14 July 2012
The Communist Party of Finland sends its greetings and solidarity to the South African Communist Party on the occasion of your 13th National Congress, being held 11-15 July.
We congratulate the SACP for its dynamic and crucial input to the on-going liberation of South Africans from the legacies of the colonial and apartheid era through the National Democratic Revolution. The SACP is the only formation in South Africa able to place the country on a course towards socialism. Your Congress will determine much of the content of this course with the adoption of your new political programme for 2012-2017 – the South African Road to Socialism.
The SACP`s pivotal role in the ANC-led Tripartite Alliance is increasingly evident. The struggle against poverty, unemployment and capitalist oppression is more pressing today than ever before. The SACP offers clear perspectives for dealing with these challenges. The CPF congratulates the Tripartite Alliance for its trailblazing work in pursuing the National Democratic Revolution.
Your Congress comes at a critical moment in the development of the NDR, and more widely in the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle worldwide.
The challenges you face in implementing the NDR are closely interconnected with the struggles taking place across the world to tackle the increasingly tenacious efforts of capitalism and imperialism to maintain their hegemony in the face of their deepening systemic crisis.
Imperialist military domination of vast areas of the world is designed to shore up this hegemony, in part by enforcing capitalist access to ever dwindling natural resources – something we see in the process of ‘land grabs` in Africa by countries of the global North.
The sinister expansion of the US African Command (AFRICOM) on the African continent is a key feature of this effort for hegemonic control over resources and geopolitics in a region confronted by massive developmental challenges. A similar process has been evident for decades in the Middle East with disastrous consequences for the people of the region and beyond.
This reality underscores the need to deepen and strengthen practical solidarity between communist and workers parties worldwide. We face common struggles and need to reinforce our terrain of common action. Your struggle in South Africa to put an end to poverty, unemployment, patriarchy and the oppression of women and to raise the example of the NDR for Africa as a whole meshes closely with the interests of the working class, poor and oppressed in every country.
We congratulate the SACP achieving a widening political space for the workers and the poor of South Africa to advance the NDR and the struggle for socialism. This achievement is crucial to our own efforts to promote the cause of socialism in Finland, where the capitalist crisis is destroying jobs and livelihoods and the welfare and health services created over decades of working class struggle.
We look forward to further developing the cooperation agreement between our two parties, which in part seeks to raise the knowledge and awareness among our respective cadres to the realities and struggles in Finland and South Africa. We are pleased that this practical solidarity is yielding results, in helping develop media skills and journalistic expertise for cadres in South Africa.
Viva the SACP!
Viva the struggle for democracy, the rights of working people, socially and ecologically sustainable development, peace and socialism!