BUILD PEOPLE'S POWER, BUILD SOCIALISM
NOW!

Central Committee Political Report

SACP 10TH Congress

July 1998

1. Introduction

We convene today in this 10th Congress of the South African Communist Party.
We, who gather together, are more than 450 SACP voting delegates, mandated by
branches from all over our country. But we are also delegations from our
alliance partners (the ANC and COSATU), we are comrades from the Women's League
and the Youth League, we are the comrades in the Mass Democratic Movement
formations, and we are fraternal delegations from Communist, Left and other
socialist parties from around the world. This is who "we" are.

This Congress belongs, in the first place, to SACP delegates and Party
members, but it also belongs to our Alliance, to our movement, and to the
hundreds of progressive formations from around the world which, over many
decades, helped to sustain our own struggle here in South Africa.

The Central Committee has decided to dedicate this 10th Congress to our late
general secretary, cafe Thembisile Chris Hani. 1998 marks the 5th
commemoration year of his assassination. In choosing as a Congress theme
the slogan: "Build People's Power, Build Socialism Now", we believe
that we are truly honouring the legacy of comrade Chris. The hallmark of his
socialism was its rootedness in the struggles and aspirations of ordinary
working people. Socialism, he liked to say, is not about heavy theories and
lofty concepts - it is about water and land, schooling, jobs, a life of dignity
for all. Born into the ranks of the poorest of the poor, comrade Chris never
forgot his roots. We pledge that this 10th Congress of the SACP will, likewise,
never for one moment forget its class roots and responsibilities. We know of no
better way to honour you, comrade Chris.

• The Central Committee has set several key strategic objectives for this
  10th Congress.
• To review progress made in our country since the April 1994 democratic
  breakthrough;
• To assess the international situation, including the situation in our
  southern African region, and our continent;
• To assess our own performance as the SACP since our 9th Congress
  in April 1995;
• To take stock of the ongoing project to renew and reaffirm socialism, in
  our Party, our Movement, our country, and, indeed, internationally; and,
  finally
• In the light of all of the above, to charge this Congress with the task of
  developing a concrete, practical programme of action that reinforces the
  progress made, that corrects errors committed, and that, above all, truly
  engages the great majority of South Africans in ongoing transformation.

In this Political Report of the Central Committee we wish to open the
discussion at this Congress on many of these key strategic objectives. Some of
these key strategic issues, however, will be introduced by other inputs,
including the input later in the agenda on SACP organisational challenges and a
programme of action. There will be time enough, over these five days, to turn to
the detail of Party organisation in work, at head office, and province by
province. We must do this, but in this opening Political Report, the CC hopes
essentially to set a political and strategic perspective.

2. We are in the midst of a vast national democratic revolution

2.1 Progress since the April 1994 democratic breakthrough

We have, as a liberation movement and as a country, embarked upon a vast
revolutionary process of national democratic transformation. Very significant
transformation gains have been achieved in these past four years. In our CC
discussion documents we enumerate some of these, including:

• Political democratisation - there has been the steady consolidation
  of national, provincial and local level representative democracy, and we
  were well on schedule in ensuring the passage through the Constituent
  Assembly of a very progressive Constitution. As Marxists we have always said
  that formal democracy is, in itself, not sufficient. But as South African
  Marxists we have long understood that even formal democracy is not a
  gift bestowed upon society by the bourgeoisie. Basic citizenship rights
  always have to be struggled for by working class and popular forces, and
  they have constantly to be defended by those forces. Political
  democratisation is one of the most evident and tangible gains of the past
  four years. As communists we celebrate this achievement, and we pledge to
  advance, deepen and defend it.

Peace and stability - there has been a dramatic curtailment of
political violence in our country, since our democratic breakthrough. In the 9
years immediately preceding April 1994, over 15,000 people were killed in
political violence. Only the land-mark electoral victory of the ANC-led
alliance could decisively break the back of the political violence fomented by
anti-democratic, third force structures.

Here we would also like to salute the work of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. The SACP has consistently expressed its support for the TRC. There
may have been issues in which the TRC could have been more forceful and more
focused - not least in its hearing on the complicity of business in apartheid
oppression. But, notwithstanding some differences, we believe that the work of
the TRC has been a major achievement of the last period. Although the full
truth about the gross human rights abuses in the apartheid period has only
emerged partially, the patterns and obvious high level responsibilities for
these crimes (including systematic assassinations and disappearances) has
deepened the crisis of the National Party and its hangers-on. As a result of
the work of the TRC, we have discovered in the recent weeks more than 480
unmarked graves of comrades who were secretly executed in police detention, or
tortured to death and furtively disposed of.

