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SACP Campaigns: Building a Vanguard, Campaigning and Activist SACP to realise our Medium Term Vision 1.
1.1 The history of the SACP is one of being a campaigning Party. During its life as the CPSA, underground as the SACP and since the unbanning in 1990, the SACP has led campaigns to organize workers and the poor, mobilize communities and to organize cadres for advancing the struggle for national liberation and for socialism.
 * Introduction**

1.2 The experiences of the Party and a negotiated transition from apartheid rule to a contested national democratic terrain are the context of our campaigns.

1.3 Immediately after our unbanning in 1990, our party immediately launched into a number of campaigns, both as part of the ANC and independently. One of the key SACP campaigns in the early 1990s was “The Triple H” Campaign, focusing on hunger, health and housing. This campaign played an important role in ‘reconnecting’ our Party with its working class base in conditions of legality.

1.4 Our campaigns since then have been guided by our strategic slogan “Socialism is the Future, Build it Now”, adopted at our 9th Congress, and they have been based on the programmes adopted at the 10th and 11th Congresses, in 1998 and 2002 respectively, seeking to realise our medium term vision. Through these campaigns, we seek to ensure that the power and influence of the Party is consolidated and felt throughout society.

1.5 While the Party’s campaigns address many issues – the international terrain, the consolidation of a developmental national democratic state, the increasing socialization of the key points of capitalist production, our major campaigns of the past period have increasingly cohered around the struggle for sustainable livelihoods, households and communities, as a key platform to seek to mobilise the motive forces of the revolution to transform the accumulation path underway in our country. This is also a critical platform to struggle for elements of socialism in the here and now.

1.6 The key demands of the Party in regard to these campaigns around sustainability are: • Access to affordable and increasingly decommodified basic services • Creation of quality and sustainable jobs and consolidation of gains made by the workers during the first decade of our freedom • Opportunities for households to have sustainable livelihoods as part of the struggle to eradicate poverty • Opportunities to empower households to improve their position economically, through education and training and work experience, support for micro, small and importantly cooperative enterprises • Access to finance • Access to productive land for household based subsistence

1.7 Campaigns are about organizing people and are the lifeblood of any revolutionary party. Key to building capacity for these campaigns is the issue of Party life and the role of party cadres (a matter that is addressed in detail in our other discussion document).

1.8 Underpinning all our campaigns must be the struggle for gender equality, the progressive eradication of racism and the empowerment of the working class as the leading motive force of our revolution

2.1 Our short-term goals (eg successful implementation of our 2005 campaign – co-ops, national land summit, regulation of the Credit Bureaux, etc) must give impetus towards the realisation of our medium term vision and our longer term goal of building socialism. Conversely, our annual campaigns must be guided by our medium and longer-term perspectives and objectives. As our strategic slogan says, our socialist objective is a longer-term goal, but whose elements can and should be fought for in the here and now. Hence our emphasis on building elements of, capacity for, and momentum towards, socialism.
 * 2. The political principles and strategy underpinning our programmes and campaigns**

2.2 To this end we must always be clear about the socialist intentions of our immediate campaigns and propagate the socialist content of these immediate campaigns, without excluding or marginalising a wide range of forces who may wish to join our campaigns, and who may wish to define the medium and longer-term objectives of these campaigns in their own diverse ways. We should always seek to empower our cadres to put to the fore the connection between current campaigns and programmes and our socialist objectives. We are perhaps not doing this adequately enough both at public propaganda level and in our cadre development programmes. How should we intensify this propaganda work? What should be the role of our structures at all levels and our cadres?

2.3 This is also complicated by the highly uneven participation by our leadership at all levels in the implementation of our campaigns, and also unevenness in understanding the details of these campaigns. If we do not link current campaigns to our socialist objectives, we run the risk of basking in the glory of our short-term victories (eg Umzansi account, co-ops legislation, regulation of the credit bureax, bringing together progressive mass organisations into our campaigns), important as these are, without a clear connection of these victories as building blocks towards the goals of our medium term vision and socialism. Most importantly these campaigns are fundamental to building the capacity of the main motive forces for the NDR and socialism. Failure to link these politically runs the danger of reducing the Party into, at best, one of the mass movements in our country, or at worst, a single issue (or a few issues) mass organisation.

2.4 It is this interconnection between immediate struggles and longer term goals, not just in theory and propaganda, but especially in the consolidation of working class power and confidence in society and in the state, that ensures that the immediate reforms that our struggles achieve have a transformational or revolutionary potential, and are not just reformist short-term victories that are subsequently overwhelmed by the persisting systemic dominance of capitalism. It is this strategic approach in theory and practice that distinguishes a revolutionary from a reformist party.

