29 December 2023

The South African Communist Party wishes the people, the majority of whom are the workers, unemployed and poor, a prosperous new year, 2024.

The struggle against neoliberal stranglehold

In 2023, the SACP strengthened its political strategy and efforts against neoliberalism. The neoliberal stranglehold on our policy space, including its macroeconomic framework, inclusive of austerity, is suffocating our economy. This hampers the transformation, diversification, and shared growth through both distribution and redistribution. Neoliberal policies prevent the elimination of inequality, poverty eradication and employment creation on a scale sufficient to resolve our national unemployment crisis.

To achieve success against neoliberalism and turn our economy around, through measures such as an adequately funded, high-impact industrial policy, we need a more united working-class and wider unity embracing progressive sections of the peasants and the middle strata. In the period ahead, the SACP will deepen its efforts to forge a progressive left front and build a powerful, mass socialist movement. This is also crucial for the adoption of new, more effective strategies and modalities on all fronts of the broader political struggle.

Democratic achievements

To the working-class the SACP says: “Let us unite and defend our democratic achievements as we take forward the simultaneous, interrelated struggles to complete our national democratic revolution and achieve socialism – the sustainable solution to the exploitative capitalist system, including its inherent crises and failures.”

The public economic sector

Neoliberal policy choices, corruption and governance decay under state capture combined are responsible for the collapse of our state-owned enterprises and critical economic infrastructure networks, such as rail networks, ports, and electric power generation capacity. 

We need greater working-class unity to resolve these issues and build a robust and diverse public economic sector characterised by thriving state-owned enterprises and infrastructure networks.

National Health Insurance

This year, the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces passed the National Health Insurance Bill amid opposition by monopolies in the private healthcare and financial sectors.

Private healthcare monopolies, who have turned the provision of quality healthcare into an exorbitant commodity accessible only by a few who can afford to pay, benefit from accumulating profits from medical aid schemes.

Financial administration monopolies, who benefit from financialisation, and medical aid scheme benefits turned into financialised products, limit the preventative and crucial day-to-day healthcare benefits through actuarial design. Day-to-day healthcare benefits under medical aid schemes typically exhaust around mid-year or shortly thereafter. This leaves most people, often obligated to subscribe to medical aid schemes as a condition of employment, without day-to-day healthcare coverage for the rest of the year annually.

To stop the injustices committed by the monopolies and ensure quality healthcare for all, we need to defend the advance to the National Health Insurance as a democratic achievement. In the same vein, we must protect the National Health Insurance by ensuring that it is not financialised, corrupted and looted. 

Red October Campaign objectives

In the period ahead, the SACP will intensify its Red October Campaign objectives to bring an end to the cost-of-living crisis and achieve accelerated land redistribution. This includes enhancing food production by the people, for the people, ensuring bulk water infrastructure development and maintenance to support food production, clean drinking water, and other household water needs. Taking forward and expanding the village development programme that we have launched is critical as part of these objectives.

Gender equality and elimination of racism

All SACP campaigns streamline the struggle to achieve gender equality. This struggle, inclusive of the fight to end gender-based violence, must succeed for South Africa to realise the vision of non-sexism.

In the same vein, the struggle to end both the legacy of racial oppression and its continuing practices of racism must prevail for our country to realise the vision of non-racialism. This struggle is an integral part of the SACP's historical mission.

Forthcoming national and provincial elections

Next year, South Africa will hold the seventh five-year national and provincial democratic elections since April 1994. The SACP is approaching the forthcoming elections through engagements with our allies and an active struggle at all levels to reconfigure the Alliance as our preferred modality. We will use this to mobilise the working-class, elevating our independent voice, to intensify the struggle to put working-class interests to the front. The SACP is calling on all people who are eligible to vote to register online, at any time, or in person during the final voter registration weekend, on 3 and 4 February 2024.

Based on both the immediate imperatives to defend and deepen the national democratic revolution and long-rage considerations to take care of the working-class’ future as a movement, the SACP is simultaneously forging a popular left front and building a mass-based socialist movement. This is guided by the principles of strategic consistency – as opposed to free-floating opportunism or short-termism, analytical alertness – the capacity to develop a concrete analysis of the concrete conditions, and tactical flexibility – the ability to avoid being caught flat-footed while still guided by revolutionary strategic consistency.

Rand manipulation

In the period that lies ahead, the SACP will deepen its efforts for individuals directly involved in manipulating our currency’s pair or exchange rate with other currencies to be held personally liable. They should face corruption charges and prison sentences. The fines imposed on culpable banks should be raised beyond 10 per cent of their annual income, and additional legislative measures must be adopted against them to clamp down on currency manipulation. 

Unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people

To the working-class and progressive sections of our society, the SACP says, “Let’s deepen our unwavering solidarity with the victims of apartheid everywhere it rears its ugly head.” 

This year, particularly since October, the SACP organised and took part in protest actions, along with various progressive organisations, against the horrific genocide of Palestinians by the apartheid Israeli settler state. For 75 years the apartheid Israeli settler state has committed untold atrocities against the Palestinians, expropriated vast tracts of their land and intensified its atrocious acts each time the Palestinian people escalated their just struggle for the return of their land and democratic self-determination under conditions of freedom.

Since the start of its latest horrific genocidal campaign against the Palestinians on October 7^th, the Israeli regime has killed over 20 400 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Included in the casualties are 106 people the Israeli military has killed in Maghazi refugee camp on Sunday night, 24 December, and patients it killed in bombarding healthcare centres. Also included in the casualties are over 100 journalists. The silence of journalist associations in South Africa regarding this unprecedented injustice is deafening; it will not be long before they are reminded of it when they speak out on events of underwhelming magnitude affecting journalism elsewhere. The apartheid Israeli regime has made it either completely impossible or at least near impossible for Palestinians to receive humanitarian aid.

Amid its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, the apartheid Israeli settler state’s Energy Ministry has awarded several licenses to different companies, including BP and Eni, for exploration of natural gas off the Mediterranean coast. Not unrelated, the Gaza Marine natural gas field offshore from the Gaza Strip is estimated to hold 32 billion cubic metres of natural gas.

The SACP condemns the Israeli settler regime in the strongest terms possible and supports efforts to hold its leaders accountable for the atrocious deeds. We reiterate our call for a ceasefire.

Solidarity with the people of Swaziland, Morocco, Latin America and others elsewhere against imperialist aggression. 

We reiterate our message of solidarity with the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy, and the people of Western Sahara against occupation by Morocco.

We express our solidarity with the people of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and others in Latin America, and in Syria and elsewhere against imperialist aggression.