24 November 2004
An Augmented meeting of the SACP Central Committee was held in Johannesburg over the weekend of 19 ? 21 November 2004. Central committee members were joined by provincial and district office bearers, Young Communist League national and provincial office bearers, and SACP comrades from a variety of sectoral units, and related institutions, among them the Financial Sector Campaign Coalition, and the Dora Tamana Savings and Credit Co-operative.
The CC reviewed the activities of the SACP over the past year, and assessed progress since our 11th National Congress in July 2002. More and more, the SACP has become an active, campaigning formation, providing active leadership to a range of social movement and other formations in the course of popular mobilization. Since our 2002 Congress, the Party?s active membership has grown by some 30 percent. Notable growth has occurred among radical youth, including increasing numbers of young and militant Communist women. This is a heartening development that was very much in evidence in the proceedings of this Central Committee itself. We are convinced that the cadre of young Communists who are emerging within our ranks will inspire many more of their generation to be active in the work of the Party, and will impact positively in dynamising our work.
Financial sector campaign
The Central Committee discussed and debated an extensive report on the SACP-led financial sector campaign. The Campaign Coalition has been in existence since 2001. It was, initially, seen by many as a marginal and largely irrelevant campaign, but it quickly gathered support from over 50 organisations and it struck a popular chord in poor communities. Its first major achievement was the signing of the Financial Sector Summit declaration of 20 August 2002. The declaration embodied many of the key demands of the campaign. However, the banks and financial institutions attempted to colonise the implementation of the Summit goals, and a long battle has been waged to ensure that labour and communities are fully engaged as key stake-holders.
In the course of the past year, a number of achievements have been scored in this regard. The intervention of government has ensured effective government, labour and community representation in the Charter Council. After some delay, the regulation of the credit bureaux is being addressed through the Consumer Credit Bill with interim measures envisaged for December this year. A bill for Financial Cooperatives has also been published, and the SACP and Campaign Coalition will be engaging actively with the process. We expect the enactment of legislation next year.
Perhaps the most dramatic recent development has been the launch of the Mzansi National Bank Account. In response to our ongoing campaigning and the Summit resolutions on universal access to financial services, the industry finally launched the Mzansi account. Interestingly, the banks required support from community and labour constituencies in order to launch the account. In just three weeks (15 working days) more than 100,000 accounts have been opened with R35 million deposited. This is a resounding confirmation of the SACP?s persistent but previously dismissed insistence that hundreds of thousands of South Africans have been unbanked because of high bank charges and the general inaccessibility of the sector to working people and the poor. The SACP will monitor progress with the Mzansi account and we will seek to improve it.
In the context of our financial sector campaign, the Central Committee also discussed the challenge of ensuring the estimated R360 billion in retirement funds, both in the public and private sectors, are brought more effectively within the scope of the Financial Charter transformational agenda. On the unfolding Telkom debacle, the Central Committee expressed support for COSATU?s engagement with the Minister of Finance around the role and mandate of the PIC, which has just bought the Thintana 15,1% Telkom share in order to ?ware-house it?, according to reports, on behalf of a spurious ?empowerment? consortium. The PIC purchase creates important possibilities to review how this significant share-holding can be used for real developmental and transformational purposes, including increasing the public ownership of this critical infrastructural entity. It is a matter of great concern to the SACP that the trustees of the PIC, who include labour representatives, have not been convened. It is absolutely essential that in this, and other cases, workers have an effective say on how their own savings are used.
The Central Committee concluded with the formal launch of the Dora Tamana Stokvel with all present in the CC meeting joining as found members with deposits and share-holdings. We see this as part of a practical commitment by communists to the general ideals of social solidarity and cooperation for which we stand. In launching the Dora Tamana Savings and Credit Coop we are also drawing on the traditions of our people.
Mawubuye umhlaba!? land and agricultural transformation
SACP structures countrywide are emerging from several weeks of intensified mobilization and campaigning in the context of our Red October Campaign for land and agricultural transformation. The Central Committee received an extensive report on activities conducted. The campaign was launched with the support of 49 organisations, including the ANC, COSATU, the SA Council of Churches and the Landless Peoples? Movement. We also had many constructive and supportive engagements with the Land and Agriculture Departments, nationally and provincially.
In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of farm-workers, small farmers and rural poor and landless participated in marches and tribunals. While some of these activities were located in major centers, many more were in remoter localities ? like Matatiele, Thaba Nchu, Heilbron, or Uthukela. A notable feature was the high level of participation by women farm-workers and rural women from former Bantustan areas. In the course of campaigning, it was not just general demands around land transfer targets that were raised, a great many local and specific issues were taken up. In the Tshwane vicinity alone, SACP activists came across four pending evictions in the space of two days that would have affected more than 500 families. We were able to block these evictions, at least temporarily, but the struggle continues. In the North West province, comrades exposed the case of a farm-worker who had been forced to drive a tractor to Botswana and back under extremely inhuman conditions. He died of exhaustion. In Limpopo we discovered a farm-worker, Champion Sithole, who had been lying in a mortuary since May 6. The farm-owner for whom he had worked for thirty years had never registered him, and had refused to take any responsibility for him after his death. The SACP ensured that Champion Sithole was afforded a dignified burial on the 13 October.
In assessing the progress of our land and agriculture campaign, the Central Committee emphasized the importance of linking land transfers to the question of sustainable livelihoods, households and communities. There is evidence of land restitution beneficiaries receiving land, but with little attention being paid to infrastructure, agricultural extension programmes, skills transfers and financing for viable production.
Mpumalanga correctional service workers
SACP structures in Mpumalanga have been taking up the case of some 160 workers dismissed by the Department of Correctional Services in the province. The Central Committee expressed its concern about these developments. The SACP urges the union POPCRU and the department to seek a speedy and amicable settlement to this problem. The Party will be monitoring progress in this regard.
Sixteen Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women and Children
The Central Committee expressed its full support for the Sixteen Days of Activism campaign. It urged all party structures and members to play an active role in the campaign. We see this campaign as intimately linked to our struggle to build sustainable communities in our townships and villages - communities that increasingly foster values of solidarity and cooperation.
Zimbabwe
The Central Committee reviewed and discussed the Party?s perspectives on the unfolding situation in Zimbabwe, and also the recent debate within our Alliance on the Zimbabwe challenge. The Central Committee reaffirms the Party?s support for our government?s attempts to engage the two major political formations in Zimbabwe, in order to reach agreement on the conditions, and the institutional and constitutional reforms required to ensure free and fair elections. The Party believes that the solidarity actions by SACP, COSATU and other formations are necessary and complementary to these endeavours. We have been calling for some years for more effective intra-alliance information sharing, debate and discussion on Zimbabwe?s challenges, in order to ensure that the ANC and its alliance are able to provide effective leadership to our own mass base and the wider South African public.
The SACP?s own position on Zimbabwe will continue to be informed by our principled commitment to the workers and poor of that country. We will continue to condemn human rights abuses and the intensified constriction of democratic space. We call for an end to security force and youth militia attacks against the general population. We are also concerned about the possibility of a rushed attempt to hold elections in March 2005 without all of the necessary conditions being in place. Elections in such conditions will deepen the overall political, social and economic blockage in Zimbabwe. Democratisation must be seen not just in narrow electoral terms, but as an essential condition for creating the space in which Zimbabwe?s socio-economic crisis can be addressed in a progressive and sustainable manner.