SACP 11th CONGRESS RESOLUTIONS

Contents

Resolution on the Alliance and the Role of the
SACP

Resolution on Socio-Economic Transformation

Resolution on Fighting the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Resolution on Addressing the Land and Agrarian
Question in South Africa

Resolution on Priority Public Goods, Services and
Entities

Resolution on the Challenge Facing Africa’s Crisis
of Underdevelopment

Resolution on the conviction and sentencing of five
Cuban patriots in the USA and on the Blockade

Resolution on the Re-establishment of the Young
Communist League, South Africa

Resolution on the Anti-Privatisation Campaign

Resolution on the Special National Congress

Resolution on the Alliance and the Role of the
SACP

Reaffirming

1. The SACP’s strategic commitment to advancing, deepening and defending
   the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) as a crucial strategic objective in
   its own right, and as the most direct path to socialism in South Africa; and
2. The SACP’s longstanding strategic commitment to the Alliance, and to
   actively building a broad, mass-based ANC committed to the leading role of
   the working class within the NDR.

And Believing that

1. Notwithstanding our democratic political advances we have not been able to
   break out of an accumulation path that is, in many respects, unfavourable to
   working people and the poor; and
2. Our current situation has introduced new possibilities but also new
   challenges, including the emergence of new class strata within our movement
3. Some of the recent difficulties within the Alliance arise out of problems
   with policy, particularly economic policy, as well as a lack of a shared
   understanding on the relationship between the Alliance and governance
   processes.
4. There is a need to create space for increased engagement within the
   Alliance, including for self-criticism and constructive criticism

Therefore Resolves to instruct the Central Committee:

1. To develop a clear strategy and programme to raise the independent profile
   of the SACP, both within the alliance and the broader society;
2. To take active steps to engage in a struggle to promote a working class
   hegemony within the NDR;
3. To expand the capacity of the SACP to make its own specific policy
   proposals on key national issues;
4. To establish mechanisms to more effectively utilise the large number of
   SACP members, who are public representatives, to promote SACP policy;
5. To work with Alliance partners to ensure that the agreements reached at
   the Ekurhuleni Alliance Summit are implemented;
6. To advance campaigns that give socialist content to the NDR, including the
   eradication of poverty, dealing with unemployment and job losses, defending
   and extending the public sector, free basic services, support for the
   principle of the Basic Income Grant, land and agrarian reform, recognising
   unpaid reproductive labour and informal work, building a socialist
   co-operative movement.

Resolution on Socio-Economic Transformation

Noting that:

1. There is growing poverty and an increasing gap between the rich and the
   poor;
2. There is on the one hand growing unemployment, human misery relating to
   HIV/AIDs while on the other hand there is an increase in food prices, cost
   of basic services and transport;
3. The poor rely on provision of basic services by the state;
4. Women and children are the largest proportion of poor people and remain
   the most vulnerable in society including being victims of violence and
   abuse;
5. Bureaucratisation resulting in maladministration of state services for the
   poor and corrupt tendencies by public officials is a manifestation of
   capitalism;
6. Ward committees have been established to facilitate the participation of
   people in the identification of their needs and in the delivery of services;

Believing that:

1. The state must intervene on behalf of the poor and stimulate
   socio-economic development by:

• Providing basic services, amongst others;
• regulate the private sector;

2. promoting of community intiatives and collective forms of ownership;
3. Transforming the state is fundamental for service delivery to the working
   class and the poor;
4. A public sector must not only be representative of society but be biased
   to ensure greater equity in the delivery of services;
5. Public servants should have a revolutionary morality of caring for the
   working class and the poor and putting people first;
6. Service delivery that is biased to the poor and vulnerable in society will
   only be achieved through working class hegemony of society;
7. A basic income grant will contribute to addressing the immediate crisis of
   growing poverty and the ravaging effects of HIV/AIDs on the poor;
8. Addressing equality is a fundamental building block of socialism;

Resolves that:

1. The restructuring of the state that results in the privatisation of basic
   services and shedding of jobs be halted;
2. The state provide basic services such as health, housing, education etc.
   to the working class and the poor;
3. The state ensures that all state owned enterprises have and obligation to
   deliver of basic services to the working class and the poor;
4. The state ensures that all state owned enterprises have and obligation to
   deliver of basic services to the working class and the poor;
5. The state expands its programme of ensuring that civil servants put people
   first;
6. The delivery of services must focus on women and children, in particular;
7. There be serious consideration of introducing a basic income grant;
8. The child support grant be extended beyond the age of six years;
9. There be a partnership between the state and people in the development of
   collective ownership and delivery of services;
10. The SACP structures builds capacity to ensure that all sectors of society
    and communities participate in ward committees to ensure that:

• service delivery is based on needs of the working class and the poor;
• there is a partnership in the delivery of services;
• there is accountability for service delivery.

