Report of the work of the South African Communist Party Central Committee Commission on the Party and State Power

Report to the Augmented Central Committee, November 2012

The question of state power has always been a central theme of the Communist Party`s analyses and programmatic perspectives. However, around 2005 the question of the SACP and state power arose within the Party in a relatively new context. There was a growing concern about the post-1994 state and the class character that had been consolidated within it.

In 2005 the SACP produced two important interventions - the Medium Term Vision document, and the November 2005 CC discussion document. In these interventions the Party advanced the thesis that, in the first decade after 1994, the new democratic state had been progressively hegemonised by the bourgeoisie. This hegemony (never a stable nor unchallenged hegemony) was realised through a combination of factors, including -

• the capacity of established monopoly capital within SA to regroup after the defeat of white minority rule and to hegemonise key parts of the new state, aligning it to an agenda of capitalist stabilisation and renewed accumulation;
• the cultivation of a new comprador stratum within the movement and state; and
• the relative demobilisation of the ANC and partially successful attempts to marginalize the SACP and COSATU.

The strategic alliance between monopoly capital and an emergent fraction of capital linked closely to elements of the ANC/state leadership lay at the heart of what the SACP began to call the "1996 class project".

This was the general analysis advanced by the SACP in 2005. It was to have a significant impact on the ANC`s 2005 NGC and COSATU`s 2006 national congress. In opposition to the 1996 class project`s strategic agenda, the SACP`s MTV document called for the second decade of freedom to be a decade in which the hegemony of the working class in all key sites of power would be realised.

But how?

We argued that an alternative agenda should include, critically, active popular mobilisation; the building of a strong SACP able to resist attempts at marginalisation; and the re-building of the Alliance as the key strategic political centre.

But what about contesting the bourgeoisie`s consolidation of hegemony over state power?

Establishment of the Commission on the Party and State Power (CPSP)

At the SACP`s 2005 Special National Congress, some delegates argued that in the light of the relative marginalisation of the left, and the pro-capitalist orientation of the state, the SACP should contest elections independently. The 2005 Special Congress was not able to reach any definitive decision on this matter, and a resolution was taken to set up a special CC commission to consider the various "modalities" of the SACP`s engagement with electoral politics. Rather than constituting a new entity, the 11th Congress Central Committee mandated the PB to act, under the direction of the GS, as the Commission on the Party and State Power. In February 2007 the Commission tabled to the CC a draft interim report, "The SACP, State Power and the Working Class". Among the main elements of this report were:

• A critical reflection on the SACP`s experience so far with election politics post-1994. This included a reflection on the degree to which the SACP had succeeded in impacting on successive ANC election manifestos (including the RDP); the ability of the party to assert an independent profile within ANC-led electoral campaigns; the impact of the Party on the list and deployment process; and our experience with SACP members serving as ANC elected representatives, including the experience of Parliamentary Discussion Forums. The general broad conclusion was that the Party had had some successes and impact but that a major review and improvement in all these areas was necessary - regardless of what electoral modality the SACP eventually decided upon.

• A broad survey of the electoral experience of Communist Parties internationally. In particular, the report focused on CPs operating in conditions similar to our own, in other words, in multi-party dispensations in capitalist dominated societies. We looked at examples from Europe, Latin America, India and Japan. Notwithstanding some inspiring achievements, the general conclusion of this broad survey was that electoral politics within capitalist dominated societies is an extremely difficult terrain for principled communist parties. A major reason for difficulty lies with the huge expense of elections (dominated often by massive campaign funding of centrist and anti-left formations by big business), and the control of the public debate agenda by the commercial media. Generally, left electoral successes in these cases involve one or another variant of broad left fronts, alliances and coalitions in which CPs are one (often a small) component. Nowhere else does our dual membership arrangement (ANC/SACP) exist - and therefore the SACP`s advantages in seeking to build working class hegemony in a capitalist society on the terrain of multi-party electoral politics is unique. The study also noted that the electoral terrain also often provokes serious strains (and even splits) within CPs - between cadres within legislatures and those more active on the mass terrain. (Since this study was conducted it is noteworthy that there have been set-backs in the two most inspiring Communist Party electoral success stories - in the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal the CPI(M) and its Left Front allies lost elections in 2009. In the case of West Bengal, this was after 40 years of sustained CPI(M)-led rule. On the other hand there have been important left electoral advances in a number of Latin American societies, and in some of these (Brazil, Venezuela,Uruguay, for instance) local communist parties have been part of wider coalitions.)

