21 August 2020
Learning from the past, Active in the present: Socialism is the future - Build it now.
[Salutations and acknowledgements]
Political education and ideological training
The SACP resolved to establish the Conference of Women Commissars, as an integral part of its cadre development strategy, to advance political education and ideological training. This is an inseparable part of our Party Building strategy and programme to dismantle patriarchy towards building a non-sexist society. Our aim is to build the SACP as a large vanguard Party of the working-class capable of deepening and defending the national democratic revolution and advancing the struggle towards a socialist transition under the direction of scientific socialism.
Let us from the onset clarify the reference to a large vanguard Party in our Programme, the South African Road to Socialism (Sars). The planned annual convening of the Conference of Women Commissars is part of building the SACP as a vanguard party. The reference large vanguard Party in Sars refers to both quantity and quality. Our Party Programme distinguishes a large vanguard Party from a mass Party. As the Party Programme states, the SACP should determine its size based on the tasks at hand. The SACP has to move with the times to develop its Marxist-Leninist character to greater heights. Therefore, it is not numbers for its own sake.
The SACP of the twenty-first century, for instance, cannot organise in the same way as the International Socialist League, for instance, organised between 1915 and 1921, important as that form of organising was relevant for its time.
Similarly, the SACP of the twenty-first century cannot organise in the same way as the Communist Party of South Africa and the SACP of the twentieth century organised. There is a marked difference between the conditions of the twentieth century and the twenty-first century. Between January 1950 and 2 February 1990, for example, the SACP had to organise underground, in exile, in the international sphere, and actively taking part in the armed struggle. The Party added these four pillars of our struggle to its strategy in the twentieth century, in response to its banning by the apartheid regime and the oppressive regime’s intensified use of violence. The apartheid regime knew no other language than its violent repression of democratic activity, buttressed by its anti-communist, anti-liberation and anti-social emancipation propaganda. In developing its organising and cadre development strategy, the SACP had to take that hostile atmosphere and its corresponding operating conditions into account.
The democratic breakthrough that we achieved at the end of the twentieth century, in April 1994, brought about different organising conditions and imperatives. Organising underground, in exile, and an armed struggle was no longer necessary. We had dislodged the apartheid regime through the 1994 democratic breakthrough. The ANC ascended to the legislative and executive arms of the state through democratic election, also gaining access to the related levers of state power. The participation in government of SACP members made the SACP (effectively) a party of governance - within the framework of the ANC being the governing party in the context of the ANC-led Alliance. Only two of our previous four pillars of struggle remained relevant, namely mass mobilisation and –international work - albeit in a vastly different context.
Our democratic breakthrough, amongst other things, required a shift in our organising and cadre development strategy, hence the necessity to build the SACP as a large vanguard Party. This brings us to the qualitative aspect that distinguishes such a Party from a mass party. The operating term ‘vanguard’ refers both to the quality of the cadres that the SACP needs and has to develop, and the qualitative character that the Party has to build to win wide acceptance and act as the vanguard.
The term vanguard, as advanced by Vladimir Lenin (for example, in ‘What is to be done?’), refers to professional revolutionaries, what Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party refer to as the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class of every country, namely the communists. As Lenin said, one does not become a vanguard cadre merely by completing a membership form or by declaring. To build itself to become a vanguard Party, the Communist Party needs to recruit and produce vanguard cadres, professional revolutionaries, members who are the most advanced and resolute. To conclude on this score, our starting point, the SACP established the Conference of Women Commissars as part of its strategy to produce vanguard cadres; professional revolutionaries; the most advanced and resolute core of the working-class of our country.
What is most important to say about a vanguard Party is that it never trains cadres for itself only, as its activists are drawn from various formations and sites of struggle: trade unions, youth formations, government officials, and so on. The vanguard Party should also trains cadres operating in these and other spheres.
We should convene the Conference of Women Commissars at least once a year, as originally planned. It is now more possible to do so with the aid of new technologies. However, we should advance the programme of the Conference of Women Commissars and deepen it every day at all levels.
Having highlighted the importance of developing vanguard cadres and building the SACP as a vanguard Party, let us now proceed and briefly reflect on some key, immediate and interrelated challenges that we face in the present period. In no particular order, the first is the chronic economic crisis that took root long before the global coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and particularly its impact on women. The second is the crisis of social reproduction, a direct outgrowth of the chronic economic crisis that predates the Covid-19 pandemic. The third challenge is the Covid-19 crisis, which is not only a health crisis but is also an economic and social crisis. The fourth challenge we face is corruption and theft of public resources and criminality in our society. The fifth is the challenge of drug and substance abuse. The sixth is the scourge of gender-based violence in particular and violence in general.
