Maximum unity rather than separatism, divisions and disunity: The way forward by the SACP
The SACP would like to congratulate Bafana Bafana for their improved performance and qualifying for the next African Cup of Nations scheduled to take place January 2015. We would have been happier with a win last night in Nigeria but we accept the 2-all draw.
Unfortunately as we welcome this good news our country is experiencing certain political events that leave much to be desired. It is in this context that the hooliganisation and disruption of Parliament are celebrated as "vibrancy" and "robust engagement".
On the contrary, this is nothing but a display of lack of content and depth. If there is one thing that it is achieving, the disruption is holding back the work of Parliament and defocusing attention from the imperative to place the transformation of our society onto a second, more radical phase.
However, there is a wide range of similar phenomena taking place. This must not be left unchallenged.
The anti-SACP, anti-ANC and anti-Alliance agenda
In its statement titled ‘The Enemy Hidden under the same colour', published in African Communist, Second Quarter, 1976, addressing the ‘Gang of 8' our Central Committee stated:
"The other face is that of the indirect and secondary enemy, who presents himself under the cover of a nationalist and even as a revolutionary thus making it difficult to identify him... THE FIGHTER MUST DISTINGUISH FRIEND FROM FOE EVEN IF THE LATTER IS CONCEALED UNDER THE SAME COLOUR, LANGUAGE, FAMILY TIES OR TRIBAL MARKINGS AS THEIR OWN, EVEN IF HE RAISES HIS FLAG WITH US"- President Samora Machel
The Central Committee further observed that:
"South Africa's press has given a great deal of space to anti-Communist, anti-ANC and racist propaganda with which it has been fed by the group of eight who were recently expelled from the ANC for persistently betraying its political and organisational principles. For the enemy this group's campaign against the people's struggle could not have come at a better moment.
It fits in very well with the Vorster government's desperate attempts to find black collaborators both inside and outside the country, in order to break up the unity of the liberation forces and to cover its criminal aggression against our brothers in Angola. Times are changing and our ruling class is being forced to find new ways to keep white power alive.
Both inside and outside South Africa it desperately needs the Savimbis and the Holden Robertos, to divide the people under banners of so-called nationalism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism, and thus to prevent true liberation. Vorster and BOSS Chief van den Bergh must indeed be satisfied to see how well their cause is being served by this group of renegades from the ANC who are capturing so many headlines in the racist press."
The context we are in today has changed remarkably since 1976 mainly because our ANC-led national liberation movement, the prime leader of our people headed by the Alliance dislodged apartheid in 1994. However, certain things have not changed. Our Central Committee statement about the ‘Gang of 8' serves as a stark reminder about this fact.
Those who are fighting against our movement because they are either engaged in creating new political organisations against it or they are expelled continue to be showered with massive media coverage. The anti-SACP and anti-ANC agenda continues to dominate large sections of the press. In a way this reflects the fact that in some sections of our society there remains those who are engaged in an old struggle against the ANC-led national liberation movement despite the new dispensation it has achieved in 1994.
Recently the so-called "Congress of the People" which was formed shortly following the ANC's 52nd National Conference held in Polokwane (December 2007) and the so-called "Economic Freedom Fighters" which was formed prior to our fifth democratic general election held on 7 Mayand following the expulsion of ill-disciplined elements from the ANC enjoyed massive media coverage. This was by no means an accident.
By and large SA still has a long way to go to achieve transformation in the media. Particularly the press is dominated by private monopoly. On the other hand, the public broadcaster - the SABC has been facing persistent problems for what is a long time now. In our Party Programme, ‘The South African road to socialism' which we adopted at our 13th National Congress held in Engoye (July 2012) we worryingly observe that:
"The public broadcaster has suffered serious setbacks in fulfilling its legal and other mandates. The SABC has also suffered chronic governance and management issues. There has to be a paradigm shift on the understanding of public service broadcasting against the mindset informed by market forces. Public service broadcasting must be protected against the interests of private corporate culture, market domination and commercial interests".
