South African Communist Party

Statement for immediate release, 22 January 2016

The SACP is calling on the Department of Social Development to play its lead role to develop a comprehensive social security programme for the country, and will support Cosatu’s action to have the problem of the newly promulgated tax laws addressed!

The signing into law this month of the Tax Laws Amendment Act and the Tax Administration Laws Amendment Act of 2015, among others meaning that the retirement fund reforms that have been pushed by the National Treasury will come into effect on 1 March 2015, will have far reaching implications for workers without comprehensive social security. The reforms, which were introduced without agreement with workers on the management of their own funds, will curtail the withdrawal benefits that they rely on after losing their jobs.

The reforms were pushed without an equal effort to introduce comprehensive social security to give workers adequate social protection in the event they lose their jobs. In the context of persisting high unemployment rate, structural and cyclical capitalist economic crisis and aggressive restructuring by the bosses, it takes a long time for most workers in South Africa to find new jobs.

Many workers are downgraded and find themselves in less secure jobs under casualisation and the unresolved labour brokering problem or never find new jobs at all.  Those who have housing loans, for example, find themselves alone without any protection in the face of ruthless evictions by the banks.

The SACP pledges to join Cosatu in the all-important struggle for comprehensive social security for the working class and calls upon the entire working class to take up this struggle in earnest.

Statement issued by the SACP, 22 January 2016