24 August 2000
Build working class power for fundamental local government transformation
Comrade President, General Secretary, the SAMWU NEC, the leadership of our Alliance, invited international and local guests and comrade delegates. Let me take this opportunity, on behalf of the Central Committee (CC) and the entire membership of the South African Communist Party (SACP) to bring warm revolutionary and solidarity greetings to your Congress.
Cde President, this Congress is an important parliament for municipal workers and local government across the country. It is this Congress that will discuss and advance the interests of the working class broadly on local government transformation and servi ce delivery from a national democratic perspective. As your Congress slogan puts it, the key challenges are to Transform Local Government, Crush Poverty, Advance to Socialism
Therefore our message to this Congress focuses on the following issues:
Local government restructuring and transformation since 1994
As the SACP and the Alliance we are all agreed that we inherited from the apartheid regime distorted state structures that must be transformed in all spheres of government.
As the SACP we acknowledge massive progress made in local government transformation in the last 6 years. This includes the historic democratic local government elections of 1995 and 1996. These elections made it possible for thousands of activists from the democratic movement to take hold of local state power through elected positions and the local state machinery. Coupled to this have been very exciting experiments of building people's power and participation in local governance and budgeting with critical involvement of organised municipal workers. For example through SAMWU initiatives, the communities of Odi, Cape Town and Carletonville have access to affordable water provided by the public sector, have stopped wasteful water leaks and access to ambulance services after hours respectively. There also hundreds of committed councillors who are committed to serve the people and have done sterling work to defend the public sector. We must support and reinforce these comrades. We put a challenge to SAMWU and ot her municipal workers to institute awards to recognise councillors committed to serve the working class and the poor.
Whilst there has been massive change, the critical question is whether the content and the manner of current local government restructuring and transformation are consistent with this approach. This is what the SACP is seriously concerned about.
During the last five years we have also seen, to much fan-fare, many municipalities implementing restructuring plans claimed as plans to make cities work. These plans have been presented as bold visions that would transform municipalities into +ACI-world c lass municipalities+ACI-... and this was to become the very first problem with these plans. The packaging greatly misrepresented the actual content. Far from being broad developmental and transformation visions, the plans were, essentially, financial rescu e programmes linked to institutional re-design.
Many of the plans were not based on the historical legacy of racial oppression that has to be overcome. Instead they have been rooted in a private sector, managerialist paradigm. These managerialist origins, wrapped in exaggerated public relations hype, ha ve continued to dog local government restructuring.
To begin, and then to persist, in these managerialist ways undercuts the necessity of grounding managerial decisions within a progressive political process. Managerial competence and financial probity are certainly essential, but they have to be informed b y, and continuously assessed in terms of a strategic political vision of transformation. Indeed, not only is there a need for a broadly shared vision of where our cities are going, but, insofar as there are financial restraints, there needs to be a politic al discussion about the causes of, and solutions to such constraints.
A second (and another typically managerialist) problem has been the tendency to confuse the inclusive elaboration of a local government transformation for the city (within the ANC, the alliance, and broad popular movement) with labour relations bargaining. Clearly, there are matters that require employer-employee negotiations, but it is disingenuous to complain that +ACI-unions are not seeing the wider picture, when strategic political discussion is forced into a narrow (and often conflictual) labour relati ons mould. The alliance between the ANC and COSATU is, in the first place, a political alliance based on a shared strategic vision of national democratic revolution. To reduce this alliance to a management-employee relationship is a dangerous delusion. To surpass the current problems, requires political leadership from the ANC, the SACP, and, indeed, COSATU.
But the inept manner in which the entire restructuring and transformation process has been handled in some municipalities has caused real damage. Discussion and consultation, in which the real pros and cons of different choices are honestly laid on the tab le, have often been displaced by management-style Microsoft Powerpoint overhead presentations transparencies instead of transparency. The importance of mobilising our own mass forces gets displaced by institutional reform organograms instead of organisatio n. Popular opposition to the plan is even worn like a badge for potential private sector investors to admire you see, we really mean business, we will see this thing through regardless. Toughness starts to become an end in itself, hawkers are bundled off p avements on the grounds that they are obstructing pedestrians (as if their survival did not depend on pedestrians), or on the grounds that they are selling pirated goods.
