SACP guide to and summary of Central Committee Political Report for the media

Build A Working Class-led Momentum for Socio-Economic
Transformation: With and For the Workers and the Poor

Political Report of the Central Committee to the 11th
Congress

1. Introduction

1.1 This is merely a guide to the political report and a summary of some of
the key issues. It would be useful to read the whole report to make better
sense of this guide.

1.2 Where excerpts have been taken from the report the relevant pages are
identified in brackets.

2. Summary of Key Issues

2.1 Building a Working Class Momentum For Socio-Economic Transformation

The key strategic objective of the SACP over the next five to ten years is
to build a mass-based momentum for socio-economic transformation that
overcomes poverty, deep-seated inequality and systemic underdevelopment,
launching our society onto a new path of growth and development. This
mass-based momentum must be ANC-led, and working class-driven. To this end, we
need to mobilise the active participation of the overwhelming majority of our
people, working together with our allies, with government at all levels, and
the mass movement. .

As an ANC-led alliance, we have attained significant and substantive
elements of political power, but dominant economic power still remains with
the same class forces as under apartheid. Unless we are able to radically
transform the socio-economic terrain, and unless we do this in the coming
decade by changing the persisting patterns of skewed accumulation , the
objectives of the NDR will be in danger. We therefore need an intensive and
extensive focus on socio-economic transformation, through sustained
mobilisation of our people and the deployment of state power. Through a
mobilised and politically conscious working class, we need to engage all sites
of economic power – the workplace, public and private capital, the state,
the banks, our stokvels, burial societies, co-operatives, street vendors and
spaza shops.

It was through the lessons from the financial sector campaign, amongst
other things, that we have advanced the concept and slogan of building a
people’s economy. Building a working class-driven momentum for
socio-economic transformation should be the basis from which we drive a
broader growth and development strategy. (pages 8-9)

2.2 A Gowth and Development Strategy

We must develop a growth and development strategy, based on a coherent
industrial policy, through maximum possible mobilisation of domestic
resources. A major focus should be on jobs and poverty eradication, with
campaigns for job creation and retention, a comprehensive social security
programme, and a conscious programme to empower women in the economy.

We must defend and extend a democratic, accountable and efficient public
sector, with the state as the preferred provider of social services to meet
basic needs, as the foundation of building a national democratic,
developmental state.

We must escalate the campaign for the transformation and diversification of
the financial sector, with a particular focus on transforming existing banks,
creating co-operative banking, strengthening public sector financial
institutions, and mobilising workers’ provident and pension funds, and the
creation of a credit regime orientated towards our developmental objectives…...

We must build a co-operative movement through mobilisation of our people as
well as engaging government at all levels to create an appropriate gendered
legislative, policy, financing framework and an appropriate credit regime for
the building of such co-operatives. (page 9)

2.3 The Financial Sector Campaign

Our financial sector campaign is one of the most successful SACP-led
campaigns since our unbanning in 1990. It is a campaign that has truly
captured the imagination of our people and talks directly to the struggles
against poverty and for sustainable livelihoods……. We must, at this
Congress, congratulate all our Party cadres for the role they have played in
driving this campaign, through marches, demonstrations, pickets and engaging
with our population. Our Red October 2000 campaign, through which we launched
this campaign, saw marches, pickets and demonstrations throughout the country.
More than 40 000 people were attracted to our famous Red Saturday!

The most important political achievement is that we laid the seeds of
political consciousness for the desirability of building a socialised
financial sector in our country. We have engaged with stokvels, burial
societies, co-operatives, savings movements and street vendors – activities
that before our campaign were partially hidden or disconnected from the
broader political and economic struggles for transformation.

Through the financial sector campaign we have also reached out to other
class forces and provided leadership in this regard. For instance, we have
established important contacts with the SMME sector, black professionals and
black business as they are fundamentally affected by the racial and
discriminatory nature of the financial sector. This has laid a basis for very
fruitful meetings with the black business council, and has identified a few
areas of common interest even beyond the financial sector.

We have made very significant membership gains through our financial sector
campaign. For instance, the single biggest growth of Party membership (about
4000 new party members) since 1998 was between October 2000 and 2001, the
period of our launch and intensification of the financial sector campaign.

