7^th OR Tambo District Congress Declaration

26 November 2017

We, communists, gathered in the 7^th OR Tambo District Congress (Bulolo Holiday Camp, Port St Johns, 25th – 26th November 2017), declare that it is high time that our structures don’t rest on their laurels and grab the bull by the horns that has hijacked our democratic revolution and has run roughshod in looting the state. These looters are organized around the President of the ANC comrade Jacob Zuma and whose floundering from one disaster to another has emboldened the enemy bringing the forces of reaction to our doorstep bringing the democratic revolution to the brink of losing access to the levers of state ushered by the 1994 democratic breakthrough.

We have noted over the years the disintegration of the constituent parts that made up revolutionary forces that are the bedrock for the advancement of the National Democratic Revolution through the divisive leadership of the present incumbents that hold sway in our movement and commit ourselves to build the unity of the masses of the oppressed and their organs by working to unite the various working class formations through working to actively build bridges between various organs of the oppressed some which originate from the liberation movement but split over the years, yet still collectively share the vision of the advancement of the National Democratic Revolution and would help in building socialism in the interstices of capitalism.

We recognize the harrowing struggles faced by the masses of the working class through being mercilessly excluded from hitch-hiking the communications highway, kept on the periphery of healthcare, education, dilapidated transport infrastructure that is only geared to benefit the narrow interests of some sections of the bourgeoisie and propertied strata in society, thereby leading to the corrosion of the socio-economic development of the oppressed. We support the heroic struggle for the decommodification of Education and Healthcare, including the demand for the building of social infrastructure, without prefixing this with terminology that seeks to maintain the commodity form of these essential services.

We fully appreciate the dangers of the capitalist system turning our rural communities into dumping sites for fractions of the black oppressed and turning our rural areas into societies that are infested with criminal activity giving rise to the proliferation of massive drug use and the turning of our communities into drug dens in our rural areas eroding the progressive morality that was historically characterized by values of human solidarity and the best forms of African organic knowledge.

It is in this context that we declare:

1. We will roll back the tenderization of the State and the turning of the state into a warren for the ruthless hunting of African skins for profit-making tearing asunder everything that we hold dear and thereby corrupting the very fabric of our institutions of the state which ultimately erodes public confidence in the willingness of the movement to drive social transformation, thereby building a stratum that factionalizes the liberation movement with its ill-gotten wealth.

2. We will work actively to unite various organs of the oppressed that collectively share the vision of the realization of the National Democratic Revolution and the triumph of the socialist struggle through working towards unity of the trade union movement in our country by interacting with various unions and federations across the board to work towards realizing the goal of one country one federation from below, whatever the protestations of our alliance partners who may hold a different view in this regard.

3. We will roll-back the capitalist market in all its manifestations given the proliferation of shopping malls pitilessly exploiting vulnerable workers. We will fight the abuse of hawkers and the turning of our public spaces into places for the private benefit of deployed cadres who use their proximity to information as an instrument for profit maximization and the building of problematic linkages between owners of businesses and political leaders which lead them into collaborating in surrendering both the land and our spaces to their financiers.

4. We will ensure that the Party has a focused program on the development of female cadres and their preparation for key leadership positions with the intention that they occupy strategic positions in the Party and fighting their relegation into political appendages simply to satisfy the constitutional imperatives of the organization without any real intention in changing the structure of patriarchal system and its negative implications for the organization.

5. We will build a campaigning Party that is actively involved in the daily struggles of the oppressed through mass protest action to try and tilt the balance of forces to the benefit of the masses of the oppressed and develop the self-activity of the masses by campaigning for provision of water, quality healthcare, Free Education in totality and any other campaigns that require the self-activity of the masses.

6. We will fight against the extraction of raw materials along the N2 coastline driven by the massive infrastructure rollout and commit ourselves to ensure that such development does not result in the masses of the oppressed being left in the doldrums with private individuals opportunistically benefitting in a manner that requires that we urgently convene a Land Summit to trash out some of the details in this area that are problematic in how the land issue is being dealt with which leads to the extraction of raw materials.

7. That we commit ourselves to building a united, strong and dynamic Party that is able to play its vanguard role in a manner that is able to knit together the various struggles of the oppressed by reversing some of the problematic conceptualizations that may have caused fissured within the working class movement over the years such as the misconception of the Marikana Massacre which we recognized in the 6^th Congress and commit to continue to engage respectfully with forces that the Party may have unnecessarily antagonized because of the euphoria of the Polokwane breakthrough.

The Congress elected the leadership in the following fashion:

Issued by Mvunelo Simthembile, District Secretary, SACP, 26 November 2017