The chronic economic crisis, the crisis of social reproduction and gender-based violence
Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, the South African working-class endured crisis-high levels of inequality, unemployment and poverty. The Covid-19 crisis, itself a direct result of capitalist accumulation and its destruction of the natural environment, is deepening pre-existing capitalist crises. As Statistics South Africa’s Labour Force Survey shows, unemployment rose in the first quarter of 2020, affecting approximately 10.8 million active and discouraged work-seekers combined from approximately 10.4 million in the last quarter of 2019. Women bear the brunt of capitalist crises, as, for example, retrenched workers and the people who look after the affected poor households.
Capital, which enjoys economic dominance in our country and monopoly in many sectors of the economy, increased retrenchments. The next Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey is therefore expected to confirm a sharp rise in unemployment because of retrenchments and the overall impact of Covid-19. The pandemic exposed the persisting legacy of unequal development, with undeveloped or underdeveloped areas lacking in essential services, such as access to clean drinking water, sanitation and decent dwellings.
The neoliberal policy regime promoted by the IMF, OECD, monopoly-finance capital and credit rating agencies, among others, will make matters worse for the working-class. That regime includes neoliberal austerity and partial or complete privatisation of public entities. This has now been given different names, such as opening state-owned enterprises or their infrastructure to private sector participation and competition—which can only be competition for greater market share, profit maximisation and private capital accumulation. The loan from the IMF, in particular, is underpinned by such neoliberal structural reforms. This agenda is domestically driven through the National Treasury supported by monopoly capital. The IMF loan is politically significant in that the IMF is brought in as an external enforcer in the absence of popular support—starting from within our Alliance. For example, as the SACP we rejected the IMF and OECD template that the National Treasury released in August 2019 as its economic blue print.
As things stand what will eventually prevail depends more on the balance of class forces not only within the Alliance but broadly in society. As Marx observed in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, between equal rights it is force that decides (especially when democratic engagements is undermined or disregarded). The victory of the working-class requires unity of purpose, and wider, intensified and deep-going mobilisation. This is what, as the SACP, we are preparing to pursue. We are calling upon the entire progressive trade union movement to unite. We will deepen our work to build the required unity of purpose. We wish to take this opportunity, therefore, to reiterate our call to the entire progressive trade union movement to convene a joint national summit, discuss and agree on a programme of action to advance and defend the common interests of workers.
The organisation of women remains absolutely important. The question facing the SACP now is not so much to establish its own Women’s League or section, but to dynamically link up with existing progressive women’s organisations (ANCWL, women in the trade unions, in schools governing bodies, in stokvels, in burial societies, in co-operatives, in the churches, etc.), as well as build new types and forms of organisation where necessary.
When we talk about the crisis of social reproduction, we are talking about, at the heart, the sphere of intense women oppression and exploitation, the heart of patriarchy and a crucial site of struggle to organise women. I am sure this conference will discuss these matters and point to the way forward.
We stand for the transformation of the South African state to become a capable democratic developmental state. We want a democratic developmental path that empowers the masses, advances radical structural economic transformation and radically reduces the high levels of inequality, unemployment, poverty and unequal spatial development. Unless we pursue such a path, the crisis of social reproduction will persist along with its underpinning, inherent crisis of capitalism. We do not need a reformist path. We need a revolutionary path, a qualitative change, in line with the revolution in the national democratic revolution.
We develop an integrated approach, recognising the interrelated nature and connection between the endemic crisis of capitalism, social reproduction crisis and gender-based violence. This Conference of Women Commissars should, therefore, place the task to end gender-based violence at the centre of our cadre development strategy. Again, this task belongs to all of us, equally, and at all levels, and without regard to gender.
Building a popular Left front, uniting organised workers and organising the unorganised is crucial in that regard. That is the direction we wish to reiterate here today, again publicly. We must fight all forms of vulgarisation of women’s struggles and their opportunistic use to advance regressive and backward tendencies like corruption, factionalism and access to positions for personal accumulation. That is why gender struggles must always be underpinned by class, anti-imperialist and non-racial content and outlook. As communists we must always expose and seek to combat use of women and gender struggles to advance narrow nationalist and exploitative interests. We must defeat the reactionary feminism that sees all men as the enemy, instead of capitalism, narrow nationalism and patriarchy. Progressive women’s struggles are not anti-men! It is for this reason that working-class women must be at the centre of women struggles. Communist women commissars should develop a leading role in building this capacity and be at the forefront of providing this direction.
Corruption and theft of public resources
Allow me to take this opportunity to reiterate one of our key messages that came out from our 99th anniversary statement. Corruption is an immediate threat to the national democratic revolution. It is weakening and tearing apart the same liberation movement that fought against and dislodged the apartheid regime. The overwhelming support that the movement received in the struggle against apartheid, and in the early successive elections starting with the first democratic general election held in 1994, is falling apart. This is occurring because of the combination of objective conditions, particularly the persisting crisis-high levels of inequality, unemployment and poverty, and the erosion of trust because of corruption.
