08 April 2001
To the masses of our people gathered here and all our people throughout the country, Cde. Pallo Jordan (Member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC), Cde. Joe Nkosi (First Vice-President of COSATU), Cde. Thusi Kubheka of SANCO, members, leaders and supporters of the SACP, ANC and COSATU in the province of Mpumalanga and the town of Ermelo, I bring you revolutionary warm greetings from the entire membership and leadership of the South African Communist Party.
We are here gathered in the name of one of the greatest revolutionaries of the struggle of our people for a better life, one of the foremost fighters against poverty, unemployment, homelessness and gender oppression, an activist for change, for the dignity of our people, the fighter we all loved, respected and admired, the fighter we all dearly miss and honour - Comrade Chris Martin Thembisile Hani.
As we gather here, we remember that it is only three months ago that we were in Cofimvaba, burying Mrs. Nomayise Hani, the mother of Comrade Chris, who passed away after a short illness in December last year. We are also only two weeks away from burying Nomakhwezi, the daughter of Comrade Chris. Like the media conspired with forces of reaction to assassinate the character of Chris, the City Press chose to assassinate the character of Nomakhwezi by alleging that she died from a drug addiction - even before there was a post-mortem conducted and this in the midst of the bereavement period for the Hani family.
On Thursday, the post-mortem results confirmed that Nomakhwezi died from an asthmatic attack. And the City Press edition of today did not even publish an apology to the Hani family for their lies and slander against Nomakhwezi. In effect, the action of the City Press amounts to insensitivity over Nomakhwezi's death as it undermined the right of the Hani family and friends to mourn in dignity without any doubt or sensation hanging around.
The SACP demands an apology from the City Press to the Hani family and the nation and action against the journalist concerned. Without this apology the credibility of the City Press will become highly questionable and the SACP will be forced to reconsider its relationship with the journalist concerned and the City Press.
USE THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTION RESULTS TO BUILD PEOPLE'S POWER AND BUILD A BETTER LIFE FOR ALL
The SACP wishes to use this event to salute all members, activists, leaders and supporters of the SACP, ANC, COSATU and SANCO in Ermelo for contributing to a massive election victory for the ANC in the local government elections in December last year. This victory, as it reaffirms the values, principles and aspirations which Chris stood for, would have made proud of you the people he gave his life for. Chris, as an ANC member, activist and leader was always concerned about the poverty, suffering and humiliation which continue to afflict our people up to this day and he would have been proud about this victory because we must now speedily use it to build a better life for all by speeding up and improving the delivery of services to our people and eradicating poverty.
This victory and the new local government system now pose a challenge to all local government municipalities to deliver free water and electricity to all our people as a matter of urgency. We cannot allow this basic demand of our people to delay any further. There are those abathakathi who already want to undermine this demand for free services by privatising local government services. As the SACP we reject privatisation because it only means that private companies will make profits whilst our people continue paying for their basic needs and face electricity and water cut-offs and evictions as if we are still living under apartheid. If Hani was here today, he would be in the forefront of working for the realisation of the provision of free services and leading the fight against privatisation because from his own experience when he grew up in Sabalele, Cofimvaba, he had to face the indignity of walking long distance every day to fetch water and collect firewood whereas in East London, a mere 200km away, white families, were enjoying subsidised electricity and water.
The SACP says we will be able to only deliver these free services and more to our people by ensuring that we strengthen the public sector in local government and that local government plays a key role in local economic development. Also important is the empowerment of our people through co-operatives and ward committees to ensure that local government and councilors remain accountable and inter-act with our people.
80 YEARS OF FIGHTING FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION, PEOPLE'S POWER AND SOCIALISM
As the SACP we are proud to dedicate this rally here in Ermelo as a launch of our programme to celebrate 80 years of our existence as a South African Communist Party.
When we were founded in those heady days in July 1921 in Cape Town, the founding pioneers were inspired by the vision of socialism - the vision of a new society based on the need of the people without any class in society exploiting and oppressing any other class.
As South African Communists we have every right to celebrate and mark 80 years of unbroken struggles, achievements, challenges, trials, tribulations in the service of national liberation, people's power and socialism.
This 80 years of communist organisation in South Africa is no mean achievement. These 80 years represents dedication, sacrifices and contributions to the national liberation struggle. Through our 80 years of existence we have contributed immensely to the building of the liberation movement, the labour movement, the mass movement and the defeat of apartheid. Through our work we have built the political consciousness of the working class. We have contributed to the rooting of the ideas and vision of socialism in our country.