Socialist perspectives on local government transformation
Our approach to local government transformation is captured by our 9th Congress and 10th Congress slogans of Socialism is the future build it now and Build People's Power Build Socialism Now
Comrades, the SACP believes that the transformation of local government is a very central question in defending and deepening the National Democratic Revolution. It is this sphere of government that is closest to the people and is tasked with enormous resp onsibilities to facilitate a people-driven and people-centred delivery and transformation.
In addition the SACP is of the view that big metropolitan cities like Johannesburg are national institutions and assets, given the fact that they are critical for economic growth and development of our country. For this reason the transformation of and res tructuring of local government generally and particularly the big metropolitan areas cannot be narrowly seen as a local or provincial matter, but they are a matter of national concern.
Our starting point as the SACP is that local government transformation must be guided by the Alliance commitment to building a developmental state. Key features of such a state are the following:
Much more importantly our transformation programmes and processes must be inclusive and aim to seek maximum possible consensus including all the key stakeholders.
As the SACP our approach is also informed by the fact that there is a job loss bloodbath underway in our country. It therefore becomes important and it is necessary for workers and unions to struggle to defend their jobs. For workers to defend their jobs i s a duty of every trade union. This is a perfectly legitimate struggle and concern, and no union worth its salt can stand on the sidelines if its member's jobs are seen to be at stake. We are not by any means suggesting that unions should not be concerned about broader issues of transformation and service delivery, but it is wrong to want to attain service delivery by sacrificing workers+IBk- jobs, or for that matter wily nily wanting to use privatisation as the only option for dealing with crisis areas. Th ose who say workers should not fight to defend their jobs must also go and tell the bosses that they should not fight to protect and increase their profits.
Where restructuring and transformation have taken place with the increased role for the private sector, we are not told whether other forms of partnerships, like public-public partnerships, as well as partnerships with NGOs and communities have been fully explored. If these have been undertaken we need to be told what the shortcomings of these are, and who undertook that investigation, and were communities and workers involved in exploring these alternatives. As the SACP, just like the national framework ag reement says, we believe that privatisation and corporatisation should not be the first option. It is simply wrong and untrue that the private sector is a better provider of social services. In a country like ours, it is the state that should play a leadin g and interventionist role in the provision of basic social services. The capitalist market is not the solution. To think so is economic fundamentalism of the worst kind.
What are we saying then as the SACP about a way forward in order that these matters are dealt with amicably? Our starting point is that we are not dealing with an enemy government, but it is an ANC government, which is elected by us and is ours. And comrad es we should not lose sight of this fact, no matter what problems we have, that our approach should be informed by the fact that we are dealing with our own comrades and our own structures. It is for this reason that we expect municipalities to deal with t he problems of the unions in this comradely way and not think that we can bulldoze our way by sidelining workers, as if they are an opposition. It is for this reason as well that the Alliance needs to take up local government transformation as we believe that a way has to be found to resolve these problems in a manner consistent with our own political approaches and commitments. But none of these things must happen in a vacuum without being based on a broader socio-economic transformation strategy.
The perspectives we advance here are actually about the deepening and consolidation of the NDR. Essentially, these perspectives are about better service delivery, building people+IBk-s power and state-led local economic development.
Local government transformation must be premised on a broader socio-economic transformation perspective
The key challenge facing South Africa's transition is the development of a coherent economic policy to drive a developmental path aimed at job creation and the eradication of poverty. We want a job-creating economy led by an active national democratic stat e, which intervenes in the economy.
It is for all the above reasons that the SACP Strategy Conference said the following on economic transformation:
It is therefore on the basis of a coherent development and industrial strategy that we should approach the transformation of local government, the restructuring of state assets, the public service in general and change in labour laws. Without this linkage, we will continue to see local government transformation which is ad-hoc and not based on our developmental agenda.
On the labour laws the SACP is gravely concerned about the current labour law review process. We wish to use this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to defend and consolidate a basic floor of worker rights. We also reaffirm our commitment to a 40-hour working week. The SACP believes that there is no rush to steamroller the proposed amendments through NEDLAC at this point in time. We are of the view that we should not proceed with these amendments until we have discussed them in the Alliance. The SACP wi ll never support any measure that threatens to erode hard-won worker rights.
The key challenge for the working class: Unleashing a mass movement for socio-economic transformation
A liberation movement consolidating its grip on state power is, undoubtedly, important, but on its own it can prove to be inadequate, or even part of the reason for a subsequent loss of transformational momentum. Bureaucratic state power in the absence of (or disconnected from) mobilised mass power can prove to be weak power. It is vulnerable to external forces (e.g. IMF pressures)and it becomes the target of (rather than being reinforced by) popular mobilisation.
