South African Communist Party

Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, 16 April 2016

 Deepen the advances achieved since 1994:

SACP message of support at the launch of the ANC local government elections manifesto  

General Secretary Cde Blade Nzimande presented a condensed version

As the leading component of our liberation movement and alliance‎, the ANC has led decades of gallant struggles to bring down colonial oppression and apartheid in our country. There is no other political formation in South Africa that can match the heroic history of the ANC in the struggle.

As the second oldest political formation after the ANC in our country, the SACP remains a dependable ally of the ANC. The SACP fought together with the ANC in the real theatre of struggle as a reliable ally to bring racial domination to an end in our country.

The Constitution that we boast of as a country today was fought for by our national liberation movement, including the Communist Party as the first non-racial political organisation in our country and the progressive trade union movement, led by the ANC. Were it not of the ANC our country would not have adopted the Constitution that we have as a country. 

The Constitution was opposed by liberals, the conservatives and right-wing forces of different moulds. They killed Comrade Chris Hani as an attempt to prevent the Constitution, whose foundations are in the Freedom Charter. They killed Comrade Chris to stop us from marching forward with the development of democracy in our country!

These liberals among others took us to court to prevent the inclusion of socio-economic rights in the Constitution. The socio-economic rights that we included in our country's Constitution were first elaborated in the Freedom Charter in 1955, and include housing, education and health.‎

We defeated the liberals, conservatives and right-wing forces who did not want the inclusion of socio-economic rights in our constitution. And we must still. We have no other option if we want to deepen our struggle to acheive full development of democracy in our country.

The massive advances achieved by our people, led by the ANC in government since 1994, are due to the ANC's respect and implementation of the Constitution. 

Today, over 17 million of our people have benefited from free houses, built by the ANC-led government implementing the Constitution. No other party can match this service delivery record in the history of our country and indeed that of many countries on earth.

The ANC-led govern‎ment massively rolled out electrification to millions of houses benefiting millions more families that relied on wood for cooking. And they were arrested by the successive colonial and apartheid regimes for cutting tree‎s for wood.

Implementing the Constitution, the ANC-led government massively expanded the provision of clean, drinkable water. For many years, our people relied on water directly from the river.

The ANC-led government built roads and clinics in rural areas and townships where there was none before. As Comrade Chris Hani states in one of his interviews, the survival of at least half of children in a family was seen as an achievement because there was no healthcare in rural areas offered by the oppressors.

Comrade Chris's own family lost three children. Today, millions of our people, pregnant women, the elderly and the unemployed have access to primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare, because the ANC is implementing the Constitution.  ‎No other party can match this service delivery record in the history of our country, and indeed in many countries on earth.

Because the ANC is implementing the Constitution, it has delivered almost near-universal access to schooling for all children. And beyond the Freedom Charter, the ANC has rolled out and continues to roll out free school feeding scheme so children do not have to learn on a hungry stomach. This is a source of encouragement for many learners from poor households to attend school. There is food at school.

It is the ANC implementing the Constitution that has drastically widened access to colleges and universities to over 1.4 million students since 1994. The demographics in our colleges and universities have changed, and black people, who were denied access, are now the majority. In particular, women are a decisive majority of students in our colleges and universities. No other party can match the ANC's record in the history of our country, and indeed in many countries on earth, in terms of the massive progress we have achieved since 1994.

There are many other achievements in other areas. Yet there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to reverse the damage caused by colonial dispossession, oppression and exploitation. The social inequalities that still persist, the high rates of poverty and unemployment were primarily created, and deliberately so, by colonial oppression and imperialist domination.

It took the colonisers 342 years from their arrival in April 1652 in Cape Town, until 1994, to create these problems in collaboration with their allies in Europe and North America - mainly in the United States. Many of them did not stop their exploitative and greedy agendas after we achieved our 1994 democratic breakthrough.

To this day many of the beneficiaries of colonial and apartheid oppression and economic exploitation in our country continue to undermine efforts to complete national liberation, achieve economic emancipation and broader social transformation. As we push forward, they are pushing backward. They are primarily responsible for the persisting economic problems. It is their system of capitalist exploitation and imperialism that produce economic crisis after economic crisis thus deepe‎n inequality, poverty and unemployment.

As the SACP we believe that the ANC in alliance with the Communist Party, the progressive trade union movement and civic organisation remains the most capable of leading our country. This is why, as the SACP, we are calling on all our people, women, youth, the working class as a whole and other sectors of society, to vote for the ANC!!

Let us provide quality service to our people and ensure that municipal offices are accessible to workers. Workers should not absent themselves or take leave from work in order to access municipal offices. The offices must be open  even on weekends.

Let us build the capacity of the state, including through insourcing outsourced services, to deliver a better quality of service to our people!

Let us take this opportunity to pay tribute to all our fallen heroes‎ and particularly those who were hanged in prison and killed by the oppressors. Among them Comrade Chris Hani and Solomon Mahlangu. As the SACP we support both the Hani and Mahlangu families in the court cases that are under way.

In particular, there are these Johnny-come-latelies who want to steal the name of Comrade Solomon Mahlangu from his family. The SACP condemns them in the strongest terms possible for undermining the primary position and rights of the Mahlangu family on matters involving Comrade Solomon Mahlangu's name!

As the ANC-led liberation movement we are confident that we will overcome the challenges facing our people, working together with them. 

We draw our inspiration from the sterling leadership qualities of President OR Tambo, who passed on this month in 1993 two weeks after the cowardly assassination of Comrade Chris Hani. 

In memory of Comrade OR Tambo, let us unite our movement and our communities. We must win this municipality, Nelson Mandela Metro, because it belongs to the ANC, as are all others.

Issued by the SACP, 16 April 2016