Address by Fikile Majola, SACP PB and Central Committee Member, SACP Eastern Cape Congress

24 May 2008

Comrade Chairperson of the session
Members of the Central Committee of our Party
The Provincial Leadership of the vanguard party of the South African
working class, the South African Communist Party
The Provincial Leadership of our Young Communist League
The Provincial Leadership of our glorious people`s movement, the African National Congress
Provincial Leadership of the Leagues of the African National Congress
The Provincial Leadership of our gallant Federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions of Elijah Barayi
The Provincial Leadership of SANCO
All Leaders of formations of the Mass Democratic Movement
Congress Delegates
Comrades and Friends

On behalf of the General Secretary of the SACP, our PB, the Central Committee and indeed on behalf of the entire membership of the SACP, I greet you all to this important gathering of communist delegates in the Eastern Province.

We are dedicating this address to our late Deputy National Chairperson, comrade Ncumisa Kondlo. We lost one of the most dedicated and reliable working class cadres of the Party and the movement. She was a comrade driven by selflessness, always willing to put our people first before anything. She was a comrade committed to the national democratic revolution, and not reformism. She saw no contradiction of being a radical national democrat and being a communist at the same time, and therefore of the being in the forefront of the on-going struggle for a radical national democracy and the struggle for socialism. For the kind of socialism we communists are fighting for is not short of radical democracy but full of it.

Long Live the Undying Spirit of Comrade Ncumisa Kondlo!

The Congress takes place just one month after we commemorated the 15th Anniversary of the cowardly assassination of our late General Secretary, comrade Martin Thembisile `Chris` Hani on the 10th April 1993. Sometimes as comrades, when we remember this gallant hero of our revolution, we tend to pose the question: "How would the situation look like today if Comrade Chris was alive?". Even though this sounds like a speculative question, is does not have to be answered idealistically. The answer is in front of us through the programmatic activities as we respond to the realities of our time.

When violence was unleased on our people, as part of the De Klerk regime`s negotiation strategy to weaken our movement, Comrade Chris dedicated his time and energy, together with many communists, in the creation of Self-Defence Units (SDUs). Without the role of the SDUs, the revolutionary base of our movement – the townships, would have been eroded by counter-revolution.

As the SACP we have endorsed the call by President of the ANC Comrade President Zuma, a call reinforced yesterday by the ANC Secretary General, for our people to immediately fight crime, in all its forms, including Xenophobia, through the creation of revolutionary street committees. Comrade Chris would expect us to be in this mass mobilizational activity as communists. The street committees must be understood as not being dealing exclusively with crime, but addressing every-day issues of our people from a street level.

Having said that, there are still a number of unanswered questions surrounding his assassination. We wish to reiterate our call for a full judicial enquiry to exhaustively investigate all the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Cde Chris. If this present government is not prepared to respond to this call, we will definitely and with urgency set up the enquiry soon after the government led by comrade Jacob Zuma takes over next year.

Long Live the Undying Sprit of Comrade Chris Hani!

We are in a new period of our Revolution

Addressing the Central Committee of COSATU last year our General Secretary comrade Blade Nzimande said the revolution was on trial! A few weeks ago he told us that the revolution was on track! Indeed our National Democratic Revolution is entering a new period that is pregnant with revolutionary possibilities. At the same time, and in a contradictory fashion, the revolution is also facing major threats.

We are now more than five months since the ANC Polokwane Conference, an event that will surely go down in the history of our movement, especially the post-apartheid history, as a major turning point. There has been several ANC National Conferences in our post-apartheid period, including the Mafikeng and Stellenbosch, but none of these Conferences (important as they may have been) can occupy the same political significance as Polokwane!

Arguably comrades, Polokwane could occupy a significant place in our revolutionary history as the ANC Morogoro Conference in 1969. Many of us already refer to Polokwane as Morogoro two. But why do we say that?

Comrades, over many years the SACP has consistently advanced the perspective that says, "at the heart of the many challenges and tensions within the Alliance, is whether our revolution should take a socialist road or capitalist road". This question was posed not because we were not sure in what direction our NDR should proceed. We knew then and we know now, we know precisely because there was a historically shared understanding within the Alliance that it is the working class that must drive and lead in the NDR and that through its leadership and hegemony our revolution will move towards a socialist society.

We knew then and we know now, that the Freedom Charter is the basis that unites us all around the NDR as the Revolutionary Alliance. While the Charter is not a socialist manifesto, it cannot be fully implemented under capitalism. The wealth of our country, as demanded by the Freedom Charter, can never be returned to the ownership of the people as a whole under capitalism. Our revolution will need a socialist society (which is why the so-called "national democratic society" must necessarily be a socialist society!) if we are to realize the demands of the Freedom Charter, especially the demand that the "People Shall Share in the Country`s Wealth". Viva Freedom Charter Viva!

