South African Communist Party
SACP statement on the occasion of its 95th anniversary
Delivered by Cde Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
At a Rally, 30 July 2016, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality
Build a larger, activist, but quality SACP to drive the second, more radical phase of our transition:
Towards an ANC electoral victory on our 95th Anniversary!
Honour the legacy and heroes of the SACP
It is fitting that the SACP celebrates its 95th anniversary here in Nelson Mandela Bay on the eve of local government elections. It is fitting because, in many ways, Nelson Mandela Bay is the place in which our revolutionary alliance was truly forged into an unstoppable fighting force. It was here, in the 1950s, in this vanguard city, that the ANC, the underground SACP, and progressive trade unions under the umbrella of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu) – the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu’s) predecessor, decisively advanced the cause of people’s power.
There are many heroes that we honour from that period. Let me recall just one – Vuyisile Mini, communist, ANC leader, trade unionist, founder MK member, song-writer and martyr. It was in these neighbourhoods that the 17-year Mini campaigned against bus fare hikes and forced removals. It was here that he worked as a labourer. It was here that he was a founder member of the Stevedoring and Dockworkers Union. It was from here that he went on to be a leader of the Metal Workers’ Union. It was here that he composed and sang in his deep baritone voice his immortal songs: “Pasopa nansi ‘ndondemnyama we Verwoerd”.
On this 95th anniversary of the Communist Party in South Africa, we dip our communist flag in your honour, Comrade Vuyisile Mini, in tribute to all our heroes and martyrs from Port Elizabeth, from the Eastern Cape, from all over our country.
Capitalists want us to forget history. Henry Ford, the American capitalist once said: “History is Bunk”. More recently the leading neo-liberal preacher Francis Fukuyama declared “The end of History”. Capitalists don’t like history. When they sell you a car, or a bag of mealie-meal, or a pair of trousers, they want you just to see a commodity and a price tag. They don’t want you to see the history behind the making of that car, or the mealie-meal, or those pants. Whose land was dispossessed to grow the mealies? How many miners lost their health and even their lives to extract the minerals that went into making the car? In what sweat-shops were your clothes produced?
History lives on in the present. Past dispossession, genocide of indigenous peoples, starvation wages all led to the accumulation of great wealth that still remains and grows daily in the hands of monopolies. And that wealth is used in the present to fund the election campaigns of parties like the DA. That wealth is used to fund media outlets that pour scorn on progressive movements. Newspapers that tell us we must forget history, that we must not “play the race card”, as they call it. But that wealth continues to support the sons and daughters of the past beneficiaries of white minority rule and colonialism. The weight of history in the present continues to reproduce racialised inequality, poverty and unemployment.
That is why as the SACP on this, our 95th anniversary we remember history. That is why we refuse to allow reactionaries, like the DA, to expropriate and white-wash our memory of Tata Nelson Rohlihlahla Mandela. Yes, Madiba rightly belongs to all South Africans, and to all of humanity. But Madiba is not a tradable commodity, a Madiba-lite stripped of his revolutionary history, stripped of his proud, inclusive African nationalism, stripped of his solidarity with Cuba and the peoples of Palestine, stripped of his hatred of oppression, stripped of his status as a founder member and leader of Mkhonto we Sizwe, stripped of the people’s movement that forged him.
Let us remind those expropriators in the DA that it was Madiba himself in 2000 at a COSATU rally who described the DA as [we quote]: “a party of white bosses and black stooges” [unquote]. Why doesn’t the DA put that quote in their TV adverts?
In remembering the SACP’s history of 95 years, in remembering the colonial and apartheid past of expropriation, oppression and exploitation, in remembering the historic struggles – we are not being sentimental. Nor are we resting on our past achievements.
