DECLARATIONS AND RESOLUTIONS TAKEN BY THE CONGRESS OF THE PEOPLE IN BLOEMFONTEIN - 14 JUNE 2015

16 June 2015

With an invigorated new sense of purpose and steely determination we are ready to do battle in next year’s Local Government Election. Our buoyant mood in this gathering is reminiscent of our first coming together in this same city, Bloemfontein, six years ago. We are resolved today to make good on our promise to the nation to restore hope, morality and certainty in the political sphere.

With our former members returning to the fold once again, in numbers, we have taken steps to tighten our constitutional provisions in order to enforce accountability, good faith and compliance from our leaders and members. We seek a smoother and better functioning of our party. Henceforth, we wish to be active in the field where vulnerable people battle hardships and injustice every day so that we can bring succour to them. We do not want be tied up anywhere else to the detriment of our voters and ourselves. We are looking ahead. We say to the nation that COPE is back!

Since our formation in 2008, we have been very conscious about our deep indebtedness to the original Congress of the People. This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the coming together of the people of South Africa in a big Indaba in defiance of the government of that time. The meeting, which took place in Kliptown, on June 26, 1955, formulated a charter that envisaged a post-apartheid society committed unequivocally to rule of law and equality before the law. Mindful of the vision and the bravery of those who conceived the charter sixty years ago, we, who are gathered here in Bloemfontein, recommit ourselves to demanding rule of law and equality before the law that exempts no one and nobody.

Since our formation in 2008 we decided to be resolute in defending freedom of speech and the right of the media to operate fearlessly in the pursuit of truth. A free media is our guarantee of freedom from the abuse of power. We will therefore always fiercely protect the right of journalists to uncover scandals and corruption; and to make these and other malfeasance public. The right of journalists to operate without threats and harassment is something we must jealously and passionately defend. We accept, as Our President Lekota rightly advises us, that criticism hurts; but we should never bleed when we are criticized. We should introspect and improve our performance because the press we get is the press we deserve.

Today is a significant day for as Congress of the People. We have now adopted a home built version of social democracy as our ideological foundation. As Social Democrats, we take offence at South Africa being the most unequal society in the world. We are also displeased and distressed that the promise of a better life for all did not materialize for the vast majority of our population. Our unshakeable mission, as Social Democrats, is therefore to strive resolutely and relentlessly to achieve an economic and social dispensation in which the wealth of the nation shall be shared by all as dividends accruing from an expanding and invigorated economy.

As Social Democrats, with an understanding of the role of entrepreneurial enterprises in creating wealth, we will work to restore business confidence by pressing for the commitment to the rule of law by all and seeking to encourage direct investments allowing for large scale job creation. Like Singapore, we want South Africa to conduct a very fierce and sustained crusade against corruption and the abuse of taxpayers' contributions to the fiscus. Corruption is the enemy that we must slay.

The Local Government Elections next year will be the battleground for politics with integrity to defeat the politics of greed, indifference and corruption. We are now ready to reclaim our position as a leading voice in the politics of South Africa. The insistence by our president Lekota that all our candidates be thoroughly acquainted with the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), signifies how serious we are about combatting corruption and its evil companion: futile and fruitless expenditure. We will enforce strict financial management wherever we have a role in municipal governance. In our view, every municipality must have a clean audit annually as a matter of course, failing which there will have to be serious consequences for the transgressing mayor and councillors.

We as delegates having taken into consideration the politics of serial corruption under a President of our country who from 2009 has shown no commitment to his oath of office.

As delegates of the Congress of the People we therefore resolve that we will-

1. focus sharply on invigorating the local and regional economies in order to give a spurt to the national economy; and in this regard we will subject the government to intense pressure to get Eskom and a host of Independent Power Producers to work together to urgently meet the energy demands of the nation so that people are not inconvenienced and businesses are not constrained or even crippled as is happening presently;

2. hold discussions with all sectors of the economy that keep the wheels of business turning in order to build stronger relationships with them; and to work together with them to combat the negative and often hostile attitude of the ruling party to business; and to address the issue of policy uncertainty openly and honestly so that those who are withholding from investing further in the country can be persuaded to change their minds;

3. insist that our public representatives, MPs, MPLs and Councillors use their respective legislature platforms to advance our social democracy objectives vigorously, and to attack the problems impeding service delivery robustly; and to be totally intolerant of both corruption and futile and fruitless expenditure. 

4. reject the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) because it is a platform for a limited number of individuals who are connected to the ruling party to get rich; and in place of the NYDA to fight aggressively for government to invest resources in the thorough skilling and training of our youth in order to open wider avenues for employment for them and all others in an expanding economy suitably supplied with marketable skill;

5. attack the unacceptable neglect and underperformance in the health services in most areas as these are compromising patient health through inadequate staffing, incompetent management, visible inefficiency, lack of medicines supply and despicable maintenance of clinics and hospitals; and to expose these to the media if the requested remedial action is not forthcoming;

6. campaign vigorously to secure support for the building of safer communities and to search for new modalities to tackle gangsterism, drug abuse, gender violence, child abuse and overcrowding in our townships and informal settlements so that henceforth politicians and not the police will deal with service delivery protests and other grievances in the front line and thus free the police to function as a professional police service working with communities to provide security and maintain law and order;

7. Pursue the injunction of President Lekota to make leadership opportunities available to young leaders who are recruited in our vigorous campaigns in our educational institutions so that they can contribute dynamic leadership which will help create an economic and political environment that will allow young people to use their training, skills, entrepreneurial capabilities, diplomas and degrees to their own and the country's benefit;

8. pursue a dynamic approach to policy evolution within the party to meet the exigencies of the time through continuous information sharing and interaction within our structures in order to deal with issues such as the removal of statues, preserving equitable language rights in schools and universities, effecting name changes, amongst other issues, in a manner consistent with evolving policies and in line with our founding values, mission and vision;

9. acknowledge the strides made by women in our society in the different walks of life since 1994 but recognize that the progress is still not significant enough to lead to parity for women in both the government as well as private sector up to the highest level;

10. do our utmost to ensure that xenophobic and organized criminal attacks of persons and businesses in our townships do not repeat themselves again and that we will therefore engage all South Africans to see themselves as Africans and being of Africa; and

11. remember June 16 each year as a day on which to commit again and again to securing social justice for all in memory of those who sacrificed their young lives to build a fairer and more just South Africa and to remain fully cognizant that our youth is our future and therefore to keep all avenues open to them to lead happier and fulfilled lives;

We, the delegates who have gathered here in Bloemfontein do once again fully recommit ourselves to the founding values of our organization. We are also resolved never to allow what happened in the past to fracture our party again. Therefore, with utmost confidence in our purpose, deep responsibility to the citizens of our nation and a passionate desire to realize the greater glory of our beloved country, we go forth to provide the alternative that the citizens of our country are crying out for. We will remain true to our goal of providing responsive, transparent and ethical governance where we are in charge.

We also declare today that we have taken to heart the ringing call of our president Lekota never to get tired in our lives to fight against the cancer of corruption and injustice. We are determined also never surrender our determination to secure freedom and justice for all inside a vibrant democratic and constitutional dispensation.
NOTHING WILL STOP US NOW!

Issued by COPE, June 16 2015