South African Communist PartyCentral Committee statement of key meeting outcomes

1 June 2020

The Central Committee (CC) of the South African Communist Party (SACP) met on Friday, 29 May 2020. The meeting was held virtually in the context of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and national lockdown.

With the CC convening in this context, Dr Zweli Mkhize, Minister of Health was invited to present a situational analysis of the coronavirus crisis. The presentation covered health-care responses to Covid-19 by government and related challenges in our continent and globally. The CC commended the Minister and government for the leadership provided to contain the spread of the deadly disease and to mobilise the whole of society in a collective response. It is very clear the virus would have infected and killed more people, had it not been for these efforts.  

The CC received a political report, which was presented by SACP General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande, and an additional presentation by Dr Rob Davies, Co-Convenor of the CC Commission on Economic and Social Transformation.

The fundamental right to life and responses to Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic was neither unpredictable nor unpredicted. For some years now the scientific community has been warning about the probability of serious pandemic outbreaks for which we have no inbuilt immunity. The current pandemic has been preceded by other deadly pandemics, many of them zoonotic diseases (diseases transmitted from animals to humans). These outbreaks are directly linked to a natural world environment increasingly off-balance as a result of accelerated, monopoly-capitalist driven deforestation, land grabs, mono-culture, the loss of bio-diversity, and mass-scale factory farming, including the wide use of antibiotics on livestock producing new, drug resistant ‘superbugs’.

The destruction of many integrated local production networks and their substitution with global ‘value’ chains has added further vectors along which epidemic outbreaks can quickly move globally.

All of these realities and the even greater and looming threat of the eco-cidal destruction of environmental sustainability for human civilisation are rooted in an unsustainable capitalist system premised on exponential profit accumulation.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also dramatically exposed many of the underlying social and economic fault-lines in capitalist societies – class, gendered, racial and other inequalities that are exacerbated by the pandemic and responses to it. Those most vulnerable to serious illness are those who have already poor access to health-care. Those who were already living hand-to-mouth, those who were already in existing precarious work, those living in crowded informal settlements, those forced to travel long distances in over-crowded public transport, are now more vulnerable than ever before.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also dramatically illustrated what, from a human and social perspective is essential work – health-workers, sanitation workers, care-workers, cleaning workers, productive sector workers – and what is not essential (advertising managers, stock-exchange brokers, weapons brokers). Social production must be transformed structurally and systematically redirected towards meeting the collective needs of society, as opposed to profit maximisation for the benefit of a tiny minority.

The Central Committee underlined the importance of measures adopted to contain the Covid-19 pandemic to be consistently about protecting the right to life. There can be no economy without human life, no production without social reproduction. The reckless neo-liberal drive to ‘open the economy’ without regard to human life, epitomised by Donald Trump’s blustering, together with his local South African disciples, must be condemned. The dichotomy that has relentlessly been driven between human life and the economy in much of the mainstream media is underpinned by exploitative profit interests without regard to human life. The main reason is that under capitalism, production is primarily for profit and private capital accumulation, and not about meeting human needs.  

Risk adjusted approach and centrality of scientific evidence

While welcoming government’s risk adjusted approach to Covid-19 lockdown alert levels, the Central Committee emphasised the importance of maintaining strict guidance from scientific evidence, as opposed to self-centred lobbying networks and their intermediaries who will not shoulder any responsibility should things take a turn for the worst.

Stringent measures must therefore take precedence to protect public health and enforce high standards of occupational health and safety in all sectors of the economy, as well as in the public service.

In the same vein, government should ensure that its response to Covid-19 in education and training fosters equality and protects staff and learners in schools, students in colleges and universities, and trainees in the workplace as a training space. Rushing ahead with opening schools that have resources and leaving behind the majority of rural and township schools will further deepen inequalities. It is important to foster a level playing field in moving forward, and consultation has a crucial role to play.     

National intervention in the Western Cape – Covid-19 epicentre

President Ramaphosa and national government have gone out of their way not to succumb to narrow party political electoral manoeuvres and point-scoring. Our response to the pandemic requires a co-ordinated multi-sectoral effort at the local, provincial, national and indeed regional, continental and global levels. The Western Cape Province has been, at least for the last two months, the epicentre of Covid-19, and sadly with more than half of the national Covid-19 positive cases and deaths.

We can only guess what the DA would have been saying if the situation was reversed with the current epicentre being in Gauteng, or the Eastern Cape. Nevertheless, we must not succumb to the temptation of party political point scoring. However, we condemn the opportunistic attempt by the DA’s acting leader, John Steenhuisen, and his party’s campaign, for government to rapidly move the Covid-19 lockdown alert levels from high to low – regardless of the ravaging impact of the contagious disease.

The situation in the Western Cape has an impact on other provinces, for example, the Eastern Cape. Above all, the province is an inseparable part of our country. Its situation as the coronavirus epicentre and death toll should therefore be treated as a national concern, in the interest of all our people. Therefore the Central Committee expressed support for national government intervention in the Western Cape, and called for the intervention to be further strengthened in terms of the Constitution of the republic.