Resolution on Fighting the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Noting:

• That the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in our country and on the
  continent is already devastating; that millions of people will suffer poor
  health; that there are indications that the death rate in our country is
  rising and that our Human Development Index is declining; that women face an
  increased burden of care and support and are most vulnerable to HIV
  infection as a result of patriarchal practices and attitutdes in society.

• That a fundamental challenge in arresting this pandemic is to bring down
  the rate of new infections by a mass campaign and public education promoting
  awareness about the imperative to change behaviour

• That the success of such a campaign is inextricably linked to the
  struggle for human development, including a radical improvement in literacy,
  housing provision, a string and effective public health system and
  employment.

• That an effective prevention campaign needs to be complemented by an
  appropriate treatment programme that can extend the lives and improve the
  quality of life of persons living with HIV/AIDS and give hope to millions of
  infected and affected people.

• That the private sector in South Africa is manifestly failing to
  contribute effectively to combating this pandemic; that there are resources
  available in the private sector that can be mobilised to fight this
  pandemic; that private appropriation of knowledge in the form of patent and
  intellectual property rights can be a barrier to making available affordable
  medicines

Therefore Resolves to strengthen and intensifying the SACP’s contribution
to the fight against HIV/AIDS, including by:

1. Mobilisation of our people behind the implementation of an holistic and
   appropriate government-led strategy to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

2. Actively linking up with and strengthening the work of community
   organisations involved in fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

3. Consciously seeking to transform gender relations and stereotypes that
   make women and girls the most vulnerable to HIV infection.

4. Contributing to, and supporting efforts to develop an appropriate
   treatment plan

5. Intensifying our campaign against multinational pharmaceutical companies
   to provide cheaper drugs, not only anti-retrovirals, but also drugs to
   combat the many curable diseases afflicting our country and continent.

6. Intensifying the struggle against HIV/AIDS discrimination in all spheres
   of society, in particular in the workplace and in the financial sector.

7. Using this campaign as a platform to struggle for the building of a
   comprehensive public health system.

Resolution on Addressing the Land Agrarian
Question in South Africa

Noting that:

• The SACP has not paid sufficient attention – both theoretically and
  practically - to the issues of land reform, agrarian transformation and
  rural development
• There is a need to properly understand and define the main content of the
  land and agrarian questions in South Africa
• There is a need to support struggles for access to land
• There is a need to build motive forces for rural transformation

Believing that:

• A bold state led rural development strategy can help address problems
  around job creation, service and infrastructural development, sustainable
  livelihoods to address multiple needs, food security and access to land
• Such a strategy will be crucial in particular in helping to address the
  plight of poor women headed households, which are the majority in the rural
  areas, and in contributing to the transformation of gender relations in the
  countryside

Resolves that:

• The SACP gives urgent attention to issues of land reform, agrarian
  transformation and rural development in developing its strategy for growth
  and development, taking note of:

• inadequacies in the current land reform programme, seeking to broaden it
  by
• linking it to agrarian reforrn; addressing issues around land ownership,
  control
• and distribution,; exploring collective usage of unused land owned by
  the state; ensuring that an audit of land is undertaken, especially that
  land owned by foreigners, the state, or held by chiefs
• the need for an agrarian strategy to address issues of appropriate
  farming systems, agricultural markets, co – operatives, human
  development, linkages between agrarian strategy and industrial strategy
  and the rural and urban areas
• the need for a rural development strategy to be based not only on a
  welfare approach but also to be seen as an important part of our growth
  and development strategy. We also need to take it forward practically.

• The SACP needs to increase its visibility in the rural areas, undertaking
  an analysis of the main class forces, and helping to organise farmworkers,
  small farmers, the unemployed rural poor Greater attention needs to be paid
  to analysing the nature of, and the transforming of, the rural state and the
  role that it can play in rural development

Resolution on Priority Goods, Services and
Entities

• Recalling the Resolution "Priority Public Entities"
  adopted at the 1999 Strategy Conference
• Reaffirms its view that:

1. The public sector and public entities remain critical in the provision of
   basic services and in shifting our economy onto a growth and development
   path capable of solving problems of poverty, unemployment and inequality
2. The strengthening of the public sector and public entities will provide an
   important stepping stone to socialism

Therefore declares its view that among major sectors producing public
goods and services over which the state must maintain strategic ownership and
control are the following:

