7th OR Tambo District Congress Declaration
26 November 2017
We, communists, gathered in the 7th OR Tambo District Congress (Bulolo Holiday Camp, Port St Johns, 25th – 26th November 2017), declare that it is high time that our structures don’t rest on their laurels and grab the bull by the horns that has hijacked our democratic revolution and has run roughshod in looting the state. These looters are organized around the President of the ANC comrade Jacob Zuma and whose floundering from one disaster to another has emboldened the enemy bringing the forces of reaction to our doorstep bringing the democratic revolution to the brink of losing access to the levers of state ushered by the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
We have noted over the years the disintegration of the constituent parts that made up revolutionary forces that are the bedrock for the advancement of the National Democratic Revolution through the divisive leadership of the present incumbents that hold sway in our movement and commit ourselves to build the unity of the masses of the oppressed and their organs by working to unite the various working class formations through working to actively build bridges between various organs of the oppressed some which originate from the liberation movement but split over the years, yet still collectively share the vision of the advancement of the National Democratic Revolution and would help in building socialism in the interstices of capitalism.
We recognize the harrowing struggles faced by the masses of the working class through being mercilessly excluded from hitch-hiking the communications highway, kept on the periphery of healthcare, education, dilapidated transport infrastructure that is only geared to benefit the narrow interests of some sections of the bourgeoisie and propertied strata in society, thereby leading to the corrosion of the socio-economic development of the oppressed. We support the heroic struggle for the decommodification of Education and Healthcare, including the demand for the building of social infrastructure, without prefixing this with terminology that seeks to maintain the commodity form of these essential services.
We fully appreciate the dangers of the capitalist system turning our rural communities into dumping sites for fractions of the black oppressed and turning our rural areas into societies that are infested with criminal activity giving rise to the proliferation of massive drug use and the turning of our communities into drug dens in our rural areas eroding the progressive morality that was historically characterized by values of human solidarity and the best forms of African organic knowledge.