Red Alert: Taking responsibility for our revolution and honouring the heroes of our revolution

Speech by SACP General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande, to the 14th National Congress of the National Union Mineworkers, 24 May 2012, Emperors Palace

Cde President Zokwana, the General Secretary Cde Frans Baleni and all the national office bearers of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), leadership of our Alliance Partners, international and other invited guests, and comrade delegates.

The SACP wishes to thank you for the invitation to come and address your congress, an important gathering which is also celebrating 30 years of heroic struggle by the mineworkers of our country. Indeed in celebrating 30 years of the NUM we are celebrating a longer history of dedication, commitment and sacrifice by millions of mineworkers over decades in the face of one of the most brutal systems of exploitation - from the struggle of against the hut and the poll taxes, against the hostel and induna systems, to the struggles for decent wages and working conditions, for a living wage, for a democratic South Africa and for socialism in our country.

Indeed the NUM and its predecessor unions always understood that the struggle against the brutal exploitation in the mines couldn't be separated from the struggle against apartheid and colonialism in general. This was because, racist and apartheid practices virtually all originated from the imperatives of capitalism to subject the African people to cheap labour in the mines.

The many apartheid laws were actively lobbied for by mining capitalists, from the forcible removal of the African people from their land, to the pass system, to the migrant labour system and to the deprivation of black people from accessing decent education and skills. The mineworkers in our country have carried the sins of the discovery of gold and diamonds in our country, and they were the initial experiment for a racist and highly exploitative capitalist system in our country.

As we celebrate 30 years of the NUM we are celebrating many other things. We are celebrating and honouring the lives of mineworkers which were lost in many bloody confrontations with the apartheid police and mine security, and the thousands of lives lost in accidents underground. We honour these workers for it is their sweat and blood that built the economy of this country.

We are also celebrating the special relationship and bonds of solidarity between organized black mineworkers and the South African Communist Party. On this occasion we recall great communists like JB Marks who led both organized mineworkers and the South African Communist Party.

As we celebrate this relationship we have also come to pledge our commitment and unwavering solidarity with the struggles of the mineworkers and to say that as South African communists we shall remain a reliable force and ally in the struggle for a living wage, a decent social wage and the struggle to consolidate and deepen our democracy. We shall remain a reliable ally in the struggle against labour brokers, casualization and retrenchments.

The current global capitalist crisis

We are waging our struggles and seeking to deepen our national democratic revolution in the context in which capitalism is facing one of its most severe crises since the depression of 1929. This current capitalist crisis has several interacting dimensions - extensive damage to our environment, the destructions of rural livelihoods, mass urbanization without effective job creation, and above all the gambling with workers' lives through a casino type economy in which workers have lost jobs and their shelter.

What is more is that there are no sustainable solutions to this multi-dimensional crisis within the context of capitalism itself. Capitalism has no strategy to resolve its own crises. Instead it seeks to punish workers and now the middle classes with austerity measures as we see in Europe, a further cut-back on social services, and attempts to intensify the exploitation of developing countries to try and cushion itself.

All this goes to prove that our struggle for socialism shall remain relevant for as long as we have a system that is creating crises for humanity and also at the great cost to our planet. This also underlines the importance of deepening international working class solidarity and for the NUM to continue to strengthen its role and relations with mining, construction and energy workers in the rest of the world.

The economic challenges of the national democratic revolution

The global capitalist economic crisis is impacting upon and reinforcing the key socio-economic challenges we face in South Africa racialised poverty, inequality and the crisis-levels of structural unemployment. All of these features of our society are deeply related to the way in which South Africa was incorporated into the global capitalist economy with the mining revolution in the late 19th century.

Over a hundred years of skewed development have left us with a hugely challenging and deeply embedded legacy. That is why for us as the SACP the NDR is not a stage in which capitalism has to be completely. The transition to capitalism long happened in our country, and therefore the NDR is a struggle to overcome deep-seated and persisting racialised inequality and poverty in our society.

Nevertheless these challenges must never make us lose sight of the advances we have made since our democratic breakthrough in 1994. A correct approach for revolutionaries is not to lament about these problems or use them in a populist fashion for short-term political gain. The challenge of true revolutionaries is to recognize advances we have made and seek to build on these in order to address existing challenges. We must not allow the many challenges facing us to lose sight of the advances we have made.

