[SACP with Red, 3.png]
South African Communist Party, Tshwane, 29 May 2017
SACP message to COSATU Central Committee:
Deepen relations between SACP and COSATU!
Delivered by Cde Blade Nzimande, Party General Secretary
The SACP wishes to take this opportunity to wish this 6th Central Committee of
COSATU successful deliberations.
Our message today to this gathering is divided into five parts:
* Current and immediate challenges facing our revolution.
* Progress, achievements and weaknesses since 2009.
* The centrality of driving a second, more radical phase of our
transition.
* Necessity to solidify the relationship between the SACP and COSATU and
the necessity to reconfigure our Alliance.
* Some of the tasks facing the SACP 14th Congress.
Current and immediate challenges facing our revolution
Cde President and delegates, it would be disingenuous or untruthful for the
SACP not to admit upfront that our revolution and the liberation movement as a
whole are facing enormous threats and challenges at the present moment. Failure
to overcome this may actually lead to a serious reversal if not defeat of all
we have achieved, especially since the 1994 democratic breakthrough. It is for
this reason that we must take to heart, what Cde Oliver Tambo - in this year of
his centenary - said on 2 May 1984 at the Solomon Mahlangu College in Tanzania:
"Let's tell the truth to ourselves even if the truth coincides with what the
enemy is saying. Let us tell the truth".
It is important to remind ourselves of these pearls of wisdom from those who
came before us also in order to expose those who always accuse us of working
with the enemy whenever we tell the truth about the weaknesses in our movement.
Their aim is to silence us. Let us refuse to be blackmailed into silence so
that we can save our revolution.
Whilst monopoly capital remains our strategic enemy, but the most immediate
threat facing our revolution are the parasitic networks encircling the state
and our economy, at centre of which is the Gupta family working with some of
the most senior comrades in our movement and the state.
Sometimes our detractors say but why is the SACP fighting these parasitic
networks but not monopoly capital. But this is a lie! Since our formation in
1921 our primary struggle has been against both national oppression and its
economic foundations based on especially mining capital. Since 2000 we have
waged a heroic struggle for the transformation and diversification of the
financial sector, including the banks.
We have sometimes been accused why the pre-occupation with the Gupta family.
This is another lie! When the Kebbles tried to capture some of our comrades in
the ANC Youth League, we stood firm as the SACP. Till today we say no to
Kebbleism, Guptarisation or any other form of capture of our movement or the
state. Even here, working with COSATU we have said no to business unionism -
the capture of progressive trade unions by business interests. We also want
this Central Committee to stand up with us and say no to corporate capture of
our organisations, our movement and the state!
The fifth democratic administration, and particularly since December 2015, has
seen the dramatic destabilisation of the pre-existing, but always unstable,
post-Polokwane relative co-relation of forces within the ANC and government.
Essentially this has been the result of a more determined, more reckless, but
relatively well co-ordinated, and well-resourced drive by a networked
parasitic-patronage faction connected to the narrow BEE tendency and actively
supported from the highest echelons of the ANC and state.
Since 2014 we have seen a greater boldness and recklessness from this networked
tendency, associated with:
* Accelerated rent-seeking activities based on state capture;
* Increasing signs of a parallel shadow state and parallel movement;
* Creeping authoritarianism and ambitions for a more presidential
system; and
* An attempt at developing a pseudo-radical, populist ideological
platform to cover for these activities.
* Accelerated rent-seeking based on state capture
This networked parasitic patronage faction is held together by the plundering
of public resources, rent-seeking activities that have focused considerably on
parasitic relations with state owned enterprises - not to privatise these
entities, but to milk them and direct their billions of rands of procurement
into private corporate and even individual pockets. Some of the current
parasitism is directed at building war-chests to subvert the ANC's December
2017 national conference.
In the late 1990s, together with COSATU, we fought a relatively successful
battle to stop attempts at privatisation of many state owned companies.