The big challenge therefore comrades is to mobilise our people behind socio-economic transformation that will benefit the working people and the poor. We cannot simply rely on government alone, given the power and pressure of capital on our government. We need a counter-balance, precisely in order to strengthen our government.
This means that in our opposition to privatisation, we must mobilise, acting together with our allies, organised workers, hawkers, the unemployed, farm and domestic workers behind a programme to defend and extend the public sector.
It also means the mobilisation of stokvels, burial societies, provident funds and savings clubs to be directed towards co-operative banks. That is why the SACP is calling for your concrete support in our planned action towards the banks and the transformat ion of the financial sector on 21 October 2000.
Perhaps also critically this means decisive steps needs to be taken for the establishment of a working class foundation a working class think-tank, to research, analyse and develop broad based policies for the working class. This should not replace such or gans as they may exist, but should harness all this work to advance working class perspectives. We hope SAMWU will raise this question at the COSATU Congress next month.
The economic debate will ultimately not be resolved in the boardrooms but through the strategic deployment of the mass power of the working class, backed by working class communities. These struggles also provide a unique opportunity for our Party to deepe n its independent class organisation amongst the ranks of the working class. It is also very clear that the working class needs a strong SACP, and the SACP needs a revolutionary working class in order to take forward the struggle for socialism. This should be the clarion call to South African communists, wherever they are located: Root the Party in the working class.
As part of this overall struggle and offensive by the working class, we need also to use this opportunity to build the SACP as a vanguard of the working class. We therefore call upon metalworkers to intensify the building of workplace structures of the SAC P as well as ensuring that the Party has strong residential branches. This is a necessity for socialism.
On the Tripartite Alliance and the local government elections
We need an Alliance consensus on economic policy as a basis for a nation-wide consensus involving key role-players in the economy. The longer we postpone this, the more unnecessary problems and tensions we will have.
As the SACP we seek to build the political consciousness and power of the working class such that the working class, and organised workers in particular, position themselves as the leading motive force of our revolution, as the leading class force of socie ty. We cannot afford a working class which is marginalised and isolated from our liberation movement, from the broad struggles of our people for a better life. Otherwise, organised workers could be marginalised into narrow workerism, which just focuses on workplace issues without looking at broader political transformation.
It is in this context that current struggles and discussions amongst organised workers confirm the growing confidence of the South African working class in independent working class political organisation committed to the achievement of socialism in South Africa through the South African Communist Party. The SACP is THE independent socialist worker's party in our country which is aligned to a radical national liberation movement and the revolutionary trade union movement. The challenge is how to strengthen this SACP as part of building working class power both within and outside the Alliance. The challenge for each COSATU affiliate is developing a unique and specific contribution to the task of building this precious organ and vanguard of the South African w orking class building the South African Communist Party rooted in our realities.
It is with this approach in mind that we discuss the upcoming local government elections. Our approach to the local government elections has to be located in terms of our understanding of the current challenges that confront our transition and our overall objective of building socialism as we have outlined them above.
Very importantly, the local government campaign is not only about the elections. It is also about the establishment of new municipalities and the implementation of a fundamentally new model of local government that is a considerable advance over the curren t one. The elections, then, are inextricably linked to the transformation of local government as a whole, and our campaign must take this into account.
Among issues the SACP will hope to see in the ANC election manifesto are the following:
Despite problems and contradictions in policy and practice on local government transformation, an overwhelming ANC victory in the 2000 local government elections still remains the most viable option to advance, consolidate and deepen the national democrati c revolution. For the SACP this also means finding ways and means to lay the basis for building people's power and the eventual transition to socialism. Where there have been qualitative and quantitative leaps forward, in the past decade and before, it has been through decisive working class mobilisation led primarily by the SACP and COSATU within the ANC-led alliance. Therefore massive working class mobilisation for an ANC victory and thorough-going and ongoing local government transformation is crucial.
With these few words, we wish you a successful Congress and we trust that it will meet its political challenges and tasks.
Amandla
VIVA SAMWU! VIVA COSATU! VIVA SACP! VIVA ANC!
Transform Local Government, Crush Poverty, Advance to Socialism
BLADE NZIMANDE GENERAL SECRETARY SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY