SACP Message to 2011 SATAWU Congress delivered by Comrade Blade Nzimande, General Secretary of the SACP, October 12 2011:

Together Let Us Build Working Class Power in our Communities

Introduction

On behalf of the Central Committee and about the 140 000 members of the South African Communist Party, I bring fraternal and revolutionary greetings to this important Congress. Your congress is taking place in the midst of a persisting crisis of capitalism globally and all its negative impact on our own country.

It is a congress that is also taking place against the background of the deepening battle of ideas within our own country about the direction of our revolution, some related but others not related to the current global crisis.

The working class is also faced with intensified capitalist restructuring of the workplace and the working class itself, through casualisation, outsourcing, mechanization, retrenchments and labour brokering as part of the intensification of the exploitation of the working class.

Despite all these challenges, which will further elaborate upon below, this is not a time lamenting, but a time to use such congresses to analyse both the global and domestic situation, come up with the correct understanding of the key strategic and programmatic tasks of the working class, and seek to discuss ways of further strengthening the organization and ideological capacity of the working class to deepen our own class offensive against capitalism and other enemies and detractors to our revolution.

It is a time through which organised workers themselves need to properly define their ongoing role in consolidating and deepening our national democratic revolution as our most direct route to socialism.

However, the many challenges we face must also not obscure some of the important advances we have made since your last congress, both as organised workers but also as the working class as a whole. The many resolutions adopted at the ANC's Polokwane Conference have been translated into government policy and programme of action. For instance the adoption by government of an industrial strategy, commitment to a new growth path to transform the character and direction of our economy, the prioritization of jobs, education, health, rural development and the fight against crime and corruption, are some of the things that the working class have fought for since our democratic breakthrough.

The fact that there is now a concrete proposal on the table about a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHI), a demand placed especially by the SACP through our 2007 Red October Campaign is an important victory for the workers and the poor of our country. That there is now an expansion of financial assistance to learners from poor backgrounds, both in terms of the increase of no-fee schools to 60%, that the school feeding scheme now reaches some 8 million learners, and that as from this year poor students pursuing trade related programmes in FET colleges are completely exempt from fees, are advances we dare not overlook.

The key challenge for the working class therefore is how do we consolidate our gains whilst deepening  the struggle to roll back the capitalist system and its barbarism.

Therefore our main messages to this Congress include the following:

1. Challenges emanating from the current global capitalist crisis
2. The key terrain on which to take forward working class struggles in general and those of the transport workers in particular
3. The SACP's 2011 Red October Campaign
4. Deepening relations between the SACP and the organised working class

1. The global capitalist crisis, South Africa, the African continent and the battle of ideas

The sovereign debt crisis in Europe, the declining economic hegemony of the US, the sluggish or non-existent growth in most of the developed world, the possibility of a "double dip" global recession are all symptoms of a structural and systemic crisis in the global capitalist system. As the SACP we have analysed the key multi-dimensional features of this crisis previously. This persisting crisis is having a devastating impact, particularly on our industrial sector. So what can be done? We definitely need to point out how capitalism is ruining the lives of millions of South Africans, but we also need to move beyond analyzing why people are victims and advance an agenda to address these challenges.

What is clear is that global economic dynamism and leadership are shifting to key developing economies - and notably China, India and Brazil. Both India and Brazil have survived the global crisis relatively well, in large measure because both economies have placed considerable emphasis on their domestic (and in the case of Brazil its regional) market - they have been less locked into an export-oriented (to the developed North) growth path. China, of course, has developed dramatically on precisely such an export-oriented growth path. But that strategy is now seriously in question, and the CPC is very actively moving towards a greater focus on its own national market, with a major focus on infrastructure development and even actively promoting wage increases.