• Education
• Health
• Water
• Municipal Services
• Central Banking
• Development Finance including Industrial Development Corporation
• Transport: most forms of public transport and communications,
  infrastructure including roads, railways, pipelines, ports and
  telecommunications
• Electricity supply/strategic energy sectors including the strategic
  purchase and distribution of liquid fuel
• Mineral rights
• Housing parastatal

Further calls on the incoming Central Committee to refine and develop
SACP perspectives, and take forward a national debate on issues of the mandating
and governance of public enterprises as service providers rather than profit
maximising institutions, as well as on acceptable and beneficial ways in which
public enterprises can access resources and technology in the hands of private
capital.

Resolution on the Challenge Facing Africa’s
Crisis of Underdevelopment

Believing that:

1. The struggle to break out of the crisis persisting and systemic
   underdevelopment, caused by centuries of colonialism and decades of
   intensified imperialist subordination, is the key challenge confronting our
   continent
2. This crisis manifests itself in, amongst other things, weak state
   formation and a lack of democracy in many African societies, the absence of
   infrastructure or, where it exists, infrastructure skewed towards the narrow
   interests of former colonial powers and the transnationals; economic
   disaccummulation; social instability and endemic war; a burgeoning health
   crisis, including the resurgence of many curable diseases, and the HIV/AIDS
   pandemic; a collapse of agricultural production and resulting hunger and
   famine; and the unsustainable destruction of our environment.

Noting that:

1. The NEPAD document, as endorsed by the newly launched African Union,
   correctly evokes the concept of "under-development" as the key
   challenge of our own continent, and appropriately highlights key
   manifestations of this crisis.

Further Noting that the NEPAD process and the NEPAD document contain some
actual and potential weaknesses including:

1. A process that has, by general consent, been for the moment not
   effectively participatory;
2. The danger that the document, in the present form, is not sufficiently
   buttressed against a neo-liberal hijacking especially that the sections on
   political and economic governance, while seeking to address themselves to
   real issues and put in place processes owned by Africans themselves, become
   a lever for new conditionalities imposed by imperialism.
3. A virtual silence on gender, and the inter-relationship of patriarchal
   oppression and African under-development;
4. The serious under-rating of the public and para-statal sectors as key
   strategic resources for taking forward economic and social infra-structural
   development

Therefore Resolves that the SACP:

1. Has the responsibility to engage actively with the NEPAD process from the
   perspective of our own Marxist-Leninist analysis of the current global
   conjuncture, and of the underlying imperialist dynamics that continue to
   reproduce our continent’s crisis of underdevelopment
2. Must support the enormously positive potential in the NEPAD process,
   ensuring the widest levels of working class and popular participation and
   mobilisation throughout our continent against under-development; and
3. With our Alliance, and with all progressive formations within our country
   and throughout our continent, must seek to strengthen the many strong points
   of the existing NEPAD process, while overcoming shortcomings and potential
   weaknesses.
4. Must seek to rally the widest range of international forces, in particular
   from among our historical friends and allies, in the struggle against our
   continent’s crisis of underdevelopment.

Resolution on the conviction and sentencing of
five Cuban patriots in the USA and on the Blockade

Believing that:

1. One of the key terrains of struggle that contributed decisively to the
   defeat of Apartheid in South Africa was the international solidarity
   movement.

2. The contribution of Cuba to the liberation of the peoples of Africa, and
   of Southern Africa in particular was vital, and was based on selfless and
   principled internationalism.

3. The Cuban Revolution and its achievements, particularly in terms of the
   defence of national sovereignty, internationalism, education, social
   services and participatory democracy, serve as a model and an inspiration to
   oppressed peoples all over the world.

4. It is the duty and responsibility of all progressive forces to support
   the struggle of the Cuban people to defend their sovereignty and the
   remarkable achievements of their revolution.

Noting that:

1. For the past 40 years Cuba has been the victim of sustained criminal and
   terrorist campaign organised and directed by the exiled Cuban Mafia based in
   the USA, and supported by the US government, which has caused massive human
   and financial damage to Cuba.

2. Cuba, as a sovereign, independent state, has every right, under
   international law, to employ all reasonable means at its disposal to defend
   its sovereignty and to combat the terrorist activities of the Miami Cuban
   Mafia.

3. Five Cuban counter terrorism operatives have been arrested in the US,
   convicted and given extremely harsh sentences by the politically corrupt US
   justice system, serving the interests of the Miami Cuban Mafia.