However, this victory is now being stolen by the parasitic elements who want to
use state owned enterprises not to drive a developmental, job-creating agenda,
but to capture the tenders and procurement books of these entities. This must
be a lesson that we must always guard our victories closely so that they
continue to serve the workers and poor of our country.
A parallel shadow state and movement
In order to advance this agenda, but also to deal defensively with the growing
exposure and popular outcry against it, there has been brazen abuse of the
presidential deployment prerogative into sensitive institutions (SARS, SSA),
and particularly into institutions involved in criminal investigation and
prosecution - the NPA, Hawks. However, while these deployments have delayed, or
buried critical investigations and prosecutions, the calibre of those deployed
and the resulting inner factional turmoil (for instance in State Security
Agency or SARS) has further deepened the crisis. With obvious presidential
support, a parallel state has developed - SARS, the Hawks, the NPA are
unleashed against Treasury; a rogue unit in the State Security Agency is
launched as a factional arm within the ANC and ANC-led movement.
On the policy front, shadowy presidential and ministerial advisers from outside
of the state and even the movement are brought in and act parallel to
constitutional structures in the university crisis, on the SASSA matter, on
nuclear policy, etc.
Growing authoritarianism
Linked to all of the above are growing inclinations to authoritarianism and
presidentialism. Nostalgia for military-style, top-down command and control is
openly expressed. It is important that we remind ourselves that states that are
captured, especially when there is resistance to that, quickly degenerate into
securocrat, if not authoritarian states.
If opposition to Mbeki at the 2007 Polokwane Conference was centred on the
struggle against over-centralisation within the Presidency, we are clearly now
in a much worse situation. Imperialist conspiracies, regime change threats are
invoked in order to justify this dangerous drift. Assassinations of ANC and
alliance cadres often go unsolved, and an emerging pattern of intimidation is
apparent (most recently the theft at the Constitutional Court offices; and
threatening behaviour at the former Social Development Director General's
private residence, etc). There is an attempt to emulate a Putin style,
authoritarian, low-intensity democracy, with meetings reported between this
faction and their counterparts in Russia.
However, both the sometimes amateurish calibre of state/ANC elements involved
in these activities, as well as the broader socio-political-constitutional
setting in South Africa (a stronger independent media, growing judicial
confidence in holding the line, a powerful monopoly capitalist sector, and
still relatively strong trade unions) often result in the early exposure of
these activities, which does not make them any less sinister. What it does
underline is that South Africa's "civil society" has a much greater depth and
resilience, whether from the capitalist or popular sectors, than Mugabe's
Zimbabwe or Putin's Russia.
All these developments underline the importance and absolute necessity for the
labour movement to stand up to defend our gains and our revolution. If workers
become spectators we really run the danger of descending into a mafia state.
A diversionary populist ideological platform
In the face of growing public exposure of the misdeeds of the parasitic
networks within or movement and the state, there have been a number of
ideological interventions from this parasitic-patronage faction.
On the one hand, these have involved setting up (or attempting to suborn
existing) ideological apparatuses - the SABC under Hlaudi; The New Age (whose
"business model", like most Gupta-operations, consists in funding through
parasitism on state owned enteprises, the SABC, and endless advertorials from
the some factions in the ANC); and the recent Bell-Pottinger operation, using
social media with "fake bloggers" and "Twitter bots", linked to pop-up "think
tanks", like Andile Mngxitama's "Black First, Land First", and Mzwanele "Jimmy"
Manyi's "Decolonisation Foundation", etc.
Generally, the stance of the parasitic-patronage network has been a populist
anti-intellectualism ("clever blacks" are disparaged.) For the first time in
many decades, the ANC no longer has a journal of ideological discussion and
debate.