China, India and Brazil have the advantage of very large domestic markets - (with populations over 1-billion in the former two, and over 200-m in Brazil). South Africa, with a population of only 50 million cannot expect to be able to sustain development and growth that is simply based nationally. And this is where our region and continent become absolutely crucial. (Imagine where China would be today if colonialism had divided it into 54 separate countries - which was the fate of our continent). The recently signed Tripartite Free Trade Agreement (SADC/Comesa/E African Economic Community) has a population of nearly 600m.

What this all means is that, especially in the face of a persisting global capitalist crisis, the SACP has an important role in advancing a different African agenda. The "African Renaissance" and NEPAD initiatives (whatever their partial merits) were too much based on the assumption of a trade-off between the developed North (and particularly the EU) and Africa. The underlying assumption was that in exchange for "good governance" (involving not just multi-party electoralism and the rule of law but also "good" macro-economic governance), the developed North would invest in and trade with Africa.

Domestically, this agenda coincided with the class interests of our banking and mining capitalist sector, as well as of a parasitic, emergent BEE compradorial strata - to the relative detriment of our manufacturing and agricultural sectors. It was also a paradigm that informed many other things - including the arms procurement package and its assumptions about a European/African strategic alliance, and misguided attempts to steer SADC into a EU style monetary union.

The SACP needs to actively advance a DIFFERENT REGIONAL AND AFRICAN AGENDA - that places DEVELOPMENT, inter-regional trade, regional industrial policies, and infrastructure that serves these objectives (and not the continued un-beneficiated export of minerals and agricultural products out of our region/continent).  To get a sense of the challenge - Southern African inter-regional trade amounts to only 10-12% of all trade from the region - far behind the rest of the world (Europe's inter-regional trade is 60%, North America 40%, Asia 30%).

From a class perspective we should understand that a strategic agenda of this kind will help to consolidate and expand a regional/continental working class. Without being mechanical, the numerical weakness of this class is one of the key factors underpinning the shallow, volatile, often compradorial nature of many African political parties and institutions.  Of course, such a strategic agenda needs to mobilise local productive capital (especially in agriculture and manufacturing), as well as a range of petty producers, workers' resources and intellectuals, etc. A regional/continental strategy as briefly elaborated above is, in other words, not just a South African "growth" strategy - it needs to be the core component of the African NDR (a better concept, surely, than "renaissance"?).

What does this mean practically within SA? There are a number of things we need to do, but let us just to highlight a few critical ones. As part of a developmental growth path for our country we need to pay attention and seek to ensure that we push policies that will revitalize our manufacturing capacity as a country. We need to change the direction of our economy and liberate it from the shackles of the often greedy and speculative financial sector, as well as an economy driven by domestic consumption of imported goods, and create an environment for building our productive capacity. This means that our industrial policy must be properly funded, and to redirect significant amount of investments to boost our manufacturing sector.

Related to the above we need to mobilize for government to increase investment into infrastructure. The SACP welcomes government's indications of its intentions to invest more into infrastructure linked to rural development. It is for this reason, amongst others that the SACP's Red October Campaign if prioritizing the mobilization and building of rural motive forces for comprehensive rural development. We will be going out to build, or strengthen already existing, people's committees in the rural areas, with a particular focus on women, to ensure that rural infrastructure is biased towards servicing the needs of the poor in the rural areas, and not to enrich a few as has been the case with narrow BEE in the urban areas.

This also means that we need to re-align the mandates of key public sector entities. For example, how do we focus SANRAL away from effectively building infrastructure (eg the Gauteng Freeway e-tolling project) that perpetuates class and race inequalities towards a developmental agenda in the region (and, of course, within our country)? How do we focus Transnet on playing a leading role in connecting the region together, rather than focusing on more export-directed iron ore lines, or restructuring premised on bringing in private rail operators (and their aspirant BEE partners)?