Sustainable recovery and development   

The Central Committee endorsed the strategic perspective succinctly summarised by the clarion call – We cannot go back to the crisis before the crisis. This means that a mere recovery to where we were before Covid-19 is both impossible and inadequate, as we were already in an endemic capitalist systemic crisis of world-record levels of unemployment, inequality, mass poverty and uneven spatial development.

Labour brokering, casualisation, other strategies coalescing around temporarisation of employment, outsourcing and retrenchments, gave rise to increased irregular/precarious employment. These and other neoliberal restructuring measures deepened the exploitation of workers. Labour’s share of income plummeted, while capitalist bosses heaped up profits. Inequality widened. Mass poverty was entrenched. Unemployment rose. In the fourth quarter of 2019, 10.4 million people in South Africa were unemployed if we include both those actively still seeking work and the so-called discouraged work-seekers. Now capitalist bosses are increasingly turning to retrenchment of workers as a response to Covid-19, further increasing unemployment. 

The capitalist system is the cause, not the solution, of the interrelated challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, deepening economic crisis and associated crisis of social reproduction – inability to make ends meet, to sustain life itself. The crises expose both the incapacity of capitalism and the bankruptcy of its supporting body of ideas to solve the problems created by the system. As the SACP Special National Congress held in December 2019 concluded, neither neoliberalism nor state capture is the solution to the problems facing the South African society. The CC reaffirmed the conclusion, as well as the associated resolute policy stance against neoliberal structural reforms, hollowing out of the state, parasitic tendencies, corruption and looting.

The triple challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, deepening economic crisis and associated multiple crises of social reproduction call for sustainable recovery and developmental path, rather a simple recovery and impossible return to what was there before. The crises require a response commensurate with their extent, rather than a mere relief package. The response must entail revolutionary structural transformation measures. It must be geared towards progressively achieving at least the following outcomes, and need to move with speed:

- Access to quality health-care for all.

- Radical reduction of the persisting and rising high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequalities – class, race and gender.

- Systematic elimination of colonial underdevelopment and the apartheid legacy of unequal spatial development which affects the formerly oppressed, historically underdeveloped rural areas and townships.

- Elimination of squatter camps (‘informal settlements’) and their replacement with properly developed human settlements.

- Address the challenges of the informal sector, which has massively grown in the midst of de-industrialisation, deepening degree of exploitation, increased retrenchments, and high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

- These unresolved problems stand in South Africa’s way to responding optimally to the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of the problems, some of the measures adopted to contain the spread of the virus have not been effective in certain areas.

In order to advance towards the desired outcomes, the CC endorsed a strategic perspective requiring intensification of working class mobilisation and popular front. To this end the CC endorsed the following key development programmes.                 

- Advancing more decisively towards the National Health Insurance (NHI). Enhancing public health capacity. The development of domestic productive capacity in, and thus building health-care equipment and pharmaceutical industrial sector, should be adopted as an integral part of our industrial policy. This should include more support for building a state pharmaceutical company.  Adapting an emerging, highly partisan discourse on the need to ‘shorten supply lines’ of medical equipment and critical food supplies to drive more ambitious and higher impact localisation programmes.

- Massive infrastructure rollout, and co-ordinated to boost industrialisation through localisation requirements for key inputs and through supplier development. The massive infrastructure rollout programme should include developing underdeveloped areas, adequate sanitation and water infrastructure, roads and rail infrastructure, energy security infrastructure – within the framework of a just transition, and communication infrastructure – with public control of the spectrum and more decisive action to lower the cost of data.

- A high employment creation impact industrial policy, adequately supported to build domestic productive capacity and raise the levels of national production to take care of the material needs of the people.

- Transformation of the agricultural sector, linked with ensuring food security, fostering sustainable livelihoods and the development of agro-processing as part of industrial policy

- Transformation of the mining sector, linked with minerals beneficiation and pioneering of high value added manufacturing as part of our industrial policy.

- Resolving the problems facing Eskom, and addressing its debt crisis, to support production and social reproduction with reliable and uninterrupted power supply.

- Turning around state-owned enterprises and strengthening the publicly-owned sector of our economy, as part of a wider national development imperative to building a new economy, an economy that serves all the people, that is a people’s economy.

- A consideration for a minimum income support grant, and the adoption of a development-oriented poverty eradication strategy comprising, as part of its elements, production support grants and technical capacity building. 

- Thoroughgoing mobilisation of domestic resources to finance sustainable recovery and development. This will require much greater openness to exploring unorthodox approaches to fiscal and monetary policy. A substantial body of research and analysis exists suggesting that there are ample resources both in public and private financial institutions within South Africa and that these can be mobilised to finance sustainable recovery and development through such measures as developmental assets or ‘impact assets’ investment requirements (‘prescribed assets’). The South African Reserve Bank should directly engage in government bond purchases. These should not be ignored or dismissed out of hand, as has too often been the case with ‘unorthodox’ proposals in the past. In the same vein, an annual wealth tax must be considered, including taxation of the massive amounts of liquid cash held in what is otherwise an investment strike.

