Attempts to sabotage the democratic process by the predatory financial sector condemned.
18 February 2016
Colonial and apartheid oppression, based on capitalist exploitation, by its very nature, created a high rate of racialised and gendered unemployment that became structural. Black workers in general and in particular women were forced to be on the receiving end. The 1996 class project through its neoliberal shock therapy and the economic crisis of capitalism – which is now worldwide and endemic under the regime of neoliberal imperialism – considerably worsened an already bad situation.
Under these conditions it is difficult for most workers who lose their jobs to find new ones. Those who do find jobs, find themselves casualised, working for labour brokers, or otherwise insecure as permanent temporaries and on pitifully low wages. The SACP acknowledges those government programmes which are aimed at creating jobs and protecting workers through setting a national minimum wage.
It is in this context that the signing into law of the Taxation Amendment Act without comprehensive social security to offer workers adequate protection has thus created new contradictions. This is why, as the SACP, we welcome the recent decision by the government to address the problem. The government’s proposed postponement of the implementation of the new tax law following engagements with social partners, in particular the Congress of South African Trade Unions, is therefore a step in the right direction and the SACP welcomes it. This shows that we have a government which is prepared to listen and is sensitive to the will of the people.
The SACP notes that sections of capital in the predatory financial sector expressed concern against this democratic outcome which they claim would be costly for the “retirement industry”. What is this “retirement industry” because the money belongs to none other than the workers and whose interests do they represent?
The predatory financial sector is at the root of the majority of South Africa’s current economic and social problems as well as political problems of policy-making as evidenced not only by their so-called concern over the government’s proposed solution to the problem created by the new tax law. Through its record high rate of evictions that only parallels that of the Group Areas Act of the apartheid regime, the predatory financial sector has shamed our country. This is why the SACP continues to reinforce its campaign for the transformation of the financial sector and overhaul of the financial architecture to serve the people!
The SACP says to the government: “Serve the people, rather than those who are plundering the hard-earned incomes of the people”.
And while the process to implement a new solution to the problem of the new tax law unfolds through appropriate legal processes, the inter-ministerial committee established earlier this month by President Jacob Zuma must move at a decisive pace to ensure comprehensive social security.
Statement issued by the SACP, 18 February 2016
