18 April 2004
The ANC's overwhelming election victory represents a massive mandate to press ahead with the transformation of our society. With some 70% of the vote, it is an election victory that is broad-based, the ANC has received support from a very wide range of constituencies and social strata.
The victory of the ANC in the KwaZulu Natal and Western Cape provinces is an affirmation that the ANC is now the leading political force amongst rural African voters in KwaZulu Natal and amongst Coloured and Indian voters in both provinces. This is important for the consolidation of intra-working class unity and setting both these provinces on a progressive transformation trajectory.
But let no-one doubt that this renewed and increased mandate has been built fundamentally on the energies, aspirations, commitment and organisation of millions of workers and poor, those who live in dusty townships, in sprawling peri-urban settlements, in rural villages and homesteads. This is the bed-rock of support for the ANC and its alliance. The ANC electoral success has been based on a dynamic and revitalised contact, over many months, between our alliance organisations and these communities.
Beginning with our president, right through to every grass-roots cadre of our alliance, we have criss-crossed our country, door-to-door. We have explained the achievements of the last 10 years, we have discussed our ANC manifesto plans, and, perhaps most importantly, we have listened to the hopes and frustrations of working people and poor.
The SACP agrees with leading ANC colleagues who have said that this victory is not a cause for arrogance. It increases our responsibilities to deliver on the commitments we have made in our election manifesto, especially in regard to creating work and fighting poverty. The trust placed in our movement is not something to be taken for granted. Moving forward, it cannot be a matter of "business as usual".
We strongly endorse President Mbeki's observation that in the coming months and years, special attention must be given to local-level governance, to local economic development, to building sustainable communities. The dynamic contact between our movement and alliance and our mass base must be sustained through active engagements and community-based programmes of action.
The SACP therefore calls upon the working class to take responsibility for its vote, by ensuring that, through its organised muscle and mass base, it is in the forefront of the implementation of the ANC Manifesto. As the SACP we commit ourselves to work towards sustained and ongoing contact with the mass of our people, through people's forums, community development forums and workers' forums. We will do this in order to ensure that the workers and the poor are mobilised as the leading social force in driving further the transformation programme and, indeed, to ensure that this electoral victory should primarily be for their benefit.
The SACP thanks and salutes the tens of thousands of communist cadres who played such a key role in ensuring this land-slide ANC victory.
CONTACT
Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara (surname Jara)
Head of the Office of the General Secretary
South African Communist Party
Tel - + 27 11 339 3621,
Fax - +27 11 339 4244/6880
Cell - +83 651 0271
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za