The work of the TRC is now nearing conclusion - but the work of uncovering
the truth about the past, and of re-building our society on the basis of a
shared and truthful understanding of that past, will continue. Those who have
failed to avail themselves of the generous amnesty provisions must not think
that we have forgotten the past, or that we have lost our resolve to uncover
the thousands of political crimes that have yet to be revealed. Our resolve in
this regard is not motivated by a spirit of vengeance but by a sense of
justice, and, above all, by the knowledge that unless the killer squads are
exposed, they will regroup to undermine our emerging democracy.

Socio-economic transformation - as we knew this was always going to be
a more complex area in which to bring about fundamental change. The strategic
defeat of apartheid was essentially a political and moral defeat. On the front
of social and economic change, where we are up against powerful vested
interests and powers, transformation is often blocked and subverted.
Nevertheless there have been major achievements on this front too, including:

• Major infrastructural programmes - notably mass electrification and the
  supply of safe drinking water to more than one million individuals;
• Health-care - where free health-care is now available to all, and there
  is a major strategic shift to primary health-care. Major struggles are
  also being waged, fed by government, against the transnational
  pharmaceutical companies to ensure that drugs are available and
  affordable;
• Land reform and land restitution;
• The transformation of the labour market, in the face of substantial
  opposition from the capitalist class.
• Women's emancipation measures - including the important Choice of
  Termination of Pregnancy Act;
• Educational transformation.

And the list goes on. There is not a single area of South African society
that is not at least the site of major transformation struggles.

The SACP rejects with contempt the demoralisation campaign waged by the
opposition forces in our country, who attempt to suggest that "nothing has
changed". There are major changes underway. Where there has been slowness,
and lack of effective change, this has most often had little to do with our
liberation movement, and everything to do with the real constraints of our
situation, and with the active blockage and spoiling to which minority forces in
our society continue to resort.

However, as we note in our CC discussion documents, there have also been some
important subjective strategic shortcomings on the part of our liberation
movement.

2.2 Strategic shortcomings and challenges

2.2.1 Macro-economic policy. Macro-economic policy has been one of the
major areas in which, in the collective view of the SACP, there have been
serious strategic shortcomings. Government's macro-economic framework policy
(GEAR) was unveiled just over two years ago. The SACP's concerns in regard to
this policy have been expressed publicly since 1996. The manifest failure of
GEAR to meet most of its targets has confirmed us in our belief that it is the
wrong macro-economic policy. What are our concerns?

 

• Our first objection to GEAR is the process by which it was formulated. It
  was a hurried and narrowly technical exercise. There was little strategic
  political oversight, and none of the alliance partners, including the ANC
  itself, were adequately consulted. To add insult to injury, when it was
  unveiled two years ago it was declared "non-negotiable". On this
  front, at least, there has been progress. Government has admitted that the
  process was flawed, and conceded that no policy (including GEAR) is
  "written in stone". We appreciate these concessions, although
  there was a time when our attempts to engage in debate and constructive
  criticism were treated with hostility in some quarters. We have, together
  with
• 
  
  COSATU, kept the debate alive, and we have legitimised the debate. But we
  have, as yet, not changed GEAR.
• Our second concern with GEAR relates to its content, or rather its guiding
  assumptions. Fundamentally it conceives of macro-economic policy as being
  directed at stabilising the economy. We believe, however, that
  macro-economic policy should be aligned much more actively with our
  transformational goals. Macro-economic policy should also be about
  transformation (not just stabilisation).
• 
  
   
• Our third concern with GEAR is that it is far too rigid. For instance its
  budget deficit reduction targets are entirely arbitrary. We agree with those
  who argue that it would be more appropriate to set a band rather than a
  single figure target for key indicators, and that flexibility should be
  allowed. Such flexibility should be based on prevailing circumstances and on
  lessons learnt. We are not arguing that we should be lax about fiscal
  discipline. After all, we are dealing with public resources, and a high
  degree of responsibility and discipline is required. However, what defines
  discipline should be debated, and should be much less rigid. The question
  arises also as to which are hard targets and which are variable targets. The
  proponents of GEAR, in the past months, have assured us that GEAR `'is
  working", notwithstanding the fact that there is a net loss of jobs (as
  opposed to GEAR's promised increases), and that growth targets are way off.
  It seems that budget deficit targets are more or less real targets, and the
  targets set for the reduction of the social deficit are just vague, hopeful
  wishes.
• In the fourth place, we are convinced that, in regard to reducing the
  budget deficit, GEAR has failed to explore all the practical alternatives.
  In particular, over R135 billion, which is some 40% of the public debt, are
  loans that government has taken from the Public Investment Commission (the
  PIC). The PIC is the investment arm of the Civil Service Pension Fund. The
  government pays substantial sums to the Civil Service Fund, which then
  transfers them to the PIC for investment. Government needs to borrow money,
  and some 40% of its present borrowings are from this very PIC! Government
  gives money, then it borrows the same money, and then it has to pay interest
  on its own money, which it is borrowing! We have an incredible circle!