Since we launched the financial sector campaign we have also seen the
passing of the Homeloans and Mortgages Disclosure Act, 2001 – forcing the
banks to disclose their lending patterns on the homeloan front. We further
welcome the publication of the Community Reinvestment Bill aimed at, amongst
other things, outlawing redlining and forcing the banks to lend in low-cost
housing. We would, however, like to see this bill being strengthened to ensure
that redlining becomes completely illegal……. legislation must cover
lending patterns of banks beyond just housing, to include lending to SMMEs,
including co-operatives.

…… we are now poised to win some of the critical demands of our
campaign and the NEDLAC Summit is set for August this year. We will not
tolerate any further postponement of this summit, and we are definitely going
to intensify our actions. We shall not abandon this campaign until all our
demands our met.

One of the most crucial platforms through which we must deepen the campaign
is that of mobilising the trade union movement to take up the question of the
management and investment of its own provident and pension funds. We want
these funds to have returns, but we also want them to invest in areas that
will create jobs and develop our communities. We call upon COSATU to lead this
campaign and ensure that workers have a meaningful say in and control over the
management of these monies, both in the public and private sectors. Trade
unions need to kick-start a huge campaign on this front, as part of the
transformation and diversification of the financial sector. (p 19 –21)

2.4 The Continued Relevance of Socialist ideology, Strategy and
Organisation

Perhaps the most important lesson over the last four years and, indeed,
over the twelve years since our unbanning, concerns the relevance and absolute
necessity of socialist theory, ideas and organisation as critical components
of deepening and consolidating the NDR itself. This is underlined, firstly, by
the current inability of neo-liberalism to deliver on its promises.
Neo-liberalism, in its most triumphant phase immediately after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, projected itself as the only idea in town, and promised a
better life through intensification of capitalist accumulation. The better
life has not happened; instead, we have seen deepening economic crises in many
parts of the developing world, and deepening inequalities between and within
countries. (p 11)

2.5 Building the Alliance

It is the view of the CC and our Party that a cohesive and strong ANC-led
Alliance still remains an absolutely central necessity for advancing,
deepening and defending the NDR and for leading society in the current period.
However, we need to confront the changed circumstances under which the
Alliance is operating, and assess whether the manner in which the Alliance is
structured is in line with the strategic tasks of the revolution at this point
in time.

….. it would be wrong to seek to operate as if we are not part of an
alliance and a movement that is in government or as if we are some kind of
unique oppositionist faction within the alliance, as the media continually
goad us to become. At the same time, it would be wrong to simply ape to the
past of how the SACP used to operate in the Alliance prior to 1990, and
particularly prior to 1994, without at the same time locating our role within
the current new situation and challenges. This would be unpardonable
ahistoricism that plays directly into liquidationism, freezing
the Party into some distant past completely unconnected with contemporary
challenges.

During all our engagements within the Alliance we patiently argued and
proposed a need for the Alliance to shift its focus towards the micro-economy
(including investment in infrastructure) through the mobilisation of domestic
resources based on an integrated, coherent and state-driven industrial
strategy. In many ways our financial sector campaign is one important concrete
contribution towards the mobilisation of domestic resources through mass
mobilisation and use of state power to direct these financial resources
towards productive investment..

During the latter half of 2001, the Alliance experienced what was perhaps
its most strenuous and conflictual period over the last few decades. This
tension was brought to a head by the COSATU and SACP-supported,
anti-privatisation strike of August 2001. We are pleased to report now that
the series of bilaterals and alliance meetings, including the all-important
Ekurhuleni declaration of April 2002, have taken us out of the dip, and set us
on a positive path of finding a common approach.

