Thursday, 7 September 2023: The South African Communist Party (SACP) in Mpumalanga Province held the 4th Plenary Session of its 11th Congress Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) on 3 September at the Ehlanzeni Council Chamber. The meeting held robust engagements based on the reports it received and additional perspectives from PEC members.
National Democratic Revolution
The National Democratic Revolution (NDR) remains the most direct route to socialism in the South African reality. Our key task is to advance, deepen and defend the NDR at all material times, ensuring that it moves towards socialist transformation and development of our society. To achieve this outcome, we will build democratic popular power with the working-class at the centre and in the forefront, and an effective developmental state.
We are therefore worried about the erosion of state capacity by neoliberalism and corruption, including but not limited to acts of corporate state capture. Neoliberalism, corporate state capture and other forms of governance decay, corruption and destruction and vandalism of public infrastructure have eroded the productive capacity of the state. State entities, such as Eskom, Transnet, and PRASA, have been severely destroyed. Their productive capacity has declined and is still declining. This seriously contradicts the NDR, which is about meeting the materials and cultural needs of the people towards complete social emancipation. This and other things countervail the NDR and its prospects for a socialist transition.
We will strengthen our campaigns and our organisational and political capacity, working with our revolutionary allies while creating and expanding space to advance economic structural transformation to achieve a turnaround, create employment at a scale sufficient to resolve our unemployment crisis and radically reduce inequality income and wealth inequality in all its dimensions—class, race, gender and geography.
The economy, especially the unemployment crisis
The latest Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter reflects additional employment of 150,000, but this resulted in a mere 0.3 per cent decline in unemployment from 32.9 per cent to 32.6 per cent. Women and young people remain the most affected by unemployment, with an overwhelming majority being African, followed by Coloured, who are followed by Indian/Asian. This means that employment and unemployment remain racially skewed along the lines of colonial and apartheid oppression. About 12 million people are unemployed, according to the expanded definition of unemployment, which includes discouraged work-seekers.
We are depressed by these numbers. It is quite clear that the situation directly results from the capitalist system and policy, especially neoliberal policy, failure, among others.
Unlike following a failing path, pursuing a people’s economy and putting people before profits will change the lives of the people for the better.
In the coming period, we will deepen and expand the Village Development Programme that our party has launched, nationally. This will help with, among others, community-owned stores. We cannot rely on profit-driven interests to serve the needs of the people. South Africa should build food producing communities, prioritising co-operatives.
Eskom also needs to improve its work because co-operatives and small enterprises are suffering under load-shedding. It is also against this background that we oppose Eskom’s plan to close some of its power stations, as that will have a negative impact on the workers and poor.
The forthcoming national and provincial elections
The upcoming elections will be the most challenging of our time. With the past local government elections showing a decline in electoral support for the African National Congress, it is quite clear that more work needs to be done to win back the confidence of our people.
The decline in support for the ANC does not mean that opposition parties are becoming more powerful, but it is because of failures to respond successfully to the needs of our people, especially the majority, the workers and poor, as an overwhelming trajectory.
Also, our people view internal divisions and factionalism negatively. They are concerned about corruption, which engulfed our state and the broad movement and, together with neoliberal policy failures, overshadowed the successes made in the past two decades.
The movement is on the back foot as it enters the 2024 elections, with visible signs of factionalists working towards the ANC’s 2027 national conference rather than working for the people. The ANC needs to take its renewal agenda and reconfiguration of the Alliance programme seriously if it is to win back the confidence of the people. Where its members or leaders are found wanting, badly conducting themselves, the ANC must act decisively. Unless this is done, renewal will remain the name of an ineffectual poem rather than political and organisational transformation and development programme.
Towards a peaceful and just world
The unipolar global order with its single, United States-led global hegemon established after the “Cold War” is a problem. We need to forge multipolarity towards a just and peaceful world. This makes efforts such as the growing BRICS and alternative payment and currency systems important.
Now South Africa finds itself amid these shifts and must clearly define itself and its role. The hegemony of neoliberal thinking, which affects the economy badly, must be defeated and replaced with a people’s economy. We pledge to play our part and dedicate ourselves fully.
International solidarity
When we met, we were also in solidarity work, including joint work with the progressive forces both in Africa and the Korean Peninsula. We had a progressive bilateral with Swaziland’s the People's United Democratic Movement on 2 September and thereafter we joined the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
We will continue to monitor Swaziland as it remains a crime scene against humanity and the working-class. The absolute monarch, an autocrat, is still marginalising people to the extreme. We will strengthen our solidarity with the progressive forces in Swaziland towards a democratic transition.
While we believe it is possible for a revolution to take place in one country, we attach great importance to all progressive forces of the world coming together to overthrow imperialism.
We welcome the outcomes of the recent BRICS Summit which recently occurred in our country.
BRICS appears to be bringing about a change in the character of the international context as more countries expressed their interest to join in and others have joined: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, South Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
We noted the outcomes of the recent Zimbabwe elections and are worried about the content of SADC reports pointing to problems in those elections. This issue of sanctions that have been imposed upon Zimbabwe also needs urgent attention, and we support the progressive forces in that country against sanctions.
ISSUED BY SACP MPUMALANGA PROVINCE
Contacts:
Lucky Mbuyane
SACP Provincial Secretary
082 351 5804
Lesetja Dikgale
SACP Spokesperson
076 869 4360
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
EST. 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA | CPSA
Dr Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo:
SACP Central Committee Member, National Spokesperson
Political Bureau Secretary for Policy and Research
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