3 April 2022
The South African Communist Party Central Committee, elected by the 14th National Congress of the Party in July 2017, held its last ordinary plenary from the 1st to the 3rd of April 2022. This was the last ordinary plenary of the 14th SACP National Congress Central Committee prior to the SACP 15th National Congress. The next SACP National Congress will take place in July this year, 2022.
The SACP 15th National Congress
As is the case with all our National Congresses, the 15th SACP National Congress will undertake a comprehensive political review of the past five years, analyse the current challenges, update the Party Programme and develop what we now call Strategic Perspectives and Tasks for the next five years but with a longer-range in mind. Our programme remains grounded on the necessity to drive a second, more radical phase of the national democratic revolution as our most direct route to socialism.
At the heart of our political evaluation at the 15th SACP National Congress will be the imperative to realise lasting solutions to the economic and broader social challenges affecting the workers and the poor—the overwhelming majority of our people. These challenges reflect the broader crises of capitalism globally: the current COVID-19 pandemic, the economic crisis—which in our case is characterised by high levels of persistent poverty, inequality, unemployment and the associated multiple crises of social reproduction—and climate change.
The Central Committee received and discussed a political report presented by the General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande, the State of the Organisation and other Secretariat reports, as well as a draft discussion document on the update of our programme, the South African Road to Socialism (the South African Struggle for Socialism), and SACP constitutional amendments report, among others.
Regarding the updated Party Programme, the SACP will, before the end of the day on Monday, 4 April 2022, officially release the discussion document—the South African Struggle for Socialism, which reflects on the Strategic Perspectives and Tasks of the Party within the struggle.
The SACP will, in the next few weeks, also officially release other discussion documents which relate to the programme, resolutions and declaration to be discussed and adopted by the 15th Party Congress. These will include discussion documents on energy security, climate change and environmental degradation, the struggle against patriarchy, building a left popular front, and the economic situation, including the struggle for the transformation of the financial sector.
Anchored in the content and direction of the Party Programme, the 15th SACP National Congress will also elect new National Office Bearers and the Central Committee for the next five-year term, which will end in July 2027.
The year 2022 as the year of congresses for our formations and their components—the imperative of organisational renewal and programme-based unity of our Alliance and broader movement
This year is also the year of the 14th COSATU National Congress and the 55th ANC National Conference. The components of Alliance formations, including the Young Communist League of South Africa, the ANC Youth League, the ANC Women’s League and the reconstituted uMkhonto weSizwe veterans’ association, will also hold their national congresses or conferences by the end of December 2022. With all Alliance formations and their various components holding their national congresses or conferences, this year is therefore a rare occasion within our Alliance and broader movement.
Thus, the year 2022 poses particular challenges for our formations, Alliance and broader movement, with implications for our country. Especially, our key policy challenge is to use our conferences or congresses to take forward the struggle for a better life for all, particularly the overwhelming majority—the working-class and poor. In this regard, the single biggest challenge is to ensure that we do not allow factionalism and narrow accumulation interests to dominate and shape the outcomes of these important highest decision-making bodies of our democratic revolutionary movement. Factionalism can only turn our attention away from addressing the material needs of our people, towards self-destructive inwardness.
As a movement, we are faced with two principal tasks as we convene these congresses or conferences. The first is that of taking to heart, frankly and honestly, the meaning and implications of the setbacks we experienced in the November 2021 local government elections. Second, in learning the appropriate the lessons from the November 2021 local government elections, we need to produce concrete programmes, campaigns and policies that will reignite the hopes and confidence of our people in our movement.
Equally important, the congresses or conferences within our Alliance and broader movement must be used to unite leadership, membership and support bases around the principal objectives to rid the movement of factionalism, corrupt and divisive elements, among other negative tendencies.
In the public arena, the consequences of factionalism and divisions include their negative impact on the developmental programmes to address the needs of especially the workers and the poor. Factionalism and divisions also lead to our people losing confidence in our movement. This includes the established trend of a decline in the electoral performance of the ANC-led electoral contest, which the movement could not arrest in the 2021 local government elections.
