The Young Communist League of South Africa (YCLSA) in Gauteng notes and welcomes the resignation of Joel Netshitenzhe as Director-General of the Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services (Picas) in the Presidency.
His departure signals an important moment within our society's shift from the disastrous, failed neoliberal policies - such as the Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy - which were imposed by the previous administration of former President Thabo Mbeki. Netshitenzhe was a central player within the 1996 Class Project that advanced these policies to appease both domestic and foreign capital, especially financiers.
The adverse effects of these failed policies are still being felt by ordinary workers and the poor, as reflected by the many ongoing class struggles waged by these motive forces in our communities and points of production. To illustrate the Netshitenzhe world-view, recall his reaction - in April 2004 in the Sunday Times - to growing unease about service delivery failure. He remarked, in relation to water and electricity disconnections, ‘There were only a few households occasionally cut off.' In reality, millions were suffering disconnections, the high prices and sometimes brutal cost recovery policies of national and municipal government, leading directly to today's alienation and the upsurge of service delivery protests.
Netshitenzhe's departure provides the ANC and its Alliance partners a strategic opportunity to champion a revolutionary agenda that transfers the wealth of our country to the people as a whole, informed by the 1955 Freedom Charter and the aborted Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) adopted in 1994 by the Alliance as the policy blueprint of former President Nelson Mandela's administration, but displaced by GEAR in 1996. The failure by the ANC and the Alliance to seize this moment, and to rise to the occasion, would mean a failure that the people will never forget.
The ongoing service delivery protests, massive retrenchments in major industries, still-excessive interest rates, escalating food prices, skyrocketing unemployment rate, deepening inequalities and mass poverty will be seen as the legacy of policies championed by Netshitenzhe. In fact Netshitenzhe is a personification of the co-option of our cadres by capital. His 1996 Class Project watered-down the National Democratic Revolution, and prevented many of the advances we could have made after the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
As YCLSA, we wish Netshitenzhe well in his future endeavors and hope that his absence from public office will accord him time to rethink his role and cleanse himself. At one point, his fabled organic intellectual status and ideological standing had earned him the name Peter Mayibuye, amongst the rank and file in the broad movement led by the African National Congress. It is that status - as a policy-maker for the people, not for capital - that he should aspire to in future.
Statement issued by Alex Mashilo, YCLSA Gauteng provincial secretary, October 21 2009
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