In effect, the true level of our debt, if this bizarre vicious circle is
discounted, is much lower than officially announced. It is around 36% of GDP,
and not the 60% that the Reserve Bank publishes. This is a significant
difference, and the real figure would give much greater investor confidence to
South Africa. As far as we know, no government in the world uses the debt it
owes to itself as part of its calculation of the overall debt.

But why do we have this bizarre situation?

In the final years of apartheid, there was a cynical switch in the way in
which the Civil Service Pension system operated. For many decades, South Africa,
like most other countries in the world, operated a Pay-As-You-Go system. In this
method, people who are working today pay into a pension fund, and those who are
retired receive payment from the actual cash that is being put in by younger
workers. There is a constant cash-flow.

From 1991, as the apartheid regime realised its days were numbered, there was
a sudden and cynical switch from a Pay-As-You-Go system, to a Pre-funded system.
In this latter approach, huge funds are accumulated in the pension fund, these
funds are invested in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and elsewhere, and
pensioners are paid out of interest earned (of courses assuming, that interest
is earned in the casino of the stock exchange). As a result of this sudden
switch, Government's contribution to the Civil Service Pension Fund nearly
trebled in 1991 from R11.6 billion, from R4.2 billion the previous year. This is
the origin of some 40% of our present debt.

So why have we uncritically taken over this system, and why have we failed to
return to a Pay-As-You-Go method for the Civil Service Pension Fund?

This is a question that the SACP has been raising in the context of our
preparations for the Tripartite Alliance Summit. Frankly, we have not received a
clear answer.

It is sometimes argued that it is now "the international trend" to
move towards prefunded pension and social security funds. Our research shows us
that this is not true, most major developed countries operate Pay-As-You-Go
systems. It is true that there is some debate in Western Europe, for instance,
about shifting to a pre-funded method. The reasons for this debate have to do
with the fact that many of those societies have ageing populations, and the
concern is that the current contributions of active workers will not be
sufficient to cover current payments for pensioners and other recipients of
social security. It is important to note two things about this European
debate: 

• First, the debate is not about civil service pensions in isolation, but
  the totality of social security provisions; and, more importantly
• These are societies in which there are ageing populations. In South
  Africa, like most other Third World countries, we have a very young
  population. By tying up public resources in a pre-funded Civil Service
  Pension fund we are, quite literally, failing to channel resources to where
  they are desperately needed - youth education, employment creation, etc.
• The SACP intends to raise the public sector Pension Fund issue in a much
  more robust way at the forthcoming Alliance Summit. We hope that this
  Congress will mandate us to pursue this matter actively.

We remain convinced that GEAR is the wrong policy. It was wrong in the
process that developed it, it is wrong in its overall strategic conception, and
it is wrong in much of its detail. At the end of the day, we cannot allow our
entire transformation struggle to be held hostage by conservative approaches to
the budget deficit. Yes, we must be concerned about the budget deficit, but that
concern must never obliterate our concern for the terrible social deficit we
have inherited.

2.2.2 The need to build a developmental state

Another area in which we believe there have been strategic shortcomings has
been in our collective failure to forcefully consolidate a developmental state.
We have often fallen into technocratic and managerialist ways of conducting
ourselves in government. There are many factors at play here, but one of them is
the insidious grip that the neo-liberal "new public management" dogma
has assumed.

We need to foster new values and a new culture in the institutions of the
public sector. Apart from the obvious need to eliminate racist and sexist values
and practices, we need also to guard against narrow managerialist and technicist
approaches to governance.

Unfortunately, in tandem with the global ideological dominance of
neo-liberalism, the dogmatic assumptions of"new public management"
have become fashionable and pervasive in the new South Africa. Among the by now
familiar assumptions of this school of management theory are:

 ~ the belief that, from the standpoint of management, there is very
little difference between the public and private sectors;

~ the assumed need to shift emphasis from rules and standards to
accountability for outcomes;

~ a preference for private ownership, for contracting out, and competitive
tendering;

~ the disaggregation of public sector structures into quasi-autonomous
agencies, in particular the separation of commercial from non-commercial
functions, and policy from delivery and regulatory functions;

~ a focus on monetary incentives in the public sector, rather than on other
incentives (social values, pride in good public service, professionalism, etc)

~ a stress on cost-cutting, credit control, efficiency and "value for
taxpayers money".