The ANC and the Alliance remain the best hope for our people and for the inclusive economic development and broader social transformation that our country needs. Our Alliance is therefore faced with the task of seeking to unite itself around a common economic transformation programme in the face of the stubborn persistence of poverty, inequality, unemployment and the associated multiple crises of social reproduction. It is also for this reason that the SACP wants the Alliance Economic Summit to be urgently convened prior to the ANC policy conference and the beginning of the 15th SACP National Congress.
The Central Committee reaffirmed the SACP’s stance that neither neo-liberalism nor state capture are foundations for a solution to the myriad of economic and other challenges facing our country. In fact, both neoliberalism and state capture directly contradict and constitute a serious threat to the consolidation, defence and deepening of our national democratic revolution. Should the two tendencies achieve dominance, the national democratic revolution will be fatally compromised. We will elucidate these perspectives further in the run up to and at our 15th Party Congress.
For it suffices to underline the following. Neoliberalism advances a policy regime that weakens and eventually displaces public participation and the role of the state in the economy. This is done by creating conditions to advance privatisation and expand the fields of exploitation of the working-class, privileging profit-making and maximisation over broader social transformation imperatives, arguing that the challenges of our people will be addressed through a trickledown of the proceeds of private wealth accumulation. The scale and nature of our economic development and broader social transformation challenges do not require, nor will they be solved through, a trickledown agenda. Our national situation requires a fundamental reconstitution and transformation of our economy.
Under neoliberalism, a trend of financialisation has come to dominate our domestic economy. Every facet of economic activity has been reduced to a multiplicity of financial transactions and products at the direct expense of building domestic productive capacity through increased investment in the productive sectors, including manufacturing. This contributed, by no small measure, to de-industrialisation.
There is a common thread between neoliberalism and state capture, much as these two tendencies seem different at face value. Although corruption is not absent in neoliberal manoeuvres, neoliberalism drives its agenda more through policy processes. While state capture sounds radical about keeping state-owned enterprises in the hands of the public, it does so in order to facilitate their looting through tenderisation—a key part of the neoliberal policy regime.
Both state capture and neoliberalism facilitate accumulation of wealth using state power, public authority or resources, by profit-seeking interests, including primitive accumulators. State capture is more identifiable with brazen smash-and-grab corrupt manoeuvres, while neoliberalism involves a strong focus on regulatory and policy capture, including by foreign institutions hegemonised by imperialist interests. All this stands in the way of development and the deepening of the national democratic revolution.
The Central Committee is of the view that developing national productive forces, building, diversifying and expanding national production, and transforming the financial sector through among others de-monopolisation, diversification and reinstating prescribed assets will go a long way towards reigniting employment creation and booting redistribution of wealth in our highly unequal society. Given our current economic realities, it is also important that we focus on expanding the social wage, including through building an advance to a comprehensive social security system. All our other policy instruments, including our fiscal, monetary and industrial policies must be aligned to these transformation and development imperatives. The latest statistics on unemployment further underline the urgency of firmly placing employment creation as a key part of the Reserve Bank’s central mandate..
Turning around state-owned enterprises, as well as expanding and diversifying the publicly owned economic sector, should be among our key economic transformation priorities. The state has a key role to play in the economy, including through direct participation on behalf of the people as a whole, through among others well-governed and thriving state-owned enterprises, and through direct employment creation and leadership of economic development and structural transformation. Advancing these developmental perspectives, and rejecting both neoliberalism and state capture, should be the basis upon which we must seek to build the unity of our Alliance, broader movement and the motive forces of the national democratic revolution at large.
In the same vein, finally, we must unite around and strengthen our collective efforts to fight other forms of corruption, criminality and lawlessness in our country. To this end, the Central Committee welcomed the emerging changes in the leadership of the South African Policy Service.
