*YCL Address to NUMSA Free State Provincial Congress by Life Mokone* Revolutionary greetings,
On behalf the five districts of the Young Communist League and its National Committee, I pass deserved greetings to all the workers in the name of our common struggle against pervasiveness of capital and its dominion. I must say that it is an honour for me to note that there continues to be a growing confidence among the workers towards the Young Communist League and its views as a responsible youth organisation. We are 5 months away from ANC led victory that took place during this year’s local government elections. The wrinkles of that victory continue to impact on our democratic institutions across the landscape of our province. As the young communist league we did not celebrate the victory because we felt that it was yet another victory. And this victory that we have once more achieved as an alliance must not be regarded as business as usual whereby the ANC will use the proceeds of this victory to once again field wrong horses in the expense of the working class. We remain gratified as the YCL to actually note that the people continue to be attached to our work and so they continue to provide their support. I refer here to the community of Ward 22 in Maluti-a-Phofung, which was never won by the ANC. Today a member of Provincial Executive Committee of the Young Communist League stood for elections and won with outright majority. This to us is an indication of the growing confidence parallel to the growth in our membership. During our 3rd Provincial Congress in August this year, the YCL made few observations which we believe can be shared with the workers today: We won the election on a purely left leaning manifesto, strongly influenced from top downwards which meant there was uniformity in our work as the alliance. The 2010 YCL Jobs for Youth Summit that has coerced the President to refer to this as a ‘year of job creation’ and many young people benefited from this call. The ANC in the province has identified jobs as the most critical of all challenges and we believe that the approach of Hlasela Campaign has managed to bridge a barrier between the community and elected representatives. It also helped not only to allow communities to understand how government works to reach out to the needs of the people but to listen and allow the public to vent out their frustrations. This made it easier for us to win elections without working much hard. The expanded public works programmes have also managed to push for more labour-intensive methods by the public sector and this resulted in a more coherent skills training; and learnerships for young workers. We are careful as the YCL to mention the private sector due to their inability to cohere with government and in many respects appear to relegating the huge responsibility of job creation to government. The introduction of guidelines for elections of public representative served as effective tool for the expansion of democracy, although many within and outside the movement found it as a platform for their manipulative tendencies. And we said, unless the ANC is prepared to take action against thuggary, it will be better to revisit the idea of the guidelines and return to the initial process. Another refreshing observation was that even in the face of the opposition that relied more on the courts than on other democratic channels brought about by the democratic breakthrough the ANC led government remained firm on consolidating the workers’ rights and their successes of the post 94 breakthrough. More oppositionist market fundamentalists have used the reversal of this worker’s successes as their manifesto and because we know that workers are most reliable voters of current conjuncture, such decisiveness helped to cement the victory for our movement. There has also been a massive empowerment to the poor in the province through fostering sustainable livelihoods, households and better communities. Some of these very strategic approaches can be credited to the calls by SACP and COSATU towards Polokwane, in which a call was made to reclaim the ANC from the organisation of the elite and back to the people. This election like of the 2009 was won over from deep in townships, in factory floors, in squatter camps, rural homesteads and institutions of learning. *YCL Congress on the ANC* * * Beyond these many issues there lies an organisation to which we uphold as the leader of the glorious alliance and we provide all the necessary backing to help it win the elections as much as it was the case with winning the freedom for our country. >From many times since the 1994 the working class and the poor served as instruments for success of all electoral processes and yet remained on the backseat of the moving car with a hope that things will change and those who are on the driving seat will keep the backseat for the workers to have their share of the democratic victory. But things never seemed to change. The victory of the ANC throughout every election has proven to be the victory only of the ANC and the alliance has kept the spectator position mainly at the times of harvest. We believe that this tendency cannot remain and that we must fight since we have nothing to lose as we have not gained anything. The current alliance relations must be reproductive of positive advancement for the Party and the working class in the province. The path towards changing the state of affairs will not be an easy route as it bothers on the future of individuals and therefore hampers of the spirit to wage a successful struggle as they will fight to maintain their dominance. We identify the contestation of space within the ANC as the leader of alliance as very important to change and to impose the working class leadership in the ranks of the ANC. Our view that branches of the ANC must begin to look within the ranks of Cosatu and the Party for leadership in their coming congresses is supported by the growing impasse upon which the working class continue be defined. The 2009 and 2011 elections are testimony to such realities where communist who were on the list through the support of the people were the first to be sacrificed and excluded and this has got to change. The effects of giving a gun to a mad person becomes of age the most dangerous turn of our revolution which when analysed correctly will also help to understand history. The internal and external onslaught against the alliance of progressive forces in our country marks the failure by few to position the outlook of our aging struggle with its distinct cultures, collective and universal emerges of our historical moments. It is a failure informed by the immediate and quick short route approach to political and economic emancipation that is so un-strategic, appealing only to self-established bottomless solidarities. More so, extremely much of the exaggerated levels of enthusiasm to liquidate the struggle are informed not by the will of the people but by the immoral sentiments of