State of the Nation Address: SACP's response
The SACP welcomes the State of the Nation Address as delivered last night in Parliament by the President, Comrade Jacob Zuma. In particular the SACP agrees with the President that South Africa is now a better place to live in than before 1994, and that we have a good story to tell in many areas of socio-economic and political transformation and development.
The SACP acknowledges the recognition bestowed by the President on the role played by our former General Secretary Comrade Moses Kotane, whose wife, a revolutionary activist on her own right, turned 102 years on Wednesday, 12 February and the SACP wishes her a happy belated birthday. Comrade Moses Kotane dedicated his life to our liberation struggle, and along with many other revolutionaries in the SACP and the African National Congress (ANC), he served our people with distinction. He was laid to rest at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, Russia after he met his death in the struggle.
Advances and progress since 1994, and particularly during the past five years of the fourth democratic administration
The SACP also welcomes the advances and progress that the President highlighted.
We demolished ‘the undemocratic, unrepresentative, oppressive and corrupt state that was serving a minority' - the colonial and apartheid regime. We replaced this racist and sexist state machinery with a ‘unitary, non-racial, non-sexist democratic state, answerable to and representative of all South Africans'.
The President's State of the Nations Address last night symbolised this, among others by reporting back and accounting to the people on the advances and progress achieved by the government in the last 20 and particularly the past 5 years, covering the five key priorities of our fourth democratic administration: education, health, employment creation and decent work, rural development, fighting crime and corruption. The President was also frank about the challenges that we continue to face, which we welcome as the SACP.
Inequality, unemployment and poverty
The SACP agrees with the President that while we have scored advances and made progress in our five key priorities there is however still more work that needs to be done to move South Africa forward. Particularly we agree with the President that focus must include addressing the triple challenges of inequality, unemployment and poverty.
The SACP welcomes the recovery of the jobs that were lost due to the global capitalist crisis in the last 5 years. As the President stated, indeed jobs are being created again, and now just over 15 million people have jobs - ‘the highest ever in our history, with over 650,000jobs created last year, according to Stats SA'.
The SACP also welcomes social security measures that our democratic government has implemented to address the challenge of poverty. As a result of this, now our social assistance programmes covers nearly 16 million people from an extremely low base, that of 1994.
Economic transformation: localisation
The SACP also welcomes progress in ensuring localisation of manufacturing and assembly. This will go a long way in expanding manufacturing and driving employment growth. The importance of measures such as the Automotive Incentive Scheme and related interventions, leading to the country's participation in the manufacture of cars, minibus taxis and buses cannot be overemphasised under the circumstances.
Similarly, the importance of the support that the government has adopted in revising and re-building the clothing, textile, leather and footwear sectors as well as agriculture cannot be overemphasised. The SACP welcomes the development of the smallholder farmers, of whom 88 due to government support ‘supplied the United Nations World Food Programme with 268 tons of maize and beans to send to Lesotho last month'.
The SACP also welcomes progress and advances in other areas of our five key priorities, including infrastructure, projects in science and technology, communications and information, land redistribution and rural development - in which significant resources as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product were invested.
HIV/AIDS and life expectancy
The SACP welcomes progress in turning the tide against HIV/AIDS and the significant improvement in the life expectancy rate. South Africans are now living longer, with an increase in life expectancy from below 50 years for males and 52 years for females in 2008 to 58 years for males and 61.4 years for females in 2013. The trend in life expectancy is now upward. That South Africa is used as a model country by the United Nations Aids Programme shows that that there has been effective leadership during the Zuma-led fourth democratic administration in confronting HIV/AIDS and other health related challenges.
Education
The SACP welcomes increasing numbers of learners and students in education across all levels, from pre-primary school through to college and university. College enrolments have increased by 90% and universities by 12%. In particular, the policy of no-fee paying schools and National Student Financial Aid Scheme have been the single largest driver financially of the increased enrolments.
We also welcome improved matric results from around 61% in 2009 to 78% last year, in particular the sustained improvement in bachelor passes each year in the last 5 years, one of the key indicators of quality.
The SACP welcomes progress in opening the new universities in Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape, and the plan to build 12 new colleges or college campuses. This will go a long way in expanding post-school education and training
"Service delivery" protests
Independent research, including by Municipal IQ, strongly suggests that so-called "service delivery" protests tend to occur not where little has changed, but paradoxically where there has been relatively significant government "delivery". President Zuma was, therefore, correct to assert that it is often not the absence of delivery that lies behind protests. It is frequently a sense of relative deprivation by those who have yet to benefit while neighbouring sections of a township have. In other cases, it is the poor quality of construction, or even localised squabbles over access to control over the allocation of state-provided resources that are at the root of some of the protests.
The SACP reaffirms the right of communities to engage in peaceful protests on any issue of concern, including service delivery. This requires communities to be on the outlook of criminal elements who would like to exploit the constitutional right to protest and reverse service delivery by destroying and burning the already delivered public goods and services. Through its branches and members the SACP will where necessary take a leading role, but real service delivery protests cannot involve the destruction and burning of the already delivered public goods and services.
Similarly, the SACP calls on the police to respect the right to life. The Party joins the President in calling on police to conduct their work within the confines of the law. The SACP condemns violence and killings, regardless of who commits such. Decisive measures must be taken to ensure that every loss of life that occurs is investigated thoroughly with decisive action taken.
Global economic conditions impact on South Africa
As the President has stated, the global economic conditions pose a challenge to economic progress in South Africa and other developing economies. The disruptive fall in our exchange rate as a result of among others tapering in the USA is likely to cause other problems in the economy despite advantages in exporting sectors. This requires urgent policy attention.
The SACP will continue to campaign for policy changes as an independent formation and participate in our revolutionary alliance with the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to attend to this and other economic challenges facing our society.
In particular, the SACP believes that the President could have said more about the negative role played by dominant private sector oligopolies. Much of the vulnerability of our economy in a climate of global turmoil is directly linked to financial liberalisation measures of the mid-1990s that were heavily lobbied for by big capital, along with dual listings, tax avoidance, and the ongoing investment strike by these major corporates. The collusive behaviour of these same players in critical sectors of our economy - construction, the food value chain, finance, telecommunications needs also to be much more firmly outlined and dealt with. It is this behaviour that is looting billions of Rands from consumers and the public purse. While the opposition parties blame President Zuma for our high unemployment rate, they are all remarkably silent about the real culprits.
Fighting crime and corruption
SACP welcomes the progress that has been achieved by the government in fighting crime and corruption, particularly the handling and investigation of 13,000 cases since the establishment of the national anti-corruption hotline, the recovery of R320 million, and other actions undertaken against perpetrators. More work in this sphere is however required, including review of the structural and material basis which give rise to and make corruption systemic.
A call to continued transformation
That South Africa is now a better place than before 1994 did not come on its own. This is the result of conscious and deliberate efforts led by the ANC in alliance with the SACP and the progressive trade union and civic movements.
The SACP is thus calling on our people, the working class and the poor, to continue voting for the ANC to lead our socio-economic and political transformation and development project towards the achievement of the Freedom Charter's vision.
Statement issued by the SACP, February 15 2014
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