1 May 2020

This year the International Workers Day, also known as the May Day is commemorated under lockdown conditions in South Africa and many countries across the world. This is a result of the global public health emergency caused by the spread of the deadly coronavirus (Covid-19). The underlying cause of the problem is the capitalist system, however. 

Capitalism not only involves the sucking of labour’s blood socially, a mode of appropriation of society’s wealth by capital. That is, the wealth of every society in which capitalism prevails appears as an immense accumulation of commodities, but its essence is the unpaid labour of workers, the surplus, in value terms, that the workers produce through their labour-power – the aggregate of the mental and physical capabilities that they exercise whenever they produce and trade in goods and services. 

Through its unsustainable expansion, capitalism is also directly responsible for environmental degradation, global warming and the passing of unknown, hence ‘novel’, viruses from animals to human beings. The capitalist system achieves this by means that destroy nature –  deforestation, contamination and pollution of our environment, and wide spread use of antibiotics on livestock producing new, drug resistance ‘superbugs’, to name but a few.   

The SACP pledges its unwavering solidarity with its ally, Cosatu, the entire progressive trade union movement and working class of our country, Southern African region, Africa and the whole world. The global spread and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic calls upon workers to unite – in every workplace, in every factory and every other firm, in mines, in farms, in schools, colleges and universities, at supermarkets, in the entire retail sector, in the airlines and the entire transport sector, including but not limited to taxis, buses, trucks and ships, and at the docks, in restaurants, in hotels and the entire hospitality and tourism sector, and everywhere in the economy, in the community, the battle of ideas and the struggle to protect the environment, and in every other place where societal activity takes place. 

Without unity, every capitalist crisis ends in the working class being the worst affected, being retrenched and losing income as well as other things that concomitantly go with income loss. The sustainable solution is to unite and fight to roll back economic exploitation, stop capitalism from destroying our natural environment, and replace the exploitative system with a socialist transition towards universal social emancipation. 

It is a hard fact that only limited advances can be won within the ambit of capitalism, and that those will always face the threat of erosion by means of new strategies of economic exploitation. This is the context in which there is mass unemployment – in South Africa currently affecting a population of approximately 10.4 million active and discouraged work seekers. This is not an isolated situation, however. It is an integral part of the history of global power relations and inequalities. High levels of unemployment are concentrated in the global south. This is the context in which there is mass poverty in the global south and high levels of inequalities – class, race, gender and uneven internal and external spatial development. The old global north–south development of underdevelopment exploitative relation is continuing and deepening under heightened imperialist aggression.  

Capitalism has plunged Southern Africa into multiple crises, including the crisis of social reproduction – the mounting difficulty facing many households and communities to sustain life itself. Africa at large is no different. Capitalism as well as imperialist exploitation undermines the independence achieved by African countries from colonialism. As a result, the continent is experiencing many capitalist system conflicts and enduring a lot of problems. Other parts of the world, especially the formerly colonised countries concentrated in the global south, are also facing similar problems. 

Through its neo-liberal iteration, the world system of capitalism as well as its regime of imperialism more aggressively attacks the share of labour’s income. In general, the share of workers’ income in many economies across the world, ours being no different, has been falling. The exploitation of labour by capital has simultaneously been deepening. These are mutually reinforcing phenomena and outcomes.

In the same vein, May Day is an important occasion to appraise the pace of social transformation towards systematically eliminating sexism and gender oppression. The history of this day will be incomplete without recognition of the struggle for the inclusion of women in industrial labour force. Women mobilisation played a key role towards the International Workers Day. 

Taking our cue from those gallant struggles, we need to intensify the struggle for workplace transformation. In particular, women remain the majority of the unemployed, worst exploited and marginalised. They are the majority affected by poverty and other capitalist ills. 

The working class struggle for gender transformation should equally intensify the imperative to combat discrimination against LGBTQI plus community members and gender-based violence.   

Neo-liberalism has also rolled back child support and related care facilities, impacting both women workers and the health and safety of children. The importance of adequate child-care facilities cannot be overemphasised. All employers should come to the party, and both collective bargaining and social policy should be strengthened around this gender transformation and child-care imperative.     

The social wage is also under attack. Neo-liberals all over the world are pushing governments to cut social spending, exposing the workers and poor to increased hardship. Hard-won working class gains are facing erosion. Advances such as the introduction of the National Health Insurance (NHI) – which is aimed at achieving universal access to quality health-care – have been opposed and postponed for years, including here in South Africa. This is the context in which the Covid-19 pandemic found many health-care systems across the world unready. 

