South African Communist Party, Augmented Central Committee 29th November - 1st December 2013 Statement, Sunday, Johannesburg, December 1 2013
The South African Communist Party (SACP) Augmented Central Committee met in Johannesburg over the weekend of 29th November - 1st December 2013.
The first day of the Augmented Central Committee (CC) was devoted to the presentation and discussion of a secretariat Political Report. The report covered an analysis of two decades of democracy in SA, key current issues confronting the South African working class, and our plans for ongoing campaigning, including support for an overwhelming ANC-alliance election victory next year.
The CC agreed that enormous gains have been notched up over the past two decades, particularly in terms of significantly lifting the floor of poverty through, amongst other things, the roll-out of social grants to 16 million South Africans (compared to 2,4million in 1994). Notwithstanding these and many other important advances, the balance of class forces has shifted unfavourably for the working class and poor, with monopoly capital being the principal beneficiary of our hard-won democratic breakthrough. Monopoly capital has used our democracy and the ending of apartheid-era sanctions not to invest in reconstruction and development within our country - but to disinvest. The equivalent of 20 to 25% of GDP has been disinvested out of SA since 1994, some of it illegal capital flight.
The draining of productive capital out of our country has been exacerbated by erroneous economic policies particularly in the decade after 1996 - including the dramatic relaxation of exchange controls and the permitting of dual listings of major, born-and-bred SA companies (Anglo, De Beers, SASOL, SAB, Old Mutual, etc.). The South African government now confronts these giants as if they were foreign investors that have to be wooed on their own terms. Compounding all of this is that the surplus that is being retained within SA, is overwhelmingly not being invested in productive sectors.
Stop the sale of Afgri to North American speculators!
The CC noted one of the latest developments on this front - the proposed de-listing of Afgri from the JSE and its sale to a little-known North American financial speculator group, registered in the tax-haven of Mauritius. Afgri is an agricultural services company that dates back 90 years. It was originally an agricultural co-op handsomely supported by successive white minority governments. After 1994, instead of transforming this cooperative to service emerging and subsistence farmers, government liberalised agriculture. Like other former agricultural co-ops (KWV, Clover, Senwes) it transformed itself into a private company and listed on the JSE in 1996. Financial speculation and profit maximisation began to displace agricultural production and food security concerns.
Today, Afgri remains a major player in our agricultural sector, and therefore, in theory, also a key asset in ensuring rural transformation and South African food security. It owns a vast proportion of South Africa's grain storage capacity, it provides services to 7,000 mainly commercial farmers through its rural-based retail outlets and silos. It is the largest supplier of John Deere tractors in Africa and was recently subsidised through governments' tractor support programme for emerging farmers. Afgri also acts as an agent for the Land Bank distributing some R2bn a year on behalf of the bank.
The SACP expresses its full support to the African Farmers' Association of South Africa (Afasa), representing some 30,000 black smallholder farmers, in taking the proposed sale to the Competition Commission. This critical cog in South Africa's food security cannot be tossed into the casino economy.
Let us build a patriotic, non-racial anti-monopoly capital front
The Afgri trajectory once more underlines the importance (and possibilities) for the formation of a broad, non-racial unity in South Africa against the ravages that monopoly capital is wreaking on our economy.
While the black majority are the principal victims of monopoly capital, virtually all South Africans are victims in varying degrees. Black and white South Africans suffer under the predatory role of the financial sector. Black and white South Africans are suffering under excessive banking and communication charges. Black and white South Africans are the common victims of the collusive behaviour of the construction companies and of the investment strike by monopoly capital. Black and white family farms are the victims of the growing monopolisation and financialisation of the agricultural sector.
This is why the SACP calls for a radical second phase of the democratic transition that prioritises the struggle to roll back the dominance of monopoly capital and its narrow BEE comprador collaborators.
Let us build a non-racial, patriotic unity against the ravages of monopoly capital!
Taking forward our campaigns
The CC resolved to carry forward and intensify the financial sector campaign as our flag-ship campaign. Among the key points of focus of the campaign are the fight against:
- Reckless and unsecured lending;
- Evictions of families from their homes;
- Irregular garnishee orders - affecting thousands of workers.
- On the broader transformation front, the SACP will continue to call for:
- The massification of consumer education programmes;
- Community re-investment programmes, particularly around housing; and
- The full licensing of the Postbank.