As a growing number of international theorists, think tanks, development
agencies and others are now beginning to say, there are many problematic myths
in this approach. The public and private sectors are not the same. The former
has to be driven by strategic social values. Any neglect of this critical
difference quickly undermines the developmental role that the public sector must
play in our society (and indeed in all societies).

The trend to disaggregate public sector bureaucracies into quasi-autonomous
agencies may, at times, be justified, but it often undermines the coherence of
what is required, and it ghettoises "non-commercial" functions
directed towards the poor.

The new public management approach often reproduces inequalities in other
ways as well. It compels front-line managers and workers (for instance in poor
local councils) to meet performance targets that have been set by senior
management, rather than allowing them the space to respond to and negotiate the
actual needs of each local context. The reduction of public managers to narrowly
focused agents of specified "delivery outcomes", makes this approach
incapable of building up a public service that can respond to the great
challenges of our country and world. Public sector managers and workers need to
be leaders of a transformation process, who understand their task as more than
just "service delivery".

Above all, the whole approach undermines the ability to sustain a unifying
political vision and agenda. The public sector starts to be driven not by
political transformational values, but by fiscal targets Political vision is
displaced by macro-economics, and cadres by accountants.

Often accepted unquestioningly as "neutral" techniques
of"international best practice", the "new public management"
assumptions have already begun to have serious consequences in the post-April
1994 South Africa. Some of these consequences are evident in the dangerous
divide that has sometimes opened up between local councils dominated by our
ANC-led alliance and ANC-supporting communities, or between key ministries and
social movements and progressive trade unions operating in the relevant sector.

The SACP is not arguing against the need for fiscal discipline, for effective
public sector management, or for transforming bloated bureaucracies. The
critical question is what political agenda drives such concerns - fiscal
discipline is not an end in itself. We also do not believe that there is some
alternative, quick-fix management blue-print. We are, however, deeply concerned
at the dangers of the uncritical and dogmatic application of neo-liberal
management practices and values within our transforming public sector. These
practices and values are particularly insidious because they present themselves
as implacable opponents of old-style apartheid bureaucracy, and as an
"inevitable international modern trend".

2.2.3 The tendency to demobilise our mass popular movement

A third area of strategic concern for the SACP, as we review the past four
years, has been the tendency to demobilise the mass popular movement. As the CC
notes in the relevant discussion document, although the Reconstruction and
Development Programme and many other policy perspectives and campaign programmes
recognise the need for a people-centred, but also people-driven transformation,
the mass popular movement in our country has been considerably demobilised since
April 1994.

There are several factors at work in this, including the redeployment of tens
of thousands of cadres since the 1994 elections, and the narrow managerialist
approaches we have sometimes adopted and which we noted above.

But another key reason has been the difficulty that our political formations,
and our mass and community based organisations have experienced in re-orienting
themselves in the new situation. Maintaining the mass mobilisational capacities
of our movement (as we must), but in the new conditions of governance, has often
proved difficult..

We certainly do not exempt our own SACP structures from this criticism. Our
branchlevel structures have often vacillated between a narrow oppositionist role
on the one hand, and being mere mouthpieces for local councillors, or government
in general, on the other.

What has clearly been lacking in the past period, has been an effective
mobilising programme of action that is driven by our Tripartite Alliance, but
which is capable of drawing in the broadest range of progressive formations and
sectors. Apart from election campaigns - where there has been mass mobilisation
in the past four years, it has mostly been ANC-aligned formations waging
campaigns against the ANC-led government, or one of its ministries. There is, of
course, nothing wrong with this in principle. But it does raise the obvious
question: why have all our mass campaigns been turned inwards? Why do those, and
we are thinking primarily of big capital in our country, who retain massive
powers and privileges accumulated illegitimately in the apartheid past, remain
unscathed? It is they who constitute the primary strategic opponent of change,
but they have been able to watch amusedly from the sidelines, while we mobilise
against each other.

The SACP has been raising these concerns within the context of the Tripartite
Alliance, and one of main contributions we wish to make to the impending
Alliance Summit is, precisely, to table a relatively extensive proposal around a
unifying Alliance programme of action. This 10th Congress must help us to
consolidate that input.

