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South African Communist Party, 22 November 2015
Augmented Central Committee Statement
Build and defend the unity of the alliance and mass democratic formations!
Advance radical economic and social transformation!
The SACP Augmented Central Committee met in Ekhuruleni over the weekend of
20th to 22nd November. The annual Augmented CC includes a wider
representation of provincial officials, SACP district leadership, and
representatives from SACP associated institutes. It is convened primarily to
review the past period and to plan actively for the coming year.
The organisational report tabled recorded the continued and unprecedented
membership growth of the SACP, with an audited membership of 234,900. We are
committed to continuing building this membership in terms both of numbers as
well as activism and quality. The growth of organised SACP membership is not
accidental. It occurs in a context in which the ongoing global capitalist
crisis and its knock-on impact on South Africa is aggravating the plight of
the working class and urban and rural poor, and large sectors of the middle
strata. It is in this context that there is the imperative of maximum unity
of our Alliance formations and of the working class and poor in general - in
defence of our democratic advances, in defence of democratic national
sovereignty, in defence of the national democratic revolution in the face of
looters and regime change agendas funded from abroad.
In discussing the political report, the CC noted that parts of the media
have once more resurrected old headlines predicting the forever-imminent
demise of the ANC-led alliance. None of this is remotely new. Over many
decades the SACP has grown accustomed to periodic spasms of wishful thinking
of this kind from the capitalist media. The present obituaries have been
occasioned by the statements and posture of a factionalist group that is
simply taking up, although with less skill it should be said, where Julius
Malema was forced to leave off following his belated expulsion from the ANC.
Once more, the anti-communist rhetoric is grounded in the realisation among
these circles that the SACP stands in the way of their ambitions to loot
public resources. The SACP has no intention of abandoning its resolute and
principled stand against political parasitism, cults of personality, and the
plundering of state and SOC resources. Equally the SACP has no intention of
breaking with the ANC and the alliance it leads. The alliance needs to be
reconfigured not abandoned. We know that our stand against corruption and
factionalism is shared by the great majority of ANC members and an even
wider spectrum of ANC supporters who fervently hope that our liberation
movement will not lose its bearings. In this regard, the CC warmly welcomed
important resolutions of the ANC's National General Council, including the
outright condemnation of slate politics funded by money that simply
reproduces endless factional churn.
In early December, the SACP's senior leadership in the Political Bureau will
meet with our counterparts in the Alliance Political Council. The Augmented
CC mandated the SACP PB to firmly encourage the practical implementation of
these important NGC resolutions.
Together, let us build on the momentum of the student struggles!
The CC saluted the widespread, radical mobilisation of students over the
past several weeks. We fully associate ourselves with the demand to advance
towards free access to higher education for the working class and poor. No
qualifying student should be excluded from post-school education and
training on financial grounds.
In the course of the student mobilisation the liberal smugness of many
university administrations has been exposed. At Stellenbosch and the
University of North West student mobilisation with academic support has
exposed language policies that have been used to perpetuate exclusion and
frustrate transformation. In many cases, the student mobilisation has also
achieved important non-racial unity. The student mobilisation has also added
fresh impetus to the long-standing struggle of the SACP and the union
movement against outsourcing of campus workers. These are important advances
that must be consolidated and strengthened as part of the wider national
democratic struggle.
It now becomes imperative that we build on the energies, aspirations and
concerns of students, many of whom have become politically active for the
first time. To take this momentum forward we need to expose a small minority
of externally-funded, anarchistic forces who are seeking to use the
legitimate demands of students for entirely other agendas. Indeed, over the
past weeks in particular, these forces have exposed themselves. The
destruction of university property, and criminal actions are not the work of
those who genuinely seek to transform the higher education and training
terrain. On the UWC campus, 300 odd, misguided anarchists associated with
the EFF and PASMO have tried to disrupt examinations, holding 30,000
students hostage. In one case at UWC, a PASMO ring-leader wrote his own
engineering exams and then opportunistically led the disruption of other
exams.
