From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [L-I] South Africa
26 July 2001
STATEMENT/DECLARATION OF THE NATIONAL SACP-COSATU
BILATERAL MEETING
BUILD WORKING CLASS POWER TO DEEPEN NATIONAL
LIBERATION AND STRUGGLE FOR
SOCIALISM
Today, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress
of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) held a successful national bilateral
meeting. This meeting took place in the context of a series of bilateraland
trilateral meetings between the ANC, SACP and COSATU. The
meeting also took place as part of the lead-up to the ANC-SACP-COSATU
Alliance
Summit scheduled for 22 September.
In its agenda, this meeting discussed the following matters: -
- A joint reflection and assessment on the current political situation and
the context and its impact on the organised working class, the unemployed
and rural poor from a working class standpoint - The state, role and
political capacity of the trade union movement - The state, role and
political capacity of the SACP - A joint reflection on the relation
between the struggle to complete the national liberation of black people
and the struggle for socialism in our country and internationally
The SACP and COSATU agree that many important gains for working people and
the poor have been made since 1994, including progressive labour and other
legislation, outlawing of racism and repression, ongoing democratisation,
and the delivery of basic services to millions of our people.
However, these gains are often overshadowed by massive job losses over the
past seven years, one million in the formal sector. This week Statistics
SA has announced that the official unemployment figure has now risen to
26+ACU-, with the expanded definition of unemployment now at 38+ACU-.
Through casualisation, contracting out and outsourcing bosses are further
seeking to subvert our democratic social, political and economic gains.
Big companies are also not investing the profits produced by workers in
job-creation and development.
The SACP and COSATU agree that, fundamentally, the difficulties we are
encountering are a function of seeking to transform our society on the
terrain of a society, and a world, still dominated by capitalism.
However, the two formations agreed that as a movement we could have done
better. In particular, the 1996 adoption by government of the GEAR
policy, marked a significant policy shift and, in practice, an attempt to
use capitalist means to achieve the goals of our shared national
democratic vision. GEAR and the related privatisation programme have
failed to achieve the fundamental restructuring of our society, and in
many respects these policies have taken us backwards. We agreed that,
while there are serious policy disagreements, the alliance remains united
around its long term vision of a non-racial, non-sexist, united and
democratic South Africa. The alliance is the only vehicle capable of
achieving these objectives.
The meeting agreed that the way forward includes:
- The revitalisation of our organisations, including, in particular the
ANC itself. Tendencies to bureaucratisation, the dominance of state
technocrats in the policy process, and organisational careerism were
dangers highlighted. We need to ensure that our formations are much more
actively engaged on the ground, in the mobilisation of our mass base. -
Support for the COSATU campaign to defend and build a strong, extensive
public sector, including publicly-owned corporations. Both COSATU and the
SACP are opposed to privatisation of publicly-owned resources. - The
struggle against corruption and the abuse of public office. Our two
formations will be working with the ANC to ensure that we are much more
pro-active in dealing decisively with these problems. Corruption,
particularly from those in public office, undermines our liberation
struggle, and is essentially the plundering of public resources. - The
detailed elaboration of much more effective industrial sector policies and
programmes +IBM- including the transformation of the financial sector. -
The building of an extensive social protection net +IBM- including major
land reform, the provision of social services including affordable public
transport, a basic income grant, and the transformation of existing
resources, like the R2,3 billion a year Road Accident Fund.
The meeting expressed support and solidarity with striking workers,
including those in Eskom and in the mining sector.
Further meetings are planned to carry forward our discussions and
programme of action.
________________________________________________________________________
COSATU Solidarity Message to the
South African Communist Party on the
Occasion of its 80th Anniversary
The two million strong Congress of South African
Trade Unions (COSATU) representing workers of
South Africa in the factories, shops, mines, farms, in
each and every workplace around the country sends
revolutionary greetings to the tried and tested ally of
workers and the political voice of the working class:
the South African Communist Party, on the occasion
of its 80th anniversary.
Today, the workers of South Africa celebrate 80 years
of unbroken struggle for socialism, 80 years of
unshakable commitment to eradicate from the face of
South Africa, indeed from the entire world, the scourge
of racism, apartheid and oppression.
None can deny the vanguard role the SACP played in
our liberation struggle. Through the example of both
leadership and membership drawn from all races in
South Africa, the SACP infused the belief and
principle of non-racialism into the African National
Congress in particular, and other liberation
movements across the entire region.
The involvement of "white" communists in the ranks of
our struggle showed that not every white person was a
racist. Above all it showed that some "whites" not only
hated apartheid and white supremacy, but were
prepared to die in the service of our national struggle
to defeat it.
