19 March 2003
As South African celebrations of Human Rights will culminate on Human Rights Day, 21 March, the South African Communist Party (SACP) calls on all South Africans to use Human Rights Day to dedicate themselves to the ongoing struggle to build a better life for all our people and to continue with anti-war mobilisation in solidarity with the people of Iraqi and all oppressed people of the world.
The SACP regards the imminent US-led war against the people of Iraqi as a gross violation of human rights. This war will add to decades of brutal oppression suffered at the hands of the Saddam Hussein regime, the cruel Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988), the 1991 Gulf war and 12 years of sanctions since 1991 which have led to premature deaths of millions of Iraqi children and have resulted in untold suffering for Iraqi women in particular.
Since 1994, every South African can vote, we have a new and democratic constitution, millions of South Africans have received running water, electricity, housing and telephone connections, rights of women and workers are protected in law. These and many other gains are important achievements.
But the economic system of capitalism does not want to see more and faster change. Close to a million workers have been retrenched. Many more are outsourced, contracted out and casualised. About 57% of South Africa's population live in poverty. And 95% of the poor are African, the majority of whom are women. This means worsening conditions despite our gains. The capitalist bosses are an un-elected minority controlling the economy.
The foundation of retrenchments, casualisation, outsourcing and the increasing poverty in our country is capitalism. The majority of townships, rural areas and inner cities are red-lined by banks. This is essentially racist. The Credit Bureaux continue to blacklist the majority of black people. Banks deny millions of our people access to credit, banking services and affordable interest rates. All these are fundamental violations of human rights. No market economy will ever be able to resolve these violations of human rights.
As the SACP, we cannot sit on the sidelines and watch a market-driven economy throwing the workers, the unemployed, poor people into poverty and misery. This Human Rights Day therefore as the SACP we are saying we must focus our attention and resources as a country on the key economic challenges facing South Africa in order to build a sustainable basis for the meaningful entrenchment of human rights in our country.
This means that we must deepen our struggles against joblessness, unemployment, poverty, HIV/AIDS and the struggle for service delivery, access to affordable medicines, access to banking services and the transformation of the financial sector. In other words, we need to deepen the struggle to build a people's economy which meets the basic needs of our people, creates jobs and builds basic infrastructure. This is the only sustainable basis for advancing human rights and to eradicate racism and gender oppression in our country. We must also use the human rights week to intensify preparations for the Growth and Development Summit as an important platform towards securing better socio-economic rights for the majority of our people.
CONTACT
Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information and Publicity
South African Communist Party
Tel - 011 339 3621
Fax - 011 339 4244
Cell - 083 651 0271
Email- mazibuko@sacp.org.za