SACP Red October Campaign rally - Message from SACP Central Committee as delivered by Deputy National Chairperson Cde Thulas Nxesi

2 November 2014

Dear Comrades and distinguished guests,

Allow me to convey revolutionary greetings on behalf of the Central Committee of the SACP.

Through the Red October Campaign we are celebrating the Great October Socialist Revolution that took place in Russia in 1917, 97 years ago. Inspired by that great milestone in the history of humanity – in the history of the struggle for economic justice; the struggle for social justice; the struggle for democracy; the struggle for complete human liberation and full social emancipation – we are rallied here today as part of our Red October Campaign 2014/5 under the theme:

Mobilise people’s power to transform the financial sector and build a People’s Economy!

Together with our allies and other progressive organisations we have scored important victories since the launch of our ‘Make the banks serve the people’ campaign in 2000. This campaign has now developed into the broader Financial Sector Campaign – which we are intensifying through the Red October Campaign 2014/5 to transform the financial sector as a whole to serve our broader developmental agenda.

Our campaign to make the banks serve the people notched up important victories.

But the struggle continues, comrades – first and foremost to defend those well-known victories which we listed when we launched the Red October Campaign 2014/5 last month – and, equally importantly, to transform the financial sector to serve all the people.

We cannot afford to have a private monopoly banking sector, and in addition, which is dominated by four oligopolies - Barclays-ABSA, FirstRand-FNB, Standard Bank and NedBank. These have now been joined by the likes of Investec and Capitec Bank, and a number of other private financial predators, including micro-lenders such as African Bank which has recently imploded. In addition, we are facing a multitude of small, fly-by-night loan sharks that only impoverish our people.

The SACP supports, and calls for decisive advance towards, the establishment of co-operative banks, state bank and the transformation of the Post Bank to offer full banking services; all of these must prioritise the people first and foremost and all the time – rather than profit.

Let us continue the struggle against the ever-rising exorbitant bank charges and high interest rates – let us prioritise production, economic and social transformation and development.

Let us intensify our just fight against reckless and unsecured lending that leads the workers and the poor into high levels of debt.

The credit bureau supports the super-exploitation and blacklisting of our people. Earlier this year we were able to secure measures to expunge adverse credit records from the system. It is clear that the credit bureau regime must be further transformed.

The financial sector, including the private monopoly insurance industry, is discriminating against people living with HIV. We must fight against this and advance alternative, caring policies.

We also call upon workers to ensure that trade union investment companies invest in a manner that advances transformation and our developmental goals. Let us also defeat business unionism, including the use of monies from the union investment companies for factional and even counter-revolutionary purposes.

Through the Red October Campaign 2014/5, the SACP will intensify the Financial Sector Campaign to:

• Review and improve the National Development Plan in line with the outcomes of our last Alliance Summit. We will in this regard participate meaningfully in the Alliance Task Team that was set up to address the essential concerns that were raised by the Party and COSATU relating to the plan’s economic epicentre. Instead to a paradigm maintenance offered by the plan’s economic policy epicentre we need rather a rupture with policies the past that did not work – this is what is needed to pursue a second, more radical phase of transition.
• Break the investment strike that the bosses have embarked upon, and push for taxation of liquid capital above a defined ceiling coupled with prescribed assets requirements to direct investment towards productive activities, employment creation and the reduction of inequality and poverty.
• Ensure consistent implementation of consumer and financial education.
• Bring to an end the bail-out of the banks that implode as a result of reckless and unsecured lending.
• Abolish the prohibitive cost of, and universalise access to communication; and ensure the immediate implementation of drop call rates reduction.
• Push for an end to commoditisation and financialisation of basic services, including healthcare; defend and ensure that the National Health Insurance Scheme is successfully implemented.

All of these require that we build a working class-led financial sector transformation and consumer activist movement. The SACP has made progress in this regard will intensify the work.

The second more radical phase of our NDR

Last week, the Party launched its discussion document entitled “Going to the Root: A radical second phase of the NDR: its content, context and our strategic tasks”.