Other key pillars of our SACP campaigning will be the struggle for land and agricultural transformation, especially in rural areas; and work within the trade union movement.
The Office of the Public Protector
The Central Committee has noted Public Protector Advocate Madonsela's condemnation of the Mail & Guardian's publication of a leaked report (allegedly from her office) on the Nkandla matter. The Public Protector has characterised the Mail & Guardian's action as "unethical and illegal", and, contrary to how the commercial media continues to report on the issue, she has also disowned the document. While we accept her assurance that she was not personally responsible for any leaking, we are concerned that there has been a pattern of premature leaks of other reports from her office in the recent past, and indeed, once more today.
There have also been other concerning issues. We were puzzled by her earlier public statement that some people "would be disappointed" with her final report on Nkandla, as if this important investigation was about playing to a gallery and dishing up a particular pre-determined outcome. We hope that the Public Protector will have also paused for a moment of self-reflection on the fact that all political parties in Parliament expressed concern at the way in which she handled the investigation into the IEC matter.
The Office of the Public Protector is a critically important institution for the defence and deepening of our democracy. Anything that undermines confidence in the office, or that gives the impression of over-reaching or limelight-seeking will weaken the office and, paradoxically, it will create a smoke-screen behind which those who are corrupt will seek to hide. As a public custodian of the values of good governance we urge the Public Protector to deal decisively with a pattern of premature leaking of reports from her office. In terms of the Constitution the Pubic Protector's Office must report to Parliament and not, in the first instance, to a sensation-seeking commercial media. The time has come for an independent investigation into the leaking from the office, and to establish whether all those within the office have the appropriate security clearance.
The Nkandla matter has dragged on for far too long. Without compromising legitimate security concerns, the Central Committee calls for the public release of the reports of both the Department of Public Works and the Public Protector - the sooner the better. So far the public has been fed with rumours, snippets, allegations and counter-allegations. It is common cause that there have been serious irregularities of over-pricing and the inflation of the scope of work required. We believe that both reports will come to fundamentally similar findings. Let the truth come out. Those responsible for serious irregularities in this case must be named, shamed and dealt with appropriately.
Public communication on this matter from the side of the executive could have been much better. Likewise, the Central Committee believes that the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence made little attempt to engage either Parliament or the broader public on its findings, and, of course, the commercial media largely ignored it.
There are other lessons to be learnt going forward. Government needs to establish much clearer norms and standards around its responsibilities in regard to the private accommodation of serving and past Presidents. In the light of some of the recent missteps, the new 2014 Parliament might wish to review the Public Protector Act of 1994. Amongst other things Parliament should consider Clause 9 (1) (a) which makes it unlawful to "insult the Public Protector or a Deputy Public Protector." While we certainly have no intention of insulting any Public Protector, past, present, or future, this Clause of the Act strikes us as vague, excessive and out of kilter with our Constitution which recognises all South African citizens as equal before the law.
The youth sector
The CC congratulated the Young Communist League of SA and its Progressive Youth Alliance partners for their clean sweep of all SRC university elections. PYA election victories under the banner of SASCO included winning back Nelson Mandela University, the University of Cape Town, and the University of Zululand. The PYA has also won in a majority of FET colleges. This resurgence of progressive youth forces on South African campuses underlines two key points:
The importance of unity in action of progressive youth formations; and
The damage that was done to progressive unity on our campuses by the arrogant and factionalist activities of former ANC Youth Leaguers now expelled from that formation and pursuing their pseudo-left, tenderpreneuring activities in the EFF.
The SACP urges the youth of South Africa to remain radical, to remain organised and militant in the struggle against the scourge of poverty, unemployment, inequality and capitalist exploitation. Let us all be vigilant against those who seek to conceal their own greed and corruption behind empty pseudo-leftism.
The labour movement
The SACP remains deeply concerned at the ongoing ructions within our alliance partner COSATU. We once more pledge our commitment to working for a united, militant labour federation. We once more assert that while Alliance partners must play a constructive and supporting role, the internal processes of COSATU must be respected.
