16 September 2019, Durban

Receive warm revolutionary greetings from the SACP Central Committee on behalf of our more than 311, 000 members. Our input here today is organised along the lines of what we see as some of the urgent and important challenges facing the working class and our country broadly. This is also guided by your theme for this 14^th National Congress: United together, Let us build SACTWU, our industry, our country and our continent.

Gender based violence and rising levels of criminality

We convened our Annual Augmented Central Committee from 6^th to 8^th September 2019.

Our point of departure is that current developments in our country are largely a reflection of a South Africa and SADC region that are in both economic and social distress. Since the 2007/8 global economic crisis, our economy has seen the persistence of its stubborn structural features of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

The rest of the SADC region continues to be the labour reservoir, not only of South Africa’s monopoly capital but also increasingly for other non-monopoly sectors of our economy and sections of South Africa’s middle and professional classes. Unlike prior to 1994, labour from the rest of SADC is no longer housed in hostels of major mining companies, but is now occupying the very same informal settlements as occupied by South Africa’s largely unemployed labour. This reality in itself creates conditions for conflict as it is like setting the poor against the poor.

The reality just outlined is worsened by employers who prefer the more vulnerable and therefore cheap labour from the rest of the region, especially undocumented migrants now increasingly employed as casual labourers in agriculture, hospitality, private security, transport and domestic work sectors. Again this is setting sections of the working class against each other. What often gets described as xenophobia is in part essentially these intra-class conflicts and competition for same scarce resources.

The economic and social distress in South Africa and the region has led to what as the SACP we describe as the crisis of social reproduction – simply put, the increasing inability of poor and working class families to make ends meet. This creates and exacerbates conditions of violence, including the incidence of gender based violence. It is often women who bear most of the brunt of violence in distressed patriarchal societies, although women abuse is not only found in poor and working class communities, albeit very intense in latter communities.

Intensify the struggle against all forms of violence and criminality

Your 14^th National Congress is convened against the realities just described, among other key developments. South Africa has just been experiencing heightened levels of violence in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and in other provinces. I want to take this opportunity, on behalf of the SACP, to reiterate our unequivocal condemnation of acts of violence and criminality, regardless of the nationality of those involved and affected. The SACP is calling upon all people who live in South Africa, South African citizens as well as residents and foreign nationals alike, to refrain from taking the law into their own hands, whatever grievances our communities might have.

It is also clear from the SACP standpoint and experiences that the struggle against violence in general and gender based violence in particular, poverty, inequality and unemployment, will not be successfully tackled unless we also deal with the scourge of substance and alcohol abuse in many of our families and communities. Again, often what parades as xenophobia are in part a reflection of community frustrations with the rising phenomenon of drug abuse and the role of both South Africans and foreign nationals involved in drug dealing.

Our education and other institutions, as part of the broader society, are also becoming sites of different types of violence and criminality. These include gender based violence and drug dealing. We welcome the stance by President Cyril Ramaphosa for law enforcement to be tightened, including through tougher sentences for gender based violence. However, government alone will not be able to successfully defeat these many social scourges afflicting our communities and society.

Before I proceed on this score, I want to take this opportunity to reiterate the SACP’s strong condemnation of all forms of gender based violence, including sexual harassment, rape and femicide. Women as well as LGBTIQ+ community members are the most and worst affected by the scourge of gender based violence.

The SACP has resolved to intensify our campaign against violence in general and gender based violence in particular. We launched this programme two years ago, in 2017, through our Red October Campaign, deeply concerned that the problem was not only continuing, but threatens to get out of hand unless the working class throws its full weight behind this campaign.

Next month, in October, we will again be launching our annual Red October Campaign, this time for the October to October 2019–2020 period. We will be focusing on building a variety of organisational fronts to primarily confront gender based violence and other challenges in our communities and local government. This is part of making our own contribution in forging a widest possible patriotic front to defend our democracy and secure the future of our country.

Our objectives for tackling gender based violence in particular include campaigning for proper socialisation and equal treatment of all children. In this regard we will be pushing a strategic focus on both the girl and the boy child. This includes pushing the socialisation of the boy child from birth to never engage in any form of gender based violence. The reason for this strategic focus is that an overwhelming majority of those engaging in the despicable acts of gender based violence and sexual harassment are males.

Our Central Committee has also called for the introduction of education on gender equality from the lowest levels of schooling, throughout the whole education system, including colleges and universities.

The SACP also intends to intensify its Know and Act in your Neighbourhood Campaign. We will be collecting proposals and demands from the people, with the aim of engaging with government to improve the criminal justice system and methods of work to effectively help the victims of gender based violence.

We are calling on our people to take note of the gender based violence command centre hotline, 080 042 8428. Let us popularise the hotline to assist all vulnerable people and survivors of gender based violence to use it to access the support they need from the Police, social workers and medical professionals.

Most importantly, we are calling upon organised workers to take up the fight against gender based violence in earnest. Otherwise this legitimate struggle is likely to be hijacked by all sorts of opportunistic elements for disingenuous reasons. SACTWU, organising in a predominantly women sector, needs to play an even more prominent role. Working class women should play a leading role in the struggles against gender based violence, much as this struggle must be waged by both women and men.

