A call on the working class to close ranks: Let us unite and ensure an overwhelming ANC-led alliance electoral victory on May 7th!
The national officials of the SACP and COSATU met on Monday 14th April. COSATU briefed the SACP on the ANC initiative to help rebuild organisational and political unity and cohesion in the federation. The SACP expressed its full support for this initiative.
The main objective of our bilateral was to align the electoral campaigning and messaging of our two formations in the run-up to the May 7th elections. Our starting point is that our strength lies in our unity. Our immediate task remains consistent work to cement the unity of organised workers on an industrial basis under the banner of COSATU based on the principle of one union one industry. This is part and parcel of our historic mission to build the unity of the working class as a whole. As the main motive force of our national democratic revolution the working class has a responsibility to translate this into unity in action behind our tried and tested liberation movement as led by the ANC, advance and defend the gains of our revolution.
In line with the resolutions of our respective formations, we are calling on the South African working class to unite, close ranks, and ensure an overwhelming electoral victory for our alliance partner, the ANC.
Reasons to support an ANC-led alliance election victory
A 20-year track record
As we mark 20-years of democracy in SA, let us remember the important working class victories we have collectively achieved over these two decades. These include a constitution entrenching labour and socio-economic rights, many progressive pro-worker laws, and a series of social gains.
Over past 20-years of an ANC-led government, there have also been critical interventions into key industrial sectors under threat from disinvestment and cheap imports - in particular major government subsidies to the auto sector, and the Clothing and Textiles Competitiveness Programme both of which saved thousands of jobs.
These and many other working class advances have been won not only because workers in their great majority have returned an overwhelming ANC electoral victory in successive elections. These advances have been made, consolidated and defended by the ongoing unity in action of our Alliance, and by the organised workers under the umbrella of COSATU.
But these advances are under constant threat from the capitalist system, and from opposition parties like the DA which opportunistically and selectively praises the administrations of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki - as if they ever voted for those governments - whereas in fact they were an opposition.
Over the past five years there have been further advances
Whilst major challenges remain, we are proud of the important advances made under the fourth democratic ANC-led administration in the midst of an ongoing global capitalist crisis. These include:
o 1 million more households have been connected to electricity;
o A half-million solar water heaters have been installed for free in mostly poor households
o A doubling of FET college student enrolments, and a trebling of the National Students Financial Aid Scheme from R3bn to R9bn;
o The consolidation of the Industrial Policy Action Plan, focusing on the critical industrialisation of our country;
o Important advances in state procurement policies - ensuring that the state and SOEs progressively move to a minimum of 75% local procurement. Already these procurement policies are bearing fruit in terms of local job creation and re-industrialisation, notably in the transport sector.
o A massive state-led infrastructure programme worth 1 trillion rands.
These are just some of the many reasons why we are calling on workers to unite, to close ranks, and to vote ANC.
But our support is not a Blank Cheque! The SACP and COSATU have actively contributed to the ANC's 2014 election manifesto. But we know from experience that ensuring the implementation of a progressive electoral mandate requires both ongoing support and vigilant (at times critical) engagement by the organised formations of the working class. Without a strong and independent SACP, without a militant and independent COSATU, and without a revolutionary working class SACP-COSATU axis, electoral promises can be rolled back and nullified by the unceasing class war waged by the capitalist class. Without vigilance and strong organisation our own formations can be hijacked.
As we take forward and as part of our campaign for an overwhelming ANC victory we remain totally committed to a struggle to address historical and structural challenges facing our people, such as the triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Our economy continues to be based on the dominance of the minerals-energy-finance complex. As part of our commitment to shift our struggle towards a radical second phase of our democratic transition, we will champion a programme to transform this colonial character of our economy and achieve diversification through among others industrialisation and regional integration.
As part of our effort to introduce radical economic changes we shall campaign for:
o A new income or wage policy including consideration for a legislated national minimum wage focused on addressing poverty and inequalities;
o A comprehensive social security system and rejection of piecemeal approaches;
o Aligning the mandate of Treasury and the Reserve Bank to the agenda of a radical economic transformation;
o State intervention including strategic nationalisation to attend to the property question as part of addressing effects of colonialism of a special type;
o Measures to ensure beneficiation including tax measures on mineral exports
o Channelling of retirement funds towards productive investment including building infrastructure where workers live;
o Comprehensive land reform to reverse the legacy of rural and urban racialised spaces;
o Further engage the NDP to support radical economic transformation.
There are several areas in which the commitments of the ANC electoral manifesto will require ongoing working class vigilance.
The fight against corruption
Our ANC-led alliance electoral manifesto advances a number of important interventions that are essential in the fight against corruption. The SACP and COSATU pledge to support these measures that include:
o Action against companies involved in bid rigging and collusion;
o The prohibition of public servants and representatives from doing business with government;
o A centralised process to adjudicate major tenders;
o All corrupt officials to be made individually liable for losses incurred to the state as a result of their corrupt actions; and
o The strengthening of corruption fighting agencies.