• A reflection on the institutional capacity and functioning of our national parliament (and provincial legislatures). The general conclusion was that parliament was the weakest and least effective of the arms of government. Its public legitimacy was low, and the Opposition was hegemonising it more effectively than the ANC. Out of this analysis the SACP began more actively to take up the call for the abolition of floor-crossing (a source of considerable damage to the standing of parliament at the time) and the passing of legislation to enable Parliament to amend the budget (and other Money Bills). (Both objectives were realised - although the degree to which the ANC-led alliance has been able to consolidate hegemony within Parliament, and the role of the SACP in Parliament need ongoing assessment)

As to whether the Party should campaign for elections independently or not, the February 2007 Commission interim report left the matter open for further debate and decision-making, but it offered some possible options. The report also noted that, whatever the ultimate decision in this regard, the DEBATE itself was already proving to be healthy. It had shaken Party comrades, perhaps especially those in legislatures, out of a certain routinism.

Meanwhile, this SACP debate was also actively canvassed and taken up within allied structures. In particular, this was the case with COSATU. COSATU commissioned independent surveys among its shop stewards and general membership to assess preferred electoral options. This process suggested that, while the SACP`s positions on policy matters (eg. GEAR, privatisation, etc.) were widely supported within COSATU, there was NOT major support (at that time at least) for an independent SACP (or workers party) electoral campaign (in fact it was less than 6%).

Resolution of the 12th National Congress July 2007

It was against this general background and informed by the work of the Commission that our 12th National Congress meeting in July 2007 adopted the following resolution on "The SACP and State Power":

NOTING

1. That the question of state power is the central question of any revolution
2. That state power is located in diverse sites, including the executive, the legislatures, the judiciary, security forces, the broad public sector, state owned enterprises, and other public institutions
3. That the strategic Medium Term Vision (MTV) of the SACP is to secure working class hegemony in the State in its diversity and in all other sites of power
4. That electoral politics are an important but not an exclusive terrain for the contesting of state power
5. Working class power in the state is related to working class power in all other sites, including the imperative of developing organs of popular power, active forms of participatory democracy and social mobilisation
6. That structures of the SACP and our cadres have confronted many problems with the way in which the Alliance has often functioned, particularly with regard to policy making, the lack of joint programmes on the ground, deployments and electoral list processes.

AND BELIEVING THAT

1 .While the state of white minority rule has been abolished and important constitutional and other gains have been won, the post-1994 state requires significant transformation.

2. This includes amongst other things:

• redressing the damaging impact of privatisation and restructuring policies that have weakened and exposed key strategic areas to the dominance of private capital;
• Addressing the lack of clear cadre development policy in the state;
• Building the strategic capacity of the state to drive developmental programmes;
• Rebuilding critical sectors of the public service, including health care and education, that are still reeling from the effects of years of down-sizing and other restructuring measures;
• Transforming the key area of local government, often the weakest sphere of governance.

3. That SACP cadres who are deployed as ANC elected representatives, or as public servants must continue to owe allegiance to the Party and cannot conduct themselves in ways that are contrary to the fundamental policies, principles and values of the SACP. The same principle applies to SACP cadres in other deployments, including within the trade union movement, community organisations, etc.

AND FURTHER BELIEVING THAT

• The alliance requires major reconfiguration if the NDR is to be advanced, deepened and defended, and if we are to achieve the SACP`s medium term vision objectives of building working class hegemony in all sites of power, including the state
• That this reconfiguration of the Alliance must include the following elements:
• The Alliance must establish itself as a strategic political centre;
• This political centre must develop a common capacity to drive strategy, broad policy, campaigns, deployment and accountability.

• At the same time, this reconfiguration of the Alliance must respect the independent role and strategic tasks of each of the alliance partners.

THEREFORE RESOLVE

• That the SACP deepens its capacity to provide strategic leadership in regard to key policy sites of state power, including industrial policy, social policies and the safety, security and defence sectors.

• That the SACP contests state power in elections in the context of a reconfigured Alliance.

• To mandate the incoming CC to actively pursue the different potential modalities of future SACP electoral campaigning. These modalities could involve either:

• An electoral pact with our Alliance partners, which could include agreement on deployments, possible quotas, the accountability of elected representatives including the accountability of SACP cadres to the Party, the election manifesto, and the importance of an independent face and role for the SACP and its cadres within legislatures.

