SACP Eastern Cape PEC statement

10 September 2012

The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Eastern Cape Province held its successful ordinary Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) meeting on the 08 & 09 September 2012 at Carnegie Hall, Gonubie in East London. The meeting was held for the party to assess the political and socio-economic conditions of the workers and the poor throughout the globe and further scrutinize the same situations in our province.

The meeting convened during increasingly difficult times for the workers and the poor due to the failure of the venomous capitalist mode of production. This was the first PEC meeting post the united and successful SACP 13th National Congress held in the University of Zululand, Ongoye, Empangeni in Kwazulu Natal. The PEC meeting was held under the theme "the unity and leadership of the working class, a precondition for any possible revolutionary advance at home and above."

The PEC meeting received and comprehensively engaged both the political report and the organizational report which served as scientific analysis at the current political conjuncture and assess our work on building an agile, adaptive and independent party for socialism and further assess our work in building the momentum and elements for socialist South Africa and the world.

International:

The capitalist system is suffering from its most crisis which is different from the usual one of booms and bursts. The crisis it is suffering from now is not only affecting a part of capitalism but the structure of capitalism as the system, this proves the correctness and superiority of our Marxist doctrine as capitalism continues to dig its own grave.

The worst crisis of this venomous capitalist system continues to be in the Euro Zone. We view the decision of Greece to remain in the Euro Zone as the postponement of the total collapse of the Euro and ironically the resolution of its domestic problems as it is clear that the solution is rather outside the Euro Zone. The working class in 17 countries in the Euro Zone is faced with the increasing levels of unemployment and hardship imposed on them through the austerity measures, cutting down on social expenditure; all with the intention to save the crumbling capitalist system.

The current developments in Syria and possible attack of Iran by the Israel represent the continuous measures of desperation to save the US led imperialist forces. The Afghanistan and Iraq remain occupied countries by the atrocious US army with the US enjoying "democracy" to loot the resources of these countries. These countries continue to be unstable with civilians killed every day by the explosions. This so-called best democratic country (USA) is still presiding over political prisoners from the Latin America; the Cuban five.

There is no other time either than now that the need for an alternative economic bloc emerges hence we support the BRICSA and propose for it to be taken from strength to strength by South Africa establishing a party to party relations. We reaffirm that for the working class to witness the total destruction of the bourgeoisie mode of production is through the unity and shared program by the international left forces.

National:

The PEC asserted the unity and leadership of the working class as the precondition for any revolutionary advance at home and abroad, such perspective has been shared by all our revolutionary allies that indeed our revolution is on trial.

The imperialist globalization and the two decades of neo-liberal policies have brought significant changes on the class structure of our society post-independence. We have seen the emergence of the black bourgeoisie that is mostly dependent on the established white monopoly capital. The narrow BEE that has been advanced has produced an unauthentic and unproductive bourgeoisie who use their political and illegal means to get rich. They have only one intention and that is to capture our movement and hijack the South African revolution and reduce our country to the tender state and led by the tender bourgeoisie.

Whilst we appreciate that there has been genuine protests and demands by the people and workers in various parts of the country, it is noteworthy that there is also an increasing lumpenization of the underclass by the lumpen bourgeoisie and the aspirant lumpen bourgeoisie. The populist demagogues and renegades have been riding on the genuine demands of the workers and the people, they have rented and organized some of the violent protests and recently have shown to be prepared to walk over the dead bodies in order to build and consolidate an accumulation path.

Our province has been most affected by the Marikana tragedy as majority of those who lost their lives are emerging from the Eastern Cape. It is against this background that we are calling upon the Lonmin Management to take greater responsibility on the livelihoods of those who lost brothers, sisters, fathers, husbands, etc. Lonmin must invest in the education of the children of the fallen mine-workers.

We are calling for an urgent charging and ultimately arrest of the Lonmin mine bosses for the killings of mineworkers. They have undermined and manipulated principles as stipulated in the Labour Relations Act of 1995, by amongst other things holding wage negotiations with an unregistered pseudo trade union and opening negotiations outside the bargaining council which had already concluded the matter with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

We are calling for deregistration of all private foreign security companies in our country as this harbors a serious threat to the security of our country. We are also calling for the security cluster of our country to be depoliticized for it to be more effective and work without any fear or favour.

We would like to wish our trusted revolutionary ally Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) a successful 11th National Congress and our revolutionary ally African National Congress (ANC) a successful 53rd congress. We trust that both these congresses will be used as a platform to deepen and advance our shared programme the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

Province:

In our province we are now experiencing a state of paralysis in our provincial government and many municipalities. The meeting raised its concerns on the unending fights in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality, Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, Mnquma Local Municipality and other ANC alliance led municipalities in our province. The leadership of our alliance must take drastic measures in relation to those who are perpetrators of such actions for their narrow selfish interests as their deeds continue to compromise service delivery to the people which is the core business of these institutions.

We strongly condemn the systemic attack by corrupt elements in the movement against the in-corruptible party cadres deployed in various spheres of government. We reaffirm our support for all those who are committed to fighting and out rooting corruption as we are committed to building corruption free governance that responds to the needs and aspirations of the people.

We reaffirm our resolve that government officials and political leaders in governance must cease doing business with the state and only declare as declaring is not enough. People must choose between being civil servants or business people. It is against this background that we also call for the coming congress of COSATU to look unto the issue of business trade unionism as it is the threat to the revolutionary traditions built over many years.

Although we are satisfied by the successful events in the province and enjoy pleasant relations as the leaders in the movement, we believe that we remain trapped on an undeclared age of hope as all what we have does not translate into improving conditions of the workers and the poor.

The PEC adopted a programme of action for the September membership month and our Red October Campaign which will focus on calling and making sure of the consistent delivery of the basic services for all.

Issued by the SACP Eastern Cape Provincial Executive Committee.

For more information contact:
Siyabonga Mdodi SACP Provincial Spokesperson
083 3588 070