The excessive tenderisation of the state, related to the neo-liberal erosion of the state's productive and professional capacity:
This has made the state highly vulnerable to external manipulation (one of the factors at play in the runaway Nkandla expenses). The SACP and COSATU support all efforts to re-build state capacity, to professionalise supply chain management, to ensure that the state uses procurement to advance strategic objectives (rather than rent-seeking), and that the public sector becomes a price-maker, rather than the current reality in which the public sector is charged a premium.
We support government initiated investigations by the Special Investigation Unit into the acts of corruption and criminality on the Nkandla security upgrades. We remain firm that those who are found to have committed such acts, regardless of whether they are in the public or the private sector, must face the full might of the law. This standard must apply in all other projects consistently.
Trade unions are not immune: the growth of business unionism - often a sub-category of BEE.
With the important trade union advances made post-1994, many unions have been able to leverage significant financial resources through automatic subs deductions, control over worker retirement funds, union investment arms, etc. However, these vast funds have also become attractive targets for unscrupulous private sector players working with some leaders in unions. Worker funds have sometimes been diverted into anti-social investments. Our trade union movement needs to commit to a thorough review of how worker funds are managed, to ensuring greater democratic worker control over the funds and greater transparency.
In appreciating the ANC election manifesto's anti-corruption commitments, the SACP and COSATU believe that it is important to underline the capitalist class dynamics underpinning much corruption. The fight against corruption is not just an ethical or law and order matter, it has also to be understood as a struggle to roll back the profit-maximising, dog-eats-dog, possessive individualism of the capitalist system.
Serious challenges in policing: the Rustenburg platinum belt
Our ANC election manifesto commits "to further improve the criminal justice system", undertaking that "the capacity of the police, prosecutors, legal aid and courts will be improved". The SACP and COSATU fully intend to hold the incoming ANC-led administration to this commitment. We expect the new administration to lead a major review of challenges in policing, including public order policing. As Alliance partners we will work with government and the police service on the ground to turn things around. Through neighbourhood watches, street committees, community police forums and other basic organs of popular power we will work to transform the current, often hostile, relationship between police and working class communities.
Workers continue to experience violence in the platinum belt and those responsible have not been arrested and where they got arrested they received bail in the name of being witnesses in the Farlam Commission - which should not be used to shield perpetrators of violence. We call on government to arrest all those implicated in the killing of our people in the platinum belt and to ensure heightened security measures for our people.
The SACP and COSATU will heighten their support for the National Union of Mineworkers, the NUM.
The Mining Sector
The ANC's election manifesto commits to taking "active measures...to ensure security of supply of ...minerals to achieve national objectives such as industrialisation and local beneficiation." In the light of this commitment, we are concerned that the most recent amendment to the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Development Act fails to drive home this objective by ensuring that an appropriate quota of our strategic minerals for manufacturing, energy, agriculture and infrastructure are sold at a cost plus price into the local market and not at excessive, profit-maximising import parity prices. Government has also been slow to implement key recommendations of the ANC-endorsed SIMS (State Intervention in the Mineral Sector) policy package - especially the critical proposal of a Resource Rent Tax.
The SACP and COSATU will campaign for the quotas and pricing of strategic mineral inputs into our national economy to be more effectively legislated for;
o The key recommendations of the SIMS report to be implemented; and
o The introduction of centralised bargaining in all sectors.
All of these are areas of key strategic interest for the working class. As the SACP and COSATU we are determined to ensure that the commitments made in the ANC election manifesto are indeed carried forward, deepened and defended.
On May 7 it is critical that workers come out in large numbers to vote ANC: unite, close ranks and vote ANC
We call on workers to defend the right to vote. SACP and COSATU say: "Workers to come out in numbers to participate in all the major pre-election activities:
o the Alliance march on April 26, in Durban in support of the ANC;
o May Day, 1 May; and
o Siyanqoba rallies
We call on workers to deliver a decisive electoral defeat on the DA and to expose the demagogy of pseudo-left parties.
Electoral boycotting, or ill-conceived campaigns and manoeuvres to spoil ballot papers play straight into the hands of anti-worker, anti-union opposition parties, notably the DA, and cannot be said to be progressive or revolutionary.
Instead of activities that are aimed at aiding a counter-revolution, we call on workers to go out in numbers on Saturday, 26 April, Durban to march in support of the ANC.
Let us remember the wise advice given by comrade Nelson Mandela when he said
"...do not listen to people who talk the loudest, and think the least; they say one thing and mean another. Revolution is serious business."
FORWARD TO AN OVERWHELMING ANC-ALLIANCE ELECTION VICTORY ON MAY 7th!!
Statement issued by COSATU and the SACP, April 16 2014
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