This is a timely intervention, comrades, intended to contribute to deepening our understanding of the current conjuncture, reflecting on where we are coming from, and developing a solid class-based analysis to guide strategy and tactics going forward.

The discussion document uncovers the underlying systemic causes of the continuing triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality in our country. These include the fact that the productive economy remains subordinated to the demands of the global capitalist system. Critical features of this legacy include:

• Dependence on commodity exports (minerals, coal, etc.) – and the failure to use these resources to promote industrialisation and development.
• High levels of monopoly concentration across all sectors – and the growing influence of the finance sector – resulting in a massive flight of capital overseas and an effective investment strike by capital.
• Reliance on a ‘cheap labour’ dispensation – which continues to reproduce South Africa’s skewed racial pattern of spatial development – with rich middle class suburbs – and the black workforce forced to commute from far-flung townships and semi-rural areas.

At the political level, the discussion document acknowledges the massive constitutional and political progress made in abolishing white minority rule. This in turn allowed the ANC-led government to embark on a major redistributive socio-economic programme – including the provision of social grants, RDP houses, electrification, water, expansion of free education, NSFAS, school feeding scheme, EPWP etc., – all of which brought relief to the poorest of our people. But there were clearly severe limits to what could be achieved – given the largely untransformed productive economy – which is at the root of what is reproducing the triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

The discussion document does not shy away from self-criticism. Politically, a major flaw was to conceive of the redistributive programme as a ‘top-down’ exercise of government with the masses seen as passive beneficiaries. The negative consequences of this included the following:

• As government’s massive redistributive effort is overwhelmed by the scale of the problems, this sets up government as a sitting duck target for anger and frustration – while monopoly capital disinvests and largely escapes blame.
• Treating people as individual ‘clients’ also tends to undermine the potential cohesion of poor communities. Many “township delivery protests” are fuelled by factional rivalries within communities – e.g. backyard dwellers versus shack-dwellers for priority listing on the housing list etc.
• The effective de-mobilisation of popular forces by the top-down, state “delivery” model of redistribution has also deprived us of an important means of transforming the state itself. The Freedom Charter calls not just for one-person-one-vote representative democracy, but also for “DEMOCRATIC ORGANS OF SELF-GOVERNMENT” – an ACTIVE PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY. We have lost sight of this crucial aspect – as we increasingly looked to the state to find technical solutions for our problems. This aspect of the discussion document has already sparked debate:
• Do we seek to recapture and democratise the official statutory institutions – community police forums, school governing bodies, ward committees, municipal participatory budgeting, etc. – as the discussion document implies, or
• Do we go back to the basics – “to continue with the popular participatory democracy of the ANC and of other democratic mass structures.’ (VC, Communist University).
• Or do we do both: go back to basics – to organise, mobilise and educate – in order to then breathe new life into the official structures we have created.

In summary, from this diagnostic, two key and related perspectives are advanced in the discussion paper:

• The problematic dependent nature of our PRODUCTIVE economy must be radically transformed; and
• We need an active citizenry and a transformed relationship between the state and communities.

Hence the need for a second, more radical phase of our revolution. The question then becomes, comrades, what is the form and content of this second phase? What is our programme of action? This is where we are going to have to focus our debate – in line with the words of Karl Marx, engraved on his tombstone in Highgate Cemetery, London:

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point is to change it.”

At a strategic level, the discussion document points out the direction we need to travel. It calls for:

• South Africa to break out (what it calls ‘relative delinking”) from its dependent position within the global imperialist system – by developing alternative economic and trading alliances e.g., through sub-Saharan regional development and BRICS;
• Critical also is the challenge of re-industrialisation – including the beneficiation of commodities - so that economically we move up the global value chain. Indeed many of the key pillars of this strategy are already cornerstones of government policy and programmes – including the New Growth Path, the Industrial Policy Action Plan, and the National Infrastructure Programme. However, there is still a long way to go.
• Our deep-rooted productive economy distortions mean that high levels of unemployment and under-employment are likely to be a long-term reality, as the NDP recognises. In this situation the fostering of sustainable (and productive) livelihoods, relatively de-linked from the labour-market are absolutely essential.