It is thus partly due to the work and politicisation of the
SACP that the first founding principle of COSATU is
the principle of non-racialism - a principle that
continues to guide our work. This is a living non-
racialism that extends beyond the rhetoric of congress
resolutions and remains the active spirit of our work in
each and every workplace across South Africa.
It is in this spirit that we welcome the World
Conference Against Racism to Durban at the end of
the month. The Conference is coming here in part to
honour our achievements in building a non-racial
democracy. But it also reminds us of our duty to fight
racism, xenophobia, tribalism and sexism in the
workplace, in our schools and communities. The
disgraceful release of white parents who attached
black learners in Vryburg points to the need to be
vigilant to ensure that racism does not creep back into
our society.
We need to mobilise effectively and occupy the streets
of Durban on the 1st of September 2001. We must
make it clear that we support the conference and
salute the UN for choosing our country to host it. We
however don't want just a jamboree that will just issue
a few paragraphs of condemnation of racism,
xenophobia and past practises of slavery trade and
colonialism. This conference offers an opportunity to
the developed countries to take a range of steps and
offer not just symbolic reparations. In the streets of
Durban we should demand transformation and
democratisation of the UN and all its institutions such
as the IMF, World Bank and World Trade
Organisation. Reparations should mean active steps
to eradicate the huge gap between the developed
countries and their former colonies in the developing
nations. It must not just open their markets for goods
from countries in the south but should take active
steps to ensure that the trade deficit that currently
exists is eliminated. The one size fits all policies
imposed through the conditions attached to loans
must end. The odious debt must be scrapped, etc.
For 80 years, too, the SACP taught all of us the
importance of placing the organisation above the
individual. The commitment to sacrifice even one's
own life in the service of the working class, for the
ideals of freedom and equality, is a critical legacy of
the communists in our struggle for liberation.
It was communists who led by example in maintaining
discipline, in consistent, principled and revolutionary
behaviour, in the practice of equality, in the need to
treat each and every worker with the human dignity
and respect she deserves. These are the
revolutionary morals and ethics that have inspired the
liberation movement and led it to victory. This is the
shining example that not only inspired our own people
but illuminated the entire world.
For 80 years, the SACP years led the struggle for
socialism in South Africa. It has done so with a deep
understanding that as part of achieving socialism,
apartheid must be crushed and the majority liberated
from national oppression. The SACP did not just lay
claim to its position in the vanguard of the working
class. It earned its place through selfless sacrifices
and immense contribution to the struggle to free
humankind from poverty and ignorance.
This incredible track record cannot be challenged by
anyone.
For this the SACP has paid dearly. It was the first
organisation to be banned under the Suppression of
Communism Act in 1950. When the ANC and PAC
were banned after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960,
the SACP had accumulated ten years' experience in
working underground. This experience assisted a
great deal in helping the ANC to cope with the new
conditions.
Countless leaders and members of the SACP died in
the trenches, in the apartheid gallows, in prisons and
in foreign soil. Countless laid down their lives, not just
for the ideal of an equal society, but also indeed for
the mere fact that they called themselves communists.
The apartheid government and other counter-
revolutionaries all over the world tried every trick in the
book to discredit the ideal of socialism and
communism as anti-humane and anti-God, as a
system that inflicted untold suffering to the people.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the
Soviet Union gave impetus to this message of doom.
Many cynics now rush to dismiss ideal of socialism as
unworkable, using the failure of the socialist
experience in the Soviet Union as their evidence.
But these forces keep mum about the achievements of
the Cuban, China and Vietnam experiences. Even
James Wolfensohn, the World Bank recently
conceded that Cuba has done a "great job on
education and health." There is a teacher for every 12
children in Cuba, and illiteracy was reduced from 40%
to virtually zero in ten years. There is a doctor for every
thousand people, and, as we South Africans know
well, many Cuban doctors and teachers assist
countries in dire need all over the world. The infant
mortality rate for children under age of five in Cuba fell
from 13 to eight per thousand in the 1990s. There are
no street children in Cuba, no one begs in the streets,
very few are involved in sex for money.
In comparison, in USA, a biggest economy in the
world and certainly the uni-polar power, which has for
40 years initiated an economic blockade on Cuba,
poverty and inequalities are the order of the day. At
the end of 1999, 40 million people had no social
security protection, and millions were trapped in
degrading poverty. Behind the glitter of wealth lie
dungeons of homelessness, poverty, street burgers,
street children, gangsters who rule the streets and so
on.
Of course, if we look at South Africa, the picture is
even worse. Where Cuba has virtually no illiteracy, one
in seven South Africans is illiterate. Where 95% of
Cubans have access to piped water, the figure for
South Africa is 86%. South Africans suffer the death of
76 children under five per thousand * a mortality rate
ten times as high as in Cuba. And where a Cuban can
expect to live to 76 years old, South Africans average
only 57 years.