In particular, since the ANC Polokwane conference we have seen some important policy breakthroughs and other achievements that we dare not lose sight of. Amongst these are the following:

• The development of an overarching industrial policy, within the context of proposals for a new growth path. This new policy emphasizes the need to beneficiate our mineral wealth as part of the industrialization of our economy and taking job creation to higher levels
• A clear move away from emphasis on privatization of the early 2000s to a commitment to a more active role by the state in economic development. It is for this reason that the SACP supports the move for the creation of a state mining company and the amendment of the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Development Act, in which licencing and prospecting rights are more forcefully used to leverage industrial policy and job creation objectives. The proposed mining rents regime, including a windfall tax and the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund must be firmly supported.
• A clear commitment by the ANC and government to move away from the 'willing seller, willing buyer' model of land reform, to a more radical redistribution of land, including expropriation as provided for in our constitution. This has been a call by the SACP since we launched our land campaign some eight years ago. Let us use this campaign to mobilise the workers and the poor behind faster and more equitable land reform, as these shifts are as a direct result of our own struggles.
• The major state-led investment into infrastructure as announced by the President in the 2012 state of the nation address responds to a call that has long been made by the working class for more investment into infrastructure. The key task of the working class in this regard is to ensure that monies invested into infrastructure are not stolen by tenderpreneurs who want a quick buck out of shoddy work whether it is in housing or the building of bridges and other infrastructure. It is also important that we mobilise to ensure that we demand that all companies that win major infrastructure projects from government must not use labour brokers and must also be committed to the training and skilling of workers
• Since Polokwane, government is now embarking on a pilot for the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) a long standing call by the SACP in particular when we launched our campaign on health for all around 2004-5. This is a very important victory of the working class, and the NUM must also make sure that the NHI pilots in the mining industry and communities do indeed become a success
• The ANC and our Alliance has now prioritized education as an apex priority of the five priorities. Government has already embarked on important measures to improve access to education for the poor. For instance now more than 60% of our schools are no-fee schools, and more than 8 millions students benefit from the school nutrition scheme. In addition FET college education has now become free for students who come from poor families if they are study occupation related programmes - a first in the history of our country!
• Government is already undertaking a review of BEE in order to ensure that it is aligned with our overall industrial and growth strategies and that it is indeed truly broadened to benefit the majority of our people.

In the run up to our own 13th Congress in July, the SACP is also calling for other interventions and measures in order to ensure that we deepen economic transformation. These include:

• Deepening and taking forward the struggle for the increasing socialization of the finance sector, through, amongst others, achieving a much greater developmental, working class biased, strategic control over key public and social financial institutions and funds. Efforts to transform the developmental finance institutions like the Land Bank, the Post Bank, the DBSA and the IDC must be supported and strengthened. We are also going to intensify the struggle for workers to make sure that they have an effective say over the investment of their pension and provident funds. For instance, given the trillions of rands of these funds, there is no reason why mineworkers cannot access affordable housing finance for decent housing. We call upon the NUM to support us in these struggles and also take a lead on this front
• The SACP is also calling for effective state support for the co-operative movement, including setting aside certain functions in the state (eg. school nutrition, cleaning services, etc) for cooperatives.
• The SACP is also calling for the strengthening of the key parts of the state to once more play an active productive role, for instance in rebuilding the capacity of the Department of Public Works and municipalities to construct housed and other social infrastructure and limit tenders in this regard

All the above are important policy breakthroughs and advances on which we must seek to build in order to deepen the national democratic revolution. The working class must take responsibility for building on these advances as part of taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution. Taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution means that we must take responsibility for the advances made as well as the challenges facing the revolution. We cannot pick and choose when to partake in the revolution and when not to when it suits us. After all we are not an opposition to our own movement and government, but an integral part of the revolutionary forces that must lead society.

What the President of the ANC is calling for, for workers to join the ANC and also accept leadership positions, is actually part of taking responsibility for our revolution, and is a call we fully support as the SACP. If workers and their leaders run away from leading in the ANC who else are we expecting to do this?

Taking responsibility for the revolution also means supporting the SACP's own Medium Term Vision which calls for building working class influence in all key sites of power, including in the state, the economy, the workplace, the community, ideologically and through international solidarity. This means that we must ensure working class organization in all these key sites of power. This must include organizing both inside and outside the state, so that we effectively use both state and mass power to advance the goals of our revolution.