This points to the need for a fundamental re-conception and repositioning of public employment programmes to provide the following:

• an expansion of our social security net, dispensing of stipends to unemployed and poor people and communities;
• providing meaningful training, skills and work experience with participants involved in productive work - providing services, infrastructure and assets to poor communities;
• along with cooperatives, micro-enterprises and various forms of self-employment, the public employment programmes can develop into a solidarity economy relatively de-linked from the capitalist market.

In the past, as the SACP, we have said that the second more radical phase must also decisively address the land question and massively intensify the struggle against corruption:

• On the land question, as we put in place statutory frameworks and structures to reopen land claims and to drive restitution and redistribution, we must never lose sight of the centrality of rural community development to promote food security and greater self-sufficiency.
• On corruption - whilst the discussion document analyses the roots of this scourge, we need to focus our energies on the development of a holistic, effective and credible anti-corruption strategy.

Comrades, a key task of the second more radical phase of our revolution is to replenish and reaffirm the integrity of both government (and officials) and of our organisations. We need to empower and affirm honest comrades, and we need to root out corrupt officials – and those who corrupt them in the private sector. This is about compliance, enforcement, accountability and consequences. It is about reasserting the traditional values and practices of our movement – exemplified by the great leaders of the past – and it is about leadership that does not take people for granted, and understands that loyalty and respect is earned by service and delivering on commitments.

This brings us to the final part of our message here today:

The organisational challenges we face.

Today we would like to draw on the analysis contained in a document prepared by the Limpopo ANC entitled: Organisational Renewal – Vision 2018. We have applied the lessons nationally and to our own situation as the SACP:

Starting with what the document calls “Our Competitive Strengths”: One of the ANC’s key strength over the years has been its strategic visionary outlook anchored on dynamic policies, progressive values and principles, vibrant organic alliance and our mass based approach to organisation. Furthermore throughout our evolution we have remained resilient, adaptive and innovative. Clearly this is equally true – if not more so – in the case of the SACP.

Secondly the overwhelming majority of our people have in successive elections consistently demonstrated their confidence in our ability to restore their dignity by delivering basic services and improving their overall socio-economic status. However in the recent elections, the significant drop in voter turnout is a concern. Clearly the internal strife in the organisation has defocused our energies thus denting our revolutionary zeal and sight of the strategic objectives.

As the SACP – members of the revolutionary Alliance under the leadership of the ANC – we recognise that when the ANC is weakened – the Alliance is weakened. Our task becomes to strengthen the ANC – and the Alliance.

Thirdly our extensive organisational machinery - which reaches the length and breadth of our country, far flung rural villages, townships and suburbs - remains unmatched. Equally we have witnessed a dramatic quantitative growth in membership, though much still needs to be done to buttress this commendable effort with extensive political education.

Comrades, we can say the same of the SACP: we have grown dramatically in numbers (now around 200,000) in recent years. Contrary to what our detractors claim the Party continues to find resonance anchored in the working class. But have we invested the necessary time and resources in the political education of cadres?

Lastly as a country we are imbued with a rich progressive historical heritage, which should serve as a source of pride and inspiration. Throughout the various epochs of struggle our people have waged relentless and heroic battles against the erstwhile repressive regime and produced gallant and visionary leaders.

It is this history of national resistance and struggle against oppression – led by the ANC in alliance with the SACP and the progressive labour movement – supported by the masses – which defeated Apartheid. It is this very same history that has sustained an ANC government for the last 20 years. We must never betray that loyalty and trust that the people have given to this movement.

Moving on to what the document refers to as “Our Fatal Organisational Weaknesses”

Seven dangers are listed:

• the danger of social distance and isolation of the party from the mass base;
• the danger of state bureaucratisation and demobilisation of the masses;
• the danger of corruption and patronage;
• the danger of institutionalised factionalism, ill-discipline and disunity fuelled and inspired by the battles over the control of state power and resources;