On July 26 this year, Cuba celebrated its 48th
anniversary since the bourgeoisie fled in boats to the
USA, leaving the proletariat in full charge of the
country's destiny. We send revolutionary greetings to
Fidel Castro and the masses of Cubans, and salute
their achievements as our own.
We need to turn around the cynics' question on
socialism, and ask: Where has capitalism ever
worked? Socialism works very well in Cuba, while the
system of capitalism based on profit maximization for
the few is not working for billions of the world's
citizens, who have been sentenced to a life of poverty
on less than a two U.S. dollars a day. It is not working
for South Africans, who face massive unemployment
and poverty, with the consequent toll in human lives.
This global experience, together with our daily
experience of capitalism, has made COSATU totally
committed to the struggle to achieve socialism in
South Africa. We are extremely fortunate in that we
have an ally of SACP's calibre that we know that will
never disappoint or betray our struggle.
As we celebrate the SACP's 80th anniversary, it is
important that the SACP acknowledge the mistakes it
committed in the past. One of these mistakes was
silence about the violation of democracy in the Soviet
Union and other European countries. Socialism must
arguably be the most democratic system, centred
around concerns of workers and the working class. Yet
it became highly undemocratic, with all decision-
making centred the Politburo and the General
Secretary of the party, with workers as the most critical
of the system instead of the people who rejoiced over
its existence. Calling this type of repression part of
the socialist system only played to the hand of our
ideological opponents.
The single lesson we can learn from this is that SACP
must never compromise on matters of principle. In this
regard, COSATU welcomes the fact that the SACP
has in the recent years been exercising its autonomy
from both ANC and COSATU. This independent
stance is particularly refreshing in light of the efforts of
some people to reduce the SACP into the political
education desk of the Alliance, whilst they pursue a
neo-liberal agenda that contradicts everything that
education desk would preach.
The SACP leadership and membership have
revolutionary duty of building the SACP into a
formidable force capable of leading a thorough
transformation of our society and our economy. The
SACP does not need leaders who act more like
traditional leaders, getting themselves elected to the
Central Committee and thereafter playing no role
whatsoever in strengthening the SACP. Leadership to
the SACP is distinct from a traditional leadership
because people must work for the former, while they
are born into the latter.
We are encouraged that the SACP has undertaken
high-profile campaigns around issues that affect the working class. The
campaign for the transformation of the financial sector, the previous
"Triple H Campaign" for Houses, Health and against Hunger, the campaigns
against racism in the farms and against poverty all show that the SACP has
managed to reposition itself from the underground support role to the
liberation movement into a movement that gives the working class leadership
and hope. For this, COSATU wishes to congratulate the Blade Nzimande, the
General Secretary, and the entire leadership of the SACP for its exemplary
and selfless leadership.
As the revolutionary alliance, we face many challenges. The 80
th anniversary takes place seven years after our democratic breakthrough.
One
challenge is to deepen democracy and the social gains of the revolution.
Central is the willingness to defend these gains from all manner of
counter-revolutionaries masquerading as democrats, opportunists who exploit
genuine concerns of our people, capital that wants to hijack our revolution
to
deepen its domination over our economy, and many more.
Amongst these many challenges is also to ensure that our liberation is never
reduced into the mere replacement of a white regime with a black one, whilst
the living conditions of our people do not change for the better. Our
struggle
was never about a narrow right to hold a ballot and throw it into the ballot
box every five years. The radical form of democracy that the NDR represents
is
much wider than that.
Whilst we are proud of our achievements of the past seven years, we are
mindful
of the social deficit inherited from apartheid and capitalist mismanagement.
A
huge effort will be needed to eradicate poverty, unemployment, disease and
ignorance.
The system of capitalism is not capable of addressing these social ills. We
cannot as the democratic movement continues to shoulder the inherent
failures
of a capitalist system. The time has come to acknowledge that only a
socialist
oriented transformation process can solve the problems we face. The Cuban
experience instructs us to abandon the self-destructive, capitalist-oriented
route that has been chosen.
It is in this context, too, that COSATU has started its anti-privatisation
campaign. The simple fact is that turning our assets over to the private
sector
cannot work. For this reason we have demanded a halt to privatisation and
that
no basic services or national infrastructure be privatised in future. If
negotiations fail at NEDLAC in the coming weeks, we will be calling for a
national general strike to back up our demands. We need a strong state
sector to begin to lay the foundations for socialism. After all, we did not
fight for liberation so that we could sell everything we won to the highest
bidder!
We look forward to another 80 years for the SACP, another 80 years of
struggle to improve the lives of our people. We know that in future, as in
the past, the
SACP will be resolute in the struggle for socialism.
Happy birthday SACP
Patrick Craven and Moloto Mothapo
Acting COSATU Spokespersons
_________________________________________________
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