However, over the past several months there has been an attempt to craft a more
coherent ideological platform, evoking black and particularly narrow African
nationalist themes and the notion of "radical economic transformation" (in the
process narrowing the until recently forgotten Mangaung resolution calling for
a "radical second phase of the NDR"). This move seems in large part to have
been motivated by the hugely negative impact on the parasitic-patronage network
of the growing revelations of their subordination to and complicity with the
Gupta-family. The Gupta connection clearly has zero positive resonance either
with the mass base, or even with the many local aspirant rentier factions who
resent the favouritism bestowed upon (or extracted by?) the Guptas. (See Jimmy
Manyi's forced resignation from an official position within the Black Business
Council because of his too close association with the Guptas.)
Ironically, given its attempt to cast itself in radical Africanist terms, much
of the content and narrative for this ideological platform appears to have been
developed by the UK-based PR firm, Bell-Pottinger, working on behalf of the
Guptas. This Guptas' propaganda machinery has sought to portray the multiple
revelations of wrong-doing on their part, and the belated closing of their
banking accounts, as a conspiracy directed against them by "white monopoly
capital" working in tandem with Treasury. (Of course, since this did not square
with the narrative, there was silence from these quarters when in February 2017
the Chinese Central Bank also shut down the accounts of a Gupta-related
company, VR Laser Asia involved in a dodgy deal with Denel.)
The latest emails revealed publicly for the first time yesterday, if authentic,
expose the extent and depth of these parasitic patronage networks, and action
needs to be taken to go to the depth of this. They in fact underline the
importance and urgency of a judicial commission of enquiry that the SACP was
the first organisation to call for, to be set up as a matter of urgency.
Over the past several months this parasitic-patronage faction has sought to
re-calibrate its public positioning somewhat. While the Gupta family (and the
networks left behind by its erstwhile Bell-Pottinger PR agency) clearly lurk in
the background in many cases, there has been an attempt to downplay links in
this direction and adopt a more radical sounding, Africanist posture. However,
"radical", in these quarters, is largely rhetorical and is almost entirely
focused on advancing narrow black elite accumulation.
The danger posed by these parasitic networks require bold and militant worker
organisation led by COSATU, but working with other progressive worker
organisations and federations, as well as with the rest of working class
communities. Parasites are not an answer to monopoly capital, just as black
monopoly capital is not an answer to white monopoly capital. It is important
that at this stage we remind ourselves of what the Morogoro Strategy and
Tactics said in 1969 on this matter in particular:
"We do not underestimate the complexities which will face a people's government
during the transformation period nor the enormity of the problems of meeting
the economic needs of the mass of the oppressed people. But one thing is
certain - in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic
wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and
are not manipulated by sections of individuals be they White or Black".
Progress, achievements and obstacles since 2009
The inauguration of the first Zuma administration in 2009, after the
significant Polokwane outcomes at the ANC Conference, happened in the wake of
two important realities. Firstly, it was inaugurated immediately after the
onset of the 2008 global financial meltdown occasioned by the financial crashes
in the United States, thus throwing the global economy into a serious downturn.
This happened after just over a decade of the implementation of our own (i.e.
government imposed) neo-liberal package, GEAR (Growth, Employment and
Redistribution), which both the SACP and COSATU had vigorously opposed.
Despite the serious obstacles just outlined the first Zuma administration did
make some qualitative advances in changing the lives of our people for the
better between 2009 and 2014.
After 1994 there were consistent efforts from within the ANC and ANC-led
movement to counter the "1996 class project" as the SACP dubbed it. These
efforts came to a head in the "Polokwane" conjuncture of 2007/8. One of the
organising perspectives of the upheaval that occurred at this point was the
assertion that the "ANC (or the Alliance, in another version) is the strategic
political centre" - and, not, therefore the state-presidency as Mbeki's
technicist approach had sought to locate it. At face value, and for many, this
assertion of the strategic primacy of the ANC-led movement represented an
attempt to reassert the democratic and mass-based, movement character of the
ANC and its alliance.
