11 October 2004
The extended national secretariat of the South African Communist Party (SACP) met in Johannesburg on Friday 8th October. The secretariat received and discussed several reports on current developments in our country and region. Arising out of these deliberations, the secretariat resolved to actively pursue several areas of concern, including:
Factional threats to state institutions
The Communist Party notes with concern a pattern, over the last few years, of extensive leaking, apparently from certain state institutions to particular newspapers. Unfortunately, however, leaking is not an isolated occurrence, and has been a consistent feature from the NPA for instance. We should remember that the Hefer Commission rebuked the NPA for inappropriate engagements with the media.
While the Party actively encourages our government and its various departments and agencies to engage dynamically and transparently with the media, sensitivity needs to be exercised where criminal allegations or investigations are involved. Allegations of corruption or any other illegal activity must be properly pursued, without fear or favour. However, lime-lighting in the media can only detract from such proper pursuit, inevitably raising the suspicion that information (or disinformation) released to the media is informed more by a factionalist agenda than by a genuine concern to stamp out illegality.
The Communist Party will engage with government around these concerns, as we have in the past. We need to ensure that a pattern of irresponsible leaking does not persist.
There are no easy solutions in Zimbabwe
Along with our alliance partners and with a range of progressive South African formations, the Party has been actively engaged with all of the major forces in Zimbabwe over several years. It was in this context that the SACP participated in a two-day meeting on elections in Zimbabwe, convened by the SA Council of Churches and the SA Catholic Bishops Conference (4 to 5 October). The SACP expresses its appreciation to the convenors. However, we are also concerned that growing frustration with the protracted political impasse in Zimbabwe might lead us all back into a short-term pragmatism that will solve nothing at all.
In the understanding of the SACP, our government’s strategic efforts, at least over the last 18 months, have been focused on an even-handed endeavour to secure ZANU PF/MDC negotiations. As the SACP we have supported these endeavours. The objective of such negotiations is to get the two major political formations to agree on the institutional arrangements, the constitutional amendments and other modalities required before acceptable elections can take place.
Despite some promising preliminary engagements, nothing substantive has yet emerged from these endeavours. This is not to say that these endeavours are misguided. On the contrary, there is little prospect for a just, still less sustainable, exit from the current political crisis without the two main protagonists agreeing on the basic modalities essential for legitimate elections. The SA government and our president have devoted considerable time and effort in this direction. The MDC has also, generally, been a diligent and willing participant. The ruling party in Zimbabwe has a central role to ensure that there is visible and measurable progress and success. Unfortunately, the trend has been in exactly the opposite direction.
The unilateral announcement of a March 2005 date for parliamentary elections was clearly a break with the spirit of this bilateral process. The unilateral declaration of a date would not, in itself, necessarily be a deal-breaker if there were real progress on the ground towards implementing conditions for legitimate elections.
The youth militias have not been disbanded and violence, particularly in by-elections, persists. Serious harassment of trade unionists, women activists and opposition politicians continues. Media independence has been drastically curtailed. Existing anti-democratic laws (POSA and AIPPA) remain on the books and are actively enforced. A new NGO Bill that seeks to cut off all external funding to NGOs is before Parliament. A highly problematic Constitution also remains in place. It accords, for instance, power to the president to hand-pick 30 unelected MPs out 150 seats in parliament.
In these circumstances, it would be a grave error on the part of progressive South Africans to adopt a "pragmatic" view that an election will happen in March in any event, "so let’s make the best of it".
Progressive South African formations must insist on the following:
It is very possible that none of these requirements is about to be realised in Zimbabwe. If that is the case, then we should soberly acknowledge the fact. But we should not allow ourselves to be tempted into short-term but unprincipled illusions. Turning a blind eye to what will likely be extremely unfree and unfair elections in March next year, on the grounds that the ruling party will be more flexible when it feels strengthened, will simply repeat all of the illusions of the 2002 presidential elections. It will set back the cause of democratisation and stabilisation in Zimbabwe, it will deepen the already grave mistrust that the majority Zimbabweans feel in regard to elections, and it will say to all southern Africans and the world at large that we are not serious about our own democratic principles.
The harassment of trade unions in Nigeria
The SACP learnt with concern of the arrest (and subsequent release) of Adams Oshiomhole, President of the Nigerian Labour Congress over the weekend. We strongly condemn the continued harrassment of trade unions and workers in Nigeria, including attempts to amend labour laws in direct conflict with ILO regulations and freedom of association. We strongly urge President Obasanjo and his government to desist from these practices. This is even more disturbing coming from a government led by the current head of the African Union, whose founding statutes are based on promoting democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
It is time for some of our African leaders not to act in a manner that suggests that the much-needed development of our African continent must be based on the suppression of the rights of the workers and the poor. We should see our task as that of nurturing these forces as the motive forces for the renewal and development of our continent, in the same way as these were the bedrock and motive forces in the struggles for independence and freedom.
The SACP wishes to express its full solidarity with the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress and all its affiliates. We also wish to point out that as a political party of the workers and the poor we will always support the right of workers to organise themselves into trade unions and the right to protest and strike to defend workers’ legitimate interests
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 4244/6880
Cell - 083 651 0271
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za, sacpho@wn.apc.org (alternate)