2.5 One practical implication of this is that we need to review our cadre development and political education strategy, and become more innovative. For instance a number of our provinces are still conducting political education in a manner that is totally divorced from our current campaigns. We approach the classics in a very cold and mechanical manner. Our political education programmes should centre around our campaigns, and approach the Marxist-Leninist classics (which remain central and essential to cadre development!) from the standpoint of what they say about our current campaigns. For example our cadres stand a better chance of understanding Lenin’s “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, if discussed in relation to our current financial sector campaign and experiences of comrades from this. It is also through this approach that the classics can help to arm better and deepen the ideological understanding of party cadres of the connection between our immediate campaigns and the struggle for socialism. The converse is also true, it is only by reflecting on current campaigns (finance, land and agrarian question, co-ops) that Marxist-Leninist classics are easily grasped and understood. We must also guard against a fundamentalist approach to the classical texts. An approach that links our own active campaigns, our own theoretical discussion WITH an engagement with these texts will also help us to enrich Marxism, contributing to the development of Marxism-Leninism generally.

3.1 We need to underline the fact that our struggle, the national democratic revolution, is made up of a multi-class front of revolutionary forces. If this multi-class bloc of forces is to advance the national democratic revolution, they have to be led by its leading motive force, the working class. The task of the working class therefore is not to satisfy itself by retreating into itself or by becoming workerist. A critical responsibility of this class is to assert its political authority by ensuring that it leads the other class forces constituting the multi-class bloc of forces in the ongoing struggle to address the national, class and gender challenges facing our country. This it must do in favour of the workers and the poor of our country.
 * 3. Some new organisational and ideological challenges and tasks**

3.2 Given the fact that the SACP seeks to be the vanguard of South Africa’s working class, specific responsibilities rest on its shoulders. There are new emerging and urgent tasks and challenges, principally being thrown up by the deepening activism and campaigns of the SACP. The Special Congress needs to discuss these new challenges and come up with appropriate strategies to undertake them.

3.3 Our campaigns have struck and continue to strike a chord with the mass of the workers and the poor, and a wide variety of other class and social forces. For instance, our financial sector campaign has struck a chord with large sections of the black middle and professional classes. These classes have significant and palpable sympathy with our financial sector campaign as they, amongst other things, suffer from a variety of socio-economic burdens, including debt, lack of access to affordable credit, listing in the Credit Bureaux, frustrated (usually racially based) career ambitions and lack of access to big BEE deals. Whilst many in these strata may not necessarily identify with socialism, neo-liberal policies dominant in our economy are alienating them and their aspirations. They are among the most appreciative about our financial sector campaign. Their response to our campaigns is one expression of the unresolved nature of the national question. Whilst the ANC is the leader of the NDR, we need, as the SACP, to maintain our own independent engagement with these class forces, around some of our immediate campaigns, and strive to win some of them onto the socialist agenda, particularly those in the public service.

3.4 Another sector broadly attracted to our campaigns is the petty bourgeoisie (small and petty traders, as well as small farmers). The trading sections of this petty bourgeoisie (eg township general dealers), are squeezed between the large retailers and the sprawling spaza shops. They are also not benefiting from the government’s SME programmes, nor from the large BEE deals and access to credit. This petty bourgeoisie also includes small-scale farmers, who are caught between the class dominance of agri-business, and lack of access to credit and big BEE deals. A racist white agricultural class, not at all committed to the rise of a black farming capitalist class, also squeezes and frustrates their economic aspirations.

3.5 While all the class aspirations of these different class forces are a subject of government policy, there has been very little popular mobilisation around them, apart from the campaigns led by the SACP.

3.6 There is also the small, but increasingly influential, black section of the bourgeoisie. Whilst this section is narrowly pursuing its capitalist interests, but it is not yet strong enough to go it alone, without seeking some kind of alliance with, or genuflection to the interests of the workers and the poor. We have correctly criticised the means by which this black section of the bourgeoisie is accumulating its wealth (narrow BEE). However we have said that part of the (class) responsibility of the working class is to ensure that where these elite and narrow deals happen, we need to direct them towards productive and job-creating investment. It is consistently on this basis that we should seek to engage, and lead, this class stratum.