2.2.4 Putting class and gender firmly back into the national democratic
struggle

Since the late 1920s, the Communist Party in South Africa has clearly grasped
the centrality of the national question in the South African reality.
Notwithstanding the April 1994 breakthrough, South Africa remains, as ANC
President comrade Thabo Mbeki aptly said a few weeks ago, "two
nations". Unemployment levels, life expectancy, infant mortality, poverty,
homelessness - in these, and other socio-economic indicators, race remains,
overwhelmingly, the most significant determinant.

However, our Communist Party has always insisted that the national question
cannot be addressed independently of the class question. With greater clarity in
the last period, we have also understood that overcoming gender oppression in
our society is not some separate task, still less a "side-issue" - it
is deeply woven into race and class oppression

It was the ANC (not the SACP) which in 1969 at its famous Morogoro Conference
asserted (in its "Strategy and Tactics" document) that:

"our nationalism must not be confused with chauvinism or narrow
nationalism of a previous epoch. It must not he confused with the classical
drive by an elitist group among the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so
that they can replace the oppressor in the exploitation of the masses...
"

This is the ANC that hundreds of thousands of South Africans, communists and
noncommunists, have helped to build. We have no doubt that these views affirmed
at Morogoro continue to be cherished by the great majority of ANC and alliance
members. But we also all know that they are words that need to be repeated, over
and over again.

In the late 1990s, while continuing to understand the centrality of the
national question in our struggle, it has, perhaps, become more relevant than
ever before to insist that a class and gender perspective must also inform our
national struggle. Nothing could illustrate this better than the abuse to which
the concept of "Black Economic Empowerment" is now so often subjected.
In much public debate and discussion "Black Economic Empowerment" is
reduced to the promotion of a new black (and mostly male) elite.

We are told, for instance, that key public sector corporations, like ESKOM,
should be privatised, and that privatisation will be part of Black Economic
Empowerment. But ESKOM is a public resource, and the overwhelming majority of
that public is black. Selling off ESKOM to a handful of emerging black
consortia, along with other private investors, removes this key public utility
from the sphere of meeting social needs, to the sphere of market-driven,
profit-seeking operations. It would be, in fact, Black Economic DIS
-empowerment.

The SACP takes this opportunity to call for the immediate withdrawal from the
National Assembly of the new Eskom Bill. The "commercialisation" of
ESKOM is the first step towards privatisation, whatever might be said to the
contrary. In itself, in any case, commercialisation is a wrong-headed option.
One of the great achievements of the past four years has, precisely, been the
electrification of over 2 million poor households. That was possible because we
were able to set ESKOM a social, reconstruction and development agenda, and not
a commercial agenda.

We are also deeply concerned that this Bill has been unilaterally pushed into
the National Assembly in violation of undertakings given to COSATU and the SACP
by the relevant ministry.

3. The Evolving International Situation

Over the past three years, the major international trends that we discerned
in our last Congress have been prominent. The post-Cold War capitalist
triumphalism, that was so characteristic of the first years of this decade, has
lost its shine. While, at the global level, capitalism is the overwhelmingly
dominant economic system, this very dominance underlines its fundamental social
and historical bankruptcy.

The critique that Marx and Engels developed of capitalism one hundred and
fifty years ago, remains absolutely pertinent. Capitalism revolutionises
production and technology, but always at the behest of private profits and not
social needs. It is singularly incapable of rising to meet the challenges facing
humanity - the challenges of mass hunger, of poverty, of environmental
destruction, of dealing effectively with the AIDS epidemic. Where there is only
social need and no profit, capitalism is, at best, slow on the scene.

The decade of the 1990s has seen the deepening impoverishment and
marginalisation of our continent. It has seen volatile and unpredictable
speculative crashes on the global financial markets. It has seen a growing
divide opening up in most of the most advanced capitalist countries, between the
rich minority, and the relatively poor majority. The allure of a rapid advance
into a capitalist first world for eastern Europe, or for the Newly
Industrialised Countries of East Asia has proved to be a chimera. The third
world is allowed to run the global race, but it is always only allowed to come
third.

But these international trends, which we analyse in greater depth in the
relevant chapter of our draft programme, are not going unchallenged. Everywhere
there is a renewal of left, progressive and alternative movements and campaigns.
In Western Europe years of rolling back the welfare state are being met with
electoral rejection and with imaginative programmes to address mass
unemployment, like the campaign for a 35-hour working week.

In Eastern Europe the neo-liberal shock-therapy programmes are equally
challenged by mass struggles and at the polling booths. In Cuba, our comrades
have weathered the worst of the "special period", the crisis that
followed the collapse of the old Soviet bloc. Contrary to the gloating
expectations of Washington, Cuban socialism has not disappeared. It has proved
that is has put down strong patriotic roots In China and in Vietnam, contrary to
most media reporting in our country, socialist ideals have not been simply
abandoned in a headlong rush for the capitalist market. In their own conditions,
with their own experience and traditions the Chinese and Vietnamese comrades
have committed themselves to defending their social gains and to developing
their countries, regardless of international fashions. The medium and
longer-term outcome of the present transformation processes in these countries
is, of course, unclear, and several different class outcomes seem possible.