Every single day, the SACP and its cadres have the duty to honour and to live up to our 95 unbroken years of revolutionary struggle. Our vanguard responsibility to lead the workers and poor of our country against the ravages of monopoly capital is not a responsibility simply proclaimed, nor is it pre-ordained and written in stone. Our vanguard role is not like private wealth automatically passed down from one generation of Trollips to the next generation of little Trollips. The vanguard role of the SACP is something that has to be earned daily in struggle.
And this is why, amongst other things, over the past recent period the SACP has been in the forefront of the struggle against the corporate capture of the state. This is why the SACP has consistently spoken out against the abuses occurring in the SABC. This is why the SACP has condemned the role of Multi-Choice in subverting ANC and government policy. (Multi Choice, by the way, is the direct off-spring of apartheid’s leading propaganda organ, Naspers). And this is why the SACP has fearlessly, and consistently, spoken out against corruption and factionalism within our own movement, against business-unionism in the labour movement, against money politics.
Advancing People’s Power in our Communities
There are some who tell us that, in raising these matters, we are “rocking the boat”. They say: let us keep quiet until after the 3 August elections. But we are not rocking the boat. We are steadying the ship. We firmly believe that the electorate will show tremendous support for an ANC-led alliance that speaks up without fear or favour against corruption, against money politics, against factionalism, against corporate capture.
And this means that when we go to the polls on 3 August, let us do so with a firm resolve to honour and build upon the wonderful slogan on our ANC posters and pamphlets: “Together, Advancing People’s Power in Every Community!”
Ensuring that we achieve overwhelming support for our ANC councillor candidates on 3 August is an important step in taking forward the struggle to advance and defend people’s power in the communities of the working class and the poor, in Metros, towns and villages. But popular power is not advanced, consolidated and defended on one day. A vote for the ANC must not be a blank cheque for this or that comrade councillor.
Let us rebuild shop-steward councils so that we forge once more the unity in struggle of the work-place and the community. Let us participate actively in school governing bodies. Let us support our local councillors, social workers and the police in dealing with the scourge of crime and drugs. We can do this through activism in street committees, neighbourhood watches, in community policing forums. An ANC ward councillor who does not have the support of popular power, through democratic ward committees, through social movement activism, through our branch structures – is an ANC councillor who will be isolated and who will inevitably fail or even be liable to give way to the temptations of personal enrichment.
Let us build co-ops, let us create social conditions in which our stokvels help to consolidate neighbourhood solidarity and protect poor communities from the ravages of loan-sharks and unscrupulous debt collectors. Let us expose the way in which Cash Paymaster and its network of blood-sucking money-lenders are unscrupulously exploiting the beneficiaries of social grants. Let us build a network of community food gardens, co-ops, and small businesses in which community development and solidarity are the priorities – not the accumulation of mega profits for the few. Let us build what we in the SACP call local solidarity economies as part and parcel of “Together, Advancing People’s Power in Every Community!”
A heroic history of the SACP: The foundations and evolution of our revolutionary alliance
The SACP, the oldest and largest Communist Party on the African continent, the second largest political organisation in South Africa by audited membership and the oldest political movement after the African National Congress (ANC), is today reaching 95 years of age. The Central Committee of the SACP on behalf of our ever growing membership, now well over 250 thousand, is saying happy birthday SACP happy birthday!
Today as the SACP we are officially launching our celebration of this important milestone, our 95 years of unbroken struggle against colonial oppression, inclusive of apartheid; the struggle against capitalist exploitation; the struggle against imperialist domination; the struggle for liberation and social emancipation of the working class; the struggle to end patriarchal domination of women; the struggle for socialism, on the eve of the fifth democratic local government elections since our April 1994 democratic breakthrough.
The SACP has fought for democracy in our country as an independent political party. It was the first political organisation to be banned in our country, in 1950, immediately after the introduction of the apartheid regime following the victory of the National Party in a racist election on 26 May 1948.
