Joint SACP Northern Cape and Cosatu Northern Cape PEC Statement

12 February 2013

The South African Communist Party and COSATU met on Monday 11 February 2013 at the Sol Plaatje Municipality to discuss a range of issues affecting the working class and the poor.

This was the first joint PEC between the SACP and COSATU since the launching of COSATU in the Province in 2008, over and above the regular official’s bilateral meetings that we always have.

The joint PEC resolved amongst others to:

1. Intensify our work in our communities working together with the ANC, SANCO, MDM formations and progressive NGOs to:

• Strengthen local Government by putting an end to outsourcing of core municipal functions to tendepreneurs, to profiteers and other vultures and hyenas.
• Build and sustain local skills development for municipal staff and departments as part of our overall strategy to enhance the developmental capacity of the local state and provincial government.
• Democratize local government by involving communities in deciding in local development priorities and holding regular ward meetings.
• Connect our community struggles to improve service delivery and to isolate the right wing elements in our municipalities who want to abuse challenges relating to infrastructure backlogs in order to collapse our municipalities for narrow neo liberal and counter-revolutionary objectives.

2. The meeting further resolved that we must continue doing political work at the branch level through amongst others our RED Saturdays and Political Schools aimed at building working class consciousness and for cadre development.
3. That we needed to foster greater unity of all alliance partners in the Province through a joint Programme aimed at fundamentally changing the lives of our people for the better.
4. Work very hard to ensure that our five priorities of education, health rural development, decent work and the fight against corruption are achieved.
5. The meeting also condemned financial institutions who engage in reckless lending of unsecured loans resulting in the working class remaining in a debt trap through loan sharks and other established banking institutions.

In this regard the meeting resolved to intensify our campaign on the diversification and transformation of the financial sector and to build our own worker controlled cooperative banks and other financial services and not be extensions and appendages of established monopoly capital within the financial sector.

On decent jobs

6. The meeting condemned Anglo-Americans intention to shed 14 000 jobs in the mining sector as well as other mining companies. We view this is a direct attack on the livelihoods of the working class and the poor.

We will there campaign against the job loss bloodbath,

Developmental Capacity of the state

7. We will campaign for the improvement of the developmental capacity of the state by amongst others doing away with outsourcing, privatization and the excessive use of consultants.

Issued jointly by the SACP and COSATU

For more information contact SACP Provincial Secretary, Norman Shushu @ 076 511 9929 and the Provincial Secretary of COSATU, Anele Gxoyiya @ 082 829 1961