Statement on the occasion of ANC 103rd Anniversary and January 8th Statement Rally, delivered by SACP General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande, Cape Town Stadium, January 10 2015

In the past 20 years, and as we celebrate 60 years of the Freedom Charter, as a country - whose government has been led by the ANC and its Alliance - we have made enormous strides and advances towards the realisation of the vision contained in this Charter. However a lot still remains to be done.

From the 1920s the Communist Party in South Africa has been a loyal and committed ally of the ANC. For nearly 90 years communists have served in the ranks of the ANC. As we celebrate 103 years of ANC-led struggle, the SACP is proud of the contribution that our own Party members have made, along with many patriotic non-communists, to 103 years of unbroken revolutionary struggle. We pledge as the SACP, with a robustly growing membership which has now surpassed 210,000, to continue this revolutionary tradition.

At 103 years the ANC is the oldest national liberation movement in Africa, and probably in the world. But to be old is not in itself an achievement. Table Mountain is old. It is old because it has stood there passively for millions of years. The ANC is 103 years old only because of a sustained and heroic struggle by millions of ordinary South Africans. There were times, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for instance, in which the apartheid regime boasted that it had destroyed the ANC forever. 

But it is us, millions of ordinary South Africans who brought down the apartheid regime and ushered in a non-racial, constitutional democracy.

But the dream of destroying the ANC, the liberator of our country and its people, has not been abandoned by a wide array of minority forces. It has not been abandoned by the hard-core racists. It has not been abandoned by anti-majoritarians posing as liberals. It has not been abandoned by sections of the media. The anarchy we see in Parliament is an attack on majority rule and on the ANC as the majority party. Here in Cape Town, the Cape Argus has shamelessly aligned itself with this anti-democratic agenda. And it has not been abandoned by the DA.   

The Western Cape and the City of Cape Town continue to be bastions of minority power, minority privilege and minority arrogance. When Premier Zille described fellow South African citizens from other provinces living in the Western Cape as "refugees" - that was not a slip of the tongue. It betrayed the underlying attitude of the DA leadership. It betrayed the basis on which the DA mobilises voters here in the Western Cape. The DA wilfully encourages ethnic division, in which Africans in the Western Cape are regarded as foreigners, as aliens.

As the ANC-led alliance we are committed to uniting all South Africans as equal citizens. We are committed to upholding the very core values of the Freedom Charter which clearly says South Africa belongs to all who live in it. This is the Freedom Charter, Premier Zille, which boldly declares that "All shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province." Nowhere in the Freedom Charter will you find a clause which says "Provinces will compete against each other". The Freedom Charter envisages the balanced economic and social liberation of all corners of South Africa - not pockets of arrogant wealth and privilege.

So yes, there are those outside of the ANC-headed Alliance who constantly dream of our destruction. However, as we have long recognised, the greatest threat to the principled unity, vibrancy and continued majority support for the ANC and our broader Alliance comes not from outside, but from within.

On this important occasion the SACP once more pledges to work tirelessly for the principled and militant unity of the ANC and our Alliance. This unity must be built upon the programmatic perspective resolved upon at the ANC's 2012 Mangaung National Conference which called for a second more radical phase of the national democratic revolution. At the heart of such a radical phase must be (again in line with the Freedom Charter) the more determined rolling back of the power and agenda of monopoly capital. It is private monopoly capital that has been the major beneficiary of our democratic breakthrough. 

Private monopoly capital has used the end of apartheid-era sanctions to disinvest legally and illegally billions and billions of Rands out of our country. In some years, as much as 20 to 25% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), surplus produced here in our country through the hard work of South Africans, has been siphoned out through transfer pricing, tax avoidance, dual listings and many other dodges. 

Not only is private monopoly capital (nurtured during decades of white minority rule) exporting the wealth of our country, it is also involved in a massive investment boycott - holding back trillions of Rands from much needed investment in social infrastructure, in the gap housing market, for instance. Meanwhile sections of monopoly capital in the construction industry embarked on massive corruption to fleece government of billions of Rands in building soccer stadia in the run up to 2010. Because this is private sector corruption, it is called "collusion" or "white collar crime", not corruption!

Through popular mobilisation and the determined use of democratic state power we must put a decisive end to this whole-sale ripping off our country's resources.

But the challenges are even greater. Private monopoly capital has also succeeded in inserting itself into our own formations, into parts of the state, into key State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), even into the delivery of social grants, where the US-listed company, Net1 Cash Paymaster saw a 148 percent increase in its profits, thanks to preying on grant beneficiaries offering them multiple insurance schemes, and even credit for air-time that then gets automatically deducted from the grant at exorbitant interest rates. Instead of a small time mashonisa (loan shark), what we have here is a mega, transnational mashonisa, pumping out of our country billions of Randsintended for pensioners, child support and those with disabilities. 

The SACP says let us together advance, deepen and intensify the ANC's manifesto commitment to transform the financial sector to serve the people! 

Together, in line with the Freedom Charter's clarion call, let us combat the DNA of private monopoly capital and corruption wherever it rears its ugly head!

Through tenderpreneurs, through fronters, through some parasites located on boards of public companies, through those who in the name of "raising funds for the ANC" are actually enriching themselves at the expense of the public, through a whole layer of comprador forces, private monopoly capital seeks to advance its profit-maximising agenda by inserting its own DNA into our movement and into our democratic government.

This is what constitutes the greatest threat to our unity and to our hard-won democracy. All too often, what presents itself as factionalism within our ranks has little to do with politics or ideology, and everything to do with competing tenderpreneurs in our own ranks who are enriching themselves and, worse still, advancing someone else's agenda. 

The struggle against corruption and factionalism is, therefore, not just a moral struggle - it is, perhaps the most important struggle of our time, for the defence, consolidation and advance of the ANC, our alliance and our democratic state. 

The SACP pledges to be a consistent, loyal and principled ally of the ANC in these important life and death struggles of our times. Together, let us boldly take on thesechallenges.  

Let us continue to build and defend our Alliance; for going forward we need more, not less, of this revolutionary Alliance - the best organised front to lead the liberation struggle of our people to its logical conclusion! 

 Issued by the SACP, January 10 2015

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