Summary Of Political Report To The Sacp Central Committee
Earlier this morning, the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Blade Nzimande, presented his Political Report to the first meeting for 2005 of the Party’s Central Committee taking place in Johannesburg this weekend.
“In light of the eruptions in the Free State & other parts of the country, our Party has an important role to mobilise working class & poor communities for access to basic & essential services. As part of our programme of action for 2005, we must launch the ‘Know your Neighbourhood’ campaign as our practical contribution to mobilise working class & poor communities”
The SACP’s programme for 2005 (under the theme “Communist cadres to the front… Build working class power for a better life: The Year of the SACP Cadre and the Freedom Charter”) is a programme that primarily seeks to consolidate and build upon our campaigns over the last few years, and continuing to consolidate our Party as a campaigning, activist SACP.
The Political Report to the CC covers the following issues
Taking forward the land & agrarian reform campaign in light of the pending meeting between the SACP & AgriSA
Intensifying the financial sector campaign to make banks serve the people
SACP work with & amongst traditional leaders & religious institutions in light of the land & financial sector campaigns
SACP work amongst working class & poor communities for access to basic & essential services
How the SACP should analyse & engage social movements
Preparations for SACP-COSATU Bilateral
The Zimbabwean crisis
The Political Report also notes that the SACP has grown by a significant 35% in membership (to reach 30,000 active & paid-up members) since our 11th Congress (July 2002). This is directly attributable to the campaigns we are undertaking and the growing activism of the Party amongst the masses. These campaigns and growth has also seen the Party increasing its engagements with an even wider range of NGOs and mass formations.
Taking forward the land & agrarian reform campaign
The key task in taking forward our land and agrarian campaign is the building of local People’s Land Committees (PLCs) to drive the campaign on the ground across the country.
In local areas, our Party branches & districts are already working on the ground with churches, land rights organisations, women’s groups & small farmers on local land and agrarian demands & building of PLCs. These PLCs bring together farm workers, youth, women, small farmers, and agricultural co-ops so that they can learn from each other, sustain mobilisation, formulate local demands and actions, strategise and struggle together engaging government, municipalities, farmers, other land owners & traditional leaders.
An important part of the land campaign this year will be the organisation of farm workers into trade unions & overcoming difficulties posed by arrogant farmers. The SACP will during the first quarter of this year hold a bilateral discussion with FAWU on how to harmonise our land and agrarian reform campaign with the organisation of farm workers into the trade union movement. This struggle should also be coupled with the struggle for the expansion of justice centres in the rural areas. Our structures at all levels will be engaging with government and other para-legal institutions on this matter.
AgriSA has requested a meeting with us. We are planning this meeting for the first week of March. This Central Committee will have to reflect on what we need to secure from this meeting. Perhaps the most important objective is to secure a commitment from AgriSA for a national land summit, an end to evictions until at least such matters are discussed at the summit, and condemnation of all acts of violence on farms.
Intensifying the financial sector campaign to make banks serve the people
This year, the SACP will work to achieve the following:
Building provincial FSCC structures - In order to give effect to using and sustaining the campaign throughout the country, it is essential that the national Financial Sector Campaign Coalition (FSCC) is complemented by provincial structures.
National public hearings - It will be very important to use the opportunities in the finance and trade and industry portfolio committees in the coming year to ensure effective participation in shaping financial sector legislation.
Provincial public hearings on financial sector transformation - Similarly, we must use the structures in the provincial legislatures to encourage public participation in financial sector transformation. The purpose of these public hearings will be to hear testimony and gather evidence from individuals, organisations and communities throughout the country on their experiences in dealing with financial institutions, the problems they have in accessing retail and transactional services and the solutions they would like to see to address these problems. The reports from the provincial hearings and the parliamentary hearings will be compiled into a comprehensive report that will drive the campaign activities in 2005 and beyond.
Financial Sector Charter Council – Through the FSCC, we must participate effectively in finalising the Financial Sector Charter targets and in setting new ones as well as in overseeing implementation of the Charter plans.
Policy and legislation - The policy and legislative programmes in the departments of Finance and Trade and Industry to give effect to the Financial Sector Summit agreements will be finalised in the coming year, requiring significant input from FSCC. We have requested comprehensive policy and legislative programmes from the departments.
Building worker-owned & controlled financial institutions - We face the immediate task of promoting the establishment of a co-operative bank or other financial institutions that will serve the interests of the working class and the majority of South Africans. In both the Financial Sector Summit and the GDS agreements we secured a commitment to enabling legislation and other support for co-operative banks and alternative financial institutions whose primary objective would not be to bleed dry the workers and the poor in order to return profits to a handful of shareholders. With legislation due to be introduced in parliament shortly, we must be prepared to act once new laws are promulgated. The power of the funds potentially under the control of the organised working class can be used to build these institutions almost overnight.
SACP work with & amongst traditional leaders & religious institutions
As a result of both the land & financial sector campaigns, the SACP has been meeting with traditional leaders & leaders of key religious institutions in our country.
Traditional leaders essentially represent both a reality (if not simultaneously a relic) of our society, and a stratum fostered and shaped as a subordinate bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie of the colonial and apartheid political regimes through the bantustan system. Yet our call for access to finance for the poor and our land and agrarian campaign have a resonance amongst them. This is particularly because they are presiding over starving and extremely poor communities, with no sustainable livelihoods.
