SACP Gauteng province message of support delivered by Acting Provincial Secretary Jacob Mamabolo to the 11th Gauteng Provincial Conference
6 8 May 2010
Provincial Chairperson of the African National Congress, Comrade Paul Mashatile
Deputy Chairperson of the ANC and Premier of Gauteng, Comrade Nomvula Mokonyane
ANC Gauteng PEC members
ANC NEC Deployees,
COSATU Gauteng Provincial Secretary, Comrade Dumisani Dakile
SANCO Gauteng Provincial Deputy Chairperson, Comrade Aubrey Nxumalo.
Provincial Aliance leaders
Leaders of the Progressive Youth Alliance, Womens League, MKMVA, Veterans League
Veterans and stalwarts of our movement
Delegates and guests,
On behalf of the South African Communist Party Gauteng Province, the Marxist - Leninist Vanguard Party of the working class, the longstanding and historic ally of the African National Congress, I am pleased to convey our revolutionary greetings and message of support to your historic and important 11th Provincial Conference.
We would like to congratulate you for holding what we are certain would be one of the most resounding and overwhelming successful Provincial Conference. This we say taking into that you had to bring it forward before the actual expiry date of your term of office, something that rarely happens in many parts of the world, especially here in our continent.
Your Provincial Conference is historic and unique because of a number of contextual conditions that defines the time and space within which it takes place.
We have just celebrated and commemorated the revolutionary lives of some amongst the many leaders of our movement in the few months preceding this Conference. And in this regard, we remember the martyrs and revolutionaries such as the late General Secretaries of the SACP Joe Slovo and Chris Hani respectively, stalwart and Hero of our movement the late Reginald Oliver Tambo, the militant and soldier of MK comrade Solomon Mahlangu.
Once more we wish to take this opportunity to send our condolences to the family and friends of Comrade Dr Molefi Paul Sefularo.
We have just emerged from the workers May Day rallies and are now looking forward to the most important and next biggest working class celebration after the 1994 April first democratic elections, and that is the most spectacular FIFA World Cup.
We are the first African country and hopefully not the last to host and certainly win the World Cup. We say this hopeful that the sons of the working class, Bafana Bafana will execute this task in the most revolutionary manner as it takes place during the Youth Month.
We also hope that the structures of the Progressive Youth Alliance as they plan the celebration and commemoration of the 1976 Soweto student uprising will find the creativity to involve some of the most celebrated young icons in the soccer fraternity who will be amongst us during that period.
Comrade Chairperson and delegates, your Conference faces a major task over the next days and that tasks is to define for the entire working class movement in our Province and Nationally on how you intend maintaining the revolutionary character of the African National Congress as the National Liberation Movement, as the leader of the Alliance, its continued bias to the exclusive class that we as communists organize, that is the working class and maintain that character of the ANC as the disciplined force of the left.
We are eager to hear how this Conference will analyze the character of the National Democratic Revolution during the term of office of this outgoing PEC, whose role and leadership in the past few years we wish to applaud.
As you would surely recall, the vanguard party held its Special National Congress at the University of Limpopo (formerly known as the University of the North) in Mankweng. Our Special National Congress was one of the most successful and united Congress of the SACP.
The resolutions of that Congress are published on our website and we hope delegates would have interacted with them as part of the preparation of this Conference.
Very briefly, we said the National Democratic Revolution takes place under very complex and dynamic international and local balance of forces. As a movement and country, we have made significant strides since the defeat of the most repressive, exploiting and brutal white minority regime in the condemned by the whole of humanity in the world.
We have significantly improved and impacted positively on the lives of the working class and the poor people through the delivery of many important services that humanity needs to sustain its life as a material being.
We have immense opportunities to deepen and advance the National Democratic Revolution as the most unifying, shared and common perspective of the Alliance and entire movement that the ANC continues to lead.
But we also said at that Special National Congress, that the momentum, pace and character of the NDR is deeply and severely constrained by the pain inflicted on the working class by the persistent and reproduced legacy of the Colonialism of a Special type. The working class in our country continues to suffer the pain inflicted by the many years of the crisis of white monopoly capital and its private accumulation of wealth. This happens at the expense of the Africans in particular and black people in general who are concentrated in large numbers here in our province.
The working class here at home and abroad continues to suffer the impact of sustained and ongoing world crisis of imperialism. This is confirmed by the latest developments in Greece and countries in Europe. As Karl Marx stated, this crisis reflect the truth about the internal functioning of the capitalist system on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
We are therefore asking this Conference to answer the question on how do we successful wage the National Democratic Revolution under this environment of opportunity for a radical and decisive advance, but real and potential conditions of counter-revolution and hostility to our people. We hope to hear how conference pronounces itself on this twin and dialectically connected contradictions.
We are clear that our country needs a new growth path led by the revolutionary state, which is the only property our people have, to break with the deep seated, well entrenched and systemic accumulation regime buttressed by white monopoly capital.
Our province hosts the economy of the country and the continent, and unless this conference makes clear pronouncements on these issues, we are doomed to the past.
The state in this province, especially in the three metros and the two District Municipalities of Sedibeng and the West Rand, command and preside over massive productive capacity that can significantly enhance the actual liberation of the working class in the whole country.
For example, how do we utilize the massive tracks of productive land to radically alter the economic balance of forces in favor of our people and who in their majority are working class?
The recently released statistics on the rate of unemployment and therefore inequalities shows that our province is the hardest hit; we are one of the most unequal societies in the world and now surpassing Brazil.
The question we are posing to this Conference is why 15 years after the first democratic elections, the economic and social indicators shows that we are reproducing some of the contradictions and features of CST at a much faster pace?
We look to this Conference to provide revolutionary answers to the entire country and the working class movement on these questions.
Comrade Chairperson and delegates, we recently held a successful Provincial Alliance, where we agreed on ten points of the Programme of Action and principles to enhance the unity and dynamic functioning of the Alliance.
We made commitments on how to achieve the key priorities of the ANC Election Manifesto and outlined the process towards the next round of local government elections.
We have agreed on how to improve Education as part of our effort to build and develop skills to improve our productive capacity, fight the HIV/Aids pandemic and introduce the National Health Insurance system for the poor.
We further resolved to hold a Provincial Economic Summit to outline strategies for Job Creation and growing the economy.
We hope that this Conference will also ratify those resolutions to ensure that it constitute the mandate of the newly elected leadership.
As you would surely be aware, the SACP held a National Summit Against Corruption and this Conference takes place within the days we have declared war against this tendency that poses a real threat to the National Democratic Revolution.
We hope your Conference will pronounce itself clearly against tenderization of the state, the strange tendency of using the movement as a platform for private and personal wealth accumulation. We hope that you will take a clear stand against the corrupting culture of white monopoly capital, which is fast dominating the entire movement and compromising its revolutionary culture.
In the next few weeks, we will announce plans for our next Provincial Congress following the decision of the Central Committee that all 5 SACP Provinces due for Congresses this year must convene their Congresses on the basis of Voting District Branches. We call on ANC members to actively participate in these Branches.
We say this because the best revolutionary days of the ANC were those when it started working closely with the SACP and therefore, a best cadre of the ANC is certainly a best communist. (It all started when former ANC President Josiah Gumede saw the new Jerusalem after visiting the United Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) and was then re-elected President). It is important to be close to communists in order to remain consistently left.
As you elect your leadership, we urge you to remember that the ANC can only be a revolutionary movement, we found it that way and let us keep it that way, for ourselves and the next generations to come.
We leave that matter in your good and capable hands and are confident that you will not fail the working class.
We wish you well in your deliberations and thank you.
Amandla!!
