of the health sector continues to be pursued by monopoly capital through private medical schemes that are linked to the major financial institutions listed on the JSE as demonstrated by the recent approval of an exemption framework to the Medical Schemes Act to create the legal space for the establishment of low income medical schemes. These low cost benefit options are targeted at bringing an additional 15 million people from the working class communities and low income earners into a financialised health sector controlled by private monopoly capital. These low income medical schemes offer a minimum and inadequate package of benefits and will be introduced in January 2016 to bolster a devouring financial black hole of the greedy private medical schemes industry. National Health Insurance (NHI) is the only viable policy instrument that will ensure that the working class is protected from a financialised health sector and will afford the working class financial risk protection. The Medical schemes have used sophisticated instruments to effect corporate capture of the Regulatory System and to gate-keep in preventing the speedy implementation of NHI. The SACP calls for the speedy implementation of the NHI and will urge the working class to reject the low cost benefit options.
Overall it is the strong ties between the belligerence of comprador private capital allied and imperialism that drives the undermining of the introduction of the national Health Insurance (NHI).
The SACP in the province will during the October to November, formally launch a robust campaign against the financial sector by marching to the representatives of the financial sector.
TOWNSHIP ECONOMY
The lekgotla” discussed the provincial government concept of "Township Economy’, in which a community based transformation of the legacy of colonialism of a special type, is driven within the townships, to industrialise, to empower the working class from narrow bourgeois accumulation regime and to roll back the monopoly of the capitalist market. A successfully driven township economy is not feasible through the BEE mode of accumulation. It can never take off without the dominant participation of massive cooperatives run by our people. One of the critical conditions of the township economy is the construction of a state corresponding to this enormously transformational content within the township economy and a strong solidarity foundation.
KHUTSONG KNOW-YOUR-NEIGHBOURHOOD CAMPAIGN
The Provincial Lekgotla conducted an intensive door-to-door community visit and the "Know-Your-Neighbourhood-Campaign’ in Khutsong. Community members have expressed real concerns and frustrations over basic the intermittent disruption of basic municipal services such as water, functional clinic service including other infrastructural services such as road infrastructural maintenance. It is often the secondary effects of bad infrastructure that is more compromising. The accumulation of dust on poorly maintained roads can have negative health implications.
Were also worried about the description of crime in the area and will revive our people’s power organs on community safety and security.
MK REBURIALS
We welcome the reburials in the past few weeks of a number of our MK cadres and heroes who were victims of brutal elimination by the apartheid regime hit squads and assassins. The missing remains of Mzwakhe Moses Phato and Archie Lethoko, Lolo Sono and Siboniso Tshabalala have been positively identified, repatriated and reburied, closing painful chapters in the memory of their family lives.
ON POLICE KILLINGS
The Lekgotla condemns a wave of dastardly killings of police in around Gauteng province and in several parts of the country. A deeply worrying escalation of cold blooded police execution trend is visibly manifest in these killings.
This trend corresponds to the growing and generalised vilification of all police in society at the behest of the mainstream media and some crooked politicians.
Were also deeply disturbed by what appears to be a positive correlation between the killing of police and an unimpeded growth in contraband automatic weapons and small arms proliferation, discovered by police in recent months.
We agree with POPCRU idea of what is essentially a call for popular mobilisation whilst rejecting from every quarter, appeasing calls for Hollywood-type knee-jerk responses. We shall embark on an alliance political program focussing on police killings, to appreciate the role of police and create more social awareness.
Given how badly Gauteng is affected, our provincial lekgotla will consider a motion for a safety and security summit in the province with a focus on community based intelligence gathering and organs of peoples power to reign in these criminals.
Government must address with its regional counterpart, the collective regional security in the light of growing comprador displacement of violent crime across regional borders.
These crimes can partly be attributed to bedevilled economic aspirations of lumpen sections of our societies from aborted national democratic revolutions. The most overriding driver of violent crime is the stubborn reality of bourgeois centralization of the wealth of our countries by rich powerful mainly white male elite in the case of South Africa and its African comprador class counterpart in other African countries.
