05 January 2004
Tuesday 6th January is the 9th anniversary of the death of cde Joe Slovo. At the time of his death, he was SACP chairperson and Minister of Housing in President Mandela’s cabinet. The SACP will be commemorating the occasion with a visit to his Soweto grave-side by cde Blade Nzimande, SACP general secretary, Helena Dolny, Slovo’s widow, and others.
For the SACP and millions of our people, celebrating 10 years of our freedom should also be a celebration of the role played by communists in the liberation struggle and the struggle for transformation. Therefore celebrating 10 years of our freedom is also a celebration of the life, struggles, sacrifices of a hero and communist like Joe Slovo. This is a history we dare not forget nor allow to be rewritten.
We are also remembering and honouring Cde Slovo who, as the first Minister of Housing in a democratic South Africa, was also a pioneer in the struggle to transform the banks to serve the poor, particularly in the area of low cost housing. We are proud that as the SACP we have managed to drive the struggle for financial sector transformation to the point of having reached significant agreements at NEDLAC and pushed the financial sector to adopt a charter. We will honour his memory by taking forward this struggle, until every South African has access to affordable financial services!
For the SACP this is not merely a ceremonial occasion. Slovo’s legacy needs to be constantly fostered and taken forward. In particular, over several decades, as a loyal and active ANC leader, Slovo insisted on the need for an allied but autonomous party of the working class, a party of socialism. He constantly insisted that, in the context of national liberation struggles, it was imperative for working people to safeguard an independent ideological and organisational platform. Africa, he noted, is littered with examples of once-heroic struggles stagnating post-independence under the domination of emergent, supposedly nationalist, rent-seeking bourgeoisies, abusing newly acquired state power for personal accumulation. With the contemporary example of Zimbabwe close to hand, the SACP is convinced that Slovo’s concerns in this direction were absolutely valid.
In the late 1980s, with the Soviet bloc fragmenting and eventually imploding, Slovo was one of the clearest communist voices, not just in South Africa but internationally. He declined the temptation of denial, conceding that serious errors had been committed in the name of socialism. But, at the same time, he was scornful of the Yeltsin option, an opportunistic switching of ideological camps. It is as communists, he insisted, that we would analyse, learn from, and accept responsibility for the crisis in the former Soviet Union. We would not run away from our socialist morality and our communist strategic outlook.
Again, this principled position is of enormous relevance in South Africa in 2004. Unrealistic hopes of a benign, post-Cold War capitalist world order lie shattered in the ruins of Cancun, Kabul and Baghdad. Post-1990s global capitalism is epitomised by Enron and Parmalat, and not by some woolly third-way dream of “partnerships” that do not address the fundamental inequalities of power. In our own country, post-1994 capitalist stabilisation has come with deepening income inequality and growing inequality.
The SACP pledges to take forward the struggle of Joe Slovo, and the tens of thousands of fellow communist militants who devoted their lives to the struggle for a better South Africa. In this year of the third democratic elections, we call upon all communists to mobilise our people to register and vote for the ANC. An overwhelming victory for the ANC would be the best tribute to this gallant son of our revolution!
Mazibuko Jara
SACP Media Information and Publicity Officer
Tel: 011 339-3621
Cell: 0836510271