3.7 Traditional leaders essentially represent both a reality (if not simultaneously a relic) of our society, and a stratum fostered and shaped as a subordinate bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie of the colonial and apartheid political regimes through the bantustan system. Yet our call for access to finance for the poor and our land and agrarian campaign have a resonance amongst them. This is particularly because they are presiding over starving and extremely poor communities, with no sustainable livelihoods. This has created a contradictory reality where some of these poor communities lookto traditional leaders to provide opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, whilst the traditional leaders themselves have become parasitic on these communities through taxes and extortions of all sorts. Ironically, our call for access to land for household based subsistence farming finds resonance with both the traditional leaders (for their own parasitic sustenance) and the poor ‘subject’ communities (for their own subsistence and, literally, survival).

3.8 Indeed this parasitic dependence of traditional leaders on their ‘subject’ communities has produced two, contradictory outcomes. On the one hand, this has reinforced backward, cultural and repressive practices from sections of traditional leaders (the worst of which has evolved into warlordism in places like KZN). On the other hand, this has created a layer of ‘progressive’ traditional leaders which sees its own future as integrally bound up with co-operation with the democratic government and its institutions, for its own survival and successful poverty eradication for their ‘subject’, impoverished communities. This requires the development of appropriate strategies and tactics to keep (progressive) traditional leaders behind our campaigns, whilst using the latter as a basis of building people’s power in the former Bantustans.

3.9 Our campaigns are also finding resonance with the churches and other religious organisations. The left leadership of the church in particular, as well as the mass of church members, are increasingly getting attracted to some of our key campaigns, especially the financial sector and land and agrarian campaigns. Recently we have been approached and held discussions with the Shembe Church, the Methodist Church and other religious formations. Incidentally there is some overlap between our own membership and the church/religious sector. The primary challenge that arises now for the SACP is the role of our Party and the working class in the church/religious sector. This Special Congress needs to reflect and emerge with appropriate strategies in relation to this task. That is, what is the role of communists in the church and the religious sector, especially on how to engage with the progressive, left-leaning sections and leadership of this sector? This is particularly critical given the fact that a large section of the working class particularly belong to a number of Christian churches, including a significant section of our own membership.

3.10 What should underpin all our campaigns and interactions with a range of the class and social forces constituting the national democratic bloc, is the question of the organisation of women. Our campaigns have a particular resonance amongst black women in particular, across all classes. For instance the gender regimes in both the financial sector, and in the political economy of the land and agrarian question, are built on the oppression of women, whether it is access to finance or inheritance of land titles. For example it is instructive that of the more than 700 000 Mzansi accounts opened since October 2004, women have taken up 57% of these accounts. This is important in that our campaigns are also addressing issues of gender inequality, and we should therefore strongly use this as a platform for organisation of women into our Party.

3.11 Another important matter is that of the changing nature of the urban landscape, the townships and urban informal settlements. Unlike in the past where surplus labour was shepherded and ‘imprisoned’ in the Bantustans, already from the 1980s, this surplus labour was moving to the peripheries of the cities, the townships and informal settlements. This trend has deepened since 1994 with the democratic breakthrough. Like in many other cities in the developing world, there is a phenomenal growth of the urban poor. This is worsened by what is now a near total collapse of subsistence agriculture in the former Bantustans. But the current accumulation regime continues to be characterised by extraordinarily high levels of unemployment coming on the back of a job-loss bloodbath decade..

3.12 The problems of the urban poor are an expression of the crisis of both production (no adequate job creating investments) and social reproduction (lack of sustainable livelihoods and means of reproduction outside of the labour market). Were it not for the social grants (the increasing predominant means of some sort of livelihoods in both urban and rural communities), the very mainstream capitalist economy and the relative social stability we have would have been seriously undermined.

3.13 Clearly, the current accumulation path is unsustainable. The political shift in government to a more assertive confidence in the leading and strategic role of an interventionist developmental state and parastatal sector needs to be consolidated. In particular, the transformational role of the developmental state needs to be better grasped. It is not primarily a question of intervening to create a more investor-friendly climate, or to lower the “cost of doing business” (although these may be strategic objectives), or to leverage narrow BEE deals. The key task for the developmental state is the systemic transformation of the current accumulation regime. Such systemic transformation may also include state take-overs, or the creation of new state-led economic/productive activities (eg. a state investment or housing bank).If we allow the continuation of the current accumulation path, we are definitely risking serious social and political instability in the medium term.

