SACP Brian Bunting District Council

8 April 2013

Declaration:

The SACP in the Brian Bunting District (Cape Metro) convened, on Sunday 7 April 2013, its 1st District Council, a constitutional gathering of branches, which was attended by more than 85 branch delegates as well as representatives of COSATU affiliates and Provincial Executive Committee members.

The District Council applauded the South African Government for convening a successful fifth BRICS summit in Durban where importantly the establishment of the BRICS bank was approved. This is a major advance in shifting the global economic balance of forces. It provides an alternative development funding instrument away from the parasitic Bretton Woods institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These liberal institutions extend loans particularly to post-colonial countries, with conditionalities imposing structural adjustment programmes which dictate cutting social spending, trade liberalization and de-regulation, meaning less government involvement.

Council further commended the South African Government for its diplomatic efforts in Zimbabwe through SADC which has brought about the implementation of a constitutional referendum paving the way for that country to hold free, fair and democratic elections. We acknowledge that the working class of Zimbabwe will greatly benefit in conditions of political tolerance, peace, stability and economic prosperity. The SACP rejects the repugnant attitude of the West towards Zimbabwe and the continued imposition of sanctions.

We salute the bravery of the Parachute One Battalion in the Central African Republic (CAR). We salute these 13 men in uniform for their heroic honour to fight the ambush by Rebels in Bengui. They did not dishonour our flag and they did not betray our commitment to the cause of peaceful and free Africa without imperial interests. We are concerned about the contribution of colonial and imperial forces in that country and in particular in the ambush against our soldiers who were there to train and professionalize the Military of that country. An investigation, by the African Union, of the presence of other foreign military forces in CAR who aided the rebels is warranted.

On the on-going debate about the National Development Plan

We assert that GEAR was similar to other IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes implemented elsewhere in the developing world. SACP and COSATU rejected GEAR as it clearly did not originate within the movement evidently sponsored by the Washington consensus. It emphasized privatization which resulted in massive job losses as well as twin evils of sub-contracting and casualisation which meant de-unionization, exploitation and increased vulnerability of workers. The SACP and COSATU opposed fiscal discipline, deregulation and trade liberalization espoused by GEAR which had disastrous consequences for the country`s industries, workforce and socio-economic development. The trade-liberalization in particular sounded the death-knell of our manufacturing and textile industries which still haunts our economy to date.

GEAR adopted a high skills - high productivity paradigm without concomitant investment in education as well as skills training and development as a prerequisite. These were the paradoxical weaknesses of GEAR which the SACP identified and challenged. The SACP challenged the 1996 class project for arbitrary abandonment of the Reconstruction and Development as a living dynamic consensus driven document and unilaterally adopting a neo-liberal approach through GEAR.

In the current phase, some publicly attack the SACP for supporting the broad thrust of the NDP. As the SACP we refuse to be manipulated into a debilitating false competition created by our detractors between government instruments, i.e. the New Growth Path, IPAP 2 & 3 and the NDP. These policy instruments and frameworks contain very progressive policy approaches to unravel underlying persistent features of the Colonialisation of a Special Type in our economy. Fixing education and investing in skills development, research and innovation are explicitly promoted in the NDP and these are requirements for a sustainable economic growth.

People who isolate the reference to "consumption spending and investment" ignore progressive approaches in education, social safety net, social or living wage, NHI, free education and infrastructure development and beneficiation of our mineral endowments. These are prominent pillars highlighted in the NDP which will grow the economy, create sustainable jobs and reduce inequality and eliminate poverty.

The SACP will not engage in reductionism but will combine theory and practise consistent with Marxism-Leninism and therefore apply the laws of negation of negation in the context of the NDP. Put simply the SACP will embrace what is good and working and improve on weaknesses whilst contesting and rejecting neo-liberal offensive seeking to change the NDP into a whole neo-liberal document.

Urgent transformation of the higher education terrain is required to change the existing landscape in order to transform the content and quality including transforming the values away from consumption, crass-materialism, competition, neo-liberalism and exploitation. University Councils are a contested terrain of ideological struggle and communists in broader society including Young Communists in Student Representative Councils must flood these Councils and transform them. Cape Peninsula University of Technology and University of the Western Cape are due to appoint Vice Chancellors and therefore the class conscious cadres should be identified and appointed. Institutions of higher learning are engaged in knowledge production which is not value or interest-free and therefore the progressive leadership needs to be installed to shape the content with progressive values.

In the City of Cape Town and indeed Western Cape under the Democratic Alliance (DA) we have witnessed the dramatic decline in capital spending in the working class communities. Expenditure on infrastructure such as storm water and roads, bulk sanitation, housing and electricity has declined hence our communities are frustrated and engage in violent protests for services and socio-economic transformation. Working class residents in areas such as Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, Chatsworth, Phillipi, Langa are suffering daily from wide-spread raging fire disasters which affect residents in informal settlements and backyard dwellings. This is a resultant effect of failure by the DA to provide housing with safe electricity for heating and cooking as well as water and roads.

Chris Hani Month

We declare the April month as Chris Hani Month, a dedicated and selfless leader, former SACP General Secretary and ANC NEC member. As the SACP, we will intensify our mobilization work in communities to reject the DA as a government of the privileged few middle class interests at the expense of the poor. We will lead heightened demands for better services and effective removal of the DA from power.

SACP cadres will, during this 20th Anniversary of the dastardly and cowardly assassination of Chris Hani, boldly engage and mobilize communities to protest and root-out DA elements who manipulate working class communities for their political gain. We will further advance our campaign to rename the Cape Town Airport as Chris Hani International Airport. We reject the undisguised opportunism of the DA to name certain obscure streets after heroes of the liberation movement when the DA were in fact collaborators of the apartheid regime which killed and imprisoned these heroes. This includes the declaration by De Lille of 2013 as Mandela year when the revolutionary values Mandela represents are the total opposite of what the DA stands for.

In this "Year of the District", as Brian Bunting District we will strengthen our branches through consistent political, theoretical and ideological education in order to heighten the hegemony in the battle of ideas. We will further mobilize the 4 000 strong membership of the SACP in our District to have 20 volunteers in each voting district in order to ensure ANC victory in the 2014 elections.

We declare this "Year of the District" as a year of heightened activism and consciousness in opposition to the neo-liberal DA in order to reclaim the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town.

Forward to ANC victory, forward!

Contact:
SACP Brian Bunting District Media Liaison Officer
Sonwabile Ngxiza
071 451 1329