Other political organisations were banned ten years later, from 1960. At that time our Party, which amended its name in 1953 from the founding name of the Communist Party of South African (CPSA) to the current name of the SACP in the face of the Suppression of Communism Act under which it was banned altogether with its literature and the Young Communist League, had already built underground and clandestine organisational experience as a new pillar of our struggle. This capacity became an important resource for the rest of our ANC-led national liberation movement.
Also, with our entire liberation movement banned after 1960, the SACP both as an independent political organisation and the South African component of the world Communist Movement, played a pivotal role when the whole of our national liberation movement was forced to go to and organise the struggle in exile. At that time, imperialist Western powers, the United States and its Western European allies, listed not only the SACP but also the ANC and branded all of us the so-called terrorist organisations, in addition prohibiting any assistance towards our just struggle. Resources in waging our struggle came from the world socialist bloc with the SACP facilitating access and the Soviet Union playing a central role.
As Communists, we did not form the SACP as a separate party opposed to other revolutionary and progressive organisations of our people. We have fought for democracy in our country both as an independent political party of the working class and in alliance with the ANC and the progressive trade union movement. We have dedicated our time and expended our energy and resources to build both the ANC and the progressive trade union movement and fostered our historical alliance with them.
No other political party in this country parallels the outstanding work of the SACP in building and defending the ANC and the progressive trade union movement (Sactu and then its successor Cosatu). We have worked together with both of these mass organisations of our people to build other mass democratic formations and weld them together in our country’s mass democratic movement that dealt a blow to the apartheid regime.
Let us use this august occasion, the 95th anniversary of our Party, the SACP to celebrate our outstanding contribution in the history of the struggle of our people to overthrow colonial oppression!
Let us underline the importance of, and celebrate the role played by the 1928 Communist International resolution on the South African question.
This year marks the 88th anniversary of that resolution that commonly became known as the Black or Native Republic Thesis. Many things have changed since that resolution was adopted. The development of our current theory of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) – but also with its own foundations in that resolution – further elaborated several changes. However, there are fundamental tenets that remain relevant.
It was that resolution that first and foremost introduced the principle of a republic based on a democratic majority rule with equal rights for all races as the immediate way forward for South Africa. Equally important, the resolution laid the foundation for the establishment and development of our alliance as we know it today – this based on transforming the ANC to become a fighting national revolutionary organisation against both the domestic and imperialist exploiter and oppressor classes, as well as based on the progressive trade union movement and peasant organisations.
Our current political programme, the South African Road to Socialism, essentially has its fundamental tenetsalso laid out in that resolution to make South Africa a republic based on a democratic majority rule with equal rights for all races. It is this resolution – based on the alliance as it established it – that tasked the SACP to systematically develop Communist and working class leadership in, and to work together with the democratic mass movement of our people while remaining and deepening its independence.
The independence of the SACP as a working class party is the basic condition for engaging in alliances. No alliance can ever serve as a substitute for the independent existence, political programme and expression of the Party. By their very nature alliances are established to pursue common objectives. They do not represent the totality of the objectives and the historical missions of each partner respectively.
Therefore without its independence, the SACP as a working class party will not engage effectively both inside and outside of any single alliance for that matter. This is why both the present and the future of the Party depend on its own independence to start with, above all else. The Communist Party cannot therefore take a single decision relying on other class forces or organisations for a successful implementation of that resolution. Similarly, both our present and the future depend on our own independent capacity to push forward the struggle towards the ultimate goal of working class emancipation through a socialist transition to communism. There is just no other class force that can be entrusted with this historical mission!
Let us build a larger but quality SACP and develop its vanguard role!
The NDR still remains our most direct route to socialism. It still requires a multi-class political front to lead,capable of uniting revolutionary and the most progressive forces, with the working class at the head.
For the SACP to continue developing and to play its vanguard role in the current period it must be bigger, so that it is able to have its presence felt in all key sites of power and influence in our society. It is therefore important that as we celebrate our 95th anniversary we commit to intensifying recruitment and political education with a particular focus on organised workers but as well as unorganised workers who we mustfurther recruit for Cosatu affiliates. However, it is important that the SACP recruits and builds its structures in all the key sites of struggle and power in society, in the economy, the community, the workplace, the ideological terrain and other spheres of societal activity.