OR

• Independent electoral lists on the voter`s roll with the possible objective of constituting a coalition Alliance agreement post elections.

• The SACP must actively engage its Alliance partners on these proposals.

• The Party and State Power Commission must take forward its work to study international experiences closely, and to analyse in detail and evaluate our local reality.

• The incoming CC must convene a policy conference within a year, in order to assess the feasibility and potential advantages and disadvantages of the different modalities noted above, including further detailed research.

• Whatever options are chosen, we must strengthen the SACP`s policy capacity, and our organised strength on the ground.

This important resolution taken at our July 2007 12th National Congress emerged, of course, partly out of an inner-Party debate. But it was also an intervention into what was then a tense Alliance reality in the immediate run-up to the ANC`s 52nd, Polokwane, National Conference.

The impact of the ANC`s 52nd (Polokwane) National Conference 2007

The outcome of the ANC`s Polokwane Conference (both its electoral and policy resolution outcomes) created space for what the SACP`s resolution had called for - a "reconfigured alliance". Of course, such a reconfiguration did not simply follow automatically and there were further challenges - particularly from what we later called the "New Tendency". However, post-Polokwane, and with the 1996 class project having been somewhat defeated, those within the SACP arguing for an independent SACP electoral list in the 2009 elections tended to be less vocal.

As a result, the work done by the "Party and State Power Commission" in the course of 2008 tended to shift focus. While discussion around "different modalities" of SACP participation in elections did not disappear, the Commission now focused on producing a more substantive Marxist-Leninist analysis of the post-1994 South African state. It also focused on making concrete proposals for a restructuring of the state after the 2009 elections. The key intervention of the Commission at this point was its report to the August 2008 Central Committee, entitled, "The SACP and the State - Ready to Govern"

August 2008 Commission Report - "The SACP and the State - Ready to Govern"

After summarising the previous work of the Commission, the August 2008 Report then referred to the 12th Congress Resolution (quoted above), and noted the following key features:

"Several key features of this resolution need to be noted:

• While upholding the importance of electoral politics, the resolution is at pains to avoid a narrow electoralist approach to the question of state power. It notes that state power "is located in diverse sites, including the executive, the legislatures, the judiciary, security forces, the broad public sector, state owned enterprises, and other public institutions". It also notes that working class hegemony over the state is related to working class power and mobilisation outside of the state. In short, the question of the SACP and state power is NOT reducible to the question of the SACP and its electoral role - which is not to say that this latter is an unimportant matter.

• The resolution is careful to locate the question of the SACP and state power within the context of our medium term vision (MTV) of building working class hegemony in ALL sites of power (including the state). The question of the exact role of the SACP (should it aspire to eventually be THE ruling party? for example) is a practical, relatively open-ended, and therefore conjunctural matter that needs always to be subordinate to the strategic priority of building working class (and not a particular party`s) hegemony in the state and elsewhere. The SACP is a weapon at the service of the proletarian class struggle, and not the other way around - i.e. the working class is not there to fulfil the SACP`s ambitions." (Commission Report to CC, August 2008)

The institutional configuration of the state

Most significantly the Commission Report to the August 2008 CC began to pay much greater critical attention to what it called the "institutional configuration of the post-1994" state. It noted that "As the SACP we have devoted considerable time and attention to tracing the displacement of our shared alliance 1994 programmatic platform (the RDP) by a very different strategic agenda (GEAR). However, we have probably paid insufficient attention to the question of how this displacement was facilitated and perpetuated by the institutional configuration of the post-1994 state."

The report continued: "In 1994, instead of the RDP being institutionalised as the overall strategic programme of government, it was marginalized into a Ministry within the presidency, headed by a Minister without Portfolio. The highest ranking official was a DDG. Attempts by the RDP ministry to coordinate work across government were resented by line departments who saw it as trespassing on their turf and the respective departmental DGs easily outranked the RDP DDG in the ensuing battles. The budget of the RDP Ministry was relatively limited, much of it donor funding and project-linked… what was meant to be THE integrative transformational national democratic programme [was reduced to] …a list of discreet projects many of them chosen or favoured by external players. The gap created at the centre of government in terms of the key strategic planning, integration and coordination, and monitoring functions by this marginalisation (and early demise) of the RDP Ministry was then filled by the Treasury."

