SACP Augmented Central Committee Press Statement
The SACP Augmented Central Committee met in Randburg over the weekend of 2 - 4 December 2011. It has become the practice of the SACP to hold an augmented meeting that includes districts in our final CC for the year.
In the course of 2011, the 90th anniversary year of the SACP, the Party has recruited 26,717 new members, bringing our membership to over 140,000. This represents a 20% growth. We attribute this growth in part to the move towards establishing voting district branches, taking formal Party structures closer to community concerns and struggles. Over the past two months, three SACP provinces have held elective congresses - KZN, Eastern Cape and North West. Interestingly, these congresses passed almost unnoticed in the commercial media - the probable reason for this is that they were characterized by high levels of unity grounded in active programmes of action on the ground, rather than the sensationalist and divisive events that seem alone to capture the imagination of the media.
The Augmented CC debated a comprehensive political report that covered the deepening global capitalist crisis, climate change and COP17. The political report also covered current trends within our country and the Party's role in the centenary celebrations of the ANC.
The deepening of the Eurozone crisis is ongoing evidence of the systemic and deep-seated nature of this capitalist crisis. Faced with their declining global hegemony and economic decline, the developed countries of the North, are seeking to displace their crisis onto their own working classes and middle strata and on to the developing world as a whole. The Occupy Wall Street movement, strikes and street demonstrations by workers and youth in Greece, Spain, Portugal, France and elsewhere are all reflections of a growing if still uneven popular awareness that the problem is not episodic or merely local, but attributable to the nature of global capitalism itself.
The same attempts to displace the crisis are in evidence in the WTO processes and at COP17. There is an aggressive imperialist attempt to roll back whatever small gains have been made in the context of these various multilateral processes. At the heart of this is the attempt to roll-back the core principle (in COP language) of "common but differentiated responsibility" (CDR) - i.e. the recognition that while we all have responsibility for addressing the threat of climate change, or global inequality - that responsibility is different as between developed and developing countries. At both the WTO and at COP17 this imperialist agenda consists in seeking to impose the same responsibilities (as those they should be carrying) on dynamic developing countries (like China, India and Brazil - but also South Africa).
The imperialist position deliberately confuses economic growth rates with what are the real indicators of development - namely, human development indices. In terms of human development indices, China, India, Brazil and indeed SA are still far behind those of the developed world. While SA has clearly accepted national responsibility for implementing serious mitigating efforts - achieving our green house gas emission reduction targets is, in part, dependent upon significant financial assistance and technology sharing from the developed North who have been and remain the major polluters.
Of course, much of the imperialist insistence on loading unjust responsibilities onto developing countries is really an attempt to block progress in climate talks and to undermine what little has already been achieved. It is essential that we continue to struggle for a global, legally-binding agreement on green house gas emissions. The SACP supports the South African government's negotiating position at COP17, and agrees that a bad deal at Durban would be worse than no deal. While every effort must be devoted to achieving a globally-binding agreement, the lesson from the struggle for climate justice is the same lesson from every other struggle - it is not capitalist elites but popular awareness and consistent popular mobilization that will deliver serious transformational programmes. In this context, the CC resolved to more fully integrate the struggle for climate justice into our mass-based work.
The Protection of State Information Bill
The CC discussed a comprehensive report on the Information Bill. While noting that the process of developing this legislation has not always been well-handled politically, the CC agreed that the intent and scope of the Bill were absolutely essential for the consolidation and flourishing of our democracy. It is important to note that leading members of the opposition have themselves described the Bill as "99% good".
Unfortunately, a SANEF-led campaign on the supposed 1% of the Bill has dominated the news pages and air-waves. Let us remind the 1-percenters that the key objectives of the Bill are cornerstones for any democracy- protecting valuable information against, for instance, identity theft, and protecting sensitive intelligence information from loss, alteration or public disclosure.
However, and not without some success, the SA National Editors Forum has narcissistically persuaded itself and parts of the public that the Bill is primarily directed against the media. In fact, the real immediate challenge facing our democracy in regard to state information is not the media, but the threat of factionalised intelligence and security services, embroiled in palace politics and tender-preneuring rivalries. This constitutes a real and present danger for any democracy, and it is absolutely essential that we insist upon the professional independence of our intelligence and security forces and put a decisive end to factionally inspired leaking.
This Bill seeks, quite correctly, to criminalise information peddling, pay-as-you-go information declassification, and the by-passing of what must now become clearly defined procedures for handling sensitive state information. Contrary to what the "1-percenters" claim - for the first time in legislation this Bill will criminalise the false classification of information in order to conceal corruption.
Of course, no legislation on earth is bullet-proof against manipulation, and therefore the success of this Bill, once it is enacted, will also require ongoing public vigilance. Instead of dividing ourselves, the SACP calls on all those, whether in the media, the trade unions, or in the state, who are genuinely committed to the struggle against corruption to unite in a common struggle.
Social struggles - let's not have gimmicks that take us backwards
The CC welcomed progress that has been made in the fight against HIV/AIDS particularly in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. The CC also acknowledged that the SANAC programme for 2012 announced by President Zuma represents a further important advance in this ongoing struggle, in particular by linking treatment for HIV/AIDS with TB treatment.
However, the CC joined many others in expressing its concern at Premier Helen Zille's misguided gimmick in turning the testing campaign into a lottery. This runs completely counter to the caring and solidaristic values that are so central to the success of our campaign against HIV/AIDS and TB.
The CC welcomed statistic that indicate a decline in the still seriously high levels of murders of women and violence against women. The CC strongly condemned violence directed against gay men and women, and the mutilation of young girls.
The CC also marked yesterday's International Disability Day, and reaffirmed our belief that those with disabilities should not be pitied but empowered. This is part and parcel of our commitment to society based on the values of solidarity, and not individualistic competition.
2012 SACP Programme of Action
In 2012 the SACP will be building upon our 2011 Red October campaign.
One of the key pillars of our ongoing mass work will be to work closely with communities, educators and students to ensure a successful start at schools and FET colleges next year. We will continue to work with our alliance partners to address the challenges of dysfunctional schools. The SACP will also take forward the struggle to "de-tenderise" school nutrition and other basic services for schools - school nutrition and maintaining access roads and school infrastructure offer ideal opportunities for fostering local, cooperative job creation.
In 2012 we will pay particular attention to reinvigorating the financial sector campaign to build a different, solidarity economy. We will continue to take up consumer issues - including housing evictions by banks, accessibility of banks, the problem of excessive bank charges, and the functioning of the credit bureaus. We will work with our allies to ensure the convening of a Financial Sector Summit during the first half of 2012. It should involve both the private and public-sector financial institutions, and it should assess, amongst other things, progress in the implementation of the Financial Sector Charter and consider concrete measures to ensure the progressive leveraging of workers pension and provident funds for development. As part of our financial sector campaign we will also continue to work for the building of banking cooperatives, focusing also on capacity building of these institutions, and deepening work with the fledgling progressive cooperatives movement.
A third pillar of our programme of action is building people's committees for rural development, focusing on organisations of rural women in particular, and strengthening rural local government through building ward committees from below and driving the Community Works and Expanded Public Works programmes.
The fourth pillar is intensifying the struggle against corruption in all spheres of government and in the private sector.
In all of these campaigns we will also work closely with our Alliance partners, ensuring that we celebrate the ANC's centenary year by emphasizing that the real hero of the centenary are the millions of ordinary South Africans who brought down one of the most obdurate authoritarian systems in the world and who continue to spearhead the struggle for a new South Africa.
Statement issued by Malesela Maleka, SACP Spokesperson, December 5 2011
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