SACP Input Delivered by Ben Martins, Central Committee Member and Political Bureau Secretary for International Affairs and Solidarity
ANC MUST ENSURE THAT THE ALLIANCE AGREED MANIFESTO INFORMS PRIORITISATION FOR THE 2024-2025 FINANCIAL YEAR
Saturday, 25 January 2025
Programme Director,
Leaders and members of the Alliance,
Esteemed stalwarts of the movement present.
Once again, the SACP congratulates the ANC on its successful 113th anniversary celebration held in Khayelitsha on 11 January 2025.
We appreciate the importance of the invitation to this second ANC NEC Lekgotla after the May 2024 election.
Our movement suffered a major setback from the May 2024 elections with far-reaching implications. As the Alliance, we are yet to address the core of the implications, given what happened afterwards.
In this message, our focus is on the priorities for the 2025-2026 financial year.
The SACP believes that priorities for the 2025-2026 financial year should be based on the 2024 ANC elections manifesto. We are glad that the six priorities elaborated in the ANC NEC statement on the occasion of the ANC 113th Anniversary are in line with the 2024 elections manifesto.
We stated in our message to the 113th anniversary of the ANC what is required by society, the working class and the poor of this country in particular. This includes, amongst others, the following:
Large-scale employment creation programmes to mitigate the unemployment crisis.
A high impact adequately funded industrial policy to drive broad-based industrialisation.
State-led infrastructure development, with strengthened state participation in critical infrastructure on behalf of the people as a whole as an apex priority.
A comprehensive poverty eradication programme.
A radical programme to resolve the crisis-high wealth and income inequalities.
Expediting the implementation of the Sovereign Wealth Fund to secure long-term national financial interests.
A comprehensive social security system, including a decisive advance towards a universal basic income grant.
Holistic implementation of the National Health Insurance to ensure universal access to quality healthcare.
Financial sector transformation, prioritising the establishment of a state banking sector and a public banking system.
We, therefore, present these to this ANC Lekgotla as areas of emphasis as extensively elaborated during the 2024 elections manifesto development process, as our contribution to this Lekgotla.
Our message to the ANC 113th Anniversary referred to the crisis of over 12 million unemployed active and discouraged work seekers, with further retrenchments contemplated at that time, including the termination of workers’ contracts in public employment programmes by the GNU and the over 3,500 direct and close to 100,000 indirect workers facing retrenchment if the government allows Arcelor-Mittal to close down productive factories in Newcastle, Vereeneging and eMalahleni. The priorities for the Financial Year 2025-2026 must be directed at reversing these trends, among others.
We also stated that the crises facing South Africa are likely to persist for a long time and that macro-economic policies rooted in fiscal austerity and other restrictive measures may not, and have not, provided any solution to these challenges in the last 29 years since the government adopted GEAR in 1996. This Lekgotla needs to cast its eyes beyond the post-1996 approach.
We agree that Local Government needs improving. Water and energy security must remain a priority.
We submit that answers to our challenges do not lie in budget cuts in the Medium Term Budget priorities but in the proper prioritisation, planning, adequate resourcing and meticulous execution of identified priorities for each year of the five-year terms, accompanied by appropriate monitoring and evaluation of progress. Our priorities should aim to resolve the challenges faced by society, especially the majority, being the workers and poor, while setting the country on a shared growth path and inclusive development trajectory underpinned by a massive, broad-based reindustrialisation.
We appreciate the ANC’s firm stand on the NHI Act, the BELA Act, and the Expropriation Act.
Having listened to what the ANC had to say, our view on the GNU and the way it was formed is well recorded.
We continue our opposition to the neo-liberal policies, including, but not limited to, austerity measures that focus on budget cuts rather than on alternatives to increase production that will help support the developmental needs of the people.
We will continue our struggle against monopoly capital, also noting that the DA, a right-wing, neo-liberal party opposed to the National Democratic Revolution, will continue to lead the charge in the interest of the beneficiaries of colonial and apartheid oppression and the class they represent.
The SACP within the Alliance will continue to take a fully and uncompromised class posture against monopoly capital and the exploiter class at large.
The resolution of the SACP to contest elections aims to assert the SACP’s independence and programme to build itself and act as a vanguard party of the workers and poor. The SACP will continue to do this as a member of the Alliance. We reiterate our readiness for the politically critical bilateral, which has not taken place as promised before this Lekgotla.
Issued by the South African Communist Party,
Founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa.
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