2. The struggles of the transport workers and in the transport sector

The struggle to transform our economy is something that also needs to be specifically taken up in the transport sector by transport workers, and SATAWU has a critical role to play in this regard. Let us identify a few critical areas of struggle that are closely related to what we have just outlined above. These are struggles that are also fundamental importance in the broader struggle for a safe and affordable public transport system in our country:

The minibus sector

Together, we need to work to formalize and improve the minibus sector. It is a sector that transports some 65% of all public transport users, and it employs around 300,000 workers as drivers, queue marshalls, cleaners, backyard repair teams, etc. However, it is a sector that has proved extremely difficult to organize. Workers are very vulnerable, and violence has been used on some occasions in which organizing has been attempted.

Despite a minimum wage declaration, the majority of workers are not paid in accordance with it. Drivers work long hours and are under pressure to speed and overload in order to make a living. As our metros and other municipalities begin to incorporate the minibus sector more actively into formal, subsidized and integrated public transport systems - we must ensure that the workers in the sector benefit from these changes. We must campaign for a living wage, for proper working conditions, and for training. This means that as we struggle for decent public transport we need to unite our communities, the trade union movement and our political formations in a common struggle in which we highlight that decent public transport means also decent work for those in the sector.

How do you expect a public transport driver to behave politely, to drive safely, etc. if, at the same time, they are forced to work inhumane hours - up to 17 and 18 hours at a time? The transformation of the minibus sector is also an ideal terrain on which to take forward with SATAWU the SACP's campaign to advance and consolidate the cooperative sector in our economy.

Transport infrastructure for the workers and poor - or for the rich?

The struggle for affordable, accessible public transport for all South Africans is also a struggle to ensure that government's budgetary priorities are biased towards public transport, towards rural and township roads, and towards the safety of our children - many of them have to walk long hours to school and back every day on roads without pavements, or bridges.

At present, too much of our infrastructure spend is biased towards middle-class private car users. Only 30% of South African households have access to a car - but too often we are spending billions of rands on infrastructure for the middle-classes (like the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project). Over R20-billion has already been spent on just Phase A1 of this project - but a recent vehicle count by government of this stretch of freeway revealed that only two percent (2%) !! of vehicles on it are public transport vehicles.

The DA and its Gauteng Legislature caucus leader, Jack Bloom, are currently running a highly opportunistic, right-wing, "tea-party" campaign against the Gauteng e-tolls. They are trying to ride on the legitimate anger of COSATU, the SACP, the ANC, and Gautengers in general about this wasteful misdirected spend. As the SACP we say this massive multi-billion rand expenditure on freeways was the wrong priority. We agree with government that all future SANRAL freeway and tolling projects must be put on hold and thoroughly reassessed.

But this isn't quite what the DA is saying. Notice how THEY are trying to staff-ride on the popular struggles. The DA, of course, are not raising equity questions, class questions - they are not asking WHO uses these roads? They are not complaining about the fact that over R20bn has been spent on the infrastructure. In fact, over the past seven years they SUPPORTED the widening and extension of these freeways - they just don't want their white, suburban middle-class car-owners to pay for the infrastructure that has been built.

Instead, they say that payment should come from the budget, or from raising the fuel levy. What that means is that all of us, whether we live in Limpopo or the Eastern Cape, will have to pay for freeways that are basically used principally by a small elite. The DA wants more freeways (at the expense of other priorities) and they want those freeways to be FREE for THEIR constituency.

The plight of road freight workers

On the freight side of the transport sector there are also many challenges for workers. On road freight there are still too many fly-by-night, unscrupulous operators who force drivers to work long hours and with unsafe vehicles. In the last several years, we have also seen road freight companies cynically exploit so-called BBBEE measures - offering drivers the possibility of owning "their own truck" and "being their own boss". While there might be cases where this has benefited workers, too often what is happening is that, in the name of "BBBEE", drivers take over the re-payment responsibilities for the truck but without having control over securing loads to transport. With the recent economic downturn, bosses found this fake "BBBEE" a convenient way of getting their former employees to carry the risk of payments on the vehicle fleet without being sure of any secure business. This is a new form of feudalism.