The past three years have seen some important waves of popular struggle - not
least in Indonesia, where Suharto has been swept from power. Here in Africa, one
of the citadels of neo-colonial power, Mobutu's Zaire has been swept away in a
wave of popular struggle. Elsewhere, democratic forces from Nigeria to Swaziland
are mobilised in a common rejection of corrupt, undemocratic neo-colonial rule.

At the 9th SACP Congress we set ourselves, as a Party, several tasks on the
international front:

• In the first place, we have been concerned to play an active role in the
  formulation of an effective South African strategic orientation towards new
  global realities. As we explain in our draft programme document, this has,
  in our view, been an area of some confusion. In the immediate aftermath of
  the April 1994 democratic break-through, there were some common illusions in
  our country about a simplistic "return to the family of nations". "As
  South Africa is welcomed back into the international economic fold and
  prepares itself for full participation in the global economy. . " is
  a typical cliché (in this case from the Standard Bank's economic
  journal for May 1994).

We believe that over the past four years a more robust and more realistic
understanding of our position in the world, and of the need for ongoing
struggle for a more just global order, has come to be articulated from
government and from our broader movement. President Mandela's principled and
firm stand, during Clinton's visit, on the US '`trade-not-aid" approach
to Africa is one indication of this growing robustness. Other examples include
our consistency on relations with Cuba, and other states that the US attempts
to demoniac, and our government's willingness to take on powerful US (and
local) pharmaceutical companies. The SACP salutes firmness on these fronts,
and we hope that we have made our own contribution to developing a more
consistent perspective on such questions.

• A second major international focus that we set for ourselves as a Party at
  the 9 Congress, was to help to foster a greater intra-Southern African
  and African progressive solidarity. Much of this work is, in our view,
  best led by our ally, the ANC, and we see the SACP's role as being often
  complementary to such ANC work. However, the complexities and protocols of
  being a ruling party, do at times constrain ANC solidarity work in Africa.
  There are cases in which the SACP has taken a more active and leading role.
  In particular, in the last period we have worked closely with progressive
  forces in Swaziland, Botswana, Zambia and Nigeria.

We take this opportunity to make several calls:

~We call for rapid progress towards democratisation Swaziland. The
state of emergency must be lifted immediately, the effective ban on political
parties must go, and real and fully representative constitutional negotiations
must be instituted. The present constitutional commission is a toothless
entity, and it has manifestly failed to move the process forward. The SACP
notes with a deep sense of loss the sudden death, this past week, of PUDEMO
National Chairperson, and foundermember, comrade.Dominic Mgomezulu.

~ In Zambia we call for the immediate release of all political
detainees. The so-called military coup of last year was little more than a
foolhardy escapade by a few individuals in the army, reflecting not a
political agenda, but the degree to which discipline has eroded. It has been
used, however, by President Chiluba as an excuse to crack-down on and suppress
his political opponents. While we welcome the freeing of former-President
Kenneth Kaunda from house arrest, we insist that all political detainees
should be freed. We also call for all-party constitutional talks. While
Chiluba prevaricates, the economy of Zambia is being battered, and millions of
Zambians are suffering.

~ In Nigeria we call for an end to the harassment of progressive
political forces, for the freeing of all political prisoners, and for a rapid
return to democratic civilian rule. The death of Abacha has created a window
of opportunity for those currently in power, but as the days and weeks go by,
that window of opportunity is diminishing. The SACP salutes the heroic
mobilisational efforts of the democratic mass forces within Nigeria, and we
pledge to offer what assistance and solidarity we can.

The ANC, at its Mafikeng National Conference last December, resolved to
struggle for an African Renaissance. In our draft programme, the SACP
expresses its support for this vision. Indeed, from the late 1920s, the
Communist Party in South Africa has endeavoured to locate its struggle for
socialism within the context of Africa. In our 1962 programme, The Road to
South African Freedom, we devoted an entire chapter to what we then called,
"The African Revolution". What we argued in 1962, in the midst the
first major wave of decolonisation in our continent, remains fundamentally valid
for the African Renaissance of the coming millenium. Our own country, our region
and our continent, confront the choice between continuing to be little more than
neo-colonial enclaves in an otherwise entirely marginalised continent, or
struggling for people-centred and people-driven continental reconstruction and
development. If the latter is what is understood by the African Renaissance,
then the SACP expresses is whole-hearted support for such a vision. A necessary
corollary of such a Renaissance is the immediate cancellation of the debt of the
poorest countries of our continent (including the debt of our neighbour,
Mozambique), and effective debt reduction for the rest of the continent.