In this regard the liberation and working class forces have a particular imperative to revitalize the key radical motive forces for thoroughgoing national liberation transformation.
We convey our deepest condolences to the families and friends of police casualties.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS
We must ensure strong ideological preparations and document our perspectives on local government elections. The province will unleash our Red Brigades to take an overriding organisational lead in mass mobilisation.
ON IDEOLOGICAL TRAINING
The province will shift towards fortnightly political education sessions which must be repeated in districts and branches. The ideological commission will work with other relevant commissions on local government elections and the mobilisation of the working class.
Issued by the SACP Gauteng province
Contact:
Jacob Mamabolo - SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary
Mobile: 082 884 1868
Lucian Segami - SACP Gauteng Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: +2779 5220 098
Office: +2711 339 3621/2
Twitter: GPSACP
Facebook Page: SACP Gauteng Province
The Provincial Executive Committee of the SACP in Free State, blessed by the presence of a fully-fledged Central Committee deployees, met on 13 September 2015 at Bram Fisher Building in Bloemfontein in the Caleb Motshabi District. This PEC observed a moment of silence to honour the communist revolutionary Caleb Motshabi District Chairperson, Comrade Mojela “Scara” Maswabi who passed away last month.
Quality into Quantity: Developing the SACP as the vanguard party of the working class for socialism
September is the vital month in the organisational calendar of the SACP. The Party is marshalling all its structures, leadership, programmes and membership drive quantitative and qualitative growth in building the capacity if the SACP to advance and deepen working class hegemony in all key sites of struggle.
During this month the SACP is renewing its annual cycle of membership recruitment. This is steeled in political education and ideological training intensified to develop and enhance the political, ideological and technical capacity of party activists, thereby transforming quantity into quality.
As the Party programme the South African Road to Socialism states, the unfolding and future historical periods require the SACP to become a large, independent working class vanguard party which is qualitatively different from a mass organisation. This is the precondition for the Party to engage in and build our alliance to become strong, and to be everywhere the class struggle takes place and lead the working class in alliance with democratic strata of our society towards the achievement of socialism!
Advancing the party of action!
The growth of the SACP did not come out of natural reasons, but through grounded and relevant campaigns which are meant to be change the lives of the workers and the poor for the better as opposed to crises they are continuously being plunged in by capitalism.
The SACP calls on all its members, leaders, structures and supporters in Free State province to strengthen the campaigns. We are forging ahead in deepening our Party’s Financial Sector Transformation Campaign. We will fight against corruption, patronage and all the tendencies of self-enrichment!
Distortions about the SACP and its decisions
Endless distortions against the SACP have failed dating back to their origins in colonial and apartheid propagandas there were meant to serve selfish interests of private wealth accumulation. They are bound to fail, again and again! This includes the distortions that are launched from within our own movement – not a new phenomenon. The Communist Party has seen a lot and the worst in its 94 years of existence and struggle.
As the province, we want to clarify those that distort the outcomes of the 13th Plenary Session of our Party’s 13th Congress Central Committee:
The Central Committee was resolute that all tendencies that seek to or have the effect of weakening our movement, the alliance and its support base, such as corruption, patronage, gate keeping, premature opening of succession debates long before congresses, manipulation of membership forms and data, buying of votes in the run up to and at congresses, etc.; all attempts at factional, corrupt and corporate capture of our movement must be dealt with decisively. The Central Committee, both in its political report and concluding press conference never identified any names of individuals or the positions that they hold.
The SACP never coined the label “premier league”. Neither did the party use such a lousy label.
On the contrary, the Central Committee made it clear that for the programme against attempts at factional, corrupt and corporate capture of our movement to succeed, anyone involved in such reactionary activities must be confronted at all levels without fear or favour for who they are – counterrevolutionaries who will destroy our movement. There is no turning back from this programme!!
As the SACP, arising out of our Special National Congress, we will forge ahead with our strategic priority to unite the working class, our communities, and our movement!!
As we approach local government elections in 2016 and incoming regional conferences, we appeal to the ANC leadership, membership and structures here in the province of Free State to be vigilant of destructive and divisive tendencies. Short-cuts on democracy have proven to be dangerous!