What is the way forward? The ANC-led alliance and particularly the PYA
formations and NEHAWU and SADTU have a critical responsibility in this
situation. We must speak with one voice, and we must listen patiently to the
many issues confronting students. We must provide concrete leadership on the
ground, campus by campus, addressing the specific issues in different
localities. We must not provide leadership arrogantly or by proclamation,
but on the basis of a common radical programme for the transformation of the
entire post-school education and training system.
In the immediate short-term, resources must be found to meet the commitment
to a zero fee increase for 2016, as well as to address the debt crisis
confronting returning students in the new year. As we move forward, a
comprehensive review must be undertaken to ensure that the government's
budgetary processes are aligned with the key strategic priorities of our
country, including how to achieve the appropriate balance in funding
universities, on the one hand, and vocational technical training, on the
other. While upholding the constitutional principle of academic freedom, the
modalities of university autonomy when the evocation of autonomy blocks
progressive transformation must be addressed. In an extremely unequal
society, simply implementing free university education for all will actually
reproduce class, racial, gendered and geographical inequalities. As long as
South Africa remains grossly unequal, there needs to be a graduated,
means-tested application of fees. Those who can pay, must pay.
The funding of post-school education and training needs also to be
integrated into a more general struggle for the transformation of the
financial sector. Consideration should be given to an income tax add-on
dedicated to post-school education and training. The SACP's campaign to
enhance community re-investment obligations on the financial sector needs
also to be included in the funding challenges. Monopoly capital is the
principal beneficiary of the public funding that goes into post-school
education and training, greater mobilised pressure must be directed there.
Transform the Financial Sector!
The Financial Sector Campaign (FSC) this past week succeeded in securing
agreement that NEDLAC will convene a Financial Sector Summit in the first
half of 2016. The Summit will be an important milestone in the SACP's
ongoing financial sector campaign. Working with a broad alliance of forces
within the FSC, we will use the summit to assess the implementation of the
resolutions emerging from the first NEDLAC-convened financial sector summit,
a key outcome of the SACP's Red October campaign launched 15 years ago.
The National Credit Act; a National Credit Regulator which recently has been
showing much greater determination in protecting consumers against predatory
behaviour by credit providers; and much greater transparency in the conduct
of the credit bureaux are some of the key outcomes of the original financial
sector summit. Local-based and social movement campaigns against financial
sector abuse have also gathered important momentum - including the exposure
of systemic abuses in emolument attachment ("garnishee") orders. In Gauteng,
SACP structures working with communities have been active in anti-eviction
campaigns.
But a great deal more still needs to be done. The IMF itself has identified
the high levels of oligopoly in the South African banking sector and the
interpenetration of banking and short- and long-term insurance as a
significant risk factor. The levels of household debt and student debt are
of great concern. Since the first financial sector summit, the degree to
which the non-banking sector itself has become excessively financialised is
another source for concern. Much of the retail sector, for instance, now
depends for profits less on selling groceries, furniture, or clothes, and
more on selling credit at exorbitant interest with all manner of fine-print
add-ons like unemployment and multiple life insurance included. The growth
of a casino economy has far outpaced the growth of the rest of our economy
while an effective productive investment strike persists.
In this connection, and as part of the CC's regular policy discussion slot,
the CC received an input from the Minister of Finance, comrade Nhlanhla
Nene, on the Financial Sector Regulation Bill recently tabled in Parliament.
In the context of the 2008 global financial sector crisis, and the local
collapse of African Bank, the Bill seeks to introduce more effective
regulation of the financial sector via a "Twin Peaks" approach, regulating,
on the one hand, prudential behaviour and, on the other, market conduct. In
welcoming in principle the move to introduce a more effective regulatory
regime the SACP and its broader alliance within the Financial Sector
Campaign will engage with the Parliamentary process. Amongst other things,
the CC flagged concern that the National Credit Regulator's current powers
should not be diluted, and that the approach to prudential behaviour should
not compromise the important task of consolidating public and cooperative
banking. Nor should prudential requirements hamper the leveraging of
financial sector resources for productive investment, and for community
reinvestment requirements into social housing, or vocational training, for
instance. The SACP will also continue to advance the call for more
effective capital control and capital account management to defend national
resources from speculative capital flight.