But who are these people who have made the SACP? Here we talk of committed people drawn from all of South Africa. Here we talk of Sydney Percival Bunting, Bill Andrews, Thabo Mofutsanyana, Alfred Thibedi, Albert Nzula, Johannes Nkosi, Josie Mpama, Ray Alexander, Alex La Guma, Joe Gqabi, Moses Kotane, Abram Fischer, Ruth First, Esther Barsel, Dan Tloome, Yusuf Dadoo, Moses Mabhida, Jack Simon, Harry Gwala, Joe Slovo, Sonia Bunting, Raymond Mhlaba and Chris Hani - few more names missing. These humble giants represent a continuing ling of struggle and dedication to our people.
Given the role we have played as communists and the role we continue to play, we are not surprised at all the attacks against us as a party of communists. On the one hand the bosses and their shop-stewards continue to hope that the poor and working people of our country will not push forward with their struggle for socialism, for water, for electricity, for a better life for all. But they do not just hope, they act on their hopes. Over the last five years they have thrown at least 4 million people to poverty and misery by retrenching more than 500 000 workers since 1994 as if we have not defeated apartheid. They continue to deny us access to affordable medicines by charging too high prices for basic medicines for TB, malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. In addition to these actions they have labeled rather strange and false attack on us as communists and poor and working people as a whole. Whilst hiding their narrow interests to exploit our people and accumulate as much as possible, and simply because we stand steadfast side by side and in leadership of our people, they have started spreading lies and falsehoods about the Party and questioning our vision of building socialism in our country.
To them we say, let them forget their wish that they can transform the South African economy on the carcass of poor and working people. Let them not under-estimate the resilience and commitment of the South African working class. Let them rest assured that in the coming months, years, decades and centuries, South African workers will fight privatisation, retrenchments, evictions, cut-offs and expensive prices for medicines. Let the rest assured that the SACP will be in the midst of these struggles. Let them rest assured that the South African working class will strengthen its confidence and trust in the SACP as their representative and leader. Unlike their parties and organisations, our Party and the alliance and movement it is part of do not merely exist out of fashion. We exist because of the class and people we seek to represent and lead.
On the other hand, there are those who pose as new revolutionaries now who seek to confuse our people by claiming that they represent their best interests and that the ANC government is not committed to deliver to our people. To these we say, where we you during the dark and difficult days of apartheid? We ask them, what alternative programmes do you have beyond the empty and opportunistic noise you make on a daily basis? We ask of them, what are you doing to fight the banks which exploit our people, the farmers attacking black workers, the drug companies which put profits at the expense of our people's health or the private capitalists which continue to exploit South African workers? As it should be, it is the SACP, COSATU and the ANC which continue to be at the forefront of struggles against the banks, the racist farmers, the drug companies and capitalists at the service of our people.
It is only the SACP which is the leading political force of the South African working class and in fighting for socialism in our country. It is only COSATU and its affiliates which will continue defending and advancing the best interest
All throughout our history we have always been rooted amongst our people and their struggles. It this tradition we seek to continue by using the month of July, the month in which we were founded all those 80 years ago, to ask our people to evlauate the SACP and shape its future. We call on all poor and working people to convene Workers' and People's Assemblies during the month of July to evaluate the history, programme, achievements, challenges and the way forward for the SACP. We are asking you the people to give answers to these questions - What has been the role of the SACP? What is the current role of the SACP? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the SACP? What must the SACP do? We know that the people of Ermelo, like our people everywhere in our country, will respond to this call and build this precious organ of theirs - this South African Communist Party of Chris Hani. A strong, vibrant SACP committed to the cause of the people is the best monument we will ever build in honour of Chris Hani.
For all these reasons whilst remembering and saluting Chris Hani, we here also formally launch the 80th Anniversary Celebrations of the SACP.
But this 80th anniversary is not only about our history. We celebrate our 80th anniversary against the backdrop of major advances in our society over the last six years, but also against the backdrop of a difficult challenges facing our struggle today. These challenges include the scourge of racism and the need to transform our economy in favour of poor and working people, in particular the banks and all other financial institutions which hoard our people's money and invest in the Kruger National Park and not here in Wesselton.
KICK OUT RACISM - BOYCOTT RACIST FARMERS, SHOPS AND PRODUTCS
This problem of racism, the most obvious manifestation of apartheid, continues to plague our country. Yesterday thousands of our people in Pietersburg buried Tsepo Matloha who was a victim of a vicious racist attack by 8 white men.
