SACP Central Committee

24-25th February 2007

The SACP Central Committee met in Johannesburg over the weekend of the 24th and 25th of February 2007. The CC meeting was preceded by a 2-day National Policy Dialogue in which the SACP evaluated the impact of SACP policy perspectives, and particularly of our policies related to a wide variety of popular campaign waged by the SACP together with many other progressive formations – including the financial sector campaign, the struggle to build co-operatives and a co-operative movement, the land and agrarian reform campaign, the public transport campaign, and the campaign for an industrial policy that priorities development and job creation.

The CC noted that there were two important lessons to be drawn from our Policy Dialogue evaluation:

• Across a very wide spectrum of challenges, and despite many delivery efforts by government, what is impeding substantial progress is the continued colonial character of the economic growth path within which we remained locked. It is a growth path that remains excessively primary product export-dependent, excessively important dependent for capital and consumer (especially luxury) consumer goods, and it is still dominated by a handful of mining and financial conglomerates. This growth path – even when there is significant and sustained growth as there have been over the past decade – actively reproduces under-development. The growth of the last decades has been actively associated with a million formal sector jobs being lost, hundreds of thousands of more jobs being casualised and otherwise marginalized, and one million farm-workers and their families being expelled from white-owned farms. Government redistributive “delivery” out of this growth path is simply not sustainable. We have delivered, but we have to transform. The CC agreed that an active, state-led industrial policy must be a key component of such a transformational agenda, and we welcomed signs that government is increasingly appreciating that a developmental growth path requires substantial systemic transformation of the economy.
  
  
• The second important lesson that we have drawn from our Policy Dialogue evaluation process is that policy development without mass mobilization and participation is bound to fail. Where we have succeeded in realizing some real progress in our Red October campaigns, it is always where we have succeeded in mobilizing and learning from a wide range of forces, and particularly at a localized level.

The CC resolved that we must take up our Financial Sector Campaign with renewed vigor, and we shall be using the month of March to begin this. In particular, we will be taking up our call for a 100% amnesty for all South Africans currently black-listed by the Credit Bureau. Some 5,5 million South Africans are affected by blacklisting, many of them for paltry sums. We stress that we are talking about an amnesty for the black-listed, and not for debt forgiveness.

We will also be mobilizing around a different model for financing low-cost housing. The current compound-interest based, 20 year mortgage bond approach is simply unrealistic and unsustainable. We are also calling for a state-owned Housing Bank to take the lead in providing a different model in this regard. We welcome the Minister of Housing’s support for this general idea. Let’s now move rapidly ahead with implementation!

After a long battle, led by the SACP, it is now fair to say that cooperatives are mentioned in many government policy documents and plans. But there is, frankly, no coherent national strategy. As for the BEE codes, they contain few if any references to cooperatives. When reference is made, it amounts to little more than lip-service in practice. The SACP believes that cooperatives need to be at the very centre of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment. We will be campaigning for the establishment of a national Cooperative Development Agency to spearhead the development of cooperatives. We also will be working on the ground to help to build a well-networked and resourced popular cooperative movement.

The National Land Summit of 2005 agreed to review the willing-seller willing-buyer approach to land reform. This review is particularly salient in the light of the fact that only 4% of land has been transferred – far behind our electoral commitment to a 30% target by 2014. Despite the commitment to a review progress is extremely slow. This slowness is particularly problematic in the light of the fact that 1 million farm-workers and their families have been expelled from white-owned farms in the post-1994 period. There must be an immediate moratorium on these expulsions. In addition those who have lost tenure must be the key motive force and principal beneficiaries of a vigorous land reform process. No to expulsions, yes to a law-governed expropriation process that provides land but also infrastructure, training and credit to the landless and land hungry!

The SACP’s approach to elections

The Central Committee also considered an extensive report by the CC Commission established to consider the approach of the SACP to state-power in general, including our approach to elections.

