South African Communist Party Central Committee statement
5 December 2021
The South African Communist Party 14th Congress Central Committee held its first Plenary after the November 2021 local government elections on the weekend of 3–4 December 2021. The highest decision-making body of the SACP in between the Party’s National Congresses meets at least three times per annum. This was the last ordinary session of the SACP Central Committee for the 2021 calendar year.
The Political Report presented by the General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande extensively assessed the local government elections outcomes, their implications for the SACP and the working-class, and the economic reality under which the working-class lives, among others.
The Central Committee adopted a programme of action for 2022, which includes.
- A universal basic income grant.
- The right to work.
- The fight against crime and violence, including gender-based violence.
- Addressing the health crisis, including COVID-19.
- Addressing the challenges of education and skills development.
- Convening a conference of the Left to discuss the way forward on the pressing economic challenges affecting our country.
- Acting against climate change, through a campaign to achieve net zero carbon emissions.
The November 2021 local government elections
The most significant feature of the November 2021 local government elections was the extremely low voter turnout. While the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic would have been a factor, we should not fool ourselves. Amid crisis levels of unemployment and poverty, of municipal dysfunctionality with communities living without clean water or reliable electricity for months and sometimes years, with a long litany of corruption cases involving politicians, large numbers of South Africans have simply lost faith in the democratic electoral processes.
Against the background of government reneging on the public sector wage deal, and government’s reiterated intention of slashing over R300 billion on public sector wages that could cause major job losses in education, healthcare and policing, there was notable apathy in election campaigning from key public sector unions.
With youth unemployment at over 70% it should not be surprising that youth voter registration, let alone active voting, was especially dismal.
These developments are of grave concern for the future of our democracy. While the ANC is still electorally by far the largest party, it nevertheless suffered major losses. However, notably, the majority of the ANC’s lost vote did not go anywhere else. It stayed at home. This was a powerful message sent by the growing registered ANC non-voter population, which the ANC, and also the entire Alliance, must take to heart.
The DA also lost votes, and the IFP, which made gains in northern KZN, remains a regional and ethnic party.
Anti-ANC DA-led coalitions in a Babel Tower of cobbled together minority parties will now make for highly unstable governance in many metros and other hung municipalities. The DA-led minority coalitions, especially in the metros, were not formed with the interests of the people, especially the working-class, at heart. They are mere anti-ANC coalitions and will more likely experience problems of instability, as they were not formed based on programmatic principles. This will affect service delivery should the instability become established.
During the elections campaign, the SACP consistently stressed the imperative to strengthen organising the working-class and other progressive forces on the ground, in our communities, both in urban and rural areas, to ensure that the government at all levels serves the people wholeheartedly and delivers quality services. Instead of bureaucratic opposition, a mass-based mobilisation to hold the government to account is crucial to be led from within the Alliance. The SACP will actively play that role.
The ANC’s poor electoral performance was directly connected also to the lack of principled unity and cohesion. Factionalism, infighting for positions, gatekeeping, and the continuing marginalisation of Alliance partners by some structures badly affected the ANC’s performance.
Arrogance also remained intact in many areas. The emergence of a parasitic petty bourgeoisie who are preying on municipal budgets to pursue their private wealth accumulation agendas compounded the arrogant attitude. The parasitic petty bourgeoisie established connections with corrupt officials mainly, but not only, in supply chain management or tender processes. Some of these elements are within our own broad movement.
Similar tendencies exist in upper spheres of the government and state organisation. In renewing the ANC, we must tackle these tendencies and disrupt the corrupt connections between public sector officials and the parasitic and bureaucratic bourgeoisie. This is a key task facing the SACP, the working-class and progressive sections of our movement and broad society.
The ANC needs to renew itself organisationally and politically, unify and ensure that ANC-led governments at all levels serve the people diligently and capably. The SACP will continue to support this effort as a matter of principle and strategic imperative, while recognising that ANC renewal will not happen without popular mobilisation, from within the movement and beyond it, against corruption and against anti-people neoliberal austerity that is being inflicted on the majority by an ANC-government.