The Central Committee noted and condemned the persisting disruptive behaviour of a leadership clique within NUMSA. For a long while now the SACP has endured an endless string of personalised insults and lies from these quarters. We have patiently endeavoured to engage with the NUMSA general secretary and his clique in a constructive if robust ideological debate. However sceptical we might have been, we decided to take him at his word that he was seeking to advance an anti-capitalist, left-wing perspective and line of action. We have even opened up the columns of our own publications for him to vent against us. Irvin Jim has consistently abused all of these sincere endeavours. It is now glaringly obvious that he and his clique have another agenda. It is not an agenda of building working class unity. It is not agenda of respecting left-wing diversity. It is an agenda informed by unbridled personal ambition and personal wealth accumulation.
NUMSA is convening a Special Congress later this month, ostensibly to obtain a democratic mandate from its membership on the future of the union's participation in the ANC-led alliance and the role of NUMSA in next year's elections. But despite all the rhetoric about worker democracy, the leadership clique has already predetermined its strategy. Last week on Thursday the clique convened a secret, off-the-record meeting with selected journalists to tell them that NUMSA would launch an independent workers party in 2015. It is time that the rank-and-file membership of NUMSA calls an end to this cynical manipulation of the union's strategic direction over their heads.
We call on NUMSA rank-and-file members to ask this leadership clique to come clean and to account:
Irvin Jim and his deputy general secretary and long-standing business partner Karl Cloete should be challenged to undergo independent life-style audits. While SACP members serving in parliament and the executive are constantly maligned by the NUMSA leadership clique, they are all accountable to parliament and to the public, and are required to submit annual disclosures of interest. There is no such transparency when it comes to the NUMSA leadership clique.
Irvin Jim must be asked to explain what his role was when he chaired the Eastern Cape tender board, and whether he benefited personally in any way.
Irvin Jim and Karl Cloete must be asked to come clean on the work of the NUMSA investment arm and its relationship to its holdings in Dove, the funerals, insurance and finance company. What is the relationship between NUMSA's Doves Absa account, the Eriotrax FNB account and Brevity Trade 12? Have the membership of NUMSA, or broader leadership collective, even heard of these entities?
Irvin Jim must explain his individual role in December 2010 in allotting Preference Shares from Brevity Trade to Eriotrax, and what was the purpose of so doing?
Comrade Cedric Gcina, in his resignation letter as NUMSA president last week referred to a NUMSA Absa account and his differences with Jim in this regard? What exactly was Cde Gcina referring to?
Can the NUMSA leadership clique assure NUMSA members that funds earned through Dove and other NUMSA Investment arm activities are not being diverted into a web of personal accounts, businesses and war-chests? What is the role of Khandani Msibi, Mahlubi Mazwi, Mphumzi Maqunqo, and Azwell Banda and their private businesses?
These are some of the questions that, we believe, the rank-and-file membership of NUMSA must pose to the leadership clique. They must do so in the name of worker democracy and in the name of taking back control of their union and their own retirement funds. Related to all of the above, the SACP calls on the Minister of Labour to institute an audit of the flow of millions of rands of agency shop funds into NUMSA. Where do these funds end up?
The SACP has consistently warned that much of the turmoil within COSATU has little to do with differences on policy or on working class issues, and everything to do with business-unionism and the class capture and privatisation of worker retirement funds. As part of the SACP's financial sector campaign, working closely with COSATU, we will be calling for the socialisation of worker retirement funds.
The SACP has a long and honourable history of building progressive trade unionism in our country, dating back to the very launch of the Party in 1921. The SACP and its activists pledge to continue this tradition. We pledge to fight for a principled unity of our alliance partner, COSATU.
16 days of activism against violence against women and children
In marking today as World Aids Day, and at the beginning of the 16 days of activism against violence against women and children, the CC joins all South Africans in condemning recent horrific actions against infants, young children and older women. We also condemn violence directed against gay and lesbians.
We salute the Department of Justice for re-introducing Sexual Offences courts and the Department of Social Development for the establishment of places of safety for victims of sexual and domestic violence, known as "White Doors."
As we move towards the close of the year, the Augmented CC wishes our membership, the working class and all South Africans a peaceful and safe festive season. Let us gather our strength for an overwhelming ANC-alliance election victory next year, let 2014 be a year in which we make a decisive steps forward in advancing a radical second phase of our democratic transition.
Statement issued by the SACP Augmented Central Committee, December 1 2013
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