4. FOCUS, the South African Friends of Cuba Society, is launching at this
   Congress a national campaign to secure the release of the five Cuban heroes.

Resolves as follows:

1. To demand the immediate and unconditional release by the United States
   government of the five Cuban patriots.

2. To commit all structures of the SACP to supporting the campaign launched
   by FOCUS for the release of the five Cuban heroes, by:

• Collecting signatures on the FOCUS petition

• Encouraging members to write to the US ambassador in South Africa,
  demanding the release of the five heroes, and

• Encouraging members to write letters of support to the imprisoned
  comrades

3. To mandate the Central Committee to liaise with Alliance partners, human
   rights and other civil society organisations to request their support for
   the FOCUS campaign.

4. To demand of the US government the immediate and unconditional lifting of
   the economic blockade imposed on Cuba.

Resolution on the Re establishment of the Young
Communist League, South Africa

Noting:

1. The resolutions of the 8th, 9th and 10th
   Party Congresses as well as the 1999 and 2000 Strategy Conferences
   pertaining to the challenges of organising the youth into socialism;

2. The weak state in which the youth movement finds itself currently. Part
   of the explanation for this is the fact that the Party does not have a forum
   within this sector to assert itself and influence processes;

3. Our programme, which requires that we build the SACP as vanguard party
   with a relatively mass character.

4. That all provinces have recommended that a Young Communist League be
   re-established.

Believing that

5. Resourceful people that they are, young people are capable of confronting
   problems specific to them by virtue of their youth, through variety of ways,
   including organised forms;

6. The youth is capable of taking initiative to organise itself in forms
   appropriate for the pursuit of a resolution of these problems, including
   into a structure that would carry forth the ideals of socialism;

7. The Party is seized with the responsibility to harness the enthusiasm,
   elan and preparedness of the youth to organise for socialism;

Therefore resolves to:

8. Re-establish the Young Communist League as a forum for recruitment,
   induction and training of young people into socialists and communists with
   the capacity to contribute directly and decisively to the sustainability of
   the SACP for years to come. The YCL shall be launched by July 2003.
   Some of the tasks to be undertaken as a build-up to the Re-establishment
   Congress will include:

8.1 The Central Committee assigning one in its ranks to assume political
responsibility for the project; and

8.2 A National Consultative Conference of young members of the SACP,
progressive youth and students to be convened within six months of this 11th
Congress to consider all aspects pertaining to the YCL, including a
constitution, composition, affiliation and programme;

Resolution on the Anti-Privatisation Campaign

Noting

1. The massive levels of unemployment in South Africa, which have worsened in
   recent years, with further job losses
2. That poverty and inequality remain unacceptably high and impact negatively
   on workers and the poor
3. That many South Africans still do not enjoy food security, and that the
   sharply rising food prices have exarcebated the problem
4. That processes towards the privatisation of public enterprises, including
   those which provide basic services, impact negatively on the poor
5. The previous resolutions which the SACP has adopted on these issues
6. That COSATU has announced the lifting of its suspension of action against
   privatisation, and has announced a general strike for 1-2 October 2002
   against privatisation, job losses, poverty and food security, and that the
   strike has been called with the objective of advancing the issues raised

Believing that

1. A democratic and developmental public sector, and the rolling out of the
   basic services are building blocks of socialism
2. That the privatisation of public enterprises, particularly those which
   provide basic services is likely to undermine service delivery to the poor
   and to lead to job losses, as confirmed by local and international
   experiences
3. As a Party of and for the working class, the SACP needs to mobilise in
   defence of and in support of the interests of the working class

Resolves

1. That the SACP actively and urgently promotes the convening of an Alliance
   Task Team to facilitate effective engagement and discussion between Alliance
   partners on this issue in a way that makes the proposed general strike
   unnecessary
2. That as we are in a phase of preparation for a Growth and Development
   Summit, a moratorium be placed on restructuring of public enterprises that
   impact negatively on the working class

Further Resolves

1. That the SACP throws its weight behind the strike

Resolution on the Special National Congress

Noting:

1. The SACP Constitution has been amended so that our National Congress will
   in future be held every 5, instead of 4, years

2. The Constitution currently provides that "The Central Committee may
   convene other Special National Congresses which shall have the same power as
   the main Congress except for the provisions relating to the election of
   elected office bearers and members of the Central Committee"

3. The need to convene at least one Special National Congress during the
   five-year terms between National Congresses

4. The need to avoid altering the Constitution unduly

Therefore Resolves

1. That the Central Committee ensures that it convenes a Special National
   Congress in terms of the Constitution during the third year of each
   five-year term between National Congresses