Unemployment and the necessity for structural transformation
The SACP is deeply concerned about the rising crisis-high unemployment. In terms of the official definition that excludes discouraged work-seekers, unemployment increased to its highest level ever, 35.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021. Despite declining fractionally to 46.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021, from its highest in the third quarter of 2021, 46.6, total unemployment represented by the expanded definition that includes discouraged work-seekers remained at a catastrophic level. The catastrophe affects a 12.5 million strong population of active and discouraged work-seekers, with youth unemployment the highest of all age categories.
The most affected national groups, regardless of age and gender, are Black African, followed by Coloured, who are followed by Indian/Asian. Meanwhile, with an official unemployment rate of 4.2 per cent above the national average, Black African women are the most affected in terms of gender. Their expanded unemployment rate is 50.8 per cent, which is about the same level as the expanded unemployment rate of Black African, 50.7 per cent.
The racial and gender dimensions of unemployment should be understood as drawing attention to the continuous reproduction of the legacy of apartheid in our economy post-1994. Therefore, we cannot overemphasise the importance of redress in employment creation programmes and interventions. These should include rigorous pursuit co-operatives and small, medium and micro enterprises development, as part of the national imperative to advance, widen and deepen structural economic transformation. Besides addressing unemployment towards securing the right of all to work, structural economic transformation must radically reduce inequality, eradicate poverty and resolve the associated crisis of social reproduction.
During the tabling of the 2022–2023 fiscal year budget in February 2022, the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, announced that the government was granting the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant a 12-month extension. The extension of the grant came as a result of public calls, including by the SACP.
Instead of terminating the SRD grant at the end of the first quarter of 2023, the government should maintain the grant and consider improving it gradually towards a universal basic income grant, as part of building a comprehensive social security system. This is what the continuing unemployment crisis calls for in the here and now.
The government introduced the SRD grant at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic following public calls, including from the SACP. During that time, in the second quarter of 2020, over 2.2 million jobs were slashed in a jobs-bloodbath principally driven by capitalist bosses in defence of their private wealth accumulation interests, deepening the unemployment crisis.
National Union of Mineworkers
The Central Committee congratulates the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for concluding its National Congress successfully this week, as well as the entire collective of new National Office Bearers on their election. In the same vein, the Central Committee expressed its sincere gratitude to former National Office Bearers of the union who served its membership with dedication and led the union to its National Congress this week.
Our message to all NUM members is as follows. Please support the collective of the newly elected National Office Bearers to consolidate principled programmatic unity and grow the union from strength to strength as directed by the NUM National Congress theme: “Back to basics is when we defend and advance to build a radical movement”.
Auctioning off of the high frequency spectrum
The Central Committee reiterated the reservations and disapproval expressed by the SACP, both within the Alliance during engagements and through open public policy statements, on the decision to auction off the high radio frequency broadband spectrum.
In expressing a different view, underpinned by a thorough analysis of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) network sector, the SACP stressed the necessity of handling the governance of the high radio frequency spectrum as a national asset, to among others de-monopolise and transform the ICT network sector. The SACP anchored its proposal in the need to build a capable developmental state that serves the people regardless of their geographic location. We also had due regard to the responsibilities of the state, to among others ensure national security, manage disasters, expand access to constitutional rights, and drive overall national transformation and development.
Thus, the SACP underlined the need to develop democratic state control of national assets to eliminate uneven development, including paying priority attention to rural development. Democratic state control of the high radio frequency spectrum and its developmental governance could play a key role to bridge the digital divide and to spread connectivity infrastructure across the length and breadth of our country, ensuring that key public institutions in areas such as education and training, healthcare and disaster management are connected to deliver on their mandates. As part of this imperative, South Africa must strive to universalise access to the internet and digital connectivity, including mobile communication, and unlock access to related opportunities.
It is therefore important to lower access to high radio frequency broadband infrastructure-based communication data, including through a roll-out of free Wi-Fi hotspots in a nationally co-ordinated development effort. In doing this, we must place a premium on high radio frequency broadband spectrum access services by the working-class and poor communities across the country. These are some of the perspectives and campaigns that the SACP will continue driving, and also to engage on within our Alliance and publicly.
