Introduction
Comrade Chairperson, leadership of SADTU in this province, leadership of Alliance present and comrade delegates, as the SACP we are indeed honoured to have been invited to your first Triennial Conference. For us this marks the deepening of relations between the SACP and SADTU, and an expression of the interdependence between communists and the labour movement in our country.
1.0 The ANC victory and the working class
Let me start by thanking all those of you comrades who voted for the ANC on the 2 June 1999. The overwhelming victory of the ANC nationally is indeed an important advance in the struggle to deepen and consolidate the national democratic revolution. It is also important to remind ourselves that the ANC has been returned to government principally by the workers and the poor in our country. It is therefore proper that we should expect the ANC government to continue with policies that are advancing the interests of the working class and the poor.
We should also thank you comrades for the role that SADTU played in ensuring that the ANC becomes the single largest party in the Western Cape. The fact that we are not in government in this province should not make us lose sight of the fact that the ANC did indeed win the election in this province though it was not an outright majority. The fact that the ANC is neither in government nor part of the government of the Western Cape is as a result of the political fraud committed by the two parties of white minority privilege – the NP and the DP. These parties decided to immorally form a government that excludes the voice of the single largest majority in this province.
The coalition government of losers does indeed pose very pertinent challenges to our movement, not least the labour movement. In this province we need to continually expose this immoral government highlighting the fact that it stands for nothing else other than the continuation, albeit under new conditions, of the interests of the white minority both in this province and nationally. The insensitivity of this Western Cape regime is also underlined by the fact that they have appointed as MEC for education that champion of white minority rights who, through the Grove judgement, held the country to ransom attempting to block the deracialisation and transformation of the education system. This means that the struggle continues to ensure that the interests of the working people and the poor are advanced in this province. It means deepening our work amongst the mass of the people to ensure that transformation is taken forward despite the arrogance, insensitivity and the racist orientation of both the NP and the DP.
2.0 Deepening racial, class and gender contestations in the current period
The above serves also to underline the deepening contestations in the current period in South Africa. As the SACP we had always and consistently pointed out that much as the vote is absolutely critical in advancing our goals, but that alone is not adequate. This means that in order to advance the interests of the working class and the poor the labour movement in particular will have to play an increasingly central role in the deepening of the NDR. We are in a period where the privileged sections of South African society are intensifying their offensive against the working people, in particular organised workers, in attempt to secure South Africa as a country principally serving the interests of the rich and the better off.
We have characterised these struggles as an expression of the principal strategic contradiction in South African society today. This contradiction is that expressing itself in a struggle between, on the one hand, those forces that stand for the most thorough transformation of South African society, not only in the political sphere, but in the economic sphere as well. The working class, the landless rural masses and the urban poor are at the core of these forces. On the other hand there are those neo-liberal forces, which stand for the modernisation of capitalism, partial deracialisation, including co-option of sections from the previously oppressed without touching the class foundations of South African society. In essence the latter forces stand for the retention of elements of white privilege (under the guise of partially deracialised capitalism) and the reproduction of unequal gender relations but under conditions where some of the better of women become part of the new elite. In essence they stand for a reformed colonialism of a special type, rather than its complete transformation.
In the current period, the principal strategic contradiction expresses itself in a number of ways. Some of these include the following:
2.1 Contest over the developmental path for South Africa The contest here is essentially between, on the one hand, those forces which argue that the path for development for South Africa is an uncritical acceptance of the current capitalist global realities. According to these forces all South Africa has to do is to insert itself into this current international conjuncture, without seeking to challenge the unequal nature of the current international economic regime. These forces also seek to direct South Africa on a path of privatisation, liberalisation, and retrenchments, smashing of the labour movement and the casualisation of labour as the foundation upon which the South African economy has to be built. The reality is that they are arguing for a developmental path that, even according to its high priests in the World Bank and the IMF, has failed dismally to develop the economies of developing countries.