It is also important that the SACP must pre-occupy itself with the building of a strong and progressive civic movement, through residents associations that must help to strengthen and revitalise the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco). The working class must concern itself with the building of a vibrant civic movement that is capable of advancing the interests of the working class in its own residential areas. It is also in this sphere that we must seek to expand the membership of the SACP, and be able to elaborate its positions and programmes.
If the task of the ANC today is to unite the broadest range of progressive forces that have the deepest interest in the most thorough transformation of our society, it is the task of the SACP to seek to unite all working class forces, formations and centres of working class struggles, into a revolutionary front for socialism, whose most immediate interests is to drive a second, more radical phase of our transition.
So let us commit to build an even more stronger and formidable SACP as part of driving our second, more radical phase of transition!
Thatha ANC, thatha!!!!!
Towards a decisive ANC victory in the local government elections
The victory of the ANC in the forthcoming local government elections will be the best 95th anniversary present for the SACP. The ANC was not only at the head of the national liberation struggle, but it has also led an important struggle and policies to change the lives of our people for the better after 1994. The ANC has led what is perhaps the largest housing programme for the poor in the late 20th into the 21st century. It is the ANC that has electrified South Africa in 20 years, more than the connections made by the successive white minority regimes in the 100 years prior to 1994!
The ANC has undertaken one of the most progressive labour reforms in favour of the working class since 1994. It is still only the ANC in alliance with the Communist Party and the progressive trade union movement supported by mass democratic formations that, as a governing party, is best placed to create the most favourable environment to advance the most immediate interests of the working class in our country.
At the same time, the best way of celebrating our 95th anniversary as the SACP is not to be in denial about, but to recognise the persisting and new challenges facing our movement and society at large. Inextricably linked with this, the best way of celebrating our 95th anniversary as the SACP will be to decisively push for radical action for our people, the majority of whom is the working class and poor, to overcome both the old and new challenges.
We must intensify the struggle to deal a blow to corporate capture in our movement, in state owned enterprises and in the state broadly. Our five-day national alliance summit held mid-last year was very clear in this regard.
The summit in fact declared corporate capture as a threat to our movement, the national democratic revolution and the democratic developmental state that we seek to build. It further said that the failure of the SABC to deliver on its public broadcasting mandate was among others due to corporate capture.
Other harmful tendencies we must deal a blow are the parasitic bourgeoisie, corruption, factionalism, patronage, manipulation of membership, distortion of internal democratic processes and social distance from the membership and mass base. These reactionary, regressive and destructive tendencies do not exist in isolation from the advancement of private interests and corporate capture.
The parasitic bourgeoisie for instance need networks of political connections with factionalists in order to pursue their private accumulation interests. In turn, factionalists depend on networks of business connections with, and funding from the parasitic bourgeoisie in order to pursue their factional interests. They are also dependent on members who have not received any, or adequate, or sufficient political education as voting fodder, linked with dispensing patronage to them in return for their votes in order to ascend or maintain a factional hold to positions of power.
Build a campaigning SACP to lead a militant, fighting working class
As we celebrate 95 years of our fighting Communist Party, we must commit ourselves to advance important struggles that are an essential component of driving the second, more radical phase of our democratic transition. An independent Communist Party can only be such, if it is capable of leading its historical mission, programme and campaigns aimed at creating conditions for deepening the NDR as the most direct route to a socialist South Africa.
It is important for the SACP to play a leading and vanguard role in the struggle for land and agrarian transformation.
The SACP needs to lead struggles on the land question both in its urban and rural aspects.
The SACP needs to intensify its campaign for the most thorough transformation of the financial sector.
