SACP Northern Cape PEC press statement

10 July 2011

The South African Communist Party and the Young Communist League in the province convened a successful 9th plenary session of the 3rd Provincial Congress PEC meeting in Kimberley from the 08th and 09th July 2011. This joint PEC took place as we approach an important epoch of our revolutionary ie , just few months before the 13th National Congress of the SACP, and the 53rd National Conference of the ANC in Mangaung as well as the all important centenary of the African National Congress on O8 JANUARY 2012.

The meeting received and discussed the Political, Organizational (both of the SACP and YCL) and financial reports. The meeting further received detailed additional reports on the Local Government Elections and a broad political overview of the current situations in South Africa and the globe.

Political Overview

The PEC noted the current onslaught on the Party and its General Secretary by the reactionary forces who masquerade as leaders of our people, and who do not have the slightest clue about our Party and National Democratic Revolution. They seek to divide the alliance and the country on the basis of narrow accumulation regime and populist demagoguery.

In case the forces of reaction don`t know we want to remind them that the General Secretary of the SACP who is also a member of the NEC and NWC of the ANC for many years has a long history of selfless, dedication and loyal struggles for the attainment of freedom in this country. We know Him in struggle he did not come yesterday.

The joint PEC called upon all comrades in the alliance to allow for robust debates and discussions as a fundamental culture and tradition of the broad Movement and to persuade all in the alliance on the correctness of their resolutions/position rather than resorting to insults and intimidation tactics.

We want to say to all our comrades in the alliance and the progressive YOUTH formations whom we love so dearly that there is nothing progressive or revolutionary in articulating positions in an uncouth manner.

Respect for our Leaders and our people is an important ingredient in the struggle to change the lives of our people

May we remind all and sundry that the SACP was amongst the first to observe that the willing buyer willing seller does not work for our land reform program .Way back in 2004 the SACP undertook a campaign for the acceleration of land and agrarian transformation, which culminated into a national land Summit:

The key pillars were.

1. Access to land for food production and food security the focus here being to take forward our campaign for accelerated land and agrarian transformation through, amongst other things, the building of peoples land committees to translate the resolutions of the land summit into reality for our people. There are four key pillars to our 2005
2. asic provision of proteins, vitamins, etc, especially for the poor in that regard we campaigned for food gardens and the provision of extra free water for poor households with such gardens. In addition, our campaign focused on release of urban land to build community gardens.
3. Highlighting the problem of high food prices, especially basic foodstuff for the poor.
4. Expansion of school feeding schemes and a focus on the more vulnerable children particular attention will be paid to a campaign to expand the school-feeding scheme through to high schools, fighting against corruption in some of the existing school-feeding schemes, and the building of co-operatives around these schemes. Our campaign will also seek to lend a hand to the national campaign of the Department of Social Development to identify and provide basic needs for the more vulnerable children, including orphans

State of the Organization

The PEC (SACP and YCL) accepted the last Central Committee report on membership that the Northern Cape is the second largest province (in terms of membership) after KZN as per capita of the population in the province.

The PEC also resolved to assist the districts that are due for its congresses and also to work towards successful provincial congresses of the SACP and YCL later this year.

Local Government Elections result

The PEC expressed its satisfaction with overwhelming victory of the ANC led Alliance in the local government elections in the province and nationally.The PEC expressed its profound thanks and appreciation to the working-class and poor of our country that have once more shown confidence in us by voting overwhelmingly for our movement.

The SACP`s key message going forward is that together with the masses of our people, the working class and the poor, we must

1. Strengthen local Government by putting an end to outsourcing of core municipal functions to tendepreneurs, to profiteers and other vultures and build and sustain local skills development for municipal staff and departments.
2. Democratize local government by involving communities in deciding in local development priorities and holding regular ward meetings.
3. Connect our community struggles to the wider struggles to change our entire society and its economy.
4. Accelerate service delivery for people centered local development.
5. The meeting further resolved that we must intensify political education in the Party at all levels as well as in the Alliance broadly in order to build working class consciousness and to deal with the scourge of political ignorance and bankruptcy.
6. That we needed to foster greater unity amongst all alliance partners in the Province through a joint Programme aimed at fundamentally changing the lives of our people for the better.
7. Work very hard to ensure that our five priorities of education, health rural development; descent work and the fight against crime and corruption are achieved.

New Growth Path

The joint PEC agrees with the general and overall thrust, and welcomes the New Growth Path (NGP) as an important departure of previous approaches towards dealing with the colonialism of a Special Type (CST) trajectory of our country, which still stubbornly persists. Indeed there are areas which still require further engagements, such as the macroeconomic issues - the issues that relate to the attempts to seek to fundamentally tackle the twin problems of our post-apartheid democratic dispensation - poverty and unemployment.

In our province both these aspects are manifesting in a big way, despite the historic existence of mining which was the basis of early industrialization of SA in the 1800s - through the discovery of diamonds. The current industrialization outlook as espoused, we believe, is an important link to the outer-resource endowed and supplying regions of country, which have not been incorporated into the real economy, which is a result of the dialectical inclusion and exclusion paradigm of economic growth of CST-trajectory. It is resulting in the uneven development of our country and concentrations of economic hubs and unsustainable. This is very basis that fuels the mega-projects paradigm, such as the concept of the speed-train between Johannesburg and Durban.

As a province and country, we believe we should begin to speedy unfold the beneficiation process and fastback the implementation of all of ANC`s Polokwane 5 priorities in order to take the process of democratization and transformation to a higher level.

International

On the Arab Spring and the unjust war in Libya:

The joint PEC noted and welcomed the endeavors of the SA government and President Jacob Zuma`s efforts to seek to find a mechanism to bring the belligerent parties to dialogue and therefore to cease the bombing of the Libyan Jamahiriya. We reaffirmed our rejection of imperialism premeditated and unjust war in Libya, because we also noted that historic underlying factors and evolution of Libya, it`s relations with imperialism, in particular, how opportunism and internal interventions have distorted the efforts who sought to engage the internal contradictions of Libyan people and society.

We reaffirm our call for NATO the G7 countries to immediately halt all military operations in Libya, which are flagrantly violating international law and are about murder and assassination, the destroying of infrastructure and could lead to an unsustainable low intensity war - the kind found in Somalia. We are of the view that, the economic interests, irritation with Colonel Muamar Gaddafi and the efforts to seek to recoup lost ground in the Arab world are the key factors propelling imperialism to wage war. Its effort to try and establish a base for AFRICOM is indeed a serious concern. We therefore, call upon progressives all over the world to mobilize and wage a struggle against imperialism`s endeavors for the re-colonization of Africa and the denuding of democracy.

We also noted the coming into being of a new African country on the 9th of July, South Sudan. We are of the view that though we welcome the efforts of allowing people to decide their fate, as it was the case in South Sudan, we are not convinced that that will bring peace to the Sudan and the region.

We also noted the much talked about loan to the Swaziland monarch and we stated our objection to any such consideration until the Swazi monarch and the Tinkundla system, agrees to allow for democratization and meet a minimum set of things which will lay the basis for free and democratic political space and organization, the un-banning of political parties and stop harassment of forces of change in the country.

This month the SACP is celebrating 90 years of unbroken struggle and will be holding celebratory events through out our country and province coupled with celebrations of Mandela day the Icon of our struggle.

With and for the workers and the poor.

Issued by the SACP Northern Cape

Contact
SACP Northern Cape Spokesperson
Footsoldier Mogorosi: 0730946027