For this reason, we will strengthen an independent SACP that is committed to the reconfiguration of our Alliance, which is capable of its own autonomous activity. Building an ever-strong SACP and asserting the independent role of the Party in all respects, including in engaging in alliances and forging popular fronts, is essential to secure meaningful democracy in our country and strengthening our movement.
The renewal of the ANC cannot just be a moralistic issue. It must be based on a programme. This must include rejecting neoliberalism and putting people before profits. As part of the renewal, we need to strengthen the building of a progressive women’s movement and the progressive youth alliance. This is one of the key tasks the SACP will take forward in the coming period.
The SACP fully supports 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence Campaign and calls upon its structures, members and the working-class as a whole to drive this campaign as an everyday campaign throughout the year. Our country will not thrive if it does not end such despicable violence against more than half of its population.
Economic and broader social transformation
Structural transformation
As the Political Report made clear, a turnaround against the economic crisis characterised by rising high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality is unlikely, unless South Africa adopts a change in policy direction. At the centre of the change must be the imperative to build a new economy. This requires the pursuit of structural transformation and broader social development to create employment at scale, eradicate poverty, and systematically eliminate inequality. The SACP will strengthen, expand, and intensify its efforts to build wider working-class unity, power, and hegemony in all key sites of the broader political struggle, inclusive of the policy space and significant centres of power existing in our society.
It is imperative to pursue structural and systemic transformation of the economy. This needs to be supported with changes in the macroeconomic framework and industrial/sectoral policies to create employment, eradicate poverty, and systematically eliminate inequality.
The policy changes required should include a review of the South African Reserve Bank mandate to make sustainable employment creation a key part of monetary policy outcomes and evaluation.
The SACP takes a dim view of the Reserve Bank’s decision to increase the repurchase (repo) rate. Increases in the repo rate impact the productive sector and employment creation negatively, for example, as they represent an increase in the cost of finance. The commercial banks that the Reserve Bank relies on as its key monetary policy transmission channels have already instructed bond repaying homeowners to cough out more.
The increase in the report rate is more bad news in the context of rising fuel prices more likely to result in increased transport costs affecting the working-class, the middle strata, and transportation of goods.
Reducing the cost of finance and maintaining low long-term interest rate is critical to building national production, creating employment, and by extension reducing poverty, and tackling the crisis of social reproduction.
Realigning the macroeconomic framework to support a progressive social policy, industrialisation, and achieve inclusive growth has become more urgent than when this commitment was made in the May 2019 ANC general election manifesto. The manifesto was supported by the Alliance, and the majority of the electorate through democratic vote.
Besides the changes required in the macroeconomic framework and social policy, it is also essential to review and make changes in other pillars of our overall policy space, including trade and industrial/sectoral policy. Each policy must have its employment creating impact reviewed, with an intention of strengthening it.
The struggle on two Fronts
Popular forces and the broad working class need to conduct a consistent struggle on two fronts. On the one hand, against the state capture networks, and their fake “RET” agenda and machinery, who project themselves as the advocates of public ownership while in fact they are defending corrupt activities and individuals, and the looting of the affected public entities and state-owned enterprises. On the other hand, we must fight against the neoliberal networks that push tenderisation through measures that curtail or deprive public investment of adequate or any budgetary resources in favour of facilitating private wealth accumulation by profit-seeking interests. This has now culminated in a trajectory that rolls back state investment and participation on behalf of the people in the economy.
For example, instead of ramping up investment in renewable power generation to secure the future of public participation and position it to serve as the mainstay for energy security and supply, the neoliberal networks are obsessed with pushing private control in favour of profit-seeking interests in this space. How can we forget, as South Africans, that the problems plaguing Eskom were created by neoliberalism under the macroeconomic framework imposed by the 1996 GEAR class project, and by state capture through governance decay, corruption, and theft at the entity?