Misdirection about cause of South African Crisis
Convergence of the liberal ideas, reactionaries and opportunists including their like in the commentarian to suggest that the causes of inequality, unemployment and poverty are the ANC-led alliance and President Jacob Zuma has no basis in fact – it is only counterrevolutionary.
This converged-blog does not exist for anything progressive but to ferment doubt among the people about the ANC-led Alliance.
Class inequality, unemployment and poverty affecting many people in our country are the necessary conditions, the results and levers of the accumulation of wealth on a capitalist private basis. In South Africa, their racial impact in terms of which Africans in particular and black people in general are the worst affected is a direct result of colonial and apartheid, racist national oppression. The system made use of sexism, involving racist male domination as part of its levers to maximise profit, divide and rule.
The mineral resources and primary goods that should have been processed in South Africa to manufacture finished products were simply extracted and exported by colonial design. This is how instead of developing our country’s productive capacity to its full potential through industrialisation real jobs were exported along with the exports of raw materials. The persisting class inequality, unemployment and poverty in South Africa is therefore a reflection of the legacy of the imperialist development of productive forces mainly in Europe and North America at our country and people.
The historical mission of our alliance is to roll back the structural inequality behind the multiple crises of high levels of unemployment and poverty as well as volatility to economic changes taking out of our country.
This is why, as the SACP we say:
Forward to the second, more radical phase of our democratic transformation!
Along with industrialisation and other structural transformation measures, as the SACP in Free State province we believe that agriculture and farming and the development of their entire agro-processing value chain will take our country forward in the right direction. We are, in strongest terms, opposed to the ongoing irresponsible tendency of farming giants prioritising game-farming over food-production. The SACP stands for food security!!
As the SACP we are calling on the working class and the poor in general to support and the implementation of Agro-parks programmes and be vigilant against corruption. This programme is meant to address fundamental challenges faced by the poor and working class, not individuals who are greedy.
Our immediate international struggle
We note all the political developments including the increasing militarisation of politics taking place in Lesotho. This impacts negatively on ordinary people on the ground.
As the SACP in Free State, charged with the responsibility, we will urgently support the Communist Party of Lesotho as our reliable ally to unite, lead and educate the people on the ground, and to safeguard the development of democracy in that country that is neighbouring our province and with which we share a common language, culture and a people.
Provincial Alliance Summit
We note with great anticipation that the spirit and decisions of the recent national alliance summit will cascade down to the provinces as an effort to build and encourage the necessity of a functional and strong alliance to lead the poor and the working people. This requires unity in action, therefore a programmatic alliance that shares a common perspective: the national democratic revolution!
Issued by the SACP Free State Province
Contact:
Bereng Soke – Provincial Secretary
Mobile – 082 455 2713
SACP Mpumalanga September PEC Statement
15 September 2015
Asserting the Party as a vanguard of the working class and the poor.
The SACP in Mpumalanga Province convened its ordinary plenary session on Sunday, 13 September 2015 at eMalahleni. The meeting dealt with contemporary political developments provincially, nationally and international.
The meeting acknowledged the strength and growth of the SACP in this 94th year of its unbroken service of struggle for our people, the majority of whom is the working class.
The province will launch its membership recruitment drive on Sunday, 20 September 2015 in Gert Sibande District. This will be steeled in a thoroughgoing process of renewal through the launch of a new cycle of annual political education and ideological training process to continuously upgrade the quality of our Party’s membership.
State of the alliance in the province:
The SACP remains committed to a united and coherent alliance. However, the Party will never succumb to the dictatorship of the lumpen-tenderpreneurs who disregard the importance of this alliance and are dedicated at liquidating it by their agenda to liquidate its other components. The lack of political will to resolve the current challenges in the alliance in Mpumalanga province and in our communities has created unnecessary doubts at the grassroots and needs to be dealt with decisively.
The starting point is for the national alliance summit declaration for provinces to convene provincial alliance summit and Mpumalanga must now move into practice. The unity of the alliance is sacrosanct with a mutual respect for all components.