The CC resolved on the following issues:

• Our approach to the state in general including elections is governed by two over-arching strategic priorities:
• The imperative of strengthening our national liberation movement and of advancing, deepening and defending our national democratic revolution – which includes, critically, ensuring that our movement remains guided firmly by Freedom Charter values and perspectives; and
• Advancing our medium-term vision of building working class hegemony in all sites of power – including the state, the economy and work-place, the community and within our broad movement itself.
• Which is to say, our commitment to the ANC Alliance is both principled and strategic, and it is not based on “mood swings”;
• Elections are a tactical and not strategic matter and need to be subordinated to both a general approach to governance and to an overall strategy informed by our commitment to a Charterist NDR and our medium-term vision of building working class hegemony.
• As the SACP we are committed to ensuring, as much as this is in our capacity and power, to ensure that future election campaigns are ANC Alliance elections campaigns. The SACP, of course, has every right to campaign electorally in its capacity as an independent party. Depending on many factors, should such an option be chosen it would not necessarily mean that such independent campaigning was breaking with a broader ANC Alliance approach to elections.
• The exact modalities of the SACP’s involvement within an ANC Alliance campaign will, of course, be a matter of intra-alliance discussion and agreement. The modalities would need to depend on many conjunctural factors, including, perhaps, different localized circumstances.
• The debate on the modalities of SACP electoral involvement in ANC Alliance election campaigns is a debate that must remain open, and it should be based on a collective appreciation of the various advantages and disadvantages of different options. These are tactical questions that needed to be guided by concrete circumstances, and it is pointless for the SACP box itself into on or another scenario years ahead of any election. The SACP will further debate these issues at its 12th National Congress in July this year, but will also need to constantly evaluate the actual reality, both independently as the SACP and in conjunction with our alliance partners.
• Whatever the modalities of our participation in ANC Alliance election campaigns there are three basic non-negotiable for the SACP:
• The nominations process – whether for a consolidated ANC list, or for an SACP list must be thoroughly democratic, and must reflect the mass-character of our formations, and the working class bias of the Alliance;
• The SACP will campaign both as part of the alliance and in its own right – using the ANC alliance campaign to strengthen the principled unity of our Alliance AND the perspectives and campaigns of the SACP itself.
• The electoral platform of any ANC alliance election campaign must advance the strategic objectives of an NDR rooted in the values of the Freedom Charter, and reflecting a bias to the working class and poor.

Within the context of all of the above, a number of concrete tasks then become imperative for the SACP and its alliance partners. None of us can opt simply for the status quo.

The Alliance needs to be very significantly re-configured at all levels. The Alliance is dysfunctional in many localities. It is imperative that we build an Alliance that is based on unity in action – and not just during electoral periods.

The ANC, by its own admission, is confronting serious challenges of factionalism, careerism, ill-discipline, and corruption. This is a matter of deep concern for the SACP and for the entire alliance. There must be a major transformation and renewal of the ANC. While ANC-led electoral outcomes have generally seen progress and the consolidation of a firm base – these cannot be taken for granted, and already there are warning signs of alienation and disenchantment in localities which should in principle be firmly committed to the ANC and its alliance.

There are also many concrete tasks confronting COSATU, ensuring sustained workers democracy, the effective servicing of members, and the huge challenge of organizing millions of marginalized, informalised and casualised workers.

The SACP, too, must also ensure that improves its organisational capacity, so that it is able to play a vanguard role. The 12th Congress will consider, amongst other things, a range of proposals around the restructuring of the SACP, particularly to ensure that our elected structures are more firmly rooted in activity-based responsibilities, and also that our basic, branch-level structures are more compact and more rooted within localized communities. The SACP, regardless of the particular electoral modality within which we engage in ANC Alliance electoral campaigns, must greatly improve its oversight over and support for SACP members who are elected public representatives.

In short, on our approach to elections the CC is saying that it is absolutely incorrect to imagine that the only choices are between an unsatisfactory status quo, or an SACP go-it-alone stance that simply plays into the hands of those who dream of break the alliance and marginalizing the SACP.

There is much more that needs to be done to ensure that electoral democracy in our country is taken forward and improved. The SACP calls for an end to floor-crossing, especially in the case of PR-elected representatives. This kind of floor-crossing degrades the dignity of our legislatures. We are calling for a review of the electoral dispensation so that a better balance between proportional and constituency-based representation is achieved.

Above all, the SACP is calling for vigilance against the danger of the corporate capture of our new democracy. There needs to be much more extensive public funding of political parties, including importantly at the local government level. There must be strict codes regarding private funding of political parties, to ensure that there is transparency in this matter.

No to the sovereignty of money! Yes to the sovereignty of the people!

Issued by: SACP

CONTACT:
SACP Spokesperson
Malesela Maleka
Tel: 011 339 3621
Fax: 011 339 4244
Cell: 082 226 1802
Email: malesela@sacp.org.za