Statement on the first anniversary of the death of Comrade President Nelson Mandela

The SA Communist Party joins the millions of our people in SA and worldwide in commemorating the death on 5 December 2013 and celebrating the revolutionary life and times of our revered leader, former President of the African National Congress (ANC); first Commander-in-Chief of the people's liberation army, uMkhonto we Sizwe; founding President of our first democratically elected government, Comrade Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Tata Madiba, Nkosi Dalibhunga.

Comrade Mandela was a revolutionary to the end! He never defined himself or accepted to be defined outside the collective leadership of, and outside the national liberation movement led by the ANC. He in fact declared with sense of humour, that the first thing he will ask after death when he arrives in heaven is whether there is an ANC branch, and that if there is none he will go ahead and establish it.

Aluta Continua - the struggle continues in memory of Comrade Mandela.

Comrade Mandela was a great leader of our ANC headed Alliance, the people of SA and in fact beyond. He was a leader without borders. Indeed he inspired many throughout the world. He epitomised unity in diversity. Comrade Mandela was dedicated to our ANC headed Alliance, believing that this revolutionary movement represented the best organised formation to lead and complete the liberation of our people!

In memory of Comrade Mandela the vanguard Party of the working class and socialist advance, SACP, in which he actively participated just before his arrest in the early 1960s, will unashamedly continue to build and defend our Alliance with the ANC and the progressive labour movement headed by the Congress of SA Trade Unions (COSATU).

In memory of Comrade Mandela the SACP will do its utmost best to ensure that the transformation of SA into a completely non-racial and non-sexist democratic and prosperous society with a better life for all is placed on second, more radical phase of the transition! This must address and ultimately resolve the pressing questions of the contradictions and the hardships faced by the majority of our people, the unemployed, the workers and the poor, both rural and urban.

At heart of this programme is the transformation of our economy to deal with the high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality, and achieve the greater goals of the Freedom Charter. The SACP believes that this will lay the indispensable basis for an advance to socialism, the most sustainable solution to contradictions and crises of capitalism!

Statement issued by the SACP, December 5 2014

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