Many more cases go unreported in the media. Here in Mpumalanga, our office receives many complaints and reports of racism and racial attacks emanating mainly from farmers who continue to treat black people with contempt as if they are not human beings.
Whilst they are racist against us they still expect us to work for them in harsh working conditions. Even worse, they expect us to buy the very products we produce with our hands and brains at expensive prices from their shops and garages. Bayadelela.
But we must not only mourn. We must act. We must act to ensure that Tsepo's killers are brought to book and not released as it happened when an East Rand farmer was released with only a suspended sentence after he callously killed an infant on the back of her mother. We must take further strong action.
We welcome the coming World Conference Against Racism and the Northern Province against racism. But we need to do more. The South African Communist Party calls for a Programme of Mass Action against racism. We cannot host the World Racism Conference in the midst of racism, which is only sanitised in the media. We call on all our people to start a massive consumer boycott of goods and services from racist farmers, shopkeepers and suppliers. We must also march to that World Conference Against Racism to expose and deal a blow against racism. If Chris was here he would be at the head of this Programme of Mass Action. In fact, it was Chris Hani who was running the length and breadth of this country from one farm to the next rural area talking and mobilising our people against racism and for a better life.
Part of this campaign must be to unionise workers in farms and educate them about their rights.
But the fight against racism is not only about racism. Behind racism is class power, is capitalism which we must not even hesitate to strike blows against at every turn and advance our cause of socialism. It is capitalism, the greed of a few to exploit the rest of us, which lies at the core of racism. It was therefore not enough for Chris just to fight racism, but he was also a communist challenging capitalism and the bosses.
Which is why the SACP talks about the need to Build People's Power for a People's Economy. Which is why the SACP says "Make Banks Serve the People".
MAKE BANKS SERVE THE PEOPLE
BUILD PEOPLE'S POWER FOR A PEOPLE'S ECONOMY
As we remember Chris Hani, we also note the SACP led campaign on banks.
Since the SACP launched the "Make Banks Serve the People" Campaign, the last two months have marked a turning point with wider and increasing sections of South African society making calls on South African banks in particular to take immediate steps to transform their practices and policies in favour of poor and working people.
The Black Economic Empowerment Report of the Black Economic Empowerment Commission specifically calls on the need for a fundamental change in ownership, policies and practices of the financial sector of our country.
Government has also announced its intention to ensure that banks actually pay just taxes.
The SACP has also met with a wide range of organisations including the National Co-operative Association of South Africa, the National Stokvels Association of South Africa, and the Million Women's Savings Movement - all of which endorse the campaign and are leading important initiatives on co-operatives, savings clubs and alternative financial institutions.
The SACP also applauds the work and campaigns of the Durban based Diakonia Council of Churches in mobilising communities around the lack of access to credit.
The banks now have nowhere to hide, they have to respond to these growing calls from the mass of our people.
Essentially, South African banks and the financial sector as a whole are unaccountable hoarders of our people's money and savings. In our inter-action with the Banking Council and a few other banks, it is clear that the prime motive driving these banks is profit maximisation at the expense of investment in social progress. We get told about the need to adhere international standards whilst they continue with worst standards for the local population.
As recently as a month ago, the Amalgamated Banks of South Africa (ABSA) decided to increase their bank charges particularly hitting hard at those who earn less than R3000 per month. Considered against our campaign demands and the fact that ABSA is the largest bank used by the majority of poor and working people, this increase goes against the verbal commitments continuously made by banks to social investment. It reaffirms, once more, the need to intensify the campaign and calls on banks to change.
All the above points to the urgency of a comprehensive review of the entire financial sector, which must include a range of steps led by government. First and foremost is the convening of a NEDLAC Summit within the next three months.
The second step is the need for government to urgently put in place a comprehensive legislative framework. This framework must include the following:
Finally, the SACP calls on community organisations, religious organisations, trade unions, stokvel associations, burial societies, and other organisations to take ownership in this campaign. This campaign is for everyone.
Making banks serve the people is the essence of what Chris Hani stood for.
But our economy is not only about banks.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the principal plane on which to advance, consolidate and deepen our struggle in the current period is on the economic front in order to address the interrelated contradictions of class exploitation, the legacy of national oppression and gender inequalities in relation to, and not in isolation from one another.
The capitalist character of South African society, and the simultaneous deepening of economic restructuring brought forward by, inter alia, the globalisation of the capitalist economy, in the context of the liberation movement being in power, have focused our realities to the importance of the economic question more than ever before. In particular, as we have noted before, the contradiction of seeking to transform the apartheid political, social and economic order in the context of the deepening capitalist character of the national and international conjunctures, has further sharpened the centrality of the question of economic transformation in our struggle.
