26 April 2004
The South African Communist Party (SACP) wishes to salute and congratulate all our people on the occasion of the celebration 10 years of our freedom and democracy.
This celebration comes in the wake of an overwhelming elections victory of the African National Congress (ANC). The SACP takes this opportunity to congratulate the ANC President, Comrade Thabo Mbeki, on his inauguration as President of the Republic for his second term. We wish him welland assure him of our full support.
It is indeed a moment and an occasion worth celebrating. It has been a decade of momentous developments and achievements: a new democratic constitution, a framework for gender equality, establishment in law of workers’ rights and a progressive labour market framework, delivery of social services and infrastructure, and beginnings of land reform.
Much as it is time to celebrate, it is also time to reflect and renew our commitment to do more to change the lives of our people for the better. Manifestly, private capital has failed to play an appropriate role in the reconstruction of our country. Instead of investing in job creation and against poverty, private capital has been on an investment strike for much of the first decade f our freedom.
As communists we are not naïve about the profit motives of the capitalist class. However, both the state and our people could have done more to pressurise and challenge private capital to do much more. South Africa’s capitalist class has benefited immensely from democracy: relative industrial peace, higher productivity and they are cash flush.
Yet they continue with their investment strike, including listing in foreign stock exchanges, retrenchments, outsourcing and casualisation and thus throwing millions into poverty through joblessness, worsening working conditions and starvation wages. As government has acknowledged, most progress has been made where the state has led economic and social delivery initiatives.
Where these have been left to private capital, there has been insignificant progress: where low cost housing and service provision has been handed over to private capital there have been disasters – cut-offs, evictions, blacklisting, lack of access to credit, redlining, and so on.
As we enter our second decade of freedom we cannot allow this situation to persist. Thhe fundamental challenge we face is that of creating work and fighting poverty. To achieve this we need a state-led and working class driven effort to drive economic transformation in favour of the workers of the poor.
In this respect this second decade of our freedom requires that we intensify the class offensive against the bourgeoisie if we are to address poverty and joblessness. This means that we cannot address underdevelopment in our country, our continent gender inequalities and the national question, including racism, other than from a consistent working class perspective.
We cannot address and defeat imperialism and global inequalities unless this is led by the working class, from the standpoint of its political interests. Any approach to all these questions and problems that either overlooks, denies or is silent about the class question can only be a lie to the workers and the poor of our country, continent and the world. This therefore means that the fundamental goal of our revolution remains the a struggle against capitalism, as a necessary condition to defeat poverty and joblessness. It is from this angle and perspective that the SACP will engage on the terrain of struggles during the second decade of our freedom!
All of this requires a strong and vibrant alliance. The SACP will play its role in this regard and to ensure that the interests of the workers and the poor are paramount across all key sites of power and influence.
CONTACT
Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara (surname Jara)
Head of the Office of the General Secretary
South African Communist Party
Tel – 011 339 3621,
Fax – 011 339 4244
Cell – 083 651 0271
Email – mazibuko@sacp.org.za