SACP Augmented Central Committee
The annual year-end meeting of the SACP's Augmented Central Committee was held over the 28th and 29th November 2008. The Party's Augmented CC meetings are an occasion to review the work of the SACP over the past year, and to plan for the year ahead.
2008 has been an eventful and challenging political year in South Africa. Following the ANC's 52nd National Conference at the end of last year, there has been a major turnaround in Alliance relationships - particularly at the national level. The many progressive social and economic resolutions taken at the ANC's Polokwane conference have created space and a favourable climate for consolidating unity in action across the Tripartite Alliance. This has been evidenced in the important May and October Alliance Summits and in the emerging character and content of the draft ANC election manifesto currently under discussion.
The political report discussed at the CC called on all SACP members to take an active part in the 16 days of activism against women and child abuse. The scourge of abuse continues to affect our communities deeply, undermining our struggle for human rights, development, and safety and security for all. It is at the community level that we have a particular collective responsibility for waging a battle against women and child abuse. The SACP, together with the ANC, has been organizing street committees and engaging with Community Policing Forums. In the course of the sixteen days of activism, let us redouble our efforts on these fronts. The CC also calls on all communists to join other South Africans tomorrow, Monday December 1st,, to mark World Aids Day. We call upon all South Africans to join the 15 minutes of silence called by NEDLAC partners at 12h00 tomorrow as part of raising awareness about the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
The CC discussed extensively a report on the current global economic crisis and its impact on South Africa. This is the most serious economic crisis in the capitalist global economy since the early 1930s. The crisis is not an accident, it is deeply rooted in the unsustainable systemic features of the last three decades of accelerated globalization. Over several years, the SACP has analysed these features, and warned against a naïve globalizing triumphalism that assumed that all we needed to do in South Africa was to align our economy to the Washington Consensus mantra in order to benefit from what was supposedly an unending horizon of global growth. While it remains the most powerful economy in the world, the US has steadily been losing its dominant hegemonic status, and it has long lost its unrivalled productive dynamism. It has used its persisting if waning dominance to foster reckless speculative activity and to prop up unsustainable consumption patterns at home, serviced by third world manufacturing centres (notably China) and oil producers abroad. Its trade deficit is now in excess of a staggering trillion dollars.
It is no accident that the trigger for the current crisis first occurred in the US financial sector, and specifically with reckless sub-prime loans. The crisis has quickly spread from the mortgage and merchant banking sector into regular banking and from there into the productive economy. Across the US, Japan and much of Europe, major economies are entering into recession. Elsewhere, major slow-downs are predicted - in China the forecast for next year is for the lowest growth rate in 19 years.
We are, globally, in uncharted waters, and no-one knows for sure exactly where this is headed. At least one thing is clear, the current global down-turn will last a considerable time. No economy will be unaffected, and this applies to SA as well. We are told that, "thanks to sound economic policies", our economy is relatively insulated from the turbulence. It is true that our banking sector is relatively insulated thanks, in part, to residual exchange controls and tight regulation (much of which we have campaigned for as the SACP). However, we do have serious structural vulnerabilities - in particular our current account deficit now standing at 8% of GDP. This vulnerability reflects SA's historical over-reliance on primary product exports and our excessive dependence on capital and luxury goods imports. While these structural features of our economy date back over a century, they also reflect a failure to use the recent commodities boom to finance a much more robust domestic industrial policy. We have squandered the boom years on vanity projects and narrow BEE deals, instead of serious transformation of our economic growth path.
There is no doubt that the current global economic crisis will impact on our economy. Growth will slow, there will be pressure on jobs and on households. Clearly, prudent economic management will be required going forward, but doing nothing will be even more imprudent. We have to press ahead with our infrastructure programmes and link active domestic manufacturing support much more dynamically to these programmes. We need to accelerate effective rural development with a focus on food production. We need to crack down on persisting collusive behavior in key sectors of our economy - including agro-processing in the dairy sector, and SASOL's rent-grabbing dominance in the PVC market. This collusive behavior by big capital is costing our country jobs and it is undermining small and medium enterprises and family farms. There is massive fraud in the import sector, not least in clothing. We call on workers and local manufacturers to expose what is happening in the clothing retail sector.
We also call on the government to reverse the scandalous Telkom Christmas gift of Vodacom shares to private shareholders at a cut-price rate, and the selling of these to Vodafone. In particular, the role of the director general in the Department of Communications, and of the former ANC presidency spokesperson, Smuts Ngonyama and his Elephant Consortium, in this ripping off of what was once a national asset, requires close scrutiny. We believe that some of the proceeds of this hurried fire-sale are finding their way into the war-chest of the Shikota Gang of Three.
The CC discussed at length the Party's active involvement in the ANC-led election campaign. We expect our 75,700 members to play a leading role in all phases of the campaign to ensure an overwhelming ANC victory next year. The transformation of SA, into a society in which there is a real material base to support the constitutional imperative of equal rights for all, is a long-haul task. Contrary to the view of some, a solid and sustained electoral majority is not a threat to democracy. It is an absolute prerequisite to sustain this long-haul march towards a substantive democracy in which rights for all become realities.
It was in this context that the CC discussed the splinter break-away from the ANC of the Shikota Gang of Three and their cohorts. These are all individuals who are well known to us, and to millions of organized workers and Alliance members. We know their track record within our organizations. We remember their factional bullying when they felt they had the upper-hand. Despite their pious rhetoric about the need to change our electoral system, we remember who was in the forefront of campaigning for the problematic floor-crossing legislation. We remember who led the resistance to any consideration of a mixed proportional representation and constituency system. Following the ANC's Polokwane conference and the recall of former President Mbeki, and sensing that they had lost their factional influence over the apex of power, they have jumped ship. They extol organizational democracy, but they are fugitives from a democratic conference outcome that they cannot accept. They lack the will-power to remain on within the ANC and raise their concerns and battle for their perspectives. They are a hybrid bunch whose only real point of congruence is their personal opportunism.
Now that Parliament has passed the relevant legislation, it is important that the President of the Republic, cde Kgalema Motlanthe should immediately sign the Broadcasting Amendment Bill in order for the current SABC Board to be dissolved. Our public broadcaster continues to be beset with internal factionalism and dysfunctionality. It is hugely problematic that the SABC newsroom continues to tolerate embedded journalism of the kind that is daily on display from the likes of Sophie Mokoena. We do not want a state broadcaster, nor do we want an ANC, or SACP broadcaster. We want a public broadcaster, and we want professional journalists not camp-followers and media advisors masquerading as news reporters.
While the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe has, correctly, received attention, the situation in Swaziland is largely ignored. But there is deepening repression in this neighbouring country. The outlawing of democratic formations has been renewed and intensified, and the President of PUDEMO, cde Mario Masuku is facing a trumped up charge of terrorism. We condemn the continued repression of the Swazi people and commit ourselves to intensifying our solidarity actions.
The SACP expresses its condolences to the government and people of India following the abhorrent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The SACP has sent messages of support and solidarity to our very close allies in the sub-continent, the CPI and CPI M.
Statement issued by the South African Communist Party November 30 2008
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