3.14 An old challenge, but requiring new forms of organisation is that of mobilisation of the urban poor, and a struggle for sustainable livelihoods, households and communities. Our ‘Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign’ is critical in this regard. We have to begin to configure some of the organisational outcomes out of this campaign, particularly in the urban areas. Do we have to try and resuscitate SANCO? Do we have to build new, working class led, progressive residents associations? Or do we have to focus on building strong ward committees that are also capable of taking up civic issues? Are ward committees not essentially an extension of the council system, thus incapable of acting independently to take up developmental challenges facing the urban poor? Or is it a combination of all these strategies? What should be the role of the SACP in this regard?

3.15 Within our campaigns we also need to pay particular attention to the interests of black middle class and professional women, who still experience many forms of discrimination. In fact BEE thus far is not only elitist, but it is primarily benefiting the male elite, despite the advances made by our revolution in transforming gender relations in the economy and society.

3.16 All these challenges and tasks do not necessarily mean that the SACP seeks to replace the ANC as the ‘broad church’ and leader of the national democratic revolution. However, a party of the working class, especially its vanguard, should seek to develop its own independent relationship with a wide variety of class and social forces, as part of asserting working class leadership over the national democratic revolution. These relationships are also critical in taking forward, deepening and broadening the appeal of our campaigns. The Special Congress must reflect on all these issues and come up with appropriate organisational strategies. The very success of our campaigns requires that we engage with this relatively new terrain, as an important dimension of consolidating and deepening a working class-led NDR and the struggle for socialism.

3.17 It is also these challenges that underpin the kind of a cadre we need in the SACP, a cadre capable of meeting all these challenges.


 * 4. A brief overview of the key challenges facing our main campaigns**


 * //4.1 “The land shall be shared among those who work it”: The challenge of deepening our land and agrarian transformation campaign//**

4.1.1 Given the fact that our land and agrarian campaign is a recent campaign, and faces a multiplicity of enormous challenges, it is important to highlight and elaborate on some of the key immediate tasks for the SACP.

4.1.2 Like the rest of the South African economy, the accumulation regime in agriculture has not fundamentally changed over the last ten years. Indeed, South Africa’s agriculture and its accumulation regime still represent some of the worst features of the political economy of land and agriculture under apartheid.

4.1.3 Our countryside provides a stark insight into the enclave character of our economy. Apart from the two distinct urban/rural enclaves in our economy, South Africa’s countryside is in itself divided into two very distinct enclaves shaped over more than a century of proletarianisation of the black rural masses and the massive land dispossession of the majority by both the colonial and apartheid regimes. The one enclave is that of the former Bantustans, and the other is that dominated by agri-business and small and medium sized farms, owned in the main by white farmers and/or their families.

4.1.4 The thrust of the SACP’s land and agrarian campaign therefore is premised on the total transformation of the above reality by accelerating land and agrarian reform to benefit the workers and the poor. Our perspectives are also firmly located in the development of a comprehensive state-led ‘industrial strategy’ for land and agriculture. Whilst government’s sectoral strategy for agriculture goes some way towards such an industrial strategy, its limitations are that it is overly focused on the competitiveness and profitability of the sector at the expense of the developmental role of the sector. In addition it is not clear how this strategy articulates with the AgriBEE document.

4.1.5 To remind ourselves, our land and agrarian reform strategy is, in the first instance, based on accelerated transfer of productive land for household based subsistence farming. This is aimed at tackling rural poverty and food security at the local level. In addition, we want other forms of small-scale farming, principally the building of agricultural co-operatives owned and run by the workers and the poor for their benefit. It is from this point of departure and goal that we should approach the entirety and other dimensions of our campaign, including matters relating to BEE and finance for land and agrarian transformation. This also includes calling for an increased role of the state in post-transfer support, as well as in the provision of agricultural inputs and support services.

4.1.6 The key task therefore in taking forward our land and agrarian campaign is the building of local People’s Land Committees (rural soviets, as it were) to drive the campaign on the ground, guided by local conditions in various localities. It is, however, important that building of PLCs must go hand in hand with building strong party structures at the district and branch level. A strong party is essential in order to ensure that communists provide leadership to these PLCs and that we are able to defend them from any offensive to destroy them by agricultural capital.

4.1.7 As we have argued before, the PLCs must be primarily made up of the farm and other rural workers, the landless people, co-operatives, progressive NGOs working in the area of land and agrarian transformation, and small-scale farmers. The immediate allies of these structures should be the local structures of Alliance organisations and, in some instances, progressive traditional leaders. We should aim to build the PLCs as the most critical components and basic units of any national people’s coalition.