a revolutionary consciousness which was not fully assumed. The reference of our message to this congress to the ‘unassumed revolutionary consciousness’ is an attempt to lay bare the tragic effects of a revolutionary consciousness when turned upside-down, resulting into a gun falling in the hands of a extremist. The extremist’s pervasive influence of an action through a barrel of a gun turning comrades against comrades has torn our movement apart. The movement of close to 150 years has succumbed to merely three years of untidiness and political obscurity subjecting the organisation to a bone targeted by the dogs. The unprincipled timing that chose to utilise the birth year of one of the oldest liberation movements in the world as a spring board for ‘personal ambitions masquerading as interest for all is an insult to those who shed their blood for the liberation they were not about to witness. Personal ambitions that intend to drive away the communist struggles from the African National Congress have become more than a threat to the unity of all progressive forces in an attempt to changing the current conditions of our people. It is important that this congress is able to implant the culture of realization to what exist behind the mask as opposed to what is fed unto the masses of our people. *Workers disdain* * * The most people who suffer the extreme wrath of the current system remain the workers. The workers do the work and the proceeds of their own labour are stolen under the pretext of the ‘logic profit’. Furthermore, what is stolen from you as producers of wealth by means of personal appropriation defines your demise. The bourgeoisies after alienating your own labour have put you under financial commitments, child school fees, home loan, a car and a monthly salary and etc, are now brave to say there is need retrenchments in order to maintain productivity and high profits. Even if you are not retrenched but the knowledge that you are on the line keeps you on docile state and limits you radicalism. Capital, has succeeded in this form even to sway our own democracy to be used against its people, the corporate salary increases continues to double without any demonstrations or a strike while those who voted suffer the scourge of ‘no work no pay’. The workers have no choice but to face police brutality in the struggle to double digits as a form of seeking to force the employer to appreciate their work by giving them conducive working environment and a living wage. It is inevitable to note that the ANC-led government and our democracy have been very kind to the bourgeoisies and yet the proceeds of such kindness have borne nothing but anguish to the workers and the poor. The next 17 years must belong to the workers through building of a strong working class power between the SACP and the workers. Millions of workers have been retrenched and casualised and thousands more to come. The white monopoly capital suffering from a fever of being led by a black government took their investment out of South Africa as a way of deepening the existing inherited crisis of overproduction and come back after ten years to apportion the blame on the ANC biasness to influence by the SACP and COSATU. *The need to mobilise the workers in all fronts* **** We need to fight these tendencies and acknowledge when government has done right because it won’t help to call it our government while we are forever on its weaknesses. So, few months back we have learnt that the government has targeted the automotive industry to wage its fight towards job creation and so it is prepared through some of its agencies to spend beyond a 100billion for this purpose. This is the amount of money which you can be right to suspect that a huge part of it will be spent on salaries of big technocrats within the sector. Furthermore, this money is expected to enable the state to produce above 1million cars per annum by 2020 in order to craft more jobs. However, should it be that all these initiatives will come while some critical elements of the failed strategies of the Mbeki regime remain and the obvious delays caused by the National Planning Commission to assist the country with better ideas moving forward, it is possible that they will fail. There is only one way of getting things done to the advantage of the workers in this country and it is only when the workers takes it to the ANC not only via demonstrations but by swelling the ranks in order to shape the direction. During our congress we, 400 delegates in attendance decided unanimously that we must struggle for the working class leadership to be elected in the structures of power of the ANC. And I noted that such call was found by some to be problematic and they decided to associate it with the Mangaung 2012 Conference. But what is more to this is that this call is also found in the 2015 vision of COSATU and no one thought that it was problematic for federation to think like that. But then this is a call for all to understand, in theory and in practice, that an active and vigilant worker is critical for the well-being of our society. And that an effective public sector requires decently remunerated, well-motivated, well-trained professionals. No worker can afford to limit his role only to the shop floor and leave the ANC in communities to everyone because this will be equal to donating the ANC to the political masqueraders. We call on you as the YCL not to limit your role to fighting only for wages but to regard societal challenges in general as your direct problem. Otherwise the workers will always safeguard the ANC from the usual culprits in the Cape and Cope but to leave it to other forces from within who will definitely hijack it and it will be difficult to re-claim it. Instead of a conclusion, let me call on all of us to work towards building an effective alliance, because South Africans depend on us, the alliance must be strong. Let all the workers belong to the SACP and the young workers to the YCL, strengthen the arty because it is yours, without the Party there will be no ideological compass and struggle for socialism will quickly loose meaning. The Party is not a vanguard of the working class by seasons, it is not a vanguard faces but it became and remained a vanguard through tested years of impulsive struggle of the common people. So, come out and defend the Party, even if it is from itself. We need a strong ANC more especially for the year 2012 and we must disappoint those who foretell 2012 as the year in which the ANC will experience its demise. We need ANC to work on discipline and we must always emphasise the centrality, unity and cohesion of the ANC as very important for the nation. HIGHLIGT: Jobs for Youth 10-11 November 2011, Joe Slovo Memorial Lecture 6 January, The YCL wishes all delegates to this Congress well in your proceedings. *AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL – AMANDLA!* -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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