18 August 2003
The Central Committee (CC) of the South African Communist Party (SACP) met in Johannesburg on 15 and 16 August.
It met in the week that Comrade Smiso Nkwanyana (SACP KwaZulu Natal Provincial Secretary) died in a tragic car accident. The CC paid tribute to Nkwanyana who belonged to a young generation of communists destined to play a significant role in the internal life of our Party and in national political life. The CC also paid tribute to Ephraim Mogale (SACP Mpumalanga Provincial Chairperson) who also died in a tragic car accident on 27 May.
Comrade Mogale played an important role in the anti-apartheid struggle and in the post-apartheid transformation of our country.
The agenda of the CC included:
2004 Elections
The CC located the SACP approach to the 2004 elections within a broader political framework of an SACP analysis of the first decade of freedom and programmatic objectives for the second decade of freedom as contained in the medium-term vision discussion document. Key in this must be laying the basis for a decisive and qualitative impact in political, mass and economic sites of power with significant input and centrally taking into account working class interests.
The key SACP objective in the elections campaign is an overwhelming ANC victory in the general election and the provincial elections. In the view of the SACP, the ANC remains the best and strategically placed organisation to lead the transformation of our country and the struggle to build a better life for all.
Within this overriding goal, our Party will also work to ensure that the working class, its perspectives and interests are central in the ANC-led election campaign.
For the SACP, the issue of an Alliance approach and programme of implementation of the manifesto after the election is important in order to minimise tensions and conflicts over interpretation of meaning of manifesto and implications for its implementation. This requires an ongoing alliance programme of action.
The CC also debated the Party approach and contribution to the ANC election manifesto. The contribution of the SACP to the manifesto will be to ensure that working class interests are factored into the manifesto. Specifically, the SACP will pay attention to the need for a focus on changing the accumulation regime through economic growth and development, extending the public sector, promotion of co-operatives, legislation to increase workers’ power over investment decisions by retirement funds, community reinvestment legislation, and the general strengthening of a national democratic state and service delivery. The agreements reached at the Growth and Development Summit and the post-GDS government announcements on infrastructure investment lay a strong basis for these objectives.
The SACP will be participating in the ANC-led election campaign through joint alliance election structures. Already many SACP members are part of ANC election structures in their own right as members and leaders of the ANC at all levels.
In the election campaign, the SACP, as a working class party, will specifically reach to all sections of the working class – organised workers, the unemployed, vulnerable workers and workers in the informal sector – as part of mobilising workers during and after the elections so that they continue to be part of ongoing struggles to advance their interests including, through an ANC victory in the 2004 elections. The Party will communicate directly with all sections of the working class on their role, the importance of the elections, their concerns and how to build and use their power through the elections, the building of the SACP, the ANC and strengthening of unions.
The CC also decided that the Young Communist League must focus its work on mobilising young voters to apply for IDs and to vote for the ANC. The YCL will use its preparations for its launch in December as part of the election campaign.
In addition, the SACP will also pay attention to ensuring that through the 2004 elections campaign, it is able to build and deepen its own relations with social movements whilst at the same time also building linkages between the state and social movements in a dynamic manner.
The State of the Trade Union Movement
Over the past years, the SACP has developed the practice of inviting senior alliance comrades to brief and interact with the Central Committee on key issues of the day. In the recent period the CC has received inputs from several ANC cabinet ministers. As part of this ongoing, intra-alliance engagement, COSATU general secretary, cde Zwelinzima Vavi briefed this CC meeting on the federation’s medium-term strategic perspectives as they were being debated in the run-up to next month’s COSATU 8th national congress.
The CC reaffirmed the SACP’s medium-term vision document that the fundamental goal of the SACP for the next 10-11 years is to ensure that the working class has a decisive and qualitative impact on all key sites of power and influence - particularly political, mass and economic sites of power - such that no significant centre of power in society can … exercise that power without a significant input from, and centrally taking into account the class interests of, the working class. The CC noted the substantial common ground between this vision and the COSATU’s emerging 2015 plan.
The CC agreed that there is considerable common ground between COSATU and the SACP around the need to improve and enhance the functioning of our ANC-led tripartite alliance. In particular, the independent strength and capacity of working people needed to be consolidated within the broader alliance. The CC agrees with COSATU that 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. The alliance should not be understood primarily as a “head-office” arrangement, and governance should not be understood merely as a national government matter.
The COSATU General Secretary urged the SACP to focus, in particular, on the development of a cadre of working-class activists. In paying tribute to Smiso Nkwanyana, cde Vavi noted his critical role in helping to build political confidence and coherence in COSATU affiliates in the province. “If the SACP can build twenty Smiso’s in every province, then we will be half-way there”, cde Vavi told the CC.
The CC also exchanged views with cde Vavi on the challenge of organising and mobilising millions of increasingly casualised, marginalised and unemployed workers. We agreed that traditional union organisational methods need to be supplemented with many other approaches, including advice offices, developing the co-operative movement, and building other social movement endeavours. In all of this work, we need to build on the advances achieved in consolidating a more developmental state, we need to use constituency offices, and we need, once more, to ensure much greater programmatic alliance co-operation at the local level. The run-up to next year’s elections presents an ideal opportunity to combine alliance ANC electoral work with active programmes around localised transformation.
Red October Campaign
For its part, and related to all of the above, in this year’s Red October campaign, the SACP will be targeting domestic workers, farm-workers and other marginalised and often casualised sectors of the working class. The Party will mobilise these vulnerable workers around their rights as workers, unionisation and dealing with worker cases. Despite progressive labour legislation and recent sectoral determinations for farm and domestic workers, there is still significant resistance to comply with the law on the part of many employers. Specifically, the SACP will highlight the plight of more than 1000 workers unfairly dismissed at the ZZ2 farm in the Limpopo province for demanding compliance with the sectoral determination. The SACP will organise activities targeted at the ZZ2 farm.
The SACP will also use the Red October Campaign to contribute to an assessment of the delivery of basic services (water, electricity and sanitation) by municipalities to poor and working class communities (townships, inner cities, rural villages and informal settlements). This will be linked to the continued SACP mobilisation of communities to register in the social security system for social security grants for those who qualify.
All these Red October activities will include the campaign to mobilise many of our people to apply for IDs. Many vulnerable workers are likely to be without IDs. Processing cases of families without access to free basic services and who need access to indigency support will require applicants to have IDs. As we experienced during the 2002 Red October Campaign, one of the central problems in access to social security is the fact that many people do not have IDs.
The Red October campaign will also see the launch of an SACP-initiated Dora Tamana Savings and Credit Co-operative (DTSACCO) to provide comprehensive savings, credit and basic insurance products to its members. This DTSACCO initiative flows from the SACP-led campaign for the transformation and diversification of the Financial Sector. The SACP also intends to encourage, mobilise and catalyse trade unions, civil society organisations, religious institutions and other interested players in order that they may also build Savings and Credit Co-operatives. All these must contribute to building a momentum towards the growth and development of a co-operative bank.
CONTACT
Mazibuko K. Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information & Publicity
South African Communist Party
Tel: 27 11 339-3621/2, Fax: 27 11 339-4244,Cell: 072 275 4723
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za