The calls for the release of the report commissioned by the ANC Veterans’ on the KaNyamazane attacks. We are not going to rest until the hooligans who assaulted our comrades are exposed and brought to book.
On the National Democratic Revolution
The theory of the national democratic revolution has been at centre of what unites and directs our revolution and the components that form part of the revolutionary alliance. The national democratic revolution is under threat from an emergence of opportunist groupings that that undermine the unity and cohesion of the liberation alliance. This will never, be left, unchallenged!
The groupings united in the agenda to undermine the unity of our alliance are motivated by self-serving interests of private accumulation of wealth using control over public service opportunities and state tenders.
There is a symbiotic relationship between institutionalised factionalism, corruption and attempts at corporates capture of our movement as a gateway to the capture of the state. Factions exist in order to gain access to state resources.
The state is seen as a tool to be captured to feed the narrow economic interests of the leading factionalists and to feed their patronage networks to build their support base. This agenda, left unchallenged, will bring down our movement and depose it from its leadership position in our society!
Political Killings in the province:
The PEC reiterated its call to the relevant authorities and law enforcement agencies to speedily deal with the investigations and release of the reports on political killings executed in Mpumalanga province. The SACP believes that, these killings are linked with the corruption that is ravaging our provincial government, municipalities and government entities and undermining service delivery. The PEC reaffirmed its commitment to fight against rampant corruption and political killings in the province.
We appreciate the good work done by the NPA re-instating the Bomber Ntshangase case which is scheduled to continue on 14 October 2015 at Bethal Magistrate Court. We are calling upon our structures to come in numbers and demand for the kingpins who are responsible for this killing to be arrested as soon as possible.
On Police Killings:
The PEC is deeply concerned with the growing killings of police. More than 60 police officers have been killed this year alone. Most of these killings happen when police are responding to the needs of the public.
Government must develop a clear long-term plan to combat these acts - which undermine the authority of the democratic developmental state that the national democratic revolution seeks to build.
The SACP will work closely with the progressive trade union POPCRU to develop awareness in our communities about the implications and dangers of police killings and the need to stand together to fight crime and corruption.
2016 Local Government Elections:
The SACP in Mpumalanga province has launched its elections campaign for the 2016 local government elections on 23 August during the party’s 94th anniversary rally. Next month the SACP will launch the Red Brigades as part of our alliance electoral machinery.
The SACP in Mpumalanga province has however noted with concern the disregard of processes for councillor nominations to be halted.
The elections campaign and process must be guided by a clear framework and principles for comrades who their communities want as councillors are not marginalised on the basis of factionalism and patronage.
International Context:
On Swaziland:
The Swaziland’s absolute monarchy has entrenched itself through culture and religion. It has deepened its control over the cabinet, legislation and judiciary. The Southern African Development Corporation (SADC) has not played a vital role to intervene in the Swaziland question.
We condemn the inhumane behaviour by King Mswati, who continued with the reed dance despite the truck accident which claimed about 38 innocent girls and ultimately 65. We cannot imagine the year that the tyrant ascended as the head of SADC region with this kind of character that undermines human rights.
We will strengthen our campaign to call for the unconditional release of political prisoners, unbanning of political parties and ultimately democracy in Swaziland. We reiterate our call for the South African government to give the Swaziland political exiles a permanent asylum status.
On the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK:
The U.S. led imperialism use South Korea to advance its agenda of aggression. Although, DPRK and South Korea averted a full-scale military confrontation and agreed to improve ties after a rare exchange of artillery fire over their heavily fortified border, tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high. We will continue with our solidarity programmes we historically shared with the DPRK Embassy.
On China:
This past week, China celebrated and commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of what it calls the People’s War on Resistance against Japanese Aggression to mark the end of its involvement in the Second World War.
China remains a strategic and tactical country for South Africa to strengthen its trade relations with.
