SACP End of the Year and New Year Messages (December 22 2010)
The SACP wishes to take this opportunity to wish all South Africans, especially the workers and the poor of our country, a happy festive season and a happy new year in 2011.
Some important advances and achievements
The year 2010 has witnessed both some significant advances as well as setbacks, especially for workers and the poor of our country. The year 2010 has been negatively affected by the global capitalist crisis - resulting in continuing job losses and the failure of the domestic capitalist economy to create decent work for the overwhelming majority of our people.
At the same time there has been some significant achievements. The holding of a highly successful 2010 FIFA World Cup, as well as continued investment into infrastructure, have all gone a long way in mitigating against what could have been an even more disastrous year in terms of jobs. One important lesson from 2010 is that if we, as a country, are able to singularly focus on a uniting objective, it is indeed possible to achieve decisive advances in the economic growth and development of our economy to achieve our overall developmental objectives.
The SACP also welcomes a number of positive government initiatives during 2010. These include the successful launch of perhaps the biggest campaign for testing for HIV/AIDS ever undertaken by government. We also welcome government's indications of its firm commitment to rolling out the National Health Insurance scheme as soon as possible. The SACP will throw its full weight behind the NHI, including engaging in battles with all the class enemies of this programme. The importance of an NHI is further underlined by the recent revelations of how private medical aid schemes have hugely increased their rates, thus continuing to fleece millions of its members to make profits.
The SACP also welcomes the strides being made on the education and skills development front, including commitment to improve conditions in our schools as well as the revamping of the country's skills development strategy. The SACP also welcomes the Green Paper on land and rural development as a much needed intervention to re-energise the much needed land reform to benefit the overwhelming majority of the landless in our country. The SACP has also called for the convening of Land Summit II in order to deepen land and agrarian transformation in our country.
The SACP welcomes the adoption of a strategy for a new growth path by government, which signals a radical departure in the economic thinking of government over the first 15 years of our democracy. Whilst the SACP is still going to discuss the details of this new growth path, we however call upon the workers and the poor of our country to mobilize in order to ensure that this new growth path does indeed serve the interests of the overwhelming majority of our people, beyond formalistic and rhetorical calls for liberal and constitutionally equality that is devoid of socio-economic transformation.
Despite the many challenges, the above shows that government remains focused on the five priorities of the ANC-led alliance. The SACP however wishes to urge the Alliance and government to also make the necessary follow ups to the many issues raised during the public service strike this year, including the issue of closing the apartheid wage gap, a decent social wage (including housing), as well as the conclusion of the necessary agreements on essential services.
We are however under no illusion that to achieve the objectives of these priorities will require enormous mobilization of our people in order to roll back attempts by greedy capitalist interests to try and undermine these goals. We for instance end the year with yet more scandals by capitalist monopolies in the food sector. The continuing robbery of our people through price-fixing, and the now scandalous exposure that rotten chicken is being re-sold for human consumption, goes to show the extent to which capitalism knows no decent bounds in its pursuit for profits.
It is for these reasons that for the SACP the struggle to fight poverty necessarily must include the rolling back of the capitalist market.
The necessity and relevance of our Tripartite Alliance: The bankruptcy of the opposition
One of the most important lessons in 2010 is that despite a heightened offensive by the mainstream commercial media, with the backing of all the political opposition, it is only the ANC-led Alliance and its government, which still enjoys the confidence of the overwhelming majority of t our people. This underlines the fact that of all the political formations in our country, it is only this alliance that is best capable to lead South African society towards a better future for all.
Alliance relations at national level remains healthy, albeit characterized by robust internal discussions, though there still remains enormous challenges at subnational levels. The SACP ends the year also highly confident of an overwhelming victory of the ANC in the 2011 local government election. The challenge is that of reinforcing the many councilors who continue to do sterling work in serving our people with diligence and determination, whilst simultaneously replacing those councilors who tarnish the image of local government by not doing their work.
The year 2010 has proven beyond any reasonable doubt the bankruptcy of all opposition parties; thus reinforcing the fact that none of them have a vision or programme capable of addressing the needs of the overwhelming majority of our people other than the ANC-led alliance.
The SACP had always correctly observed and argued that the IFP could not survive beyond the existence of the apartheid regime and its dependent tentacles of the bantustan system. The SACP is being proven right by what is an inevitable implosion of this organisation. The inevitable implosion of the IFP is a vindication of our argument that tribalism, coupled with the narrow interests of a dependent Bantustan elite, can never be a solution in addressing the national needs and aspirations of the African population as whole, irrespective of tribal and other narrow identities.