The neoliberal and state capture networks are seeking to impose their models in other key areas, such as in the network infrastructure areas, in the water sector, in the ports, and in the rail networks, to name but a few. In the Information and Communications Technology sector, the neoliberals are pushing wholesale privatisation of the broadband spectrum.
Sadly, the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement delivered to Parliament last month by the new Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, pushes auctioning off the broadband spectrum with no mention of a set aside for the state to pioneer national development imperatives, for the state to fulfil its constitutional obligations including ensuring national security. We call on the Minister to revise this problematic stance.
The key task facing the SACP and the working-class from now on is to intensify “The Struggle on Two Fronts”, against neoliberalism and its policy regime, not least its agenda of austerity, on the one front, and against state capture networks and other forms of corruption, on the other front. In carrying out this task, the SACP and the working-class must, and we will, expose and tackle entryism and deception by neoliberal elements. They come across as committed to the genuine struggle against state capture and other forms of corruption, while in fact they seek to exploit the fight to push privatisation and other neoliberal policy measures.
In advancing the struggle on two fronts, the SACP will push the development and expansion of the publicly owned economic sector to take care of the material needs of the people. The working-class needs to unite behind this strategic imperative and to defend the publicly owned economic sector against neoliberal and state capture agendas. Joint action by the progressive trade union movement remains essential.
The SACP will strengthen its efforts and engagements with the progressive trade union movement to work together in pursuit of the common interests of the workers. Convening a joint summit of the progressive trade union movement can contribute positively to taking this proposal of building unity in action forward.
In the same manner, the Central Committee tasked the Political Bureau and the Secretariat of the SACP to initiate a process to convene a conference of the Left. This action is in line with the SACP’s resolution to build a popular Left front. The conference of the Left should reflect on the multiple crises facing South Africa, the persistent high rates of growing unemployment, poverty, inequality, the associated crisis of social reproduction, the energy crisis, and the climate change crisis, to name but a few. This will serve as a platform to expand consultation on a joint programme of action and mobilisation.
The just energy transition
The SACP invited Barbara Creecy, the Minister of Forestry and Fisheries and Environmental Affairs. She made a good presentation on the environment, climate change and a just green transition. The Minister also briefed the Central Committee about the outcomes of COP 26. The SACP will support the progressive thrust of the government’s programme on this front, towards achieving net zero carbon emissions, whilst also mobilising progressive forces on the ground. We must not allow developed country governments to set an agenda and impose it on everyone else. Democracy must prevail, and must be a key element, to achieve a just transition.
Investment in Eskom/state capacity in the renewable power generation capacity and building social ownership is a key imperative for a just transition.
Putting profit-seeking interests before the people using energy as a commodity will result in unjust practices. It will condemn the state to a procurer exposed to the whims of the private wealth accumulation market. Energy will not be produced to serve the people and national development imperatives. It will be produced like any other commodity destined for sale to make and maximise profits.
Protecting workers and creating alternative employment must be part of the defining features of the just transition. Any transition that will cause misery through retrenchments, among others, and result in ghost towns, will be unjust. That must be avoided.
Also important, while considering international developments, South Africa must plan the transition from the standpoint of our national situation, our challenges, and our development imperatives.
The unemployment crisis
Unemployment rose in the third quarter of 2021 by 0,5% to 34,9%, affecting 7,6 million active unemployed work-seekers. Looking at the total picture represented by the expanded definition, South Africa’s unemployment crisis is worse than it is depicted by the officially preferred narrow definition. It is a disastrous 46,6%, having increased by 2,2% in the third quarter of 2021. This affects approximately 12,5 million active and discouraged work-seekers. This monumental disaster needs to be understood in all its dimensions, including race, gender, age, and geography. In this way, South Africa will inform its interventions in a much better way.
Unsurprisingly but scandalously nearly 30 years after our democratic breakthrough, unemployment is strongly marked by racial and gendered features. African unemployment is at a shocking 51,1%. Unemployment among all women is at 55,1%, compared to 42% for men. Youth unemployment is a catastrophic 77,4% for those aged 15 to 24 and 55,3% for those aged 25 to 34 in terms of the expanded definition.