However, in practice the Polokwane moment involved a marriage of convenience
(or, perhaps, an unholy alliance) of the broad left, anti-neoliberal bloc with
demagogic forces for whom the assertion of the ANC as the strategic political
centre was a move to displace incumbents in the state with their own, in order
to advance an even more aggressive parasitic, rent-seeking agenda. These latter
forces identified patronage-based mobilisation within the ANC as the soft
underbelly from which to capture strategic positions within the state to
advance their parasitic agenda.
In the first Zuma administration (2009-14) there was a relative balance of
forces between the divergent agendas that had come together in a marriage of
convenience at Polokwane. In some sectors (health with a major shift on AIDS,
trade and industrial policy, state-led infrastructure spend, recalibrating
competition policy as a means to leverage economic transformation, a greater
emphasis on vocational training, etc.) space was opened up for progressive
advances, including developing a better working relationship between the state
and social movements (the social movement campaign for anti-retroviral
treatment being the most obvious case).
There were also other important advances in the significant increases in social
grants, increased numbers involved in public employment programmes, increase in
RDP houses. But at the same time there was not enough resources invested for
instance into the industrial policy action plans. In essence these measures
never translated into radical transformation and change in the semi-colonial
nature of our economy.
Furthermore, in terms of sustaining and re-building the ANC-led movement's
capacity to mobilise the key motive forces, these and other positives in state
deployment, coincided with the weakening of COSATU, partly as a result of the
global economic downturn and resultant retrenchments. There was also a loss of
momentum on the SACP side in terms of active working class and popular
mobilisation (a failure to sustain a very successful financial sector campaign
for instance). Deployment advances in some sectors as just noted, however,
were always (and surely deliberately) held in check by other deployments in the
2009/14 administration.
Internal political weaknesses in the ANC are particularly glaring. Factionalism
and state capture have unfortunately created an internal stalemate in
leadership, with an ANC NEC incapable of leading itself and the rest of the
Alliance out of this quagmire. Internal stalemates are particularly dangerous
in political organisations as their resolution often lead to massive internal
destabilisation and often decay.
Building working class power to drive a second more radical phase of our
national democratic revolution!
Ours is a struggle for a socialist South Africa. Whatever we do must always be
guided by our overall strategic goal that the working class must never lose
sight of. It is only a highly mobilised and militant working class, with the
SACP playing its vanguard role that is best placed to lead the struggle for
socialism.
After a prolonged revolutionary struggle, the 1994 democratic breakthrough in
South Africa finally abolished the institutions of white minority rule with
their origins in centuries of colonial domination. This radical rupture laid
the basis for a democratic dispensation within a progressive, non-racial
constitutional order.
Since 1994, the SACP has been actively campaigning for a new push, a second
radical phase of the struggle to advance and deepen the national democratic
revolution (NDR), on the basis of the bridgehead of the 1994 democratic
breakthrough.
We have consistently argued that without urgently opening up this new front of
struggle, without an uninterrupted second radical advance, the gains of the
first phase would be threatened; the liberation credentials of the ANC-led
movement could be increasingly eroded as memory of the anti-apartheid struggle
receded; popular power might be dissipated into passive expectation of state
delivery, or individualistic consumerism, or, at best, fragmented into
thousands of localised and sectoral protest actions. Any undue pause, we have
further argued, would allow South African monopoly capital, historically
sheltered behind colonial and white minority rule, to re-group. All of these
likely tendencies, we said, would leave the structural legacy of apartheid
colonialism and the socio-economic crises affecting the majority of South
Africans largely intact.
In 2017 it is obvious that these concerns have been substantially correct.
More concerning still, faced with these challenges, the ANC, the leading
formation in our liberation struggle over the past decades, a political
movement that has enjoyed overwhelming electoral support since 1994, is,
itself, now in serious and possibly irreversible decline.
This was the context in which the SACP contributed to and welcomed the ANC's
2012 National Conference resolution for "a second radical phase of the NDR".
Unfortunately, having taken this important resolution, there was little
appetite or interest at first from within much of the ANC itself to provide any
substantial content to, let alone active organisation and mobilisation for a
second radical phase.