- Transformation of the financial sector to eliminate financial exploitation, reduce high finance charges, and make banks and other financial institutions serve the people on developmental grounds. Structurally, financial sector transformation necessarily requires de-monopolisation, changing the patterns of ownership, ensuring diversification, thus fostering co-operative banks and building a developmental state financial sector. A state bank should therefore be seen as one step in the right direction. Building a developmental state financial sector should encompass strengthening and upgrading key development financial institutions to function as fully-fledged sectoral developmental state banks with adequate state funding and direct access to the financial facilities offered by the South African Reserve Bank. The development finance institutions include but are not limited to the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and the Land Bank.    

Even before the onset of the coronavirus crisis, a broad front of progressive forces across the world was calling for a Global Green New Deal. Associated with the effort, the CC adopted the following programmatic principles as part of the measures required to advance sustainable recovery and development.

- Ending austerity through using fiscal policy to manage demand conditions, making full employment a central policy goal, and using monetary expansion differently – so as to finance public investments which add to inclusive and sustainable outcomes.

- Enhancing public investment with a strong caring dimension, including major public and community works programmes – to also advance the right of all to work, and all articulated towards achieving decent work goals, as well as mitigating and adapting to climate change.

- Raising government revenue, through greater reliance on progressive taxes, including on property and other forms of rent income.

- Establishing a new global financial register – to clamp down on tax havens and other forms of base erosion and profit shifting.

- A stronger voice for organised labour – to drive the decent work agenda and turnaround the falling share of labour income, thus tackling inequality and economic exploitation.

- Taming financial capital, to make financial institutions serve the broader social good.

- Rein in corporate rentierism, including through stronger regulation.

- Deepen the struggle to safeguard democratic national policy sovereignty, and in the international arena push for the removal of restrictive provisions in trade and investment agreements to allow the development of appropriate industrial and other policies.

Co-ordination and building a capable developmental state

The Central Committee commended key public institutions that demonstrated requisite capacity to serve the people in the fight against Covid-19. These notably include the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The CC further commended government for establishing the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) and mobilising national unity, through among others wide-ranging engagements.  

The Covid-19 crisis has brought to the fore the necessity to advance state transformation and build a capable democratic developmental state. Such a state must have internal capacity to drive structural transformation and sustainable development. It must intervene as a capable democratic developmental state, as well as directly participate in social reproduction sectors (for example, health-care) and the economy in the interest of all the people, the majority of whom in our country is the working class and poor.

The NCCC, with its combination of key ministers and specialist advisory panels, appears to have led to some overcoming of silos in government. This may suggests the need to consider establishing a Presidentially-led Sustainable Recovery and Development Council (SRDC) to co-ordinate and lead a state-wide sustainable recovery and development programme. The Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Council (PICC) should be re-invigorated to drive nationwide strategic infrastructure development programmes.        

The role of SACP structures and the working class

In the period following the Central Committee meeting, the SACP will focus on deepening organisational strength at all levels to contain the spread of Covid-19 and advance the programmatic perspectives adopted by the CC, towards sustainable recovery and development. The Covid-19 lockdown alert levels, especially the risk adjusted approach requires more attention to be paid to the grassroots level through well-co-ordinated community-based organisation, as well as at the district-level in support of the district development model. These tasks will still require extensive use of digital technology, as it happened under higher lockdown alert levels, but increasingly buttressed by more targeted activity on the ground, carried out by well-trained activists whose primary task will be to protect lives.

The SACP will anchor these organisational efforts in a wider strategy to rebuild our movement. This will accordingly involve strengthening ongoing participation in Alliance consultative engagements and joint efforts to flatten the Covid-19 curve and drive radical structural economic transformation and social development.

The SACP calls upon the progressive trade union movement in all sectors and the working class as a whole to unite. This is essential in order to drive sustainable recovery and development, thus prevent being pushed back to the crisis before the Covid-19 pandemic, and fend off attempts by class forces and strata who want to push the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on to the working class. The importance of forging a popular Left front cannot be overemphasised.        

International situation

The Central Committee expressed support for the United Nations’ call for the lifting of sanctions, a global ceasefire, and a moratorium on arms sales to countries involved in war or terrorist activities. This call will enable the affected countries to direct their energies and resources towards fighting Covid-19.

The unsustainable debt and associated interest and penalties into which many developing countries find themselves trapped should be set aside and scrapped. The international financial institutions, particularly the Bretton Woods axis that compounded the situations of these countries by plunging them into crises through their loan conditionality must take full responsibility for their actions.   

Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, Central Committee Member: Head of Media & Communications, 1 June 2020