• A second area of international focus that we set for ourselves at our 9th
  Congress, was to develop South African solidarity with peoples still engaged
  in struggling for national self-determination. After all, we are
  emerging from a national liberation struggle, and we have benefited from the
  unstinting solidarity of people and organisations around the world. We have
  always believed that it is important to build a culture of solidarity in our
  country - solidarity is not just something we receive, but something we
  give. In particular we highlighted the plight of the people of East
  Timor, Palestine and the Western Sahara, and we condemned the
  Turkish military occupation and division of Cyprus.

In regard to East Timor, we think that the SACP has been able to play a small
but effective part in a broader South African and international effort to
high-light the East Timorese struggle for national self-determination. The 1996
Nobel peace award to comrades Bishop Belo and Ramos Horta helped to raise the
global profile of this struggle, but the SACP had not waited for this event. We
have maintained relatively dynamic ties with the Timorese liberation forces, and
we have tried to work closely with President Mandela in the important
initiatives he has undertaken. We have also organised demonstrations against the
Indonesian embassy. The demise of Suharto has opened up space for a more dynamic
international effort to resolve the East Timor issue in line with long-standing
UN resolutions. The SACP calls for the immediate release of Xanana Gusmao and
other Timorese political prisoners. We also call for the scaling down of the
Indonesian military presence in East Timor, as a climate-creating step towards
negotiations for a referendum on the future of the country.

Obviously our concerns in regard to Indonesia are not limited to East Timor
alone. There are political prisoners in Indonesia who have been in jail for more
than three decades now. Most of them were members of the PKI, the Indonesian
Communist Party. Suharto's successor, Habibie has announced that, while some
political prisoners will be released, this does not include those associated
with the Communist Party. We call for the release of all political prisoners,
and we call for the effective democratisation of Indonesian society.

At our last congress we also addressed ourselves to the ongoing and
unresolved problem of West Sahara. We called for rapid progress towards a
UN-supervised referendum. While the SACP has been vocal on this matter over the
last three years, generally we have not, as South Africans, been able to make an
effective contribution to the international effort. In the past months there
have been some signs of progress, mainly under a US-led initiative. We welcome
the progress, but regret that South Africa has not been as active as it could
have been.

In the Middle East we note the continuing instransigence of the Zionist
forces in Israel, their unreconstructed expansionist ambitions, and their
unwillingness to abide by solemn agreements that they themselves have
underwritten. We express our firm solidarity with the people of Palestine in
their ongoing struggle for self-determination.

At the 9th Congress we condemned the ongoing Turkish occupation and division
of Cyprus. The SACP has connected with Cypriot forces in South Africa, and
internationally, in seeking to keep pressure on the question. We are greatly
encouraged by our government's decision to halt arms sales to Turkey.

• Throughout the 1990s (and of course before) the SACP has consistently
  struggled to develop a Cuba solidarity movement within our movement,
  and within our country. We believe that in the course of the 1 990s the Cuba
  solidarity movement has put down effective organisational roots in our
  country. In the first few years the SACP was more or less alone in this
  solidarity campaign, now it has acquired a much broader character, and we
  welcome this important advance. Over the past two years, as part of our SACP
  branch-level and district-level programme of action, we have called on SACP
  structures to link actively with the hundreds of Cuban doctors working
  generously and selflessly in remote parts of our country. We believe that
  many South African Communists have taken up this work. We hope that our
  Cuban comrades have had some experience of the warm sense of solidarity that
  the overwhelming majority of South Africans feel for Cuban and the Cuban
  revolution.

The SACP has engaged in several high-level bilateral meetings with the
Cuban Communist Party, and we have hosted a Cuban party comrade for several
weeks at our head office to help foster an in-depth and working understanding
of our Party.

Working for the international renewal of the socialist project

The SACP international work has, of course, been much more wide-ranging
than the specific issues and campaigns we have just mentioned. We have, over
the past three years, endeavoured to play an active role with fraternal
parties, organisations and other formations around the world in renewing the
socialist project. The impressive number of international delegations at this
10' Congress is testimony of the importance that we, and our comrades from all
continents, attach to this work. We thank all the international delegations
here, and all the other parties and formations that have sent messages, for
the interest that you take in our party, and in the ongoing South African
national democratic revolution.