We condemn terrorism, we condemn imperialism
The CC expressed condolences to the communities who have been victims of
recent terror attacks in Mali, Nigeria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Syria,
Afghanistan and France. In condemning these atrocities, the CC notes that
without exception, the origins of these despicable acts can be traced back
to the social turmoil provoked by US-Nato regime change interventions
particularly in Iraq and Libya and the current regime change strategy in
Syria.
Over the past year and indeed even in the past weeks there have been
important geo-political developments that underline that, while the US
undoubtedly remains the dominant global hegemon, its ability to unilaterally
achieve its strategic objectives has suffered significant decline. The
importance of the re-opening of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba
should, of course, not be unduly exaggerated - the US will continue to
attempt to erode Cuban socialism and sovereignty now much more through
"soft" power (i.e. economic leverage and consumerist ideological power).
Nonetheless, the re-opening of diplomatic relations marks a strategic defeat
and reversal of five-and-half decades of US imperialist policy directed
against Cuba and indeed the Latin America region. US-imposed sanctions
against Cuba must now be lifted.
In the course of 2015, US/NATO politico-military strategic agendas in the
Ukraine and now in Syria have also suffered humiliating set-backs. In the
past weeks, the Russian air campaign against ISIS and other terrorist groups
has caught the US and its allies off-balance in the region, with Russia
succeeding in forging a strategic alliance not just with the Syrian
government, but also the Iranian government, along with operational
collaboration with Hezbollah and Kurdish forces. There is also now
intelligence sharing between Russia and the Iraqi government (installed
originally by US intervention!). The Vienna Declaration marks an important
diplomatic victory in which the US and its allies were forced (at least in
words) to abandon the strategy of territorial fragmentation (along
"ethnic/religious" lines) of Syria and the removal of Assad as a
pre-condition for a political settlement, as opposed to a principled line
that the future of Syria must be determined by the Syrian people themselves
in conditions of peace.
All of these developments - political, military and diplomatic - have caused
a substantial setback to US imperialist geo-political regime-change
strategies that were honed in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and repeated in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Amongst other things, the Russian air campaign
in Syria deliberately pre-empted the US-NATO plans for a Syrian "no-fly
zone" - which, as we know from Libya and before it Yugoslavia, means a
US-NATO bombing campaign to effect regime change.
Losing ground in Syria and Iraq, ISIS has now launched terror attacks in
Paris. The events in Paris have been widely condemned in the Western media
(as opposed to the somewhat luke-warm concern about the ISIS bombing of a
Russian civilian plane, or the ISIS slaughter of thousands of Azidis in
Northern Iraq, or ISIS bombs in Beirut, or the ISIS-aligned Boko Haram in
Nigeria and neighbouring countries). Domestic public outrage has now forced
France and the US into greater action in dealing with ISIS in Iraq and
Syria, after years of half-hearted intervention in which ISIS was seen as a
useful counter-balance to Iran, Assad, and the Kurdish PKK and its allied
YPG forces in Northern Syria. Western public outrage has forced Western
governments to work more closely with Russia and its allies to counter the
ISIS threat. Despite its feigned opposition to ISIS, it is inconceivable
that the US was ignorant of the thousands of trucks involved in the
road-based pipe-line from ISIS-controlled Syrian oil-fields that has been
the principal source of funding for this terrorist group.
Forward to a unifying COSATU national congress!
The SACP wishes COSATU well in its important National Congress starting
tomorrow. In the recent period there have been important indications of
consolidation of unity within the federation and we trust that the National
Congress will consolidate the unity of the federation around a radical
programme of socio-economic transformation to address the triple crisis of
unemployment, poverty and inequality within our society. Such a programme
needs to be consolidated on the bedrock of worker-democracy, service to
members, and collective leadership. The revitalisation of the ANC-led
alliance requires an independent, militant COSATU.
Issued by SACP Augmented Central Committee, from Kopanong Conference Centre,
Benoni, Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, Gauteng Province, South Africa
Contact:
Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, SACP National Spokesperson, 082 920 0308
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