We posed the earlier question because we had reached theoretical and political conclusions that a particular class project – "the 1996 class project" - had emerged within our movement, a project that challenges the leadership of the working class in this revolution, a project that dismisses nationalization and other revolutionary demands of the Freedom Charter as "out of date", a project that sought to replace the revolutionary Alliance our people, with a reformist alliance made up of the state, state managers with emerging black business (and behind it and under pinned by it established white business), a project that sought to demobilize (and even marginalize) our movement as the Strategic Political Centre, including marginization of COSATU and SACP, a project that concentrates power in the State Presidency and Executive, thereby marginalizing parliament, NEDLAC, and de-mobilizing our movement.

We symbolically traced the beginning of the implementation of this project to 1996, when a policy called GEAR was implemented with determination by government despite our protests. But its real begginings can be traced in the late 1980s, to what the SACP calls the 1988 class project.

While economically GEAR affected negatively the whole working class, it is workers in the public sector that bore the brunt of this project. Let us remember those periods of "downsizing", "supernumerary", "outsourcing", "and restructuring of state assets "," reducing of budget deficit" (meaning budget cuts). All these were direct attacks on the income, benefits and jobs of the workers. More than 100,000 workers, especially those whose work is to clean, cater, secure and maintain state property, lost their jobs. More so, the rest of the working class was feeling the effects of GEAR, especially on the provision of basic social needs.

The goal of Gear was to reach 6% of growth which, it was hoped, would deliver low unemployment and end poverty. But to achieve this goal, all what was required of the working class was to accept low wages, outsourcing/privatization and casualization of their jobs and so on. In other words, growth would be attained through intensified exploitation of the working class.

Indeed comrades, what that growth brought about in the last 13 years (even though it did not achieve its 6 percent target) was rising profits of the capitalist class (and the bee capitalists) and ever-declining wages of the working class, leading to further inequalities and widening wage-gaps in our society. It is not rhetoric therefore to say, that the first decade of our freedom (1994-2004) has been the decade of the bourgeoisie.

Later on we were told GEAR was nothing but "economic stabilization", nothing more than that. But if truth be told, there was more than "economic stabilization" in GEAR. Gear was also an ideological and strategic political determination to restore the crisis of South African capitalism to profitability.

We were quite justified to say, something has gone wrong with our national democratic revolution and that the main beneficiary of the first decade of our democracy has been the bourgeoisie and middle strata. This, we said, must change; future decades must be decades of the workers and the poor!

In the whole period, especially post-1996 period, the most important revolutionary task facing working class going forward was to dislodge the 1996 Class Project, and of course we refer to a democratic process of dislodging this project!

This was a task that involved mass mobilisation and saw the Party embarking on independent campaigns on the ground, and at times jointly with our socialist ally, COSATU. It was a process that requirement development of working class consciousness and mass political and ideological work across with Alliance.

The task ran across the whole Alliance precisely because the class project cannot simply be demarcated into "camps", which by definition may mean "those in one camp are for a class project and those in another are against". The impact of the class project was across our movement and the Alliance, not limited to government.

Our conclusion comrades was that the 1996 Class Project delivered not only major economic benefits for the bourgoisie, but also crises for itself, crises of chronic proportions. We today still see the symptoms and feel the effects of this all-round crisis!

The present electricity crisis is a crisis of the class project due to its failure to invest in Eskom. The reason for this failure to invest is clear, it was the intention to privatize Eskom. The corruption crisis is a crisis of the class because of its pre-occupation with narrow BEE. "I did not struggle to be poor". This ideology of "there is nothing wrong to be rich" has now spread like a dangerous virus in the body of our cadreship from national to local. The ugly contestation for positions of power that we now see everywhere often has very little to do with political or ideological differences. It is a dirty struggle over resources, and often public resources. Those who are "in" are fighting to keep their positions so that they can keep control over power and resources and so that they can continue to dispense patronage. Those who are "out" are fighting to be next in the queue in order to access the loot. The tragedy is that when all this is happening service delivery suffers and more and more of our people are likely to lose confidence in us and in politics. They will join the chorus of cynics "politicians are all the same". The food crisis is partly a crisis of the class project, because of its failure to speed up the land reform process and invest or ensure investment in agricultural production. Those who produce, produce for foreign markets at the expense of domestic food security. More broadly the food crisis is the crisis of global capitalism. More and more the world produces food crops to feed motor cars and not human beings. The SACP`s position that the sooner the current President leaves office the better is a correct position. In the context of next year`s elections decisive action is needed not only at national but in some of our provinces as well.

The failure of ANC grassroots structures (and of the Alliance) in the face of the xenophobic attacks on our fellow working class brothers an sisters are partly as a result of years of de-mobilization of our movement.

Above all, what the 1996 class project has produced is a leadership crisis in government. The palace politics that this project represents – that of back-stabbing, factionalism, corruption – have created a situation in which we have seen lack of leadership in government to confront a number of crises facing the country. This is something that the SACP brought before its Central Committee on the eve of the Alliance Summit this month. "Everything starts to rot at the top", so goes the saying. In this context the CC felt we could begin to address the leadership challenges if we (ANC-led Alliance) re-call the State President. To paraphrase our Deputy Secretary General, Comrade Jeremy Cronin on this matter:

• "Who in South Africa today believes the State President is providing leadership on Zimbabwe?"
• "Who in South Africa today believes the State President has ever provided leadership on HIV/AIDS?"
• "Who in South Africa today believes the State President is not being investigated by the Germans and British on Arms Deal?"
• "Who in South Africa today believes that the State President is providing leadership on the SABC crisis?"
• "Who in South Africa today believes the State President is not involved in the Pikoli/Selebi saga?"
• "Who in South Africa today believes the State President is providing leadership on Xenophobia?"