Instead of serving the people selflessly and wholeheartedly, certain elements use their access or proximity to political power to build business connections. All they want is the use of the power entrusted by the masses through a vote to accumulate wealth on a private, capitalistic basis. This does not go alone. It goes hand in hand with private business interests, building political connections to accumulate wealth on a capitalistic basis. The political-private business and the private business-political connections are centred round the system of tenders. Tenderisation of the state, its functions and state-society relations is a frontier for accumulation regime of corruption.
The shameless personal protective equipment (PPE) and Covid-19 related corruption are no different. That includes inflation of prices in tenders or state procurement. Health is by and large a provincial competency. It is at that level that PPE and Covid-19 corruption is concentrated. Municipalities are also involved. The two spheres of government and the national sphere where such corruption has occurred must be tackled decisively, through thoroughgoing investigations. Allow me to reiterate what we said in our 99th anniversary statement. Those found guilty of corruption must face severe sentences. We must send them to prison to wear orange overalls. The state must seize the assets that they may have acquired through corruption-related conduct. We reiterate our support for Special Investigating Unit investigation into Covid-19 related tender corruption.
We must be frank, comrades. This Conference of Women Commissars must make it that the task to fight corruption must be waged at all spheres of government organisation. All levels of Party Organisation must, therefore, be both vocal and active in the fight against corruption.
The fight against corruption must go deeper to the root and tackle all its material bases. Our struggle against corruption will be incomplete unless we go to the root and uproot tenderisation of the state and the corruption-prone tender system. This means the efficacy of the Public Finance Management Act, Municipal Finance Management Act and related regulations must be re-examined. There is a problem on the legislative and regulatory front. Particularly the profit-making private sector-centric procurement bias must be rolled back along with other neoliberal aspects of the legislative and regulatory framework. The legislative framework must give preference to the necessity to build and develop internal state capacity and co-operatives and community empowerment. There are just so many services that are tenderised, which should not be the case. The ANC manifesto commitments to review outsourced services with the aim in-sourcing have not been implemented. This destructive legacy must be done away with.
The SACP is equally concerned by the looting of public resources and destruction of public infrastructure. Our railways are being looted—cables, tracks, other parts and components of the rail system are being stolen, and all unabated. At Eskom, as everywhere else, the corruption that contributed to the rise of load shedding took place at all levels. When others were stealing millions up to a billion or more at the top, others were stealing cables and other parts and components at the lower levels. These are sold as ‘scrap metals’, and even exported. As SAA Technical, the same was reported regarding the corruption and theft of aircraft replacement parts. These were channelled to service aircraft in supposedly capable private airlines. This is one factor that contributed to the crisis that SAA was flown into. All this takes place as if South Africa is a stateless society, a banana republic where there is no rule of law and law enforcement capacity.
In the same vein criminality, generally, including drug dealing, drug and substance abuse, must face the full might of the law. We need a system review to determine why such crimes seem to be taking place unabated.
The SACP is calling for action. Let us be clearer, we denounce corrupt elements and all the elements who steal public resources regardless of their class position.
Allow me, comrades, to pose this vexing question. Is there no advanced agenda to collapse the ANC from within? The enemy has tried for decades to infiltrate the ANC and failed. The situation we are in now challenges us to ask whether we have structures, leaders and members within out movement who are captured. For instance, how do you remove a mayor because of corruption allegations, related investigations and charges in the court law, and then justify promoting that former mayor to the provincial legislature without the court process being concluded? That happened in Durban and KwaZulu-Natal Province. When you raise this matter, you are told that you are anti-women. That is, of course, absurd. We must fight corruption to the finish. We must implement our movement’s resolutions consistently to win the battle against corruption without regard to the gender of those implicated.
Is it, therefore, not the right time to make the struggle against corruption an inseparable part of the struggle to combat gender-based abuse and violence and bring down patriarchy? I am posing this also as a theoretical question, by the way. We must guard against the co-option of the struggle to combat corruption and its conversion into a factional instrument used by men in our movement to fight one another. Advancing the struggle against corruption—which also has its patriarchal features—from the standpoints of women and the struggle against gender-based abuse and violence will contribute immensely towards the much needed victory against the rot.
We have to convince our comrades that cleansing the ANC of the rot engulfing it is one of our key contemporary tasks. The reality, comrades, is that if the ANC were to collapse today, we will still need an ANC type of a formation to build.
Thank you, comrades.
Socialism is the future - Build it now.