The profit-based, private health-care sector that excludes the workers and poor who do not have the money to pay is not taking any responsibility. Those involved in the profit-based, private health-care practice want more profit. Covid-19 is not a crisis for them but an opportunity to maximise profit. Theirs is not a concern primarily for human life. It is primarily a profit-making, self-enrichment, agenda. This is why many of them view the Cuban internationalist, humanitarian-based health-care provided in the fight against Covid-19 as a threat, rather than a solution for millions of the workers and poor who have never been seen by a specialist before – the reason being that specialists are unaffordable. 

The lower strata of the middle class also find themselves excluded from the profit-based, private health-care sector, as a result of their medical aid schemes either being not accepted or exhausted in no time every year. In either case, the profit-based, private health-care sector demands money in the form of out-of-pocket payments. Many of those who experienced this problem while hospitalised in private hospitals find themselves pushed into debt, owing huge amounts of money that their medical aid schemes refuse to pay.  

The SACP unwaveringly reiterates its support for the health-care assistance offered by the government of Cuba through its Internationalist Medical Brigade at the request of our government. The SACP further supports our government’s plan to put key elements of the NHI into practice now in the fight against Covid-19. 

No further delays to the full introduction of the NHI should be allowed. Resourcing of full NHI introduction and health-care broadly should be catered for adequately in the review of the national budget. This is a priority both for winning the war against Covid-19 and preparing our country to face-off future pandemics. 

Another important priority is adequate resourcing to turn our economy around. To this end, it is crucial to align our macro-economic framework, inclusive of both monetary and fiscal policies, to support the objectives of the second radical phase of the national democratic revolution – our democratic transition. This shared commitment of the Alliance, made in the ANC May 2019 general election manifesto, must be implemented.   

In order to turn around our economy and systematically eliminate the colonial and apartheid legacy of uneven spatial development, our country should attach great importance to a massive infrastructure expansion programme. This should include the expansion of clean drinking water infrastructure and sanitation to cover all human settlements, as well as building domestic productive capacity as part of our top economic policy and broader social development priorities. Related to all this, the importance of rural development cannot be overemphasised. 

All our economic policies should be geared towards creating employment on a high impact and decent work basis, as well as forging sustainable livelihoods. This should include the development of a thriving co-operatives sector and countering the rising possibilities of increased unemployment as a result of the economic impact of Covid-19. 

In short, the pandemic underlines the importance of our Alliance’s shared strategic perspective to move forward our democratic transition into a second, more radical phase. This programme of broader social transformation includes advancing adequate social protection. 

Decisive steps to move towards a comprehensive social security system, inclusive of a minimum income support grant for every unemployed adult who does not receive any social grant or Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) payment, will play a crucial role. This however requires sustainable support in the form of a strong domestic productive capacity, and expanding, diversifying and raising the levels of national production, as well as a review of our fiscal policy stance. 

In other words, we need a completely different economic approach and fiscal policy stance that place meeting the needs of the people second to none. Over and above that, a sustainable development path will require greater emphasis on a just transition to cleaner and renewable sources of energy.  

In Latin America, the United States (U.S.) is unleashing its imperialist aggression, placing many countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, to name but a few, into varying forms of distress. The inhumane Donald Trump administration is intensifying the U.S. imperialist aggression. It is shamelessly using the global Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity, thus exposing millions of human lives in many countries to death.  

The Middle-East is being destroyed. The reason, again, is capitalism as well as imperialist machinations. Many countries in that region are war-torn. Imperialism has concentrated its militarism in that region. 

The capitalist system as well as its highest stage of imperialism has killed and maimed millions of people not only in the Middle-East but also across the world, in other regions, including North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa and here in Southern Africa.     

The SACP pledges its solidarity with workers and people of all countries placed under heightened imperialist aggression. 

We pledge our revolutionary solidarity with the people of Swaziland who are struggling for democracy, the people of Western Sahara against Moroccan occupation, the people of Palestine against systematic expropriation and extermination by the apartheid regime of Israel, and the people of Syria against imperialist militarism and machination. 

The SACP pledges its revolutionary solidarity with the people of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries in Latin America that are facing heightened imperialist aggression.