Similarly, when Cope was formed, the SACP correctly argued that not sustainable political party in our country can exist and sustain itself purely on the basis of having lost leadership positions in another political party. Cope is falling apart precisely because those who broke away from the ANC continue to do what they know best, that is, elevating fighting for leadership positions above the national interests of our country as a whole.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has long proven itself as representing the interests of a privileged few, through the mobilization of minority fears, not even in the interests of the majority of the Coloured and Indian minorities, but for purposes of entrenching white minority (and often racist) interests. Therefore the public posture by the DA as champions of our constitution, is nothing more than a smokescreen of trying to hijack our democracy and constitution to serve the interests of the privileged white minority.
The openly racist treatment of Africans by building open toilets by the DA in Cape Town - one of the worst violations of human dignity since 1994, represents one of the worst violations of our constitution. The additional violent brutalization of black (African and Coloured) communities in Hout Bay, is the ultimate exposure of the racist character and agenda of an organization like the DA.
All the above is proof that the opposition parties in South Africa cannot be able to address the genuine aspirations of the overwhelming majority of South Africans, other than to serve very narrow, sectarian, and often racial, elitist and tribal interests.
Defeat the often racialised (and elitist) liberal offensive
As we end the year 2010, and begin the New Year 2011, it is absolutely important that the workers and the poor of our country must define and lead the transformation agenda in our country. This is particularly important in the wake of an increasingly aggressive liberal, anti-majoritarian and oppositionist offensive against our democracy, mainly carried through and abetted by commercial media in our country.
If there is anything that must be a lesson from 2010 it is that the transformation and diversification of South African media is an even more pressing priority in consolidating our democracy. The SACP pledges to do all in its power to lead a genuine and principled struggle for the diversification of our media to reflect South African society in its totality.
This must be a struggle for a media that represents the overwhelming majority of our people, including through their own languages, rather than mainly through the English language. It is for this reason that the SACP urges parliament in the New Year to urgently discuss, amongst others, the idea of a media tribunal as well as other transformation interventions for media diversity.
An important component of taking forward the struggle for the transformation of the media, one of the priorities for the SACP in 2011 would be that of defending our public broadcaster from a heightened liberal offensive to capture this institution. This liberal offensive projects itself as the biggest defender of the public broadcaster, when its real agenda is that of capturing the only major media institution that is not in the hands of a liberal, oppositionist force; as the print media has already been captured by these interests.
The SABC, as a public broadcaster, must genuinely serve the interests of the workers and the poor of our country. To this end we will also be closely watching its turn around strategy in order to ensure that its public mandate is strengthened and that the turn around strategy is not a masked neo-liberal agenda to subject the SABC even further to the commercial capitalist interests. We call upon the Alliance to convene an indaba on the SABC in the New Year, to discuss these and other challenges facing the public broadcaster.
The year 2011 as the year to deepen genuine people's democracy
The SACP therefore calls upon all the workers and poor of our country, and all progressively minded South Africans to use 2011 as the year to deepen genuine people's democracy that prioritises the socio-economic interests of the majority of our people. This must go beyond the liberal rhetorical commitments to formal democratic rights devoid of socio-economic rights for the majority of our people.
As part of realizing the above objectives, the SACP will escalate its Red October Campaign to transform both the South African state and private financial institutions to prioritise the eradication of poverty. It is for this reason that we are also calling for the convening of another financial sector summit, involving both the private financial institutions and the development finance institutions. The aim of such a summit would be to review progress since the adoption of the Financial Sector Charter as well as to ensure that resources in the financial institutions are also harnessed to support government priorities.
Fighting the seduction of decadent capitalist values on our youth
The SACP also wishes to congratulate our Young Communist League for the successful congress it held this year despite an attempted offensive by the new tendency towards selfish capitalist accumulation to try and derail this congress. The defeat of this tendency was an important milestone that built on the highly successful ANC NGC held in September this year. We wish the newly elected leadership well and its main challenge will be to strengthen the YCL to play an important role in mobilizing our youth for job creation and education, and against the seduction of decadent capitalist values of worshipping money over social solidarity.
If there is one important and fundamental challenge of our country going into 2011, it is that of waging a consistent struggle to defeat all attempts to try and turn our youth into worshippers of tenders and money at the expense of a principled struggle to transform our country into a democracy for all.
Despite the many weaknesses in the organization of the festival of the World's Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), the SACP affirms the relevance of such organizations and initiatives and firmly rejects the DA's right wing criticism of the necessity to mobilize youth against imperialism and its decadent values.
It is also for these above reasons that we must celebrate 2010 as the year in which government took the struggle against corruption to higher levels, including the establishment of the anti-corruption unit in the department of public service and administration, as well as a commitment to make government tender procurement more transparent.
Similarly, we must make the year 2011 the year to expose and fight corruption in both the public and private sectors, and highlight the fact that it is the capitalist system that is the biggest generator of corruption in our country and globally.
We take this opportunity wish all South Africans a happy festive season and a happy 2011. In particular we wish the workers of our country a deserved break from the grinding mill of capitalist labour.
Issued by the SACP, December 22 2010
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