SACP GAUTENG PROVINCE WELCOMES THE ANC'S DECISIVE ELECTION VICTORY IN THE PROVINCE
11 May 2014
The SACP Gauteng Province held a Special Provincial Executive Committee meeting today at the Satawu Provincial Office in Johannesburg. The meeting was convened to undertake a collective analysis and assessment of the outcomes of the national and provincial elections held on the 7th May 2014.
The PEC resolved to congratulate its historic, most trusted and primary political alliance partner, the African National Congress (ANC) for a decisive and resounding election victory in our province. The election victory has once more placed the economic hub of the continent firmly under the control of the overwhelming majority of the revolutionary people and working class led by the ANC.
The SACP's proposed way forward in Gauteng Province
Moving forward, the SACP identified the strategic and principal task in Gauteng as that of building strong organisations across the Alliance in the province focussed on strong branches especially in working class and poor areas. It is in this context that the PEC resolved to call for the urgent process of qualitative renewal of the ANC and its Alliance partners in the province. The renewal should not only strengthen the ANC on the ground but its Alliance partners.
The PEC resolved that such a renewal should ensure that the ANC and its Alliance partners have the organisational capacity to rise to the occasion and to confront the challenges facing the National Democratic Revolution. This qualitative renewal should find expression in the work of the ANC, Alliance and government. The renewal agenda should be orientated and focus on the motive forces of the NDR found in their majority in townships and informal settlements. This renewal must confront the abstract "myth" that tend to over-exaggerate the middle strata in Gauteng, wrongly defined as middle class.
The PEC reaffirmed its long held view that the qualitative renewal should urgently attend to the tendency towards two centres of power in the province, creating competing and parallel political processes between the state and the ANC-led Alliance. This wrong tendency has also sent confusing messages to the working class and the poor. The SACP also believes that the character of Gauteng as an economic hub constitute the material basis for competition for "power and control" over the accumulation regime between the organisation and state.
The PEC resolved that this renewal must ensure that state resources and its development trajectory are directed towards mainly residential areas of the working class and poor, especially the townships and informal settlements. The PEC believes that state resources should not be mainly focussed and directed to urban areas and cities directly benefiting monopoly capital.
Such a renewal should also appreciate the revolutionary capacity of workers in line with the SACP's experiences of the Qina Msebenzi/Tia Mosomi Election Campaign. The PEC further resolved that such a renewal should also ensure that both the ANC and government should not allow any community struggle (so-called service delivery protests) to proceed without both their urgent, prompt and swift intervention. The SACP's' direct experience of consistent interventions in working class communities bears testimony to this reality.
We further believe that such a qualitative renewal should be consistent with the character of the ANC as a force of the left that is consciously biased to the working class and the poor. This we believe is the only way to reaffirm the 53 percent that voted for the ANC and to quantitatively grow the hegemony of the ANC in the province. The renewal must decisively confront without fear or favour every deviationist tendency in the ANC and Alliance especially in government, including municipalities that resist the left character and working class bias of the ANC. The PEC emphasised that full appreciation of this character of the ANC as the most decisive factor to renew the ANC in the province.
The SACP strongly believe that failure to appreciate the urgent need for renewal based on the left and working class character of the ANC has the potential to weaken, confuse and demoralise the 53 percent that defended the ANC in this election, thus leading towards the final disintegration and implosion of this 53 percent towards local government elections.
Defeat of the low intensity counter-revolution
The SACP believes that the ANC election victory is decisively significant, as it constitutes a resounding defeat of a highly determined and extensively mobilised coalition of forces of low intensity counter-revolution led by the historic and class enemies of the ANC. The SACP firmly believes that the low intensity counter-revolution engineered in the province against the ANC was the most vicious, complex, aggressive and sophisticated onslaught since the first democratic elections in April 1994.
This coalition of counter-revolutionary forces is mainly located and effectively operates from the Gauteng province. It includes certain sections of the commercial mass media, self-anointed commentators, semi-anarchists, populists, demagogues feeding from business trade unionism, exhausted and extremely tired former revolutionaries and some forces strategically placed within organs of the democratic state.
The common and shared narrative of this extremely hostile forces is their neo-fascist hatred of President Jacob Zuma, one of the most popular, humble and most revolutionary leader of the ANC. These forces tend to scapegoat and blame President Jacob Zuma for contradictions and challenges of our country that dates back to more than 350 years of colonialism, racial and national oppression.
The SACP further believes that this ANC victory will bring to an immediate end, the scape-goating and personal slander of President Zuma and his leadership collective.
The ANC election victory in a midst of a severe world economic recession.
The SACP noted that the ANC fought an election campaign in the midst one of the most severe and devastating world economic recession. The negative effects of this recession were felt more in Gauteng province as the economic hub, and the epicentre of industrial and finance monopoly capital.
In this regard, the PEC noted the scale of job losses, retrenchments, casualization, labour brokering, the rise in prices of basic foodstuffs and other services such as electricity. Even the middle strata, mainly African and Black people, were severely hit by a wave of high indebtedness and reckless credit lending with excessive interest rates charged by finance monopoly capital.
This situation, reinforced by a highly intensified anti-ANC and anti-President Zuma slander and direct personal attack, painted a gloomy picture to the working class and poor in our townships and informal settlements. It is against this background and context that the SACP believes that the ANC election victory in our province remains decisive and overwhelming.
We are deeply humbled that the revolutionary people of the province and country defeated these forces, and further that their defeat marks the beginning of their disintegration and implosion as they continue to tremble before a decisive ANC election victory.
PEC thanked workers, the working class and revolutionary people of the province for voting ANC and defending the revolution.
SACP also thanked all communities that allowed its alliance partners to intervene and this include Bekkersdal, Zamimpilo, Leewfontein, Lenasia, Somalia and many other parts of the province.
SACP also condemns violence that affected elections such as in Alexander and Bekkersdal.
The PEC thanked its Red Brigades, the Moses Kotane and Violet Siboni Volunteers for working very hard and tirelessly to campaign for an ANC election victory.
Statement issued by Jacob Mamabolo, SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary, May 11 2014
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