Decisive action against the erosion of state authority

The SACP is also deeply concerned about the erosion of the strategic capacity and discipline of the state, in particular the key components of our criminal justice system, like the police crime intelligence, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks), State Security Agency, and even the National Prosecuting Authority. This erosion of state authority, in many ways and by no small measure, has left many households and communities exposed to unabated criminality.

Working class communities and lower sections of the middle strata are the most and worst affected, while the rich have resorted to gating their upmarket areas and engaging private security armies to protect themselves.

The erosion of state authority in the past years, in this case especially law enforcement authorities, is a direct consequence of state capture. State authorities were repurposed to either turn a blind eye to state capture or aid rogue or criminal activities. These included illegal gathering of intelligence against all those seen to be fighting against state capture.  This has come out clearly from the testimonies made at the commissions of inquiry into state capture and tax administration and governance by SARS, as well as from the report of the high level intelligence service review panel.

Therefore unless drastic action is taken, starting at the top echelons responsible for state capture, it will remain difficult to rebuild the strategic capacity and discipline of law enforcement authorities to perform their work competently and without favour, fear and prejudice.

I therefore want to take this opportunity to reiterate the consistent call we have made, as the SACP, for a thorough, independent and specialised investigation into the manifestation and impact of state capture in law enforcement authorities and their infiltration by criminal syndicates.

The SACP calls upon organised labour in particular to play a key role in the cleaning up of the institutions of our criminal justice system, as well as all other state institutions that have been corrupted by state capture and other corrupt activities.

Society-wide transformation to systematically eliminate violence

Colonial and apartheid oppression embedded violence in its law and used it in education, training and management of particularly the oppressed. Consequently, violence was implanted in our society’s social fabric as one of the ways for expressing concerns and settling disagreements and disputes. The forms of violence unleashed against the oppressed in the colonial type and apartheid workplace, in the domestic sector where “kitchen girls” and “garden boys” were employed, in class rooms through corporal punishment, found their manifestation and evolution as “a way of life” in their households and communities.

It is therefore imperative to attach great importance on fostering a human rights based, non-violent national psyche in South Africa to eliminate the persistent legacy of the inherently violent regime apartheid was.

The National Treasury’s “…economic strategy for South Africa”

Our Augmented Central Committee expressed a deep concern about the National Treasury pushing prescriptions (“recommendations”) from “OECD Economic Surveys: South Africa” and “Economic Policy Reforms 2017: Going for Growth” as a key part of its “…economic strategy for South Africa”.  We will deal with this problem extensively in the process agreed upon by the Alliance. In the intervening period of time, we want to emphasise the following.

The SACP resolutely rejects the OECD prescription for South Africa to weaken its social dialogue mechanisms, especially collective bargaining. The OECD “recommendation” runs counter to the spirit of the Thuma Mina Campaign and the need for the social compacting led by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Accordingly, the SACP has denounced the push for the roll-back of the legally recognised extension of collective bargaining agreements.

The SACP calls upon the working class to intensify its focus on what should be our number one priority – that of driving decent work inclusive of the much needed employment growth through structural transformation of our economy. In so far as a broader consensus is required in order to turn our economy around, the SACP rejects any suggestion that workers’ hard won rights and other achievements must be taken away or rolled back as a precondition for “inclusive” economic growth and development.

The SACP also wishes to reiterate its stance that economic growth alone, without structural economic transformation, is unlikely to address the systemic colonial features holding back our economic and broader social progress. It is important to go to the root and resolve the underlying causes of our economic problems instead of merely focusing on the symptoms.  

The SACP has also dismissed another anti-worker proposition propagating the idea that wage increases are responsible for entrenching inequality and rising unemployment.

The SACP reiterates the strategic perspective, enshrined in the ANC 2019 election manifesto, of the absolute necessity to move our national democratic transition on to a second radical phase. Accordingly, we are calling on the working class to unite and rally behind its common class interests. In this regard the SACP is putting forward a framework aimed at advancing structural transformation towards a people’s economy. Central to these measures is the national imperative to develop and diversify national production, and radically reduce inequality, poverty and unemployment through decent work – which necessarily includes employment growth.

1.    A comprehensive and coherent industrial policy, including a digital industrial strategy, and an innovation, research and development master plan. 

2.    Sector master plans to give practical effect to the much needed comprehensive and coherent industrial policy, digital industrial strategy, and the innovation, research and development master plan.

3.    Strengthening and adequate funding of the Industrial Policy Action Plan, firmly in line with the national transformation and development imperatives just outlined. This must include strengthening and updating the industrial strategy of the textile and leather industries.

4.    In the same vein, reinforcement of the National Skills Development Plan (NSDP), much stronger articulation of the Sector Skills Plans in line with the NSDP, and adequate support for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) as well as Community Colleges. We are calling upon SACTWU to take a lead in ensuring that employers in the textile and leather industries open up their workplaces for work experience and training placements for both TVET college students and lecturers.

