25 July 2000
This weekend, the South African Communist Party celebrates 79 years of unbroken struggle for national liberation, people's power and socialism.
This 79 years represents the following:
But this 79th anniversary is not only about our history. We celebrate our 79th anniversary against the backdrop of major advances in our society over the last six years, but also against the backdrop of a jobs crisis, persisting mass poverty, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and a society that remains amongst the most unequal in the world.
Our main challenge as a country is the fundamental transformation of our economy and
the deepening of democracy as part of a programme for sustained growth, job creation and
development in favour of the poor and working people.
ECONOMIC CHALLENGES AND THE ROLE OF THE STATEIN THE ECONOMY
While there has been moderate growth, the prospects of sustained growth and development remain uncertain. Decisive action is required to ensure that this growth turns out to be more than just temporary, modest and cyclical. It is against this background al so that there has been sustained working class obilisation over the last months, culminating in the massive May 10 general strike involving 4 million workers.
The key question is: what is to be the principal accelerator of economic growth and development? Since mid-1996 hopes had been vested in attracting substantial flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) through a programme of self-imposed fiscal austerity. FDI flows have been disappointing and, indeed, financial liberalisation ha s seen a net outflow of capital.
Without for a moment denying the importance of attracting FDI, the SACP argues that much greater emphasis needs to be placed on the mobilisation and co-ordination of budgetary, parastatal and domestic private capital for a more concerted infra-structural development approach.
In this connection, the SACP calls for the implementation of the 1998 Presidential Job Summit resolution that envisaged major summits in the key industrial sectors of our economy.
The SACP appreciates the shifting of the focus of economic policy and debate away from macro-economic issues and towards the productive economy. We need thorough-going perspectives and a consensus of a coherent industrial strategy that embraces the manufac turing sectors, but also mining, agriculture and services; this will, of course, have implications for macro policy, which must be aligned with such an industrial strategy.
Running through all of the SACP's positions on the economy, is a commitment to strengthen, democratise and extend the public sector to enable the state to drive a developmental agenda at national, provincial and local levels. This is what should also guide our approach to ongoing local government transformation and the forthcoming local government elections.
The transformation of the public service and the restructuring of public enterprises and state assets are central to building the National Democratic State that will ensure that the objectives of the NDR are achieved.
The SACP sees no need for downsizing, outsourcing, privatisation and the reduction of labour standards in the public sector.
Restructuring of the financial sector and the building of a co-operative sector
For some time, the SACP has been warning about the continued monopolisation and concentration of financial resources and power in South Africa. We are literally allowing banks and the financial sector in this country to get away with murder. South African banks are simply refusing to be part of addressing poverty and economic reconstruction in our country.
Evidence presented to the parliamentary hearings on the role of banks during June confirms the following:
It is in this context that the SACP calls for a public campaign for the fundamental
transformation of South African financial institutions and the long-term establishment of
a new public sector driven banking system aimed at addressing the needs and interests of
the poor. To this end, as the SACP we also call for legislation to force banks to set
aside certain amount of money for low-cost housing and credit access. Related to this we
need to call for the regulation of this faceless credit bureau whose blacklisting of
retrenched workers and the poor is actually undermining our attempts to provide access to
finance for a nu mber of community development activities.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS
The SACP acknowledges ongoing local government transformation and the implications of this for more concerted local-level democracy and transformation. The SACP here, too, emphasises the need to use democratic institutions to mobilise public, parastatal, c o-operative and private sector resources around a coherent developmental approach.
Our people and government must take active initiatives to ensure local economic development is biased towards co-operative and community based development; to ensure that municipal services for basic needs are provided in such a manner that they are increa singly free as lifeline services and that primarily public-public partnerships are undertaken where restructuring of municipal service delivery is necessary.
It is in this context that the SACP approaches the vexed question of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Too often, so-called PPPs have amounted to little more than privatisation exercises in which cash-strapped municipalities have sold off their resources, and have lost any ability to exercise strategic leverage in the process. Where unavoidable, these should be implemented with the above strategic understanding.
An overwhelming ANC victory in the 2000 local government elections remains the most
viable option to advance, consolidate and deepen the national democratic revolution. For
the SACP this also means finding ways and means to lay the basis for building peopl
e’s power and the eventual transition to socialism. We therefore call on all
communities, workers and all our people to register an overwhelming victory for the ANC in
the coming local government elections.
BUILDING THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY
Let us also dedicate the 79th anniversary to the ongoing task of SACP party-building. The high levels of participation, the quality of debate and cadre development by the SACP over the years has produced a high-level cadreship throughout our country, and p resent in government, legislatures,local councils, in schools, hospitals and factories, in the trade union movement and other progressive social movements.
With over thirteen thousand active, fully paid up members, the SACP´s membership is now, in fact, larger than it has been in its 79 year history. We are building a cadre-based, quality party in the context of a strategic alliance with a mass ANC and a mass COSATU. Over the last few years, the SACP has achieved higher levels of popularity, profile and rootedness, particularly within the progressive trade union movement, than ever before.
In the current period we need to put great emphasis on ongoing party building, on implementing our programme of action, and, above all, on building an SACP, based on our communist morality that is exemplary in its incorruptibility, its principled approach to politics and its selfless devotion to working people and the poorest of the poor.
It is for these reasons that, during October we will launch a Red October 2000 campaign, as part of the ongoing task of implementing the tasks and building an SACP rooted in the working class and its communities.
For the above perspectives to be realised in practice requires a struggle led by the ANC itself to reaffirm political strategic command of the trajectory of the South African transition. Together, as the alliance and in unity with the great majority of South Africans, let us boldly reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the strategic direction of the transition is guided in detail and in depth by our shared vision of a thorough-going NDR.
AMANDLA!