"But Treasury`s mandate and key competence lies in financial management and this means that planning in the state is largely reduced to bureaucratic compliance with a medium-term budget cycle that emphasises financial management and mechanical templates. Evaluation of performance is reduced to measuring ability to spend a budget. For the Treasury the principal concern is the preservation of its macro-targets while the actual quality of outputs is liable to be less central.

"This results in the dislocation of any effective strategic coherence with a string of unintegrated and unstrategic mega-projects often dominating budgetary allocations - arms procurement, Coega, Gautrain, Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, Dube Tradeport, 2010, etc. Many of these are big infrastructural programmes with little thought about their sustainability beyond the construction phase. In all probability many of these represent corporate/comprador enclaves for private accumulation.

"The attempt to introduce some degree of integrative coherence into the state via the clusters has also generally not been successful. The clustering system brings together several line department ministers, but there is no hierarchy among ministers and in many of the clusters there are prolonged and sterile deadlocks - the most notable being the long-delayed conversion of TV broadcasting to digital."

"The coherence of the post-1994 democratic state is further compromised by dysfunctionalities between the three spheres of government. Provinces in particular are often responsible for problematic major mega-projects and the hollowing out of local government has often reduced municipalities into tendering agencies with all the attendant dangers of corruption. At the provincial and local level, the state is increasingly less and less an implementer and more and more a tender processor."

The August 2008 Commission Report also raised the reconfiguration of national departments. This was a proposal that the Commission through the SACP delegation had already tabled at the May 2008 Alliance Summit. To quote the proposals:

• A single rural development department rather than an under-resourced land affairs department as a junior partner to agriculture
• The separation of Minerals and Energy into two departments, to prevent the capture of energy policy by mining interests, and to ensure that there is a serious focus on energy security;
• Doing away with a department of Public Enterprises, and the allocation of SOEs to the relevant line departments; and
• The creation of a department of tertiary education."

Significantly, three out of four of these suggestions were to be implemented a year later in the immediate aftermath of the 2009 national elections.

However, what was probably the central "reconfiguration" of the state proposal put forward by the August 2008 Commission Report was only to be implemented in 2009 in a very partial form. This is what the report referred to as "an institutional centre for government-wide planning".

An institutional centre for government-wide planning

The August 2008 Commission Report argued for a national planning capacity in the following terms:

"Central to all that has been stated above is the argument that capitalist hegemony over the post-1994 state has been facilitated by (and in turn it has exacerbated) the absence of a strategic national democratic developmental (as opposed to budgetary/macro-economic) planning and co-ordination capacity in the state.

"If we are to build working class hegemony in the state then addressing this absence becomes absolutely critical. We have resolved that the ANC and the Alliance must constitute the strategic political centre. But there is little prospect of this being realised in practice if there is not technical and institutional capacity within the state to plan, monitor and coordinate our public resources - and therefore to discipline capital. An Alliance political centre might resolve on driving the strategic priority of job creation, but if the state is incoherent, locked into bureaucratic routinism, and captured and fragmented by the cherry-picking interests of compradorist factions within our movement working with monopoly capital, then there is little prospect of driving through strategic transformation."

Indeed, the idea of a national planning capacity was not new. At the ANC`s Polokwane 2007 National Conference the SACP had advanced the need for a national planning capacity. This was captured in one of the Polokwane resolutions:

"A strengthened role for the central organs of state, including through the creation of an institutional centre for government-wide economic planning with the necessary resources and authority to prepare and implement long and medium term economic and development planning."

The SACP 2008 Commission report noted and welcomed this resolution and added that:

"This planning centre [should] be located within the presidency; [and]…. this planning centre [should] embrace not just economic planning, but planning in general"

The SACP and state power following the 2009 elections

Participating in the 2009 elections on the ANC lists, the SACP played an active role in shaping the elections manifesto and in the list process. Following the elections, a significant number of SACP members (in their capacity as ANC members, of course) were elected into the National Assembly and into provincial legislatures. The Party was also actively consulted (for the first time since 1994) around ministerial and deputy ministerial appointments. While SACP comrades had been in Cabinet since 1994, previously the deployments (at best) often lacked any coherence and (at worst) may have even been deliberately designed to compromise SACP leadership with appointments to problematic areas (involving, for instance, the down-sizing of the public sector, or driving privatisation).