Following the recent expulsion of Numsa from Cosatu we have seen massive media coverage of an anti-SACP and anti-ANC malicious content. This is not balanced as some reports do not even offer the SACP and the ANC an equal opportunity to present their side of the story. Despite the fact that the SACP and the ANC are Cosatu's Alliance partners and NOT trade unions or its affiliates and therefore DO NOT participate or vote in its meetings such as the Central Executive Committee there is a persistent agenda to blame them for the expulsion of Numsa.
This is utterly false that the SACP and ANC played a role in the dismissal of Numsa from Cosatu. Such "analysis" is trivial, disingenuous, misleading and factionalist, to say the least. Such malicious content becomes worse when it is presented as "independent analysis". It reveals itself as nothing, but a regurgitation of the propaganda developed as a marketing strategy to profile new political organisations which for a while now are being formed in opposition to the ANC.
So-called "independent analysis"
The propaganda cannot be an independent analysis, which is why the likes of Moletsi Mbeki, who reportedly sought close ties with Numsa investments and was actively involved in architecting the failed "Democratic Alliance" and Agang-SA marriage in the context of being a Polokwane griever are among those propagating it. To this extent what we see are failed or standing capitalist private interests played out as "independent analysis". There is also nothing absolutely surprising about individuals like Max du Preez; for they fit the conservative mould of the continuous anti-ANC-led Alliance agenda post-1994.
Instead of going to the root, the so-called "independent analysis" which we are addressing ignores hard facts. In the process it jumps on to the bandwagon of baseless anti-SACP and anti-ANC-led Alliance allegations that constitute a political agenda. This has so far proven to be nothing, but a one-sided and embedded opinion in a climate in which no-one dares to analyseholistically all the actions which constitute part of the problem.
It is in this context that the ANC's intervention was attacked before it was implemented, throughout its implementation and its outcome rejected even before it was arrived at. FACT: it is not the SACP that attacked and rejected the outcome of the ANC's intervention. On the contrary we have consistently supported this intervention and frequently met with Cosatu and the ANC in bilateral meetings. Professor Steven Friedman's "independent analysis" that suggests otherwise is an inverted "analysis". It is inevitably diametrically opposed to the truth.
We have sometimes been told through the so-called "independent analysis" that to be independent one or her organisation must prove their "worth" by attacking the ANC-led Alliance or partners! This is like a prisoner who as a condition of gang membership is required to attack another in jail. Such a "definition" of what it means to be "independent" is, inherently, politically embedded.
Should such an "analysis" be allowed to prevail, South Africa will be set on a counter-revolutionary direction which will plunge our country into a poverty of philosophy and hostility towards a scientific outlook of society. The fact of the matter is that despite what as the SACP we have characterised as non-antagonistic and therefore reconcilable contradictions within the ranks of the labour movement in general and Cosatu in particular and which have by no doubt contributed to the present challenges, the problem is fundamentally the result of deeper structural processes and forces which are systemic and historical.
Global capitalist crisis and the legacy of colonisation and apartheid
The international capitalist system crisis that erupted in 2008 worsened what was already a structural triple-crisis of racialised and gendered inequality, unemployment and poverty in SA which was primarily created under colonialism and apartheid. As a response to the crisis, cost-cutting in the private sector and austerity measures in the public sector entrenched world-wide with some countries in Europe being the worst affected.
Global production and trade plummeted both as a result and a part of the crisis. Many firms were liquidated, millions of job losses occurred, unemployment acutely increased, inequality within and across borders widened, and more people than before were affected by poverty. Hard-won workers' gains were eroded the world over.
It became more difficult for workers to secure new gains as they were pushed more into the defensive. Many among the employed population, mostly black people in SA found themselves faced with an increased demand to take care not only of their immediate but also extended family members affected by unemployment.
While others imposed austerity measures, governments such as SA generally maintained increased levels of public, social and infrastructure spending that they had adopted. However, growth on these was structurally constrained as the tax base contracted.
As our recently launched discussion document states, successive ANC-led governments since our victory over apartheid in 1994 have driven major redistributive socio-economic programmes. Among the notable achievements have been:
More than 16 million (nearly one-third of all South Africans) are now benefiting from a range of social grants - up from 3 million in 1994;
Over 7 million new household electricity connections benefitting millions of our people have been made since 1996. (To put this achievement into context - in the preceding century, successive white minority regimes only electrified 5 million households!);
Over 3.3 million free houses have been built, benefiting more than 16 million people;
More than 1.4 million students have benefited from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme;
Over 9 million learners in 20 000 schools receive daily meals.