The SACP will continue engaging and forging a campaign around the policy of Wireless Open Access Network which the government dropped to pave the way for the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to auction off the high radio frequency broadband spectrum on a highway speed. Particular attention will also have to be paid to the de-monopolisation of the mobile communication and internet service providers space by allowing more participants, including democratic worker- and community-controlled co-operatives as well as SMMEs.
Finally, in this area, the rollout of digital set-top-boxes or decoders for working-class and poor families must be completed on a countrywide basis as a matter of urgency. The switch off of the analogue broadcasting signal to the digital broadcasting signal without first ensuring that all working-class and poor families are covered in the rollout of the set-top-boxes has left the affected families without access to television broadcasting. This also amounts to depriving the affected families of access to public broadcasting services.
The NATO-Ukraine and Russia conflict
The imperialist instrument of war called NATO is the principal cause of the conflict in Ukraine through its expansion, aimed at and encircling Russia on several fronts, and more possibly with China as the ultimate target. The Central Committee reiterated the SACP’s call to all whom it may concern, to NATO, as well as to Russia and to Ukraine, to stop the military conflict in Ukraine with immediate effect. This must include the United States-controlled NATO both stopping and reversing, as well as finally ending its imperialist expansion and wars.
Therefore, the Central Committee reiterated the call made by the SACP here in South Africa: No to imperialist war in Ukraine or any part of the world. As the SACP, we stand for peace and not imperialist war. In every war there is loss of life, affecting the working-class and working-class children. Also, as the war in Ukraine shows, wars also lead to increases in other hardships on the working-class and the poor. This includes driving up the prices of food, energy, and other basic necessities. In this regard it is not only the people in the war zones who are affected. The entire world is affected because of worldwide economic connection.
Pointing out to the facts about the principal imperialist agenda, the destructive history of NATO and its expansionist aggression does not mean that we support any side in the war taking place in Ukraine, however. This is one reason we are emphatic in our call for a total end of the war and respect for human rights in Ukraine with immediate effect, without regard to who is involved.
Through its expansion, NATO seeks not only to extend its sphere of military presence and domination but in the end to entrench monopoly of the world-economy through its transnational corporations. This includes a drive to control natural resources, others sectors and markets in different countries and global regions.
How can we as Africans ever forget that which underpinned NATO in 2011 bombarding Libya, causing massive destruction and loss of life? Joe Biden, the current president of the United States (US) was its vice president when that happened. Taking control of Libyan oil was a key factor.
Besides, private wealth accumulation by the capitalist bosses who control the military industrial complex in the United States, and in other NATO member states, depends on acts of war. This is one reason the US, either directly or through its domination of NATO, has caused many wars. The stocks of its military industrial complex rallied as the conflict in Ukraine passed over into open military war. Therefore, when the working-class and working-class children lose their lives in war, the capitalist bosses who control the military industrial complex and finance its dealings laugh all the way to the banks.
Around mid-March 2022, for example, Biden announced that the total amount that the US will pump into Ukraine in weapons of war and other military spending amounted to $1 billion in the week before then, an astronomical increase compared to the $2.7 billion the US already pumped into Ukraine in weapons of war and other military spending between 2014 and the beginning of this year.
In addition to calling for a total end to the war in Ukraine, without regard to the sides involved, the Central Committee called on the United States and its imperialist NATO allies to end their imperialist wars across the world, and to withdraw all their troops from every single country they have occupied or in which they have built military bases. These include but are not limited to ongoing occupation of or wars against Syria, Panama, Yemen, the illegal blockade of Cuba, all unjustified and unilateral sanctions against other countries, and the imperialist support for the occupation of Palestine by the apartheid Israeli regime, which must end with immediate effect, unconditionally.
The SACP stands for a just and peaceful world and is firmly opposed to all imperialist wars.
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