South African Communist Party
Declaration of the 14th Party Congress
We, 1, 819 Communist militants, have met over the past five days as delegates to the SACP’s 14th National Congress in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng. We are drawn from over 7, 000 SACP branches from across our country and from the ranks of the Young Communist League of South Africa. As delegates, we represent 284, 554 SACP members. Five years ago, at our 13th National Congress, we proudly announced that our membership had grown massively to over 150, 000. We have nearly doubled once again. We are well aware that this surging popularity of the Party imposes responsibilities upon all of us.
Our Congress occurs at a time when South Africa’s monopoly-dominated capitalist economy, with its colonial and apartheid legacy features, continues to reproduce crisis levels of unemployment, inequality and poverty – all of which are strongly marked by racial, gendered and spatial features. At this Congress we have taken resolutions which both reaffirm our principled strategic posture as well as advancing specific interventions that need to be undertaken.
We are reaffirming our strategic commitment to a radical second phase of the National Democratic Revolution as the most direct route to a socialist South Africa. To reinforce and give practical content to this strategic perspective we have also resolved on many specific interventions.
We have committed to working closely with our strategic ally COSATU to develop a common approach on a job-centred economic policy ahead of the convening of an urgent national Job Summit.