5.    Turn-around of the publicly-owned sector of our economy, its expansion and safeguarding against any form of capture by private profit interests. More than ever before South Africa needs a thriving publicly-owned economic sector to drive national transformation and development imperatives destined for lifting the quality of life of our people. The SACP is strongly opposed to privatisation at Eskom, as well as to the privatisation of our national broadband spectrum, rail, water, Telkom and other strategic infrastructure, among others.

6.    Alignment of monetary and fiscal policies as well as the broader macro-economic policy framework. In this regard, the South African Reserve Bank Act must be amended, in line with our Constitution, to make employment growth targeting explicit in its mandate, promote greater transparency and foster accountability on employment creation on the part of the Bank.   

7.    Decisive pioneering of financial sector transformation. In this regard, adoption of measures to direct investment into the productive sectors of the economy. This should include a strong consideration of productive investment requirements (“prescribed assets”), a sovereign wealth fund, and the pursuit of a thriving co-operative baking sector for the benefit of the working class and poor in general.

8.    Development of the co-operative sector at large and the solidarity economy, thus adequate legislative, incentives, capacity building and other forms of material support for co-operatives to thrive across the economy.

9.    Review of outsourced services, on a state-wide basis, to roll-back the hollowing out of strategic capacity and discipline of the state by tender corruption and state capture. Linked with this is the imperative of building an organically capable national democratic developmental state. 

These measures must be strengthened in the course of advancing towards a people’s economy. They are therefore not the totality of everything but only a summary. To this end the phrase “our industry” in your theme must be interpreted to refer to the absolute necessity to develop democratic worker control in the economy as a national transformation imperative. What we want to emphasise, above all else, is the importance of unity, the forging of a popular left front, thoroughgoing Alliance consultation, and inclusive public policy making in line with due processes.

The African Revolution and regional integration

The many problems experienced in South Africa are, as we have partly indicated, a reflection of deep-rooted capitalist economic system and consequent post-colonial problems in the rest of the continent.

To mention but a few examples, the Zimbabwean economy has experienced a landslide collapse. In addition the problem of repressive state action against democratic expression has not been abandoned. This is epitomised by the killing of protestors by the military following the past elections.

There are serious problems facing democratisation in Swaziland. The country is ruled by an absolute monarch and ravaged by systemic social problems.

Mozambique is facing long standing problems.

Morocco is continuing its occupation of Western Sahara.

The long standing crisis in Sudan has heightened. 

South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are facing serious problems.

There is still Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Shabaab in East Africa. A complex of other social problems in both situations remains unresolved.

In Cameroon the people of the south are facing a systemic extermination campaign driven from the north.

Egypt is under military rule. This has its own inherent problems.

It is in this context that South Africa is increasingly hosting ever rising numbers of economic, war, political and crisis refugees both from Southern Africa and the continent as a whole. In addition, the country is also increasingly hosting the different categories of refugees from other parts of the world, for example, Asia.

The 1994 democratic breakthrough, subsequent development of human rights culture and relatively strong economy are among the pull factors. However, the South African economy is itself not strong enough to meet the material and cultural needs of South Africans.

For example, according to the latest Statistics South Africa’s Labour Force Survey, unemployment in the second quarter of this year rose to approximately 10.3 million people, in terms of the expanded definition of unemployment. Inequality and poverty remain stubborn. The problem of uneven development remains persistent.

It is clear that our struggle to develop and diversify national production and solve our economic and broader social problems must be rooted in the imperative of advancing the African Revolution. This must include solidarity to achieve democracy, peace and development in Southern Africa and the continent as a whole.

Finally, in order to succeed, the African Revolution must be intensified to uproot imperialist control in the entire continent.       

Alleged sabotage of President Cyril Ramaphosa and abuse of the SABC

SABC management released a statement saying they suspect the recent television broadcast of the President’s unedited recorded message to the nation was an act of a co-ordinated internal sabotage. The recording was made when the President was preparing his message of sincere solidarity with the victims of gender based violence, overwhelmingly women, including the recent attacks on affected foreign nationals as well as South Africans. He called for the end of violence perpetrated by men against women and children, and generally for the end of gender based violence. He also called for calm, order and peace, and upon all the people who live in South Africa to refrain from taking the law into their own hands.

The SACP has noted the SABC statement on this utterly unethical conduct. We are awaiting the report of the internal investigation the SABC management has announced it has instituted. Our expectations exceed the consequence management promise made by the public broadcaster’s management, however.

We strongly believe the dismantling of the Presidential correspondence team by management at the SABC paved the way for the unprofessional conduct, among other problems affecting coverage for the President. The Presidential correspondence team comprised experienced journalists who upheld ethical standards. We say this because the unethical behaviour unleashed against the President is unprecedented.

In addition, while journalists have to comply with ethical standards, it is crucially important to develop proper governance environment and operational model at the SABC, to prevent unprofessional conduct and guarantee successful public broadcasting.

In conclusion

The SACP wishes your 14^th National Congress a resounding success.