If we are to take forward these positive developments in the Alliance and
move towards consensus on a growth and development strategy, it is important
for all of us to learn the appropriate lessons out of our Alliance experiences
over the last four years:

• That no economic policy or developmental trajectory can be pursued
  successfully without a buy-in from the main motive forces of the
  revolution, particularly the working class.
• That a collective (Alliance) analysis of the balance of forces
  (domestically and globally) and their implications for the NDR is a
  critical component in taking forward that NDR. This is simply because
  there is no single corner in any of our Alliance components that possesses
  the sole wisdom on taking forward the NDR..
• That the mobilisation of the working class is a critical weight in
  tilting the balance of forces in favour of a progressive developmental
  agenda. Contrary to our detractors, the mobilisation of the working class
  does not inherently mean a mobilisation against government, nor should
  progressive forces be threatened by such mobilisation. Instead, the
  ongoing and constant mobilisation of the working class is an important
  weapon in creating space for a developing country to advance a
  developmental agenda beneficial to its people.
• That as an Alliance we have made major qualitative and quantitative
  advances through unity in action based on a common programme of action. We
  have in the past defended the revolution against violent
  counter-revolution in the early 1990s, by jointly using our mass power;
  unity during the election campaigns; and acting together through mass
  campaigns around clearly defined programmes. The Letsema campaign, the
  jobs and poverty campaign, the HIV/AIDS campaign, as well as the financial
  sector campaign, and the Ekurhuleni Summit resolutions provide a
  foundation for a programme of action for the Alliance in the period to
  come.

Of critical importance is the need to implement the Ekurhuleni programme of
action, premised on an agreed upon growth and development strategy, which will
also act as a basis for approaching the growth summit. .(p 15-17)

2.6 The challenge of building working class unity

An important measure to take forward the unity of the working class is to
work towards our long-standing goal of "one country, one
federation". We are calling upon all the major trade union formations in
the country, particularly COSATU, to earnestly work towards starting unity
talks.

We are also calling upon workers in the PAC, SOPA, AZAPO, NACTU and Fedhusa
to join the South African Communist Party, and to work with the SACP, as the
vanguard of South Africa’s working class, where appropriate. At no other
time has the slogan - "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to
lose but your chains" – been so relevant than at this period.

We would like to call upon white workers to join hands with their black
brothers and sisters by joining the non-racial trade union movement. Again,
there is more that binds the white and black working class in our country
today. Capitalist exploitation, retrenchments and joblessness know no colours.
To the Afrikaner working class in particular, we want to say your future, your
language, your rights as workers lie in joining cause with unions like COSATU.
(p 13)

2.7 The AU and NEPAD

The SACP welcomes the formation of the African Union to replace the
Organisation of African Unity (OAU). We would like to take this opportunity to
congratulate President Thabo Mbeki on being the founding chair of the AU.

The big task of the AU should be to focus the attention of the continent on
building people-centred and people-driven democracies, fighting poverty,
promoting gender equality, and rebuilding the African economies to serve its
people and challenge the imperialist economic stranglehold on our continent.

We call on the AU to focus its urgent attention on the unfinished business
of building democracy on the continent, particularly the Swaziland and
Saharawi situations. The SACP is concerned that Swaziland has been accepted to
the AU, without a firm commitment from the rulers of that country to a
time-table of democratising Swaziland. We urge the AU to use its prestige and
clout to put pressure on the Swazi government to lift the ban on political
parties, release the President of PUDEMO, Cde Mario Masuku, allow the
unconditional return of exiles, and create conditions for free and fair
elections based on the aspirations of the majority of the Swazi people.

We also call upon the AU to move speedily towards the settlement of the
Saharawi question. Decolonisation on our continent is incomplete without the
national self-determination of the Saharawi people. We are of the view that it
is time our country establishes full diplomatic relations with the Saharawi
Republic.

…. we reject the notion that the development of the African continent
should be traded off for notions of good governance that are premised on
imperialist, neo-liberal conceptions and conditionalities similar to those of
the failed and disastrous structural adjustment programmes forced on our
continent.