We commit, as the SACP, to continue being in the trenches together with SATAWU on the many battlefronts lying ahead in the areas outlined above and beyond.

3. The living (and social) wage campaigns

The SACP fully supports the struggle for a living wage as led by COSATU. We also strongly condemn the obscene salaries being paid to company executives, whether in the public or private sector, whilst expecting workers to tighten their belts over already ‘non-existent' stomachs. The SACP fully supports COSATU's campaign against the modern day slave owners, the labour brokers.

In joining COSATU's living wage campaign, as the SACP we will also seek to factor in the necessity for the expansion of a social wage in order to cushion the working class from the erosion of its real earnings, whilst not abandoning the struggle for a living wage.

For instance it is critical that we ensure that the NHI is built such that it significantly reduces the cost of health care for the workers and the poor. However, in this regard, the working class needs to join the struggle for shifting our health care system away from a curative, but to a strong primary health care, paradigm; including the promotion of healthy life-styles.

It is time that South Africa's working class , a significant section of which does not benefit from government housing programmes, takes up the issue of an affordable housing scheme, using in the main workers' savings both in the public and private sector. These savings often benefit middle-men and administrators whilst there are significant resources that can be directed towards affordable housing loan systems for the workers and the poor.

The struggle for safe and affordable public transport system is a critical component of a decent social wage, just as the struggle to ensure that we transform the apartheid human settlement patterns so that the working class is located closer to their workplaces.

Similarly the question of the creation of an appropriate facility for children of workers who want to go to university or college but who earn higher than the R122 000, yet are not earning enough to be able to afford college or university fees.

All the above are important struggles to be taken up together with the struggle for a living wage!

4. Building hegemony on the ideological front - here there are at least two key tasks:

We need to more consistently reclaim the moral high ground for a radical NDR perspective. Our association (real or assumed) with the "new tendency" in the run-up to Polokwane and in its immediate aftermath, has enabled a whole range of anti-majoritarian liberals (from Afriforum through to the DA) to present themselves as the "defenders of our Constitution and Bill of Rights", of non-racialism, gender sensitivity, and of general moral decency. They have even sought to present themselves as the true defenders of Nelson Mandela's, and of late the UDF's, legacy. The demagoguery of the populists has played directly into this agenda - but so, too, has the anti-people behavior of sections of the trade union movement in the course of some of the strikes.

Now that the lines between a principled left perspective and the right-wing demagogy are being more clearly drawn, it is important that we consolidate this by presenting the SACP (and it allies) as defenders of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the rule of law. We have allowed anti-majoritarian liberals to appropriate and re-interpret this terrain. What they have done is to REDUCE the Constitution and Bill of Rights to ONE dimension - namely those (necessary but limited) aspects of the Constitution that involve checks and balances on the executive (and to a lesser extent on Parliament)

We need to restore the Constitution and Bill of Rights to their fuller meaning - they are clarion calls to ongoing radical national democratic transformation. Even the Property Clause is NOT a traditional liberal property clause - it allows for expropriation "for a public purpose or in the public interest". While compensation is required, that compensation DOES NOT have to be based purely on market value - but must have regard to, amongst others, the current use of the property and the history of its acquisition.

Another related area where we need to RE-POSITION the debate is on the whole media and information front.  The media itself (and a whole range of anti-majoritarian liberals) are attempting to reduce the issue of the necessity to transform our media landscape to the issue of a the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal.  In this way, they have sought to hide the very many problematic aspects about our media (the monopolistic media ownership and control, the exploitation of media workers, the gutting of the public broadcaster, the juniorisation of the newsroom and the dumbing-down of news content).

These latter, fundamental issues, have a social and class content that we need to take up energetically. By centring the debate on the Tribunal the media and anti-majoritarian liberals have turned the discussion into a liberal "freedom of speech" discussion. The SACP stands firm on its its support in principle for the ANC's proposal of a Media Appeals tribunal, but we should certainly actively re-position the debate into how media ownership in our country runs counter to freedom of speech and the media.