Over 400 000 solar water heaters have been installed free on the rooftops of poor households in the past 5 years - one of the largest such programmes in the world.
There are many other major redistributive achievements in sanitation and water connections, in adult basic education, in Grade R school enrolment, in rolling out HIV treatment, and much more.
Despite these major and all important socio-economic redistribution achievements, combined with the non-racial, non-sexist democratic transformation including the many human and workers' rights we have enacted since 1994, and together improving the quality of life of millions of our people for the better, there was however insufficient structural transformation particularly of the systemic features of our productive economy.
This economic transformation is itself the subject of an intense process of class struggle which the SACP has been pushing. It continues to form the strategic objective we seek to achieve through our discussion document, titled ‘Going to the root'.
Meanwhile, in the face of the international capitalist crisis and the historical legacy of colonisation and apartheid, some disingenuously blamed the ANC-led government and even the Alliance for what was caused by capitalism. Certain opposition parties actually propagated the idea that SA's current challenges are not connected to the country's history of oppression and exploitation.
It is in this context of a capitalist crisis that in addition a similar politics of demagogy and populism, involving simplistic approaches to what is a complex, deep-rooted, systemic and structural problem emerged. This was in part assisted by massive media coverage, while the ANC-led revolutionary movement was being either marginalised or attacked in large sections of the press.
Mushrooming unions promised workers to achieve maximum bargaining demands. However, at the same time they shifted attention from the capitalist class exploiters, and attacked the ANC-led government and Alliance coupled with emotive mobilisation raising false hopes. This fuelled fragmentations in the labour movement as some workers believed in it and realigned. But were those maximum demands achieved? Never.
The payslips of the workers in the Rustenburg platinum belt do not lie. They tell a true story consistent with the hardships that workers experience in their daily lives. This is in stark contrast to the figures that have been manipulated in the media to suggest otherwise.
The SACP firmly supports workers' struggle for a living wage and better conditions of employment as well as the decent work agenda. However under capitalism labour exploitation by "private" capital will not end, and will continue to reproduce the problems that workers want to do away with.
Therefore the real fruit of their battle lies in joining the ranks of the revolutionary movement to fight for socialism while at the same time intensifying collective bargaining struggles. This cannot be used as a divisive platform to deepen and pursue fragmentations within the ranks of the labour movement.
By its inherent nature and character the struggle for socialism and the struggle for the achievement of the goals of the Freedom Charter require MAXIMUM organisational and political unity, particularly within the ranks of organised workers who must be dedicated in organising the unorganised.
However, what we have seen is a divisive phenomenon which demands socialism from the SACP instead of joining ranks with the Party and taking the struggle forward through in unity. The SACP does not have socialism - on the contrary, it is fighting for it.
In the context of the crisis we have also seen how easy some even within the ranks of the labour movement took the bait. Like opposition parties they too increasingly attacked the democratic revolutionary movement - for what are centuries-old problems primarily created under colonisation and apartheid and made worse by the international capitalist system economic crisis.
The increased challenge facing workers' hard-won gains and the difficulty to expand on those gains as capitalists became more intransigent in the face of the crisis were also blamed on the ANC-led government and Alliance.
Concerning policy differences within the Alliance, more engagements have been taking place. The Alliance partners have in fact agreed at its last summit held in 2013 to set up a Task Team to address the issues raised by the SACP and Cosatu regarding for example the National Development Plan.
The SACP's strategy is not to break away and go a separatist route when there are policy differences in the Alliance. FACT: for the Party, MAXIMUM UNITY among the historically oppressed and the working class is sacrosanct. This is the condition for the success of the National Democratic Revolution and the struggle for socialism.
It is in pursuit and defence of this GOLDEN RULE of MAXIMUM UNITY that the SACP has for many years stood firm and rejected deceptive calls to break the Alliance: this is very much consistent with the historic mission of the ANC which was formed to unite ALL the historically oppressed and ALL the democratic people who support this just cause to pursue the struggle for freedom.