Over the past year, however, there has been a sudden but largely opportunistic
resurrection of the idea of "radical economic transformation". Unfortunately,
this belated evocation of radical transformation has typically been associated
with the most reactionary, private rent-seeking elements within our movement.
They have appropriated this slogan demagogically as a distraction from the
increasing exposure of their own parasitic looting of public resources. This
looting is carried forward by way of well-organised networks of patronage,
coordinated through a strong strategic presidential centre that straddles both
the constitutional state and a parallel shadow state.
>From a wide range of progressive comrades within the ANC and alliance, from
>stalwarts and veterans of our movement and armed struggle, even from those
>democratic forces historically opposed to, or suspicious of the SACP, there
>has been a growing recognition of the role the SACP has played, working
>closely with all democratic forces, inside the movement, inside the state and
>in broader society, in exposing and in fighting both state capture and
>liberation movement capture. More than ever, the SACP has a critical, vanguard
>role to play in providing real content to the imperative of a second radical
>phase of the NDR - not just in theory, but above all in mass-based practice.
What are the critical organisational tasks in this context? How should the
ANC-alliance be reconfigured to respond to these challenges? Is reconfiguration
even possible or desirable? In taking forward this role, if the SACP is to be
credible and serious about dealing decisively with the cancer consuming our
movement, we need also to examine self-critically what lessons we can learn
from the recent past. What role might we have played unintentionally in
creating the crisis?
The SACP says it is important that we give serious radical content to radical
economic transformation. There are at least two pre-conditions to this. The
first is to locate it within the broader strategic goal of driving a second
more radical phase of our national democratic revolution. The second is that a
precondition to any radical economic transformation must be the defeat of the
parasitic networks like the Guptas. There can be no radical transformation
whilst the parasites continue to exist and hold our state and economy at ransom.
Solidifying SACP and COSATU relations and rescuing our Alliance
The pre-condition to drive a second more radical phase of our transition as our
direct route to socialism requires two organisational developments in the short
to medium term. In the first instance this requires the solidifying of the
relationship between the SACP and COSATU as the socialist axis of the national
democratic revolution and our Alliance.
Strengthening our relations must not be turned into a boardroom exercise, but
must be based on joint programmes of action.
The SACP and COSATU have held a series of bilateral meetings since COSATU's
last national congress. We agreed, among others, on taking forward a common
programme, joint work and campaigns, including:
* Decisive implementation of the national health insurance, ensuring, at
the same time, that is not hijacked by private or corrupt interests, or watered
down: The national health insurance must deliver universal health coverage and
quality healthcare particularly to the workers and poor.
* The second financial sector summit, convened by the National Economic
and Labour Council (Nedlac) to review progress since the first summit held over
a decade ago and to discuss new measures towards a new financial architecture.
* The national jobs summit, convened by Nedlac to discuss effective job
creation policies and turn the tide against the persisting crisis level
unemployment rate. This must be preceded by a joint SACP-COSATU national jobs
summit preparations prior to the Nedlac convened jobs summit.
* Review of the National Development Plan (NDP) in line with our
alliance summit declaration of 1 September 2013: The SACP and COSATU did not
agree to the economic and labour policy content of the NDP. There can be no
second radical phase of our democratic transition including real radical
economic transformation under the auspices of the NDP, particularly economic
and labour policy content in its current form.
* A comprehensive social security for the workers and poor.
* Combat corruption and corporate capture both within the ranks of our
movement and the state, and push for insourcing of outsourced, out-contracted
or privatised public services or assets. This must for instance include a
campaign for all road maintenance and construction to be insourced back to
municipalities and for those workers to be permanently employed.
On behalf of the SACP I am appealing to this Central Committee to discuss
practical implement measures.
The main objective of our struggle is to complete the national democratic
revolution, end exploitation by capitalist stakeholders and build socialism.
