Joint Press Statement from SACP/COSATU bilateral
The national leaderships of the South African Communist Party and COSATU met in Johannesburg yesterday (23rd June 2011) in a full day bilateral. The bilateral was convened on the eve of COSATU's critical Central Committee meeting which begins on Monday next week.
The meeting agreed that the SACP/COSATU axis had been absolutely critical over the past two decades in consolidating our new democracy, in defeating attempts at whole-sale privatization of public property, in running mass campaigns against corruption, and in spearheading the call for placing our economy onto a new, more egalitarian growth path in which jobs and the transformation of the productive sector were at the centre.
The meeting also agreed that our country continued to be characterized by three major structural crises - the crises of unemployment, poverty and inequality. These structural crises are strongly inflected by racial, youth and gendered features. We agreed that these structural crises are compounded by the persisting global capitalist crisis - and that within our country and internationally socialist-oriented structural changes were the only sustainable path to ensure a better life for the great majority of the world's population.
The bilateral noted that the deepening capitalist crisis presented both possibilities for and the necessity of left unity and active popular struggles. However, periods of capitalist crisis are also typically characterized by various forms of right-wing demagogic populist mobilization acting on behalf of various capitalist strata in crisis, but often masked behind a pseudo-left rhetoric.
We believe that the same phenomenon is apparent in SA, finding a potential mass base amongst tens of thousands of unemployed and alienated youth in particular. However, behind this populism are often well-resourced business-people and politicians seeking to plunder public resources.
We resolved as the SACP and COSATU to close ranks and to expose the true agenda of these tendencies and their connections to corruption and predatory behavior in the state. At the same time, it is crucial that we address the socio-economic structural realities (unemployment, poverty and inequality) that are giving rise to this phenomenon.
The bilateral discussed frankly and in a comradely spirit a number of areas that had provoked some public debate between our formations - including the deployment of senior SACP members into government. In regard to the deployment of SACP leaders, the Party reaffirmed that this was a collective decision of the Party based on the Party's commitment to building working class hegemony in all sites of power, both within and outside of government. COSATU did not disagree with this position in principle but believed that the two formations should continue to assess how best to achieve an effective balance between the SACP's mass mobilisational and state-related responsibilities.
The two formations concluded by agreeing to meet as a matter of priority after COSATU's CC to map out a more concrete mass programme of action. Key aspects of this programme should include the ongoing struggle against corruption, the integration of social wage struggles (for housing, a National Health Insurance, education and public transport) into the living wage campaign of COSATU, and the struggle for land reform and rural development.
The two formations reaffirmed their conviction that the unity in action of the SACP and COSATU constituted the bed-rock for advancing, consolidating and defending the national democratic revolution- itself the most direct path to a socialist SA based on meeting social needs and not private profits.
In the light of these agreements, the two formations also re-affirmed the need to strengthen our Alliance by ensuring that the rest of our joint programme of action is fully implemented.
Statement issued by COSATU and the SACP, June 24 2011
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