Since 2009, there has been a clear change - with numbers of SACP members deployed to key positions in the inter-related economic, infrastructure, rural development and skills and training sectors. This pattern was further consolidated by the Cabinet re-shuffle in June 2012.

While SACP members deployed into the national executive have not acted (and should not act) as a factional caucus, it is noteworthy that, working with other deployed comrades, they have succeeded in driving important advances in the key economic-infrastructure and related sectors - in particular, the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Action Programme (in its second and soon to be third iteration), the 2011 launch of the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission, and a major investment in re-building the Further Education and Training Sector. For the first time, there is a concerted effort to establish cross-cutting integration between these and other key policy and programmatic areas.

However, as noted above, the proposal to establish a fully-fledged STATE National Planning Organ within the presidency was not implemented after the 2009 elections. Instead, the NPC that was established was constituted of "civil society" members, that is, part-time commissioners from academia, research institutes, and the business sector. In effect, the NPC corresponded to what the SACP had proposed as an additional ADVISORY committee to a fully-fledged STATE Planning Organ. While the National Development Plan that has emerged from the NPC is a generally reasonable if uneven document - it is rather more a "vision" than a state plan. It has not emerged organically from within the state and although "adopted" by Cabinet, it is not clear how it can be implemented, or what kind of binding discipline it could possibly exercise over different line departments, or spheres of government, other than in a general "visionary" kind of way.

In short, the nettle of institutionalising a transversal, strategic, developmental discipline ACROSS the state has not yet been fully grasped. There still remain several contenders in this space - each with its own major objective (and often subjective) limitations (Treasury, Monitoring and Evaluation, Economic Development, COGTA, DPSA, NPC, and the clusters). Probably the most ambitious attempt to fill the gap of strategic coordination is the newly formed Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission - although its focus is infrastructure and its institutional functioning has yet to be bedded down in law. As the SACP Commission we believe that there are many positive lessons that can be learnt from the emerging PICC model - however, we need to continue to press for a fully-fledged STATE planning organ to be established after 2014.

While the SACP`s influence within the economic and infrastructure sectors has been marked, the Party`s influence over, and even policy development perspectives in regard to the critical criminal-justice-defence sectors has been marginal. And yet there are many challenges in this sector, including in Intelligence, SAPS and Defence. The SACP`s 12th and 13th Congresses produced resolutions on challenges in the SANDF - but we have generally failed to make any serious impact. The Marikana tragedy, the high number of civilian deaths at the hands of the police, allegations of torture, and the failure to provide basic community safety to many townships and informal settlements have highlighted serious challenges in SAPS. Again, our impact has been minimal.

The Augmented CC should mandate the SACP "Commission on the Party and State Power" to expand its work in these critical areas, and link this work to community mobilisation around street committees, CPFs, etc.

2011 Local Government Elections and a renewed debate on the SACP`s role in elections

The ANC`s 2007 Polokwane Conference and the 2009 National and Provincial elections created a new climate within the Alliance and resulted in the relative muting of the debate within the Party around whether the SACP should contest elections independently. However, those advancing this perspective did not disappear. Advocates of this approach tended to come from Party districts and branches in which there was a history of significant intra-Alliance tension and conflict. Real (or alleged) flaws in the ANC`s local government election nominations process in 2011 in some localities gave additional impetus once more to calls from some quarters for the SACP to contest elections separately.

While the proposed modalities for such independent contesting varied - generally those advancing the call suggested that an independent SACP list should be in selected municipalities (not everywhere); that the objective would be to contest "within the context of the Alliance"; and therefore to seek some kind of coalition agreement with the ANC AFTER the election. The proposal was presented, therefore, as "NOT being an attempt to break the alliance". The SACP CC noted these arguments, but viewed them as unrealistic. In a situation in which there were extreme tensions WITHIN the ANC over the list nominations process, the idea that there could be some localised "gentlemen`s agreement" between the SACP and ANC on separate lists was seen as utopian. The CC believed that, at least in current conditions, it remained the responsibility of SACP cadres to fight for the principled unity of the ANC and Alliance, and to work to build a majority within the ANC to defeat the "new tendency" and other negative factions, and generally to build working class hegemony within the ANC. Separate SACP electoral lists would compromise these priorities and play into the hands of the new tendency and other factionalists within the ANC.

Generally, this line of march was approved by an overwhelming majority within the SACP, and the 2011 local government elections saw significant numbers of SACP cadres being elected as ANC councillors - including as executive mayors in two metros. However, not all Party comrades were happy with this approach, and not all were happy with the local government elections outcomes.