Indeed what Polokwane represents, is the strategic defeat of the class project!

As such comrades, we believe that Polokwane marked a turning point in the post-apartheid history of our movement. It closes a chapter where the very question of the NDR was in doubt, and opens a period full of revolutionary possibilities. From a strategic point of view, the 1996 class project was democratically dislodged in Polokwane. But not completely dislodged. What we dislodged in Polokwane is only one aspect of the project. We dislodged the project tendency to concentrate power in the State Presidency and consequently we restored the ANC (and its Alliance) as the Strategic Political Centre- meaning that it is the ANC-led Alliance that provides political direction to transformation, not those deployed in government. We must be clear we are not in opposition to government. This government is ours. Those who serve in government serve at our pleasure. In the words of the January 8 statement, those who are outside government must never work against those who are in government, and those who are in government must never be allowed to undermine the ANC.

So Post-Polokwane comrades, the struggle continues.

While Polokwane has produced progressive policies and resolutions, which we proudly welcome, the successful implementation requires us to continue with the task of dislodging, democratically, the 1996 class project.

In other words, we cannot be satisfied with change of leadership at national level, and ignore the fact that major change has to come at provincial, regional and branch levels of the ANC itself. The ANC must be rescued from the jaws of the 1996 class project from branch upwards! The Alliance itself must be reconfigured at all levels!.

We must renew the ANC and ensure that by 2012, when ANC is 100 years old, we have a radically different ANC in which a radical working class political culture is dominant, in which working class leadership and working class interests are dominant, in which majority of COSATU and SACP members are active and reliable working class cadres of the ANC.

The Alliance Summit – an historic and successful event

The recent Alliance Summit which took place on 9-10 May 2008 has been a hugely successful event, taking us along the direction of a reconfigured Alliance as the Strategic Political Centre of the national democratic revolution. As the Alliance Summit declared, in the next few weeks, months and years we will witness and participate in an Alliance that does the following:

• Building Alliance capacity to play its role as the Strategic Political Centre;
• Alliance Meetings regularly at leadership levels, at national, provincial, regional and local levels
• Working together as Alliance to jointly formulate and monitor implementation of policy;
• Working jointly in the deployment of Alliance cadres;
• Working jointly in the drafting of the 2009 Election Manifesto;
• Working toward a National Economic Policy Conference by June this year.

The Summit reaffirmed the Alliance`s unwavering support for the ANC President in the run up to his trial (which if truth be told is a dead trial). The Alliance has clearly pronounced, in line with the ANC conference resolution, that comrade Jacob Zuma will lead the ANC government next. We urge this Congress to help hasten the death of this trial by adding its voice to the call for the trumped up charges to be withdrawn with immediate effect.

The decisions of the Alliance have immediate implications for the Party going-forward. They include this question of reconfiguration of the Alliance itself. As we prepare for SACP Policy Conference, it is becoming more important to discuss the options open before us on the question of `State-Power`. It is important that we debate this question in the context of the post Polokwane period and the outcomes of the Alliance Summit.

Long-Live our revolutionary Alliance!

The crisis of governance in Eastern Cape

The crisis of governance in Eastern Cape and near-service delivery collapse has been one of the deepening crises of the class project. As the SACP we are deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation in the province and some muncipalities. All the problems characteristic of the class project seem to be at play here – on-going corruption, lack of leadership in government, service delivery crisis in health, education, social development and other departments.

But the crisis in the Eastern Cape is not just a crisis of governance is essentially a crisis of political leadership. It is a consequence of the class project`s demobilisation of the province from the centre. This has resulted in serious weaknesses across the structures of the Alliance.

It is time for the SACP and the Alliance to intervene! But our starting point should be to build a strong Party from the branch to the province. The provincial leadership centre must hold. We must strengthen our working and programmatic relations with COSATU. Fundamentally it is these two working class formations that should carry the responsibility of building a strong ANC.

One of the decisions of the Alliance Summit is the need to address the Eastern Cape situation immediately and comprehensively as the ANC-led Alliance. The National leadership of the Alliance will be visiting Eastern Cape, and will meet all the leadership structures of the Alliance in the province. We certainly believe this Congress will contribute in defining actions and measures needed to address this situation.

Finally, comrades we hope you emerge from this congress more strengthened and resolved. Let us taking forward our Party Programme – The South African Road to Socialism. Let us salute the YCL on the occasion of the 86th anniversary of its establishment. Let us keep our focus on the tasks that lie ahead.

We wish you a very successful Congress!

Socialism is the Future - Build it now, with and for the workers and the poor!!!