South African Communist Party

29 December 2016

SACP 2016 Year End Statement

The SACP wishes to take this opportunity, the end of 2016 to wish all South Africans a happy new year. In particular, we would like to send a special message to the working people of our country, millions of whom take a holiday during this festive season, to have a well-deserved rest. It is the toil, perseverance and hard work of the working class that oil the wheels of our economy and keep it turning.

To the millions of the unemployed, rural and township masses, the SACP says: Let us organise and work together, including by starting and strengthening our co-operatives and developing a solidarity economy as a means of creating productive work and building an inclusive economy -‎ rather than the dog eats dog selfish capitalist economy.

What we need as a country to measure economic progress is the improvement of the conditions of ordinary people, not how many billionaires we have produced.

In 2016 the world's richest people made US$237-billion or R3.3-trillion more than they had in January.

This widened inequality further, in the sea of poverty across and within borders, including in South Africa. That, for instance, the Guptas have become the richest Black billionaires in 2016 shows the toxic role of corporate capture of the state, in addition to deepening exploitation of the workers and the poor both economically and politically.  

We must therefore intensify our struggles against economic exploitation by the bourgeoisie as a whole and corporate capture of strategic levers of public power by parasites. 

Let us make 2017 truly a year of rigorously moving our national democratic transformation onto a second, more radical phase: 

At the centre of this struggle it is crucial to decisively advance radical economic transformation to benefit the workers and uplift the poor of our country from poverty. Going to the root, we must work together to eliminate the colonial and apartheid features of our economy and capitalist exploitation as its foundation.

It is also important that we fight to jealously guard our democratic national sovereignty, so that our country is not sold to the highest bidder, and so that we are able to pursue our own economic policies. The extent to which we make progress in this regard will have influence on our pace towards realising the important goal of tackling class, racial and gender inequalities, unemployment and poverty.

The year 2017 is an important policy year in our country:

It offers an opportunity to emerge with policy changes for driving the second radical phase of our democratic transition.

As the SACP we will be consulting widely and extensively, including by convening a conference of commissars, and a national imbizo, to discuss with our people ways of dealing with the many challenges facing our country.

We will be convening our Party’s 14th National Congress in July, and we will further engage with the views to be raised at the national imbizo. The Congress will update our political programme with immediate focus on addressing the urgent and pressing challenges facing our country and our people.

The most immediate challenge is to build hope amongst our people, that indeed a better South Africa that creates jobs and sustainable livelihoods is indeed possible. There is no better way to achieve this hope, other than to build and strengthen our Alliance and other progressive mass organisations with the working class in a firm leading position! 

The only way towards realising the hope for a better future, is by the people, themselves, changing their own conditions for the better. The SACP pledges to continue playing its own role as part of this struggle, and as a dependable force of the people, especially the workers and the poor.

Let use the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution to intensify international solidarity for world peace.

The African Revolution for independence, for the advancement and full development of democracy, and for continental prosperity, is not over. The struggle continues!

The interrelated challenges of under-development, neo-colonialism and imperialism remain entrenched, and pose a serious threat to continental unity. We must deepen our continental struggle against these challenges and the systemic forces behind them.

The SACP pledges to use, in 2017, the occasion of the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution that occured in Russia in 1917 to deepen its work to develop Communist Party organisation in the African Continent. The SACP will use this process of Party Building to reinvigorate the African Left Networking Forum (ALNEF) and its efforts to build a continental revolutionary movement of the working class in alliance with progressive forces.

The SACP condemns in the strongest terms possible the DA’s mayor of Tshwane, Solly Msimanga, for his recent visit to Taipei. 

The visit was against the advice of the Department of International Relations and Co-operation. Msimanga violated the One China Policy, and thus disregarded South Africa’s international obligation not to interfere in China’s domestic affairs, in particular not to recognise any cessation. The last time South Africa had relations with Taipei was during apartheid. 

Msimanga’s action, which we can only believe is based on the uncritical support granted to the DA by its voting and coalition partners, is proof that the DA will push South Africa back to the years of apartheid in different ways.

In the next few days, on 1 January 2017 the Cuban Revolution will mark its 58th anniversary.

This will be the first ever anniversary of the Cuban Revolution since the death of its Commander, the founding First Secretary of the Communist Party Cuba and the country’s former President, Comrade Fidel Castro Ruz. Fidel passed away on 25 November 2016.

Next month, January 2017 will also see the United States inaugurate its 45th President, Donald Trump, a man who displayed a racist attitude towards Africans and South Americans, among others, a sexist attitude towards females, and hostility towards Cuba. The SACP pledges its continued solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and people. 

We will continue our campaign for, and we reiterate our call to the United States to lift its illegal economic blockade of Cuba, to evacuate and stop the human rights violations it continues to commit in Guantanamo Bay.

The SACP pledges its solidarity with the people of Western Sahara, Palestine and Swaziland. 

We call on the occupying regimes, Morocco in Western Sahara and Israel in Palestine to evacuate the occupied territories respectively. In particular it will be a contradiction to African unity for Morocco to form part of the African Union while it is disrupting African unity by means of its occupation of Western Sahara.

We pledge our support for the struggle for democracy and reiterate our call for the unbanning of political parties in Swaziland.

The SACP condemns the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Ambassador Andrey Karlov, on Monday 19 December 2016.

There can be no justification for such a heinous act of terror and the killing of diplomats.

Issued by the SACP, 29 December 2016