On the other hand, the working class and the poor are struggling for a developmental path that prioritises the role of the state in development, the extension of the public sector in service provision and a state principally representing the interests of the working people and the poor. The very first five years of democratic government in our country has proved that it is the state that must play a leading role in development in order to meet the basic needs of the majority of the people in our country. It is the state, and not the private sector that has realised the provision of electricity, clean water, primary health care and education for the millions of the poor people in our country. This is an important lesson that we must build upon in the next five years. The biggest challenge for the working class in the current period is to roll back the capitalist market from the provision of basic social services and ensure that the public sector becomes the mainstay of our economy.
2.2 Ideological attacks on the working class
This period is also characterised by intensified attacks on the working class, in particular on organised workers. The first and most sinister type of attack is that of counterpoising the interests of organised workers as necessarily being against the interests of the unemployed and the poor. As part of this attack all sorts of forces have all of a sudden become the “champions” of the poor, essentially as a means not to advance the interests of the poor but to attack the working class and organised workers in particular. It needs to be said that the struggle of employed workers, the landless rural masses and the poor is essentially the same struggle. It is a struggle against poverty. A struggle by organised workers against retrenchments and casualisation is essentially a struggle to defend workers’ only means of livelihood – jobs! The struggle of farmworkers and landless rural masses is a struggle for access to productive land as a means to make a living. The struggle of the urban poor is a struggle to find meaningful employment in order to make ends meet. An important challenge therefore for the SACP, the labour movement and the poor is to weld these struggles together for sustainable means of livelihood.
The other ideological attack on organised workers is that they are a spoilt elite that is only interested in its own narrow economistic self-interest. This is the worst insult that can be heaped on organised workers of this country. Without the sustained struggles and sacrifices of organised workers in fighting apartheid there would be no democracy today. It is these very same organised workers who have to sustain their unemployed relatives who are unable to make ends meet because of the absence of a comprehensive social security system. In fact what are called wages in South Africa are nothing but workers’ earnings plus provision for social security, health, education and general social provision for the unemployed relatives.
Related to this is the rather new claim, even by some of our own comrades, that working class interests represent only the sectional interests of South African society. Organised workers are being relegated to a small sect, despite the fact that they are in fact the leading detachment of the working class. Such accusations directly play into the hands of the very same bosses which want to smash and weaken the labour movement and it must be vigorously challenged from whatever quarter it emanates from.
2.3 Job losses and apartheid-type labour practices
South Africa is currently going through one of the massive job losses in its recent history. We have called this a job-loss blood bath precisely because there is an intensification of placing profits before people. As the SACP we have called on the urgent convening of sectoral summits aimed at reversing this bloodbath and set our economy on a path of job creation, job security and job retention. These retrenchments are a direct attack on the labour movement and the living standards of the working class in South Africa.
Even more disturbing is the re-emergence of a tendency from some employers to want to revert back to some of the worst forms of apartheid-type labour practices, including lock-outs and unilateral restructuring. It is as if now that we have a democratic and legitimate government, this can be used to launch fresh attacks on organised workers. This is nothing but an attempt to turn the victory of the working people and the poor into a victory for a minority elite, at the direct expense of the working class. The SACP is committed to fighting these practices in the same way as we fought against them during the apartheid era. The dawn of democracy in our country, brought about by the extreme sacrifices made by the working class, cannot be allowed to be turned into an instrument for the benefit of a small elite, no matter how “non-racial” or “non-sexist” the composition of that elite may be.
3.0 The challenges facing the working class and the Alliance
There are a number of challenges facing the working class and the Alliance in the current period in the light of the picture sketched above:
3.1 The resolution of the public sector wage dispute
As the SACP we are deeply concerned about the manner in which the current public sector wage dispute is proceeding. Our last Central Committee in July called for the parties to the dispute to negotiate until they reach an agreement. We reiterate this call and urge parties to return to the negotiating table, as failure to do this will place in danger the entire programme of public sector transformation. Public sector unions need the ANC government to advance its own interests, just as government needs COSATU public sector unions to advance the goals of state transformation and social delivery. Furthermore, there is no contradiction between service delivery and a living wage. Any attempt to oppose the two results in the fetishisation of service delivery as if it can be separated from the existence of committed corps of policemen and women, teachers, nurses and clerks who are paid a living wage.