The Unity of the Revolutionary Forces and the Revolutionary Movement

We will not be able to achieve all the above and defend the gains of our revolution if we also do not pay particular attention to the unity of our organisations and the revolutionary movement as a whole. This requires a number of interventions of our part.

It means that we must fight against all foreign tendencies within our organisations. The first target must be what we have referred to as the 'New Tendency' in our movement - an attempt to corruptly capture our organisations so that they are turned into instruments for self-enrichment or personal and private business opportunities for leaders or people in influential positions. Contrary to what our detractors say, this 'New Tendency' is not only found in the ANC but across all our organisations. This tendency for instance attempted to derail the congress of the YCL in December 2010, using money and sheer thuggery to try and capture our youth formation.

We are seeing a similar phenomenon in the trade union movement, where, like in the case of the NUM, even employers are paying some individuals so that they can capture the NUM and turn it into a sweetheart union. But this tendency in the trade union movement also aims to capture the millions of rands in some of the union's coffers as well as corruptly influencing the investment of union provident and pension funds for private accumulation purposes.

This is an example that it is wrong to think that the only place where leaders can be corrupted or co-opted is only in the ANC or government. This is a threat that faces leadership across the board in the trade unions as well as corruption the private sector. That is why also we must fight against the phenomenon of business unionism where leadership positions in the union are used to access either union funds and business or to enter into business generally.

What the above means is that whilst we need to promote unity, there can be no unity between genuine revolutionaries and these tendencies. These tendencies of corruption, self-enrichment, buying members and business unionism must be completely flushed out from inside our ranks!

We must always bear in mind that those who seek to buy members in our organisations, will tomorrow also sell our organisations and ultimately our country to the highest imperialist bidder. So they must be defeated as a precondition to building the unity of the revolutionary forces. We are here as the SACP to support the unity of the NUM based on the principle of building a revolutionary trade union that is able to fight for workers' interests unconditionally.

In building the unity of the revolutionary forces means building the unity of our Alliance. Building the unity of our alliance does not mean that each of the Alliance components must sacrifice its independence. There is no contradiction between independent formations and building an alliance. After all, it is only truly independent organizations that can enter into alliances.

That is why it is important for our working class formations, as independent formations, that they must maintain their independent structures and programmes. But in pursuing working class programmes (whether it be fight e-tolling or against labour brokers) we must at all times ensure that we do not compromise or damage the standing, image or integrity of the ANC and our government. Our campaigns must be different from those of the DA and other liberal forces, whose goal is not a principled struggle to improve the lives of our people, but is to try and discredit our movement and government. This is called taking responsibility for the revolution!

The SACP also wishes to appreciate the deepening relationship between our two formations, through common campaigns, including joint political schools. We must also continue to work together to try and build Elijah Barayi into a true college to educationally empower the working class. It is important for the NUM to also play a leading role in the struggle for the skilling of mineworkers, and ensure that levies meant to train workers are not gobbled up by tenderpreneurs but are spent to produce a skilled workforce.

Defending our human dignity

The SACP wishes to use this occasion to once more express its outrage at the recent portrait of the President. This portrait is deeply offensive, insulting, demeaning and one of the most serious violations of the black body in recent times - a continuation of centuries of the violation of the black body by racist South Africa.

Over the last couple of years the SACP has been consistently pointing out that there is a new offensive in our country, an anti-majoritarian liberal offensive whose aim is to undermine majority rule and roll back the principle that the people shall govern. We have recently pointed out that this offensive is a reflection of a centuries old attitude of racist white South Africans towards black people. It has also now become a refuge to all those racists who opposed our transition to democracy.

In our press release of our Draft Congress Programme we said,

"What was once called in colonial circles the thorny 'native question' has now been dusted off, updated and botoxed into an inflated threat of 'one party political dominance'". This is the continuation of the same old colonial attitude towards black people, but couched in different terms. It is the same old conservative liberalism that once argued before 1994 that majority rule was bad for South Africa, rather consideration should be given to a qualified vote, so that only 'civilised' blacks can be given a vote. This portrait is the same as what was done to Sarah Baartman, also a continuation of the 'thawuza' practice in the mines - one of the worst violations of the black body by white capitalists anywhere in the world. It is the same thinking that says blacks were never in the Western Cape in the past, and that in fact black people in the Western Cape are refugees.