Issued by SACP Mpumalanga
Enquiries:
Bonakele Majuba - Provincial Secretary
Mobile: 082 968 4877
Lesetja Dikgale - Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: 076 869 4360
SACP Gauteng Provincial Lekgotla Declaration
14 September 2015
The SACP Gauteng Province held its PEC Lekgotla on the 11-13 September 2015 hosted by the Dr. Yusuf Dadoo District of the SACP, in the municipality of Merafong, Carletonville, South of Johannesburg, under the theme, "SACP Gauteng at the centre of working class revolutionary processes" Our alliance partners Provincial Secretaries addressed the meeting. Merafong can remembered as the base for militant community social struggles and campaigns, led in part by SACP cadres and militants. It is out of this influence that the Lekgotla convened in the district, with a deep focus on the mining sector in our country and globally.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
On the international front, the lekgotla reaffirmed our solidarity with Cuba and committed our party to an engagement with our alliance counterparts, to intensify our solidarity campaign for the lifting of the economic blockade against Cuba. The Lekgotla notes the endurance of subversive attempts by imperialism directed at the Mandela-Castro medical practitioners training program in Cuba. We commend the Cuban people for their unbroken solidarity with Africa during the outbreak of Ebola in three countries in West Africa, and support the Cuban Medical Brigades nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The SACP Lekgotla expressed serious concern about the forced migration flows out of Africa and the Middle East of thousands of refugees, mostly induced by wars of imperialism led by NATO alliance. The political regime change projects and invasion of countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, steamrolled the rise of fundamentalist religious outlooks in the Middle East and elsewhere. We extend solidarity to the refugees and support all actions in solidarity with them.
The Lekgotla also honoured Cde Patrick Baleka who was our member and dedicated his life to the liberatory cause of the Saharawi people. The SACP will continue with its campaign on the referendum for self-determination against Morocco’s colonial occupation of Western Sahara.
We will also prioritise solidarity work against the impervious King of Swaziland King Mswati III and deepen our campaign for the country’s democratisation and release of political prisoners.
THE SACP LEKGOTLA FOCUS ON MINING TOWNS
The Executive Mayor of Merafong Municipality Comrade Maphefo Mogale-Letsie delivered a welcoming address in which she stressed the significance of the year of the Freedom Charter. The Mayor underlined teething problems faced by the mining towns in the district, a common trend in mining communities across the country. She underscored municipality serious decline of revenue, lowering of the productive base, the near collapse of some mining operations within the municipal jurisdiction. The mayor also pointed to huge inequalities in the town including job losses, serious poverty and inequality.
The municipal infrastructure is withering away with declining revenue income streams. Mining towns are generally beset by manifold environmental problems. Merafong area is burdened by sink-holes and dolomitic grounds due to previous years of deep mining. The municipality is encountering precarious water supply and about two of its reservoirs had to be decommissioned.
There’s growth of illegal mining, with many surrounding informal settlements serving as enclaves of illegal mining activities. The SACP is deeply worried by rising crime and sabotage of essential municipal infrastructure.
In this regard the lekgotla agreed on the need for an alternative economy based on the revitalisation of depressed mining towns. The SACP will dedicate time during the Red October month to reconnect with communities and discuss these issues.
We also call for an Alternative economy summit in the province as part of marking the legacy of the late former Provincial Chairperson Cde Nkosiphendule Kolisile. Principal in the campaign should be the focus on mining companies who generally don’t pay their rates and taxes.
CRISIS AND THE STEEL INDUSTRY
The Lekgotla noted a serious downturn of commodity prices affecting precious metals prices and the mining industry. The crisis is accompanied by a silent restructuring both of production and the haemorrhaging of jobs in the industry, resulting in the creation of huge pockets of poverty in society. These developments carry enormous implications for the Gauteng provincial economy.
The lekgotla agreed that our regions will lead mobilisation of the community for the renationalisation of Acelor Mittal and against the extension of bailout packages.
ON THE ENVIRONMENT
The lekgotla underlined the need to draw the working class to the urgency for ecological awareness. As such we received contributions on the measures that should form part of efforts to guarantee secure energy supply and the reduction of Gauteng province reliance on the national grid. As part of this effort we will pay attention to acid mine drainage, the sink-holes and dolomitic parts of Gauteng. We underline once more that these cannot be divorced from decades of deep mining in which imperialist capital was impervious to catastrophic environmental impact in favour of profits.