Our campaigns are also finding resonance with the churches and other religious organisations. The left leadership of the church in particular, as well as the mass of church members, are increasingly getting attracted to some of our key campaigns, especially the financial sector and land and agrarian campaigns.
The primary challenge that arises now for the SACP is the role of our Party and the working class amongst traditional leaders & in the church/religious sector. This Central Committee needs to reflect and emerge with appropriate strategies in relation to this task. This is particularly critical given the fact that a large section of the working class particularly respect traditional leaders & belong to a number of Christian churches.
SACP work amongst working class & poor communities for access to basic & essential services
A key question that we however need to ask is where is the SACP and its structures in mass upheavals in townships (like Diepsloot, Phomolong) as well as in those disputes around the redrawing of provincial boundaries? Our Party has a responsibility to play an important role here. This Central Committee needs to discuss this matter.
The problem of the urban poor is an expression of the crisis of both capitalist production (no adequate job creating investments) and capitalist social reproduction (lack of sustainable livelihoods and means of reproduction outside of the labour market). How do we mobilise the urban poor? Our ‘Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign’ is critical in this regard.
How the SACP should understand & engage social movements
It is clear that our Party is uniquely placed to play an important role in rebuilding a progressive mass movement, led by the working class, with a clear political and ideological vision. However a related task in this regard is to assist the ANC to rebuild its leadership role over the many mass struggles. Perhaps in implementing our 2005 PoA, one of the key responsibilities we have is to use our mass campaigns and linkages we are building with progressive intellectuals and NGOs to assist in repositioning the ANC to be at the head of these mass struggles.
It is also clear that unlike the mass movement of the 1980s, some of the most vocal of these “new social movements” are characterised by a narrow and ultra-leftist ideological orientation, which is oppositionist in character (to the democratic government), and unable to provide a clear political and ideological vision to the many legitimate struggles of ordinary people on the ground. Overall, social movements are also unable to relate these struggles to the broader questions of transformation and state power. Whilst some of them play an important role on single issues, but there is a real danger that the sectarian leadership of some of these social movements have locked themselves into a permanent & vicious cycle of oppositionism and isolation from key centres of political power, thus incapable to take their struggles beyond an angry protest mode. Whilst the human rights angle is important, it can tend to be a narrow “human rights discourse”, delinked from a transformatory thrust. All of this goes to show that mass movements divorced from a progressive political movement are liable to narrow human rights orientation, oppositionism, ultra-leftist factionalism and, more often, political reaction.
Perhaps the most important lessons for us is that these movements are arising mainly out of the weaknesses of our movement. Our mass work on the ground around access to basic & essential services will be critical in taking forward these perspectives.
Preparations for SACP-COSATU Bilateral
An important development this year is that we are planning to hold a full bilateral with COSATU before our Special Congress. In this bilateral we aim to exchange our perspectives and views on our respective (class) analysis of the first decade of freedom, and the challenges facing the working class as we enter the second decade of freedom. The bilateral will also seek to harmonise our 10-year visions, as well as our programmes of action for this year. Of particular importance in this regard will also be to work towards harmonising our international work, particularly in the Southern African region, and identify the tasks of the working class in the region.
The Zimbabwean crisis
The SACP has been very actively involved in the unfolding Zimbabwean situation. We have engaged with our comrades in government, and with the ANC and COSATU. We are active in the local Zimbabwe Solidarity movement, engaging with the SACC, SA Catholic Bishops Conference, and with a range of NGOs. SACP comrades have been key-note speakers at a series of conferences, seminars and also at trade union, public and campus meetings on Zimbabwe. Our analyses of the Zimbabwean situation, emerging in part from our fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe in December 2003, are generally appreciated – because they break through the sometimes sterile liberal rights/versus national liberation movement sovereignty debate that has dominated the South Africa public debate for some years.
One guiding thread of our interventions has been to seek to ensure that our Alliance is as unified as possible on Zimbabwe – so that our various interventions and endeavours are not mutually undermining, and so that we begin to develop a common strategic analysis and understanding of the challenges and possibilities of any South African engagement.
The SACP appreciates COSATU’s response to its second expulsion. This response has been, amongst other things, to move towards organising the trade union movements of Southern Africa (through the Southern African Trade Union Coordinating Council -SATUCC). This is a very important step, and it holds the potential for beginning to galvanise organised workers throughout our region much more actively as a motive force for ongoing democratisation.
Clearly, COSATU (and possibly some of its regional counterparts) will also be mounting a series of pickets, demonstrations and possibly border blockades. The SACP should welcome, support and participate in these events. However, it is important to have the correct strategic and tactical understanding of this mobilisation. It should be designed to demonstrate worker solidarity, worker power, and it is certainly a means of developing a sense of worker internationalism. These actions are NOT/should NOT be directed at instigating “regime change” in Harare.
The strategic objective of all of our interventions in the coming weeks must be to impel an opening up of as much democratic space as possible in Zimbabwe, and then seek to ensure that whatever space IS conceded REMAINS open as a base upon which to help to stabilise, normalise and build after March 31.