This was the context in which at our July 2012, 13th National Congress there were tensions within the "Party and State Power" Congress commission. This was, perhaps, the one discordant note in an otherwise highly unified Congress. Not for the first time, this particular Congress commission was deliberately packed and targeted by one SACP district in particular - although there were also vociferous individual voices from elsewhere as well. The chair of the Commission was treated abusively, and the behaviour of some of the participants bordered on factionalism.

Those calling for the Party to contest elections independently at the 13th Congress commission were particularly aggrieved that the Commission on the Party and State Power (CPSP) had not tabled a separate report to Congress. They were not satisfied with the explanation that the ongoing work of the CPSP had been incorporated into both the Political Report to Congress and the draft SARS document. The Congress commission proposed that the incoming CPSP must table such a report to this Augmented CC, and this was accepted as part of the resolution on the "Party and State Power" by the plenary of Congress.

This present report from the CPSP is, accordingly, tabled partly in fulfilment of this Congress resolution. However, it is probable that the present report may not satisfy many of those who raised the issue in the commission at the 13th Congress. These comrades appear to expect the work of the CPSP to be narrowly if not exclusively focused on the Party`s participation in elections. As we have noted throughout this report, a narrow electoralism has NEVER been the focus of the work of the CPSP. However, ongoing assessment of and debate around the Party and elections is an important topic that needs to be kept on the agenda in the light of changing circumstances. We need to manage this debate carefully, however, and we need to guard against dividing the Party between those who have benefited from ANC-led electoral processes (whether as elected deployees, or as appointed officials) and those who have not.       

The struggle against the "new tendency" - and the tenderisation and agentification of the state

After 2009, the work of the Commission on the Party and State Power has focused considerably on the inter-related issues of corruption, BEE primitive accumulation, and the new public management restructuring of the public service and state (as an integral component of the 1996 class project). The political context of this focus has, of course, been the sharpening intra-ANC battle (led by the SACP) against the "new tendency". The Commission`s focus on the new public management restructuring of the public service and state (along with BEE primitive accumulation) endeavoured to shift the debate around corruption from a merely moralising and personalising discourse - to analyse more profoundly the systemic underpinnings of corruption.

This work of the Commission contributed to a major reworking of the relevant section in the South African Road to Socialism - as adopted at our 13th National Congress in 2012. Essentially, the new public management approach sought to apply private sector norms and practices to the state and public service - including monetarising performance incentives, the replacement of professional leadership with generic managerial leadership, the fragmentation of the state apparatus into a myriad of "cost centres" and agencies, and the outsourcing of capacity. This created a wide range of localities for rent-seeking and tender-preneuring activities, especially in the South African reality which combined a toxic mix of:

• the subjective and objective vulnerabilities of a new political elite, in the context of an extremely unequal society;
• the strategic agenda of established capital (to protect its own interests by accommodating a buffer stratum with political connections);
• the canonization of BEE as official state policy and the deliberate fostering of a supposedly "patriotic bourgeoisie" (whose objective situation, quite apart from any subjective leanings to honesty or corruption, was always liable to lead to compradorial and parasitic behaviour); and
• fragmented, unjoined-up governance structures ushered in under the auspices of the new public management approach and inevitably creating a fertile milieu for a wide-range of rent-seeking behavior to proliferate at public expense.

Proposed ongoing tasks for the CPSP

In the run-up to the 2014 elections, the SACP/CPSP needs to build on our 2008/2009 relative success in making a major impact on changing the configuration of the national state and the systemic features that undermine a strategic developmental discipline. While important progress has been made, as we have noted above, much still needs to be done:

• Including the need for a fully-fledged STATE planning capacity. Among the many key areas that require decisive strategic attention from such a capacity is the rapid urbanisation process underway in our society (and throughout the global South);
• The developmental transformation of the criminal-justice-defence apparatus of the state;
• Overcoming the negative impact of the "new public management" through re-building state and parastatal capacity, through drastically limiting outsourcing; through reaffirming a professional civil service ethic; and critically by dealing much more decisively with corruption.

The CPSP also needs to empower the SACP to engage actively with the ongoing discussions around the role of provinces and the strengthening of local government.

All of this work needs to be guided by our over-riding objective of consolidating working class hegemony in all sites of power - not least within the state apparatus.