Whilst our country is facing an economic stagnation, funds in the hands of the financial sector are either not re-invested in our economy, or are being divested away from the productive sectors that have the potential of creating millions of jobs.
The SACP commits to continue taking forward, working together with Cosatu, the struggle for a minimum wage and a comprehensive social security system that aims to address the most glaring aspects of working class lives in our country.
A comprehensive social security includes meaningful assistance to acquire affordable housing, access to higher education, the creation of a working class friendly national health insurance scheme.
The SACP firmly believes that one of the most crucial dimensions of the working class struggle in the current period is that of the battle of ideas.
At the heart of this struggle must be the most thorough transformation of the media space, with a particular focus on de-monopolisation and rolling back the temptation of using the public broadcaster as a milking cow for sections of the parasitic bourgeoisie.
The public broadcaster for instance, has been moving from one crisis to another. Every crisis at the SABC has become the basis for a new, more destructive crisis. And at the centre of all this is an administrative and governance decay, as well as the now proven incapacity of the SABC board to hold the despotic management that has established itself at the public broadcaster to account.
The SACP will, in the coming months, also be launching a campaign on the right to work!
Late 20th and early 21st century capitalism has seriously eroded jobs and work, principally through the radical restructuring of the workplace through neo-liberal measures such as outsourcing, casualisation and labour brokering.
It is therefore important to wage a class struggle on the right to work as an important means of livelihood for the working class.
The SACP, working closely with its Young Communist League and other Progressive Youth Alliance formations, will continue to campaign for access to decent and affordable education, especially for the children and youth from the workers and the poor. At the heart of this must be access to free basic and higher education for the working class and the poor.
The SACP needs to support and strengthen the Young Communist League to play a leading and more prominent role in this struggle. For instance both the SACP and Young Communist League must build strong structures in college and university campuses.
The struggle for accelerated implementation of the national health insurance scheme (NHI) is a matter of immediate priority.
Private capitalist interests backed by sections of imperialism are working very hard to undermine the implementation of the NHI. They have been upping the volume on the propaganda that the NHI is not affordable or feasible.
The SACP needs to work closely with progressive health unions, as well as mobilise communities towards the achievements of the goals of the NHI.
In order to become successful both in its campaigns and historical mission, it is important that the SACP firmlyintegrates in all of its programmes, perspectives and therefore thinking the gender transformation struggle. The Party must use this to build a progressive women’s movement in the forefront of the struggle to end patriarchy in all its manifestion.
Beyond elections
We need to ensure that after the local government elections we do not demobilise but continue with ongoing implementation of our Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign.
It is important that we ensure that local councillors do indeed convene quarterly meetings to report back to and consult with thier communities. We must mobilise communities to ensure this. We must ensure that our people do not simply go and cast their vote and thereafter sit back and not participate or seek the convening of community meetings to express thier views about transformation and community development.
This is why, as the SACP, we are saying:
“Communist cadres to the front: Let us unite the working class, our communities and our movement!”
Deepening international solidarity
We dedicate our 95th anniversary to all the African people who are facing different forms of oppression in their respective countries.
We express our solidarity with the people of Swaziland and Western Sahara in their quest for democracy, self-determination and freedom.
We also call upon our brothers and sisters in South Sudan to end the civil war, to unite to build their new country and embark on a path of using their natural resources for the development of that country.
We are equally expressing our revolutionary solidarity among others with the people Cuba, who for more than half a century have been living under United States imperialist aggression and attempts at regime change. Whilst we welcome improvement in relations between the Cuba and U.S governments, we call for the immediate lifting of the illegal U.S blockade against Cuba.
We continue to extend our solidarity with the people of Palestine, who have been dispossessed of their land and are stateless because the Zionist and apartheid Israel has continuously been expanding itself on their dispossessed land.
The SACP will continue to be part of the international workers and Communist Parties as part of deepening working class internationalist solidarity, our fight against imperialism and for a just world!!!!
Issued by the SACP, 30 July 2016
