TheTimes.jpg Blade: Enable people Olebogeng Molatlhwa, The Times, Johannesburg, 7 January, 2016 The SA Communist Party has warned its tripartite alliance partner the ANC against propagating a culture of dependency. Speaking yesterday in Soweto on the 21st anniversary of the death of SACP leader Joe Slovo, the party's general secretary, Blade Nzimande, said liberation movements such as the ANC often fell into the temptation of wanting to do everything for their people at the expense of enabling them to become productive and self-sufficient citizens. "Problems also occur in post-colonial societies when liberation movements concentrate too much on providing services, on doing things for the people - as important as these things are - rather than also and more importantly concentrating on building production, developing and diversifying the total national productive capacities, and making sure that the benefits of production are distributed among the most deserving people. Joe Slovo Commemoration, 2015, The Times.jpg "As production develops more people will be in productive work and our capacity to deliver social programmes will be greatly increased. These strategic tasks are mutually reinforcing," he said. South Africa is lauded internationally for extending basic social services to millions after decades of neglect by the apartheid government. These services include the provision of almost 3million houses since 1994. The government provides grants to more than 16million people (including more than 11million children), free schooling to more than 5million children and free meals to millions more. But the government's programme has been criticised for creating dependency on the state. Nzimande told SACP members yesterday that hard work by individuals would underpin the socialist society the party advocated for South Africa. Nzimande also criticised the ANC for failing to transform the economy, which he said was another common failure of liberation movements. "We have not yet transformed the colonial features of our economy with its dependency on exports of raw materials and primary goods. Our economy is still reliant on importing finished goods, or production by multinational corporations, from the bathroom to breakfast, from communication to transportation, from the clinic to the hospital, from the classroom to the lecture hall, right in the workplace where we are importing capital goods." On the constitution, Nzimande said: "[This] is the year for us to assert the progressive content of our country's constitution. We must clearly reflect on the necessary compromises that took us one step forward and the conditions under which our constitution was agreed upon. "The sun must rise! This is the time for us to intensify our struggle to move beyond those necessary and transitional compromises." Nzimande's criticism of the ruling party can be viewed against the backdrop of souring relations between the ANC and the SACP after intense battles between the parties in Mpumalanga, as well as between the SACP and ANC youth league in KwaZulu-Natal. Adding to the SACP's woes are anti-communist sentiments brought to the fore by the rise of the so-called Premier League - a group comprising the premiers of North West, Free State and Mpumalanga, and the ANC women's and youth league - which wants AU Commission chairman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to succeed her former husband, Jacob Zuma, as party and national president. From: <http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2016/01/07/Blade-Enable-people> http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2016/01/07/Blade-Enable-people -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