Critical to the success of NEPAD is mass popular involvement in order to
ensure that the powerful countries and their allies do not transform it into a
new form of structural adjustment programme. Such popular participation must
be premised on mass mobilisation, in alliance with progressive forces
globally, to focus on key issues, eg. debt cancellation, people-centred and
popular governance as the basis of democracy and building strong African
states, access for African goods to markets in the North, and an end to
conditionalities that further subjugate the continent to perpetual poverty.
(p 5-6)

2.8 Fighting the Aids Pandemic

….. We need to use every tool at our disposal, from education and
prevention to treatment, to address this national emergency….The SACP is
making HIV/AIDS a top priority in its work. We call on all South Africans,
government, religious leaders, political leaders, trade unions, women,
workers, young people and all civil society organisations – in effect, the
entire nation – to work together in redoubling efforts to defeat this
scourge.

The SACP is particularly concerned that the private sector in South Africa
is not doing enough to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic….. as part of the
SACP-led campaign to transform and diversify the financial sector, the SACP is
calling for a full audit of HIV/AIDS policies in the financial sector … We
challenge the Banking Council and the insurance companies to come to the
forthcoming NEDLAC financial sector summit fully prepared to discuss and agree
on a strategy to deal with this pandemic and eliminate discriminatory
practices in the sector against HIV positive people. (p 10-!1)

2.9 Linking Short and Long Term Struggles of the Working Class

In working class struggles there will be short-term and longer-term
objectives. The Party does not mechanically support any trade union struggle,
simply because it is waged by workers. However, to dismiss short-term working
class and trade union struggles as inevitably "infantile" or
"sectarian" is tantamount to abandoning the short-term interests of
the working class for some distant, abstract "longer-term" goals,
seemingly unconnected to current struggles. We are sometimes goaded as the
Party that in order to be truly a vanguard of the working class, we must turn
our back on short-term class struggles, around jobs for instance, and fix our
gaze on the long term, as if socialism will land like a Boeing 747, with the
SACP as the certified pilot, having, until then, cruised high above the daily
struggles of working people. Yes, we must guard against
"short-termism", taking up issues in anger or frustration without
any sense of strategy. But taking up short-term working class struggles with a
sense of strategic purpose is a very different matter. We need to ensure that
the manner in which we take up the immediate struggles of the working class
does not compromise, but rather builds towards, our longer-term goals. (p
13)

2.10 Taking forward immediate campaigns for the working class and the
poor

Rise in food prices

The SACP is very concerned about the rise in the basic prices of food in
our country at the moment. ……we call on governnment to seriously consider
extending zero-rating of basic foodstuffs on which our people survive.
However, the most important task in this regard is mass mobilisation to ensure
that the benefits of zero-rating do indeed reach the intended beneficiaries
– the workers and the poor.

Social grants and a comprehensive social security programme

We have identified the establishment of a comprehensive social security
programme as a key component of a growth and development strategy. As the
SACP, we reject neo-liberal notions of projecting a comprehensive social
security programme and a basic income grant as wasteful expenditure,
particularly in the light of poverty in our country. It is for this reason
that we welcome the report of the Taylor Committee recommending to government
to work towards a comprehensive social security programme, with an initial
focus to extend the Child Support Grant to older ages. As the SACP, we support
the call for an intensive exploration of the feasibility of providing a Basic
Income Grant.

The SACP also welcomes the call by the Minister of Social Development for a
campaign to be started to register deserving people for social grants. We
would like to propose to this Congress that the SACP, working with our allies
and other mass formations, throws its weight fully behind this campaign. This
will go a long way towards cushioning our people from some of the worst forms
of poverty.

It is well worth considering that we start with this campaign immediately
after our Congress, and work towards a Red October 2002 campaign that focuses
on registering deserving social grantees. As the SACP, in line with the
Letsema campaign, we call on all our professionals, particularly teachers,
nurses and doctors to assist in their spare time to help in the identification
of such potential social grantees. Let us also use our schools and churches to
have special weekends to register deserving grantees. (p 19)

3. Guide to Some Other Issues

3.1 The global situation (including the Bush Administration, Enron,
WorldCom and crony capitalism, systemic contradictions of globalisation) – (p
2-5)

3.2 10 years of the South African Transition (6-8)

3.3 4 pillars of the programme of action (9-11)

3.4 Democratic governance for transformation (12-13)

3.5 Gender Relations and Women’s Emancipation (13-14)

3.6 Rural Transformation (14-15)

3.7 On the unity of the Party (17-18)