This is the common thread connecting all the campaigns and joint work we agreed
to undertake. It is the basis of our relations and must find its profound
expression in our immediate tasks and in our perspectives.
Cde President and delegates we cannot overemphasise the importance of defending
our state-owned enterprises. COSATU and its affiliates in particular organise
in the public sector, including state-owned entities. It is important to
leverage this structural location to fight corruption, misgovernance, corporate
capture and other forms of looting these institutions. SAA, Denel, Transnet,
Prasa, SABC, Petro-SA, Telkom, Post Office and Post Bank, Eskom, etc. must not
be looted and bankrupted right under the nose of progressive trade unions. Let
us together wage a relentless struggle to defend the basic wealth of our nation
and public resources. We need state-owned enterprises at all spheres of
government to advance national transformation imperatives as opposed to
enriching a few individuals or families.
For instance the irregular and potentially corrupt reappointment by Eskom of
its former CEO, Brian Molefe, is something that must not be allowed to happen.
This was preceded by an attempt to give him a R30-million golden handshake
under the guise of a pension payout.
Our role as SACP and COSATU will also be strengthened by a thorough
reconfiguration of our Alliance. The modus operandi of the Alliance since 1994
has exhausted itself. It cannot be that we all contest elections and we leave
all key deployment decisions to the ANC only, and sometimes to individuals.
This is not about individuals and positions but about the exercise of state
power. The Alliance can no longer function in this fashion, this must come to
an end.
The SACP 14th Congress in July 2017
We are holding our 14th Congress in this important year of the centenary of the
Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917. We will be using this
Congress to further discuss all the matters we just raised and more, including
the important question of the political tasks and choices facing the SACP
currently and in the coming period, as the question of whether the SACP should
not consider contesting elections in its own right.
The factionalist battles inside the ANC are exerting a lot of pressure on the
SACP in particular. The highest point of this pressure was in the lead up to
the local government elections in many localities especially eThekwini in KZN.
The SACP was under pressure to register to participate in the elections in its
own right.
Since then there is increasing pressure both from inside and outside our ranks
for the SACP to consider itself as a new home or to be in alliance with those
cadres who feel alienated from the ANC but still see themselves as part of our
movement.
There are a growing number of communists and non-communists who feel that the
ANC in particular is losing its political and moral authority amongst some of
its members and voters.
There is near consensus inside of the SACP that the current modalities in the
functioning of the Alliance since 1994 have now exhausted themselves. There is
a strong feeling that contesting elections together as allies, but leaving key
decisions in the hands of the ANC alone is no longer acceptable. In fact
deepening factionalism and the corruption of internal organisational processes
have further bedevilled Alliance relations
These are real pressures that we cannot and should not ignore. But at the same
time we need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions, both of a strategic
and tactical nature, including the following:
Can the SACP take as fundamental a decision to participate in elections in our
own right purely based on reaction to the pressures we have just outlined?
Rather is the fundamental question that we need to answer not the one on how
will SACP electoral participation advance the struggle for radical economic
transformation within the broader context of the struggle for socialism?
Can we be able to change the situation inside the ANC and the Alliance without
a fundamental reconfiguration of the ANC/Alliance? Related to this is the fact
that reconfiguration of the Alliance is not a boardroom exercise, but a
function of struggles on the ground and shifting the balance of forces
Or even further, can we reconfigure the Alliance inside or outside it?
Has the ANC fatally lost its capacity to unite and lead the motive forces of
the national democratic revolution? If so how and why? And do we think the ANC
can no longer be saved from itself?
How does the SACP, on its own relate to non-communist but progressive forces,
in the ANC and broader society, whilst avoiding some of the mistakes we may
have committed since 1994, but especially since around the Polokwane conference?
Whatever resolutions we take at our 14th Congress we will come back and engage
COSATU in particular and the Alliance in general.
Thank you
Issued by the South African Communist Party
Contact:
Alex Mashilo, National Spokesperson, 076 316 9816
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