Our geographical position, at the southern tip of the African continent,
and our limited resources, have sometimes constrained some of our work. But,
fortunately, current globalisation is not all bad news for internationalism.
While the value of the Rand has made international travel more and more
difficult for us, the Internet and email have created new possibilities to
share information, to debate and discuss with each other, and even to
co-ordinate international campaigns.

International communist solidarity is not just about high-profile meetings
and campaigns. It is also about grass-roots connections, and these are more
possible than ever before. Here, as one example, is an e-mail
message we received from Cantabria in Spain a few days ago, the writer is
reacting to SACP material he has found on our Internet Home-Page:

 Dear comrades,

I 've just read your draft for the Congress (actually only the section 'Our
Marxism ' and some paragraphs more) and I 've fond it splendid I 'm not used
to documents so concise, clear and that comes to the point. I 'll take time to
read it more slowly, you pose crucial questions. For the moment, I have only
missed within the text - when you speak about globalisation - a wider
reference to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. Perhaps you haven 't
paid enough attention to it.

Have you got a translation of the CC Draft document in Spanish? If not,
I 'll try to make a translation. I 'd like to distribute it between my
comrades in Spain.

Yours faithfully,

Javier Fernandez Retenga Member of the Communist Party of Spain
Organising Secretary of the United Left in Cantabria"

As you can see, more than ever, there is international communist, socialist
and progressive discussion, debate and umrabulo going on. (By the way, the
comrade from Cantabria, Spain is completely right about our omission of
references to the struggle against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment,
and we must take steps to include this in our revised draft!)

 4. Build Socialism Now

As the SACP, in our efforts to play an active role in the renewal of the
socialist project, we have found our ongoing dialogue with international
fraternal organisations and comrades absolutely vital. But we have also found
that the renewal of socialism is something that can (and has to) be based on our
own 76 years of indigenous South African and African working class and popular
struggle.

In the midst of the dramatic transition process going on over this decade in
our country, a process in which we Communists have never been spectators, we
have also stolen precious organisational time to debate, to revise, to review
the meaning of socialism.

At our 9th Congress we made, we believe, an important strategic shift as the
SACP, it was a shift that was alluded to in our slogan: "Socialism is the
Future, Build it Now!". We were moving away from what had sometimes been an
excessive "stageism" in our approach to socialism. While the national
question, and the national struggle were in the forefront in the concrete
conditions of our society, this did not mean that the struggle for momentum
towards, capacity for, and indeed concrete elements of socialism, had to be
postponed for some distant "second stage". Socialism is not something
that we keep on the shelf, or hidden up our sleeves. It is as communists that we
engage with the challenges of our society, here and now.

In our 9th Congress, in our Strategic Perspectives document, we also
began to develop concrete proposals around what we mean by building socialism
now. These include:

• Rolling back the empire of the market,
• Democratising what remains of the market;
• Building and defending a powerful, democratic, developmental public
  sector;
• Transforming power relations in the work-place, building socialism not
  just from the top, but also from the bottom up, and
• Fostering the socialisation of the ownership function - through the public
  sector, but also through an emerging and dynamic co-operative sector, and
  through the strategic control and deployment of social capital (like worker
  pension and provident funds).

These positions, which we developed 3-years ago, have begun to have a much
broader resonance. We were especially pleased to note that COSATU, at its
Congress in September last year, adopted resolutions on socialism that reflected
a major convergence in our approach towards building socialism. COSATU's
resolution on socialism talks about "building blocks" for socialism,
and these building blocks are more or less the same set of programmatic
positions briefly noted above.

In the past months we have, in the context of building the socialist project
in our country, held a major national bilateral with COSATU, and we have been
involved in numerous political education programmes with COSATU and with many of
its affiliates.

The agenda of the SACP is, unabashedly, socialist. It is not a secret agenda.
Nor is it an attempt to hijack the national democratic struggle. The president
of the ANC said last week, at the COSATU Central Committee meeting, that a
strong COSATU and a strong SACP contribute to building a strong ANC, and vice
versa. We agree. A strong SACP is a Communist SACP, what else can it be?
We are profoundly convinced that the ongoing national democratic revolution
needs to have a continuous injection of socialist ideas. The assessment of
whether progress is being made or not, needs constantly to be subjected to a
collective, working class, political analysis.

By the same token, we are equally persuaded that the task of all genuine
socialists in our country is to be in the midst of the vast national democratic
transformation process underway, and led by the African National Congress.

This is why the slogan of this Congress is one slogan, not two
slogans:

 

BUILD PEOPLE'S POWER, BUILD
SOCIALISM NOW!