Geographically, the worst unemployment levels are in rural areas. The former bantustans are the hardest hit. They still resemble their status under apartheid as labour reservoirs for monopoly capital and productive activity in metropolitan areas, in the context of racialised and gendered uneven capitalist development. In the former bantustan areas, there is no industrial development and notable job opportunities. There is little, if any at all, opportunity for sustainable livelihoods in the former bantustan areas.
Policies aimed at addressing the unemployment crisis must also be aimed at achieving transformation in terms of race, gender equality, youth development, and making rural development a key priority to roll back uneven development and unequal distribution of investment and resources.
Social policy and public employment programmes
In this context, governmental timidity or, worse still, short-sighted austerity, is simply unacceptable. When government introduced the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant of a meagre R350 to assist those aged 18 to 59 who do not receive any social grant, there were over 9,5 million applications. This shows the levels of desperation in our society. Some 6,5 million of these applications were eventually approved.
But now the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement has announced that this extremely small grant will be terminated at the end of March. This will leave the millions of the unemployed sinking deeper into deprivation and destitution, with no alternative amid the worsening unemployment crisis and the economic impact of the emerging fourth wave of COVID-19.
It is imperative that the widest range of working-class and popular forces actively mobilise in the coming period for the Social Relief of Distress Grant to be extended beyond March, that the amount is significantly increased, and that this becomes a first and rapid step towards establishing a universal basic Income grant and the establishment of a comprehensive social security system.
Immediate interventions should include scaling up public employment programmes both to provide relief against unemployment and to expand the provision of skills development. Public employment programmes will contribute positively towards establishing the right to work in our country.
Taking forward the fight against COVID-19
We wish to salute the work of the South African scientists through genomic surveillance. This has helped, and even provided leadership to the entire world, in identifying new variants of COVID-19.
The Central Committee denounced imperialist and other governments that have shut the borders of their countries against entry by South African and Southern African people, as if the Omicron variant of COVID-19 originated in Southern Africa. The fact of the matter is that the spread of this virus is global, and, in fact, the new variant may have come from outside the African continent.
In the face of this situation, the SACP calls on our people to go out to vaccinate in numbers as the best way to fight against this deadly virus.
The SACP calls upon the government to, urgently, resolve the matter of medicines acquired by the South African National Defence Force from Cuba.
The South African Health Regulatory Authority must stop making statements that are insensitive, that border on recklessness and make it come across as if SAHPRA is imposing a second blockade on Cuba after the United States.
International situation and solidarity
The SACP expressed its concern about situations of instability in the Southern African region. Besides political and economic challenges in Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, and Mozambique, the SACP is concerned about what seems to be an impending instability in Botswana.
The tensions between the current President and former President of Botswana pose a serious problem of instability in that country. We are also concerned that the South African Reserve Bank seems to be unfairly implicated in funds allegedly stolen in Botswana. SADC should pay close attention to the developing situation in Botswana so that it does not lead to instability.
We are calling for the intervention led by SADC, especially the establishment of inclusive dialogue among all the political formations, to be expedited to negotiate a transition to democracy in Swaziland.
The SACP denounced the call by the imperialist countries to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics, ostensibly as part of the new Cold War waged by the United States on China. This is all because of China’s impressive economic growth and development that is advancing to surpass the United States economy.
The SACP pledges its solidarity with the people of Sudan in their struggle for democracy, the people of Western Sahara in their struggle against occupation by Morocco and the people of Palestine against occupation by the apartheid Israeli regime. We reiterate our solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua against imperialist aggression.
We welcome the re-merging consolidation of, and advances by, left forces in Latin America, including in Peru, Honduras, and Chile. This underlines our point that neoliberalism is not the solution, but the cause of the problems and challenges faced by the workers and poor in the world.
Issued by SACP, 5 December 2021