5. Our 2011 Red October Campaign

Over the last 12 years, the SACP has led the Red October campaign, working together with a wide range of progressive forces.  The central message of our Red October Campaign is a call to the workers and poor of our country to be their own emancipators. It is only the workers and poor themselves, in struggle and in solidarity with all other progressive forces, that will consolidate and deepen our national democratic revolution, and advance the struggle for socialism in our country.

Since its launch twelve years ago, the Red October Campaign has shown that with collective power, mobilization and organization it is possible to begin to transform our country. Over the past 12 years the Campaign has:

• led to the roll out of affordable banking services to the poor, via the Umzansi account;
• placed the transformation of the financial sector as a whole firmly on the agenda;
• driven the passing of the Co-operatives and Co-operative Banks legislation; and
• the introduction of the National Credit Act to protect consumers against reckless lending;
• led to the convening of the Land Summit in 2005, a key demand of the 2004 Red October Campaign. This summit resolved that the capitalist-market, ‘willing seller, willing buyer' model of land reform must be changed as it is an obstacle to access to land by our people
• raised the demand for affordable, accessible and safe public transport system for all in 2006, leading to the convening of a national transport indaba and the allocation of increasing budget for the transformation of public transport;
• led to the acceptance by government to move towards rolling out a National Health Insurance (NHI) - our campaigning in 2007 and again in 2009 highlighted this demand; and
• mobilized worker organisations and communities to blow the whistle on corruption, which has also led to an increased focus by government on these matters, including the call for to reform government tenders through greater transparency.

There are two major lessons from these important but partial advances won through our Red October Campaign:

• One, we must not satisfy ourselves by becoming professional, arms-length critics, permanent protestors, lamenters in the face of the many challenges facing our country. It is essential for the working class to take the lead practically, through concrete actions and campaigns!
• Two, we are up against powerful pro-capitalist forces. Partial advances can be rolled-back, or hijacked. We must remain vigilant, mobilized and active!

Through our Red October Campaign we have deepened our work with the progressive trade union movement, formed important alliances with community organisations, youth and women's groups, faith groups and many progressive NGOs and research initiatives to advance the struggle of ordinary workers and the poor. We want to continue to build on this.

The 2011 Red October Campaign is special. It is launched during the 90^th anniversary year of the SACP. It is therefore a Red October in which to remember, to learn from, and to celebrate the inspiring role played by hundreds of thousands of South African communists in the struggle for democracy, national liberation and socialism. We will best honour the memory of those who have struggled before us by continuing to be in the trenches with the workers and poor of our country.

In 2011 the SACP calls upon workers, progressive forces and our communities to join us in campaigning on the following issues:

a. Through this to, amongst People's education for people's power - Education with an emphasis on making our schools functional, and also the wider challenges of skills and training, with a particular focus on the girl child and the youth. We also call upon the trade union movement in general, and SATAWU in particular, to take a lead in ensuring that the skilling of the working class in prioritized, as well as the strengthening of the capacity of SoEs to train artisans and technicians

b. Building a solidarity economy-build and strengthen a people's cooperative banks movement as part of taking forward our campaign to make banks and other financial institutions to serve our people. Organised workers have an important role in the building of a co-operative banks movement, including workers' banks.