It is for this reason that the Party's detractors and enemies hate it with passion. This has become common in the misleading and poisonous opinion pieces and utterances we have seen flying in the media some unfortunately from the ranks of the labour movement. They and their ilk project the ANC as the main target which en route to it their artillery finds the SACP forming a defence wall.
The SACP has worked very hard in building the progressive trade union movement over the many years of its existence and struggle. No political party in this country can match its credentials. In building a united society, organisational and political unity, the SACP has dedicated many years in the struggle to build the Alliance, whose roots and theoretical basis are contained in the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1848).
Marx and Engels developed the fundamental principles of Communist Party organisation and relationship with other political organisations. Section II of the Manifesto states that: "The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement". Section IV states that: "The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement".
This is the programme the SACP has been committed to in our liberation struggle, the National Democratic Revolution and the struggle for socialism. It is in this context that hardly 7 years after its founding the SACP developed a dedicated focus on building the Alliance. It will be childish after so many years of struggle to abandon the Alliance simply because some "independent analysis" and new opposition forces lined up against the ANC call on us to do so in order to prove that we are "independent".
On the contrary, the party's independence is the foundation upon which it forges alliances. The SACP will NOT stop defending, and will NOT impose a maximum programme as a condition of unity on its Alliance partners and all other progressive organisations and individuals.
We would also like to caution those who would like to take the simplistic, inward and backward tribalist attitudes on the challenges facing the working class. Such a behaviour is extremely dangerous and goes against the spirit with which the ANC was formed to crash the demon of tribalism. The SACP is available to engage with all whom it may concern against this dangerous phenomenon.
What is to be done?
As our Politburo said, the SACP "remains committed to the struggle for working class unity, including a respect for a diversity of views amongst the organised working class and the popular masses. The SACP will do everything in its capacity to achieve this unity, and is currently working on a new programme to intensify the class struggle".
The Party has requested bilateral meetings with Cosatu and the ANC with the aim of consolidating and taking forward a broader Alliance approach in ensuring that everything possible is done to restore unity in Cosatu for the federation to develop further and play its role as an independent and militant representative of the workers! The SACP welcomes in this regard Cosatu's Central Executive Committee to embark on a process of political engagement.
The SACP reiterates its call on workers, the progressive labour movement in particular and the labour movement in general to "prioritise the unity in diversity of the working class and poor in practical, on-the-ground work" and "NOT elevate tactical differences... while monopoly capital strengthens its exploitative grip on our country".
We further reiterate our call for the re-building of principled, disciplined and MAXIMUM UNITY in the labour movement based on respect for democracy. Further, the Party calls for increased effort to organise unorganised workers and to all Cosatu affiliates to work harder in building unity. This includes the 7 unions that have announced the suspension of active involvement in Cosatu.
The Party was correct to commit itself to this effort of unity. We reiterate our humble call for this to include "a collective discussion on the contemporary challenges confronting South Africa's working class". Setting a leadership example, we have put forward our discussion document, titled ‘Going to the root', on placing the programme of the transformation of our society onto a second, more radical phase!
The SACP is absolutely correct that unity and intensified effort instead of divisions are needed to confront the problems facing the working class: "massive capitalist-driven dismantling of our productive economy" and the "restructuring of the work-place" involving "casualisation, labour-brokering, increasing capital intensity, growing monopoly domination at the expense of more labour-intensive, medium-scale enterprises, tax avoidance through tax havens, transfer pricing, collusive behaviour, an investment strike, crisis levels of domestic unemployment and under-employment, poverty and inequality".
The SACP will not lower its level and start exchanging insults with those who are not committed to unity. On the contrary, we will consistently seek new ways of engaging them even if they are not prepared to be convinced otherwise through persuasion.
We call on all metalworkers to seek constructive engagement to remain in Cosatu which is their home as it is to all other workers. Similarly, ANC headed liberation movement and Alliance remain a home to the metalworkers of our country as it is to all other workers, progressive strata and revolutionary militants.
Statement of the SACP Central Committee presented at a press conference at Party HQ by the Second Deputy General Secretary, Comrade Solly Mapaila, November 20 2014
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