ON THE ANC
The Lekgotla received an important political message from the ANC and will continuously engage perspectives it advances. We reiterate our commitment to rebuild strong relations with the ANC and also to facilitate sound relations in the district of Tshwane between our party and other alliance partners. We hope to convene bilateral with the ANC and Cosatu in order to develop urgent solutions on areas of controversy on the basis of principles of our movement.
ON COSATU
The Lekgotla congratulates the newly elected provincial leadership of Cosatu.
The party also discussed the need to deepen its influence within the trade unions in the province. The SACP throws its full weight behind the Cosatu national stayaway on the 7th October. Amongst the key issues to be highlighted are Job losses, public transport system and decent work. The campaign will also take up the traditional financial sector demands for community reinvestment legislation, for prescribed assets legislation, low bank charges and limited bond repayment terms so the working class can pay off their properties in not more than 5 years.
Cosatu agreed to be more active in the SACP Know your neighbourhood campaign, in particular through the activism of Cosatu locals. The party will work closely with Cosatu in monitoring the action on labour brokers.
ON THE YCL
The Lekgotla received the YCL organisational report. It welcomed the program of action of the YCL that will see the revitalisation of its structures and decided on extending its principled support.
ON PARTY BUILDING
The lekgotla received a comprehensive assessment of the state of the organisation report mainly focussing on the work of our districts and party branches in the implementation of our program of action and campaigns. A number of challenges could be identified for correction. Principally these challenges relate to weaknesses in ideological training and correlates to the exponential growth of our party. The party, due partly to its financial sector campaign has found itself increasingly in the service of a base much wider than the working class.
The lekgotla is satisfied by enormous progress in the area of party building across the province, although beset by unevenness in the implementation. We agreed to pay greater attention to under-performing party structures and deepen ideological support. We welcomed the newly appointed district organisers across all 5 districts in the province.
CORRUPTION
We will intensify our campaign to combat corruption, corporate capture of our movement and the influence of blood money in our politics.
SACP FINANCIAL SECTOR CAMPAIGN
In the light of the burgeoning of speculative financial activities in international markets, the Lekgotla agreed to engage intensively with the SACP discussion document on Financialisation. We therefore tasked both our structures and the Economic Transformation Commission in the province, to engage communities and make specific proposals on the course of action by the province. Greater attention must be paid to the social necessity for a huge cooperative and strong movement in the province, especially in the banking sector. We have to address the role of Post-Bank in this regard and re-evaluate the gains of the Mzansi account. Despite some victories against red-lining, we are witnessing as a backlash from the capitalist crisis, a strong resurgence of pyramid scheming and mashonisas. Much more disturbing is the malignant anarcho-corruption linked to the financial and property sector in which sophisticated syndicates prey on the working class. They operate through mainly the appropriation of counterfeit judicial and state administrative functions, where fraudulent title deeds, court orders, interdicts, affidavits and other legal documents are produced are used to evict working people families and uproot them from their livelihoods. The syndicates then rely on other arms of the state to see through the fictitious judicial orders, leading to police guaranteed execution of these orders. We have to debate the notion of and implications of the withering away of certain key functions of the state in the light of this growing anti-state anarchic corruption.
The financialisation of the health sector continues to be pursued by monopoly capital through private medical schemes that are linked to the major financial institutions listed on the JSE as demonstrated by the recent approval of an exemption framework to the Medical Schemes Act to create the legal space for the establishment of low income medical schemes. These low cost benefit options are targeted at bringing an additional 15 million people from the working class communities and low income earners into a financialised health sector controlled by private monopoly capital. These low income medical schemes offer a minimum and inadequate package of benefits and will be introduced in January 2016 to bolster a devouring financial black hole of the greedy private medical schemes industry. National Health Insurance (NHI) is the only viable policy instrument that will ensure that the working class is protected from a financialised health sector and will afford the working class financial risk protection. The Medical schemes have used sophisticated instruments to effect corporate capture of the Regulatory System and to gate-keep in preventing the speedy implementation of NHI. The SACP calls for the speedy implementation of the NHI and will urge the working class to reject the low cost benefit options.
