The Special Congress of the SACP meeting in Durban this coming weekend is a call to all workers and poor people of South Africa, black and white, to escalate mobilisation and organisation to defend their gains, advance their interests and roll back capitalism in our country. Notwithstanding important gains made by the workers and the poor since 1994, the first decade of freedom had been most beneficial to the established (white) and emergent (black) strata of the capitalist class. Workers’ share of GDP has declined dramatically, productivity has increased, and unemployment levels have escalated. This affects all workers whether black or white.
Economically, the capitalist class (black and white) has been the main beneficiary over the last ten years on the basis of continuing exploitation of all workers and exclusion of poor people from the mainstream economy. This is why we see black and white workers joining their hands in struggles against retrenchments and worsening working conditions whether at Telkom, Sasol, Rex Trueform or DRD Gold.
The prevailing capitalist growth and accumulation path will not be able to resolve the systemic, structural crises of under-development that continue to beset our society. The recent spontaneous social and civic uprisings in various townships demonstrate this reality: an expression of suffering by poor communities.
In this second decade of freedom, working class forces must intensify a sustained and mass-based class offensive on the power and interests of the capitalist class. To achieve this outcome many challenges lie ahead. Government’s much greater emphasis on building a strong state and parastatal sector that is capable of playing a strategic developmental role is one important step forward. The workers and the poor of this country need a strong public sector and interventionist state, which play a developmental and leading role in the economy.
All workers must challenge pro-capitalist economic policy and the management and ownership monopoly of the bosses in the workplace and the broader economy. The pain of retrenchment of mainly Coloured workers in the Rex Trueform factory in Cape Town must be felt by the white worker facing retrenchment at DRD Gold. The thousands of Indian workers in the Durban clothing and textile workers must fight together with their African brothers and sisters loitering in Umlazi and kwaMashu due to unemployment. The millions of landless people across our country are also faced with homelessness and exclusion from the banking system, and are without opportunities to use productive land and sustain themselves. They depend on government pensions and income from their brothers and sisters who are workers in the cities and towns.
For all these reasons, the SACP Special Congress will develop practical programmes to build and achieve the non-racial unity in action of all our country’s working and poor people to intensify struggles for accelerated land and agrarian reform, job creation, access to basic and essential services and ensuring worker control of retirement funds, the broader democratisation of the financial sector and the building of a progressive co-operative movement. This must go together with the mobilisation of poor communities and families who are unemployed behind their struggle for sustainable and decent livelihoods.
At the same time, the SACP will also contribute to the strengthening of the ANC-led tripartite alliance. This requires, amongst other things, a much greater active participation of workers in grass-roots level ward committees, community policing forums, school governing bodies, and ANC branches themselves in the lead-up to the ANC’s centenary celebration. Our Special Congress will discuss programmes to ensure that the working class will be at the centre of the implementation of the alliance programme of action. This is the only way that all working and poor people of our country can ensure that the ANC remains their party as black and white working and poor people.