We are being told by the media that the producer of this portrait, which by the way is not even an original portrait (except the insult which is original) was an anti-apartheid activist and therefore cannot be accused of racism and bigotry. This is where the difference is between the likes of Slovo, Ray Alexander, Neil Agett and many other white revolutionaries in our country; they never used their struggle credentials in order to patronize the African majority.

Simply because someone struggled against apartheid yesterday and today spews racism and insult the African majority does not mean we must accept this. Does this mean we must accept whatever insults thrown at us, just because they come from someone who claimed that he struggled with us in yesteryears? We are being patronized and we must refuse such patronage, otherwise we will forever remain kitchen girls and garden boys, who must always be grateful to the baas just because he gave employment!

We must remind ourselves of what cde Mao Zedong once said that if you were a revolutionary day before yesterday, and you continued being one yesterday, but today you become a counter-revolutionary, you are a counter-revolutionary that's it!

In the context of the heat around the publication of a cartoon of Prophet Mahomed by a Danish cartoonist some seven years back, the decision by the Mail and Guardian to publish this, Ferial Haffajee, now editor of the City Press said at the time reflecting on this incident on 24-05-2010:

"My gentle brother made me understand, for the first time, that freedom of expression was not absolute, no rights were. Rights have to be balanced against responsibilities, not doing harm, causing offence and understanding social mores"

Now, when the City Press is asked refusing to remove this offensive and insulting portrait from the City Press web pages, the same Haffajee says:

"As journalists worth our salt, we can't. Besides, the horse has bolted. We published on Sunday. (Jackson Mthembu) is no paragon of virtue and neither is our president, who has done more to impugn his own dignity than any artist ever could

"But mostly, I will not have my colleagues take down that image because the march away from progressive politics to patriarchal conservatism is everywhere

"I am tired of the people who desire to kill ideas of which they do not approve. Besides, our morality and good practices is selective"

The question to be asked here what is the difference between the legitimate anger of the Moslem community, and that of the African community and other decent South Africans? Whose morality is selective in this regard?

The message here is clear all communities in South Africa have a culture, except the African people!

We want to say to those who are defending this portrait as freedom of speech and expression. There is a big difference between freedom of speech and freedom to insult. It is not you who are insulting us who must tell us how we must feel, but it is us who know how we feel. We have been insulted, our dignity has been assaulted and violated, and we have been made to feel naked. Nobody else, with no amount of English, will make us feel different or change this reality.

What all this is a reflection of is that a section of South Africans have not accepted our gesture and commitment to national reconciliation, the building of a socially cohesive non-racial South Africa. These commitments are taken by these elements as a sign of political weakness. We agree with the President, this must not detract us from our commitments and course to build a non-racial and non-sexist, inclusive society. We must rise above bigotry, racism, sexism and notion of cultural superiority. But in so doing, we must also make it absolutely clear that the body of the President is not for sale, so are the bodies of the black majority in this country!

In the light of this, we need to demonstrate our disgust at this portrait and all what it means to the President, his family, to the majority of our people all decent South Africans.

We therefore call upon all the entirety of the working class and all our people that, as from this Sunday, they boycott the City Press newspaper! We must from now onwards not buy this newspaper; and those who subscribe must immediately cancel their subscriptions and not read it if delivered this Sunday, until it withdraws this portrait from its pages and web-site and issue an apology to the nation for the offence caused!

We must demonstrate people's power, our power and use our muscle, in order to protect our dignity and our bodies! We call upon all our alliance formations and all other structures committed to the protection of human dignity to join us in this and explain to our people why it is important to take this action.

Let us all this weekend, in our shop-steward councils, churches, branch meetings, in our stokvels and societies, in our community meetings, in our youth and women's gatherings, in our calls to radio stations call for respect of human dignity and support the boycott of the City Press. Our generosity must not be taken for granted! We fought for this freedom of speech and expression which today is being turned into a weapon against our very being, against who we are and what we want to be and where we want to go as a country.

Let us unite in defence of our President, his dignity, and his office and to defend the dignity of the black person, respect for the black body, defend our democracy.

For the working class, let us escalate our struggles for the radical transformation of South African society, for the wealth of our country to be shared amongst all the people, for our labour to be adequately compensated and for an end to all forms of discrimination in the workplace and in broader society. Let the NUM take the lead, as it has done over the last thirty years, by adopting resolutions at this Congress in support of all these actions.

We wish you a successful Congress!

This item first appeared in Umsebenzi Online, the online newsletter of the SACP.

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