Overall it is the strong ties between the belligerence of comprador private capital allied and imperialism that drives the undermining of the introduction of the national Health Insurance (NHI).
The SACP in the province will during the October to November, formally launch a robust campaign against the financial sector by marching to the representatives of the financial sector.
TOWNSHIP ECONOMY
The lekgotla” discussed the provincial government concept of "Township Economy’, in which a community based transformation of the legacy of colonialism of a special type, is driven within the townships, to industrialise, to empower the working class from narrow bourgeois accumulation regime and to roll back the monopoly of the capitalist market. A successfully driven township economy is not feasible through the BEE mode of accumulation. It can never take off without the dominant participation of massive cooperatives run by our people. One of the critical conditions of the township economy is the construction of a state corresponding to this enormously transformational content within the township economy and a strong solidarity foundation.
KHUTSONG KNOW-YOUR-NEIGHBOURHOOD CAMPAIGN
The Provincial Lekgotla conducted an intensive door-to-door community visit and the "Know-Your-Neighbourhood-Campaign’ in Khutsong. Community members have expressed real concerns and frustrations over basic the intermittent disruption of basic municipal services such as water, functional clinic service including other infrastructural services such as road infrastructural maintenance. It is often the secondary effects of bad infrastructure that is more compromising. The accumulation of dust on poorly maintained roads can have negative health implications.
Were also worried about the description of crime in the area and will revive our people’s power organs on community safety and security.
MK REBURIALS
We welcome the reburials in the past few weeks of a number of our MK cadres and heroes who were victims of brutal elimination by the apartheid regime hit squads and assassins. The missing remains of Mzwakhe Moses Phato and Archie Lethoko, Lolo Sono and Siboniso Tshabalala have been positively identified, repatriated and reburied, closing painful chapters in the memory of their family lives.
ON POLICE KILLINGS
The Lekgotla condemns a wave of dastardly killings of police in around Gauteng province and in several parts of the country. A deeply worrying escalation of cold blooded police execution trend is visibly manifest in these killings.
This trend corresponds to the growing and generalised vilification of all police in society at the behest of the mainstream media and some crooked politicians.
Were also deeply disturbed by what appears to be a positive correlation between the killing of police and an unimpeded growth in contraband automatic weapons and small arms proliferation, discovered by police in recent months.
We agree with POPCRU idea of what is essentially a call for popular mobilisation whilst rejecting from every quarter, appeasing calls for Hollywood-type knee-jerk responses. We shall embark on an alliance political program focussing on police killings, to appreciate the role of police and create more social awareness.
Given how badly Gauteng is affected, our provincial lekgotla will consider a motion for a safety and security summit in the province with a focus on community based intelligence gathering and organs of peoples power to reign in these criminals.
Government must address with its regional counterpart, the collective regional security in the light of growing comprador displacement of violent crime across regional borders.
These crimes can partly be attributed to bedevilled economic aspirations of lumpen sections of our societies from aborted national democratic revolutions. The most overriding driver of violent crime is the stubborn reality of bourgeois centralization of the wealth of our countries by rich powerful mainly white male elite in the case of South Africa and its African comprador class counterpart in other African countries.
In this regard the liberation and working class forces have a particular imperative to revitalize the key radical motive forces for thoroughgoing national liberation transformation.
We convey our deepest condolences to the families and friends of police casualties.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS
We must ensure strong ideological preparations and document our perspectives on local government elections. The province will unleash our Red Brigades to take an overriding organisational lead in mass mobilisation.
ON IDEOLOGICAL TRAINING
The province will shift towards fortnightly political education sessions which must be repeated in districts and branches. The ideological commission will work with other relevant commissions on local government elections and the mobilisation of the working class.
Issued by the SACP Gauteng province
Contact:
Jacob Mamabolo - SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary
Mobile: 082 884 1868
Lucian Segami - SACP Gauteng Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: +2779 5220 098
Office: +2711 339 3621/2
Twitter: GPSACP
Facebook Page: SACP Gauteng Province
No comments:
Post a Comment