3.2 Harnessing sectoral struggles into the overall objectives of the revolution as a whole
One of the key challenges of the Alliance, particularly its leadership, is to weld together legitimate sectoral struggles with the overall struggle to deepen and consolidation the national democratic revolution. It would be wrong to castigate, as a matter of routine, sectoral struggles as necessarily undermining the goals of the NDR as a whole. Just as it would be wrong to project each and every sectoral struggle as necessarily revolutionary. But at the same time it would be wrong to project the overall goal of the revolution as being above and separated or distracted by legitimate sectoral aspirations and interests. For instance, the SACP is strongly of the view that the Alliance leadership should desist from using platforms of unions or other sectoral formations as places to go out and lecture these formations like schoolchildren. This is counter-productive and makes us to fail to effectively harness these sectoral struggles into a unified struggle to deepen transformation.
We dare not forget that the victory over apartheid was achieved through harnessing the creativity of the mass of our people, whether it is in the Self-Defence Units, street committees or PTSAs. Similarly the struggle for transformation and a better life for all will be realised through harnessing the energies of our people in their sectoral formations. This is the kind of leadership that is required; otherwise we run the danger of abstracting the overall objectives of the national democratic revolution from mass and sectoral struggles of our people. Any revolution is a combination of leadership and the creative expressions of our people.
3.3 The struggle for a national democratic, developmental state
As the SACP we are firmly committed to a struggle to defend and extend the public sector as the most crucial weapon the transformation of South African society. Firstly, this means that we are against the notions of a lean and mean state for its own sake without measuring this against the objectives of our developmental programmes. Secondly, we are strongly of the view that public enterprises are not there to be sold off to private capital, nor as instruments to nurture a black bourgeoisie. These entities should be defended and strengthened as instruments for social delivery and they should by and large be kept in the hands of the state. For this reason we are calling for an audit of these public enterprises, their existing and potential role in social and economic development, in order to strengthen them for the implementation of the RDP. This is part of the developmental state that we are calling for.
4.0 The challenges for SADTU
4.1 Build a strong united SADTU and COSATU
The most important task facing teachers now is to build a strong SADTU. Part of this struggle is to effectively weld trade unionism and professionalism and not the artificial separation of the two, whilst at the same time not losing sight of the distinct features of each. But at the same time there can be no strong SADTU without a strong COSATU. The challenges of the current period call for an even stronger federation
4.2 Taking a lead in the culture of learning, teaching and service
SADTU needs to concretely come up with a campaign to enhance the culture of learning and teaching in our schools and colleges. We do not share the view that SADTU is pursuing a wrong kind of trade unionism, nor the fact that most of SADTU members are lazy. It is therefore important to urgently implement your own resolution of weeding out lazy elements and take a lead in COLTS.
However a key component of this task is not just to teach, but also to teach a curriculum that is characterised by humane and caring values and to challenge the barbarism and capitalist ideology in the classroom. Socialist ideas and thinking should also be firmly part of the curriculum and syllabi.
4.3 Building a strong SACP – the workers’ vanguard
The SACP has dubbed October 1999 as the Red October. We have jointly embarked on this campaign with COSATU in order to recruit for the SACP amongst organised workers and increase COSATU membership as well. We call upon SADTU in this province to be part of this campaign and ensure that we also establish SACP workplace units in educational institutions as well. These units are important for building the political understanding and confidence of the workers in order to lead the NDR and lay strong foundations for socialism. The Red October Campaign will be underpinned by our commitment to struggle against job losses, to fight for women’s emancipation in the workplace and the home, to defend and extend the public sector and to spread awareness about the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the struggle for cheap drugs.
We are also using this campaign to intensify the debit order campaign and call upon you to assist in funding the SACP so that it truly becomes the independent political vanguard of the working class.
With these words we wish you a successful conference!
Issued by: SACP Dept. of Information & Publicity
E-Mail: sacp1@wn.apc.org