We have also seen the deepening of the ideological dominance of the neo-liberal ideology in our own country, in particular its own South African version, Afro neo-liberalism. This combines an aggressive black African petty bourgeois agenda through the acceptance of neo-liberalism, provided it works to create an accumulation regime favourable to its own class interests. Afro neo-liberalism restricts Black Economic Empowerment to the creation of a black capitalist class, and the use of the state in a parasitic manner whereby it is used as an instrument for black capital accumulation. Afro neo-liberalism would also support privatisation as a means to hand over to this class some of the state assets for its own purposes of accumulation and to enter the ranks of the capitalist class.
This neo-liberal agenda is no different to the global capitalist agenda of marginalising, if not weakening, the working class as a basis upon which to grow our economy. This neo-liberal offensive argues that the black working class is a spoilt "elite", an "aristocracy" that is only interested in its own "selfish" interests at the expense of the unemployed poor. This ideological offensive serves to mask the real agenda behind such attacks, that the working class has to be weakened, not because it is actually an aristocracy, but because it is a threat to the consolidation of post-apartheid South Africa as a capitalist society. Neo-liberalism ideologically projects itself as more concerned about the poor, when in fact the category "poor" is conveniently used to attack the real potential obstacle to capital accumulation, a strong, organised and united black working class which is actually constituted by the overwhelming by the majority of our people including formally and informally employed workers in all sectors of the economy, and unemployed workers. Afro-neo-liberalism correctly emphasises the urgency of tackling racial inequalities and racism in our society, but conveniently forgets that the very same black working class is an even worse victim of racism, rather than being an aristocracy of any sorts. Instead the real aristocrats, white monopoly capital, are not even mentioned, except in so far as to how they should be encouraged and given incentives to support the creation of a black capitalist class. Thus a new type of anti-working class, and typically compradorial-type relationship and dependence is created between white finance monopoly capital and the black petty bourgeoisie.
In essence Afro-neo-liberalism, like its global neo-liberal foundations, seeks to strip the national question of its class content, or conversely, seeks to insert a different class content into the struggle to address the national question. Slowly emerging with this hegemony of neo-liberalism is a veiled characterisation of the (black, and particularly African) working class as the enemy of progress and economic transformation in our country. Even worse, the black working class is cynically demonised as being its own worst enemy by not accepting the realities of capitalist globalisation, by continuing to engage in "adversarial" labour relations!
Two kinds of contradictions threaten to swallow neo-liberalism and its African version in its own ideology. Firstly, the strengthening of neo-liberalism is unlikely to address the national and gender questions, instead it tends to deepen the racial contradictions in broader society and class inequalities even within the very previously oppressed black majority. Secondly, instead of creating an independent black capitalist class it creates a black section of the capitalist class that has a (internal) compradorial-type relationship to the white capitalist class, thus deepening the hold of white local and international monopoly capital over the South African economy. This is likely to become a new form of internal colonialism, reflecting itself less through the political, but increasingly through economic forms of subjugation and domination.
Neo-liberalism constantly seeks to limit discussion and development of economic policy options to elitist policy designs by explicitly marginalising the working class and the mass of the people from effective participation. In our context this is reinforced by the generally hostile bourgeois media which constantly castigates working class interests as narrow and self-centred, whilst projecting neo-liberal policies as the most appropriate set of economic policies.
The above realities point to only one direction, the need to mobilise our people to struggle for the building of an economy in which they effectively participate and which is increasingly oriented towards meeting their needs. This will, in the first instance, enable us to shift the terms and contours of the economic debate such that it is dominated by concerns of the working class and the poor. This also requires concrete struggles around economic restructuring that favours the working class and the poor, in line with our programmatic commitment to rolling back and transforming the capitalist market.
OUR CONCLUSION - MORE AND MORE STRUGGLE
In conclusion, we say:
Remember Chris Hani - Build the SACP
Remember Chris Hani - Build a better life for all and deliver services to our
people speedily
Remember Chris Hani - Fight privatisation and strengthen the public sector
Remember Chris Hani - Make Banks Serve the People
Remember Chris Hani - Build People's Power for a People's Economy
AMANDLA!
VIVA SACP! VIVA ANC! VIVA COSATU!
LONG LIVE THE UNDYING SPIRIT OF CHRIS HANI!