SACP Politburo Statement

The SACP Politbureau (PB) held its ordinary scheduled meeting on Friday to amongst others assess the current political situation in our country, also in preparation for its Central Committee meeting to be held on the last weekend of this month. The PB also noted that it was holding its meeting closer to the end of the first year of the new government administration led by President Jacob Zuma.

The SACP wishes to express its overall satisfaction with direction that government is taking after a year of the inauguaration of President Zuma. The SACP welcomes progress on a number of important fronts, despite the fact that one year is a rather short time by which to fully assess progress for any new administration.

We welcome the fact that despite government taking office in the middle of the worst global capitalist crisis since the early 1930s, government maintained its funding commitments to support the implementation of its five priorities of decent work, education, health, fight against crime and corruption, and rural development.

The PB strongly applauds the action taken by the board of the Government Employees Pension Fund not to approve certain investment initiatives of the Public Investment Corporation (PIC). The SACP has before raised its serious concerns about some of the investment activities of the PIC which seems to be biased towards narrow BEE deals at the expense of broader developmental investments. The SACP calls for change in the leadership of the PIC in order to ensure that this workers' fund is re-oriented away from narrow deals that benefits a few individuals.

 The latest revelation of the PIC financing the BEE  transaction at the now AfriSam,  and the R100m-odd of government employees' pensions that the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) overspent on CBS Asset Management are just but examples of why the mandate of the PIC must urgently be reviewed. Close to 1,3bn of public pension funds we hear has been lost in this yet another failed narrow BEE deal. This is scandalous!

To this end the PB specifically calls upon all SACP members, our alliance partners, and our people as a whole not to be distracted away from focusing on these five priorities. This is period that calls for true revolutionaries and other patriots to come forward, to ensure that our country focuses on its real enemies - poverty, unemployment and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. True revolutionaries have a duty to defend our alliance and seek to isolate all those who want to weaken and divide our alliance, as this can only play into the hands of counter-revolutionaries and those whose aim is greed and the looting of public resources.

The SACP also welcomes government's commitment to the development of a new growth and development path. The SACP sees the adoption by government of the Industrial Policy Action Plan 2 as an important component of a new growth path, thus moving towards the realization of one of the long standing calls by the SACP for South Africa to develop an industrial policy premised on building the productive capacity of our economy to create jobs and sustainable livelihoods.

Despite the fact that the SACP would have liked to see more working class representatives in the National Planning Commission, nevertheless we welcome the establishment of this commission and we are going to be engaging it on what we see as medium and long term priorities and plans for our country.

The SACP is particularly encouraged by government's renewed and change of course on fighting the HIV/AIDS scourge. This is a sea change from the past attitude of denialism and lacksadaisical attitude towards this scourge. We are also happy that government is still committed to a National Health Insurance Scheme, aimed at ensure access to quality health care for our people.

The SACP also welcomes President Zuma's consultative style of governance and leadership of our Alliance. This has indeed been a breath of fresh air, as well as transparency of government actions and the signing of up performance agreements with Ministers.

Indeed the SACP is of the view that there can still be some improvements including faster movement towards adoption of a framework of a new growth path, as well as better consultation around the restructuring of the police and new labour market initiatives. The SACP is however confident that with the new alliance processes now in place, including the Alliance Political Council and regular alliance summits, nothing will stand on the way towards deepening alliance unity and improved consultation processes.

The SACP commits to escalate its campaign against corruption as part of its partnership with government to ensure that every cent meant for our people's developmental needs indeed goes there. We also shall not be intimidated by tenderpreneurs and other greedy elements, whether within or outside our ranks, who seek to hijack our democratic gains for their narrow and selfish interests.

Statement issued by the SACP, May 9 2010

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