As part of the struggle to transform our economy to serve all of our people, we will use this Red October to revitalize our financial sector campaign. The SACP is calling for the convening of the second National Financial Sector Summit. This Summit should involve both the private and public financial sectors, to assess progress made since the signing of the Financial Sector Charter in 2003. The private sector banks are not investing in low-cost housing or in mixed-income property developments that will offer affordable housing for those who don't qualify either for RDP houses or for current bank mortgages. The private banks are still charging exorbitant fees in many cases. Many public financial institutions - like the IDC, the DBSA and the Land Bank are beginning (under pressure from government) to change - but there is still a long way to go. Too often public finance institutions just like private banks. We need to put pressure on government to move more speedily to establish the Postbank as a fully-fledged, publicly owned bank with an outreach to the remotest rural areas. We need, also, to ask firm questions of our pension funds and of the various trade union investment arms. Are they copying private capitalist firms, or are they contributing to job creation and social development?

c. Building local people's committees for comprehensive rural development - With a particular emphasis on building a women`s rural movement for land, food and infrastructure for rural development; and

d. Intensifying the struggle against corruption - Through all these struggles we must intensify the struggle against corruption and tenderpreneurs.

6. The struggle against corruption - including defending the moral and revolutionary integrity of our movement

In order to achieve many of these objectives outlined above, including in our Red October Campaign, it is important that we also intensify the struggle against corruption, including the impact of corruption on all of our organisations in the Alliance and the broader progressive movement. The SACP wishes to salute SATAWU for the whistleblow at SAA that has now led to full investigation of all allegations of corruption in that entity.

In meaningfully fighting corruption, this requires amongst other things, that we intensify the struggle in the following areas:

Exposing, naming and shaming those peddling dirty money - Our movement is faced with a serious threat of attempts to buy our cadres with money, to influence decisions in our organisations through money. Let us name and shame those who are trying to buy you! Let us name and shame money peddlers, tenderpreneurs and those seeking to steal our organisations for their own personal interests of greed!

‘De-tenderise' the state - Worse still, our state is being daily ‘tenderised' - many bureaucrats in the state (some of them highly qualified professionals) increasingly don't actually DO anything, don't build anything - instead they spend their time writing up tenders and adjudicating on applications. Increasingly the state relates to its popular base by way of these tenders. Instead of uniting popular forces behind a common struggle for transformation, the state divides communities into competing factions all vying for a tender.

This is a source of a great deal of corruption in the state, but also of factionalism within our own organizations which get used as stepping stones to influence the allocation of tenders.

Let us also fight against the latest phenomenon of ‘professional tenderpreneurs' (the ‘tender-brokers), who do nothing but use their political influence to influence tender awards and get cuts from those corrupt proceeds. Let us not allow the relationship between government and political leadership, on the one hand, and our communities, on the other, to be mediated by the tender!

The SACP calls upon all our alliance to cement its unity by focusing on the key challenges facing our country (unemployment, poverty and inequality, disease and ignorance), and UNITE against corruption and tenderpreneurs!

Expose the corrupting influence and failure of the capitalist system - The whole world is in a crisis today, retrenching millions of especially young workers, because of the greed and selfishness of the capitalist system. Let the workers and the poor of our country unite behind ‘Socialism is the Future, Build it Now' to roll back the capitalist system and its corrupting influence.

7. Defend and deepen the special relationship and unity between the SACP and COSATU

The relationship between the SACP and COSATU must continue to be strengthened through ongoing joint programmes between our two formations. This must also be accompanied and buttressed by ongoing joint political schools between our two formations. Our relationship must never be taken for granted, it must always be consciously worked on. We inherited the relationship between the SACP and the progressive trade union movement from the 90 years of SACP work in building a progressive trade union movement. It is a relationship that is central in the struggle to defend and deepen the NDR, as our direct route to socialism. At no stage should we allow any forces to try and separate communists from the trade union movement, as this would mark the defeat of the struggles of the working class.

Part of deepening the SACP/SATAWU relations we wish to propose a joint political school focusing on two principal issues:

1. The history of the relationship between the SACP and the progressive trade union movement and the challenges going forward
2. A working class approach to transport issues and the transformation of the transport sector in South Africa

Out of the above we will then identify two or three concrete areas of campaigning and joint work between the SACP and SATAWU.

With these words we wish you a successful Congress!!!

Issued by SATAWU, October 12 2011

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