4.1.8 One of the immediate objectives of these PLCs is to take up demands on land and agrarian reform in their respective localities and push for the immediate establishment of local land forums in their respective areas. The local land forums should be made up of government (including local government and regional/local offices of the Departments of Land and Agriculture), landowners/local representatives of agricultural capital, workers and landless masses. The aim of such land forums would be as a platform to engage government and local agricultural capital and landowners around accelerating land and agrarian reform. What are the key challenges for the SACP and our cadres in building PLCs? What form should these PLCs take?

4.1.9 Already this early in our campaign we have managed to bring together more than 50 progressive formations and a range of progressive intellectuals into a broad platform to take forward the campaign. The key question here is how do we deepen work with progressive formations working for land and agrarian reform at all levels of our structures, particularly at district and branch levels? How should we relate to traditional leaders in this regard?


 * //4.2 “The wealth of the country shall be shared”. Our financial sector campaign//**

4.2.1 The fundamental objective of our financial sector campaign is to transform the financial sector in our country to serve the overall developmental interests of our country, in particular the needs of the workers and the poor.

4.2.2 Since our 11th Congress, the financial sector campaign has achieved major gains. This is arguably one of the most successful SACP-led campaigns since 1990. We have since then consolidated the position of the SACP-led Financial Sector Campaign Coalition as the leading voice of the workers and the poor in the transformation of the financial sector. This coalition has demonstrated that a diverse group of mass organisations can come together around a single issue and campaign effectively for a specific set of goals that individual organisations would have little prospect of achieving. It is primarily due to our work in this area that our Party membership has grown significantly since the 11th Congress.

4.2.3 A mere month after our 11th Congress, NEDLAC held a first, and historic financial sector summit, in which 13 agreements were signed. Soon thereafter, the finance bosses embarked on a process to produce a financial sector charter, which led to the formation of the Financial Sector Charter Council, in which the Financial Sector Campaign Coalition, through the Nedlac Community Constituency, is a major player. Our single biggest achievement has been the launch of the Umzansi account, making it possible for the workers and the poor and millions of the unbanked to have an affordable bank account. This is a direct outcome of our struggle in this regard.

4.2.4 The Financial Sector Summit and Charter contain many of our demands for the transformation of this sector. These include access to basic financial services, universal access, development of sustainable financial institutions like financial co-operatives, regulation of micro-lending and credit bureaux and broad based black economic empowerment.

4.2.5 However, there are still many challenges facing the SACP on this front of struggle. Our advances so far still represent progress with regards to consumer type demands, which, though very important, are just a dimension of overall transformation of the sector. The Special Congress will have to come up with appropriate methods to intensify our mass campaign and organisation to take forward this campaign.

4.2.6 Some of the key challenges facing the SACP and the FSCC include the following:


 * Ongoing mass work and engagement with people’s financial institutions in our localities and workplaces, including financial co-operatives, stokvels and burial societies. For instance, one outcome of our campaign is an attempt to build a single national federation of burial societies to increase the voice and muscle of this capital in the hands of our people, estimated at about R4bn. What role should SACP structures be playing to bring together burial societies in their localities and support the building of national progressive structures of burial societies?
 * Engagement of trade unions to form their own savings and credit co-operatives. The most serious challenge in the transformation of the financial sector is to engage trade unions and workers at all levels to demand control over the investment decisions on their retirement and pension funds. What are the specific tasks for communists, particularly those within the trade union movement, in this regard?
 * Building of our Communist Stokvel, the Dora Tamana Stokvel, by recruiting as many party members into it.
 * Most importantly, to build structures of the Financial Sector Campaign Coalition, particularly at provincial and district levels. What are the concrete steps we need to take to realise the building of the FSCCs at these levels?


 * //4.3 Co-operatives//**

4.3.1 Our campaign for building co-operatives derives from our strategic objective of building a socialised economy, and harnessing the energies of the mass of the workers and the poor to create sustainable households and livelihoods. The concept of co-operatives is also premised on building on the networks of social solidarity within our communities to transform their own conditions for the better. Co-operatives are also important for the SACP in that they can be used both as building blocks and schools for socialism.

4.3.2 However, co-operatives are not inherently progressive, as the history of Afrikaner co-operatives in our country show. Nor are they automatically socialist. Our strategy and objective is to build progressive co-operatives and foster their development along socialist lines. In addition, our approach should be a combination of supporting existing co-operatives as well as building new ones.

4.3.3 Since our 11th Congress we have increased our focus on the question of co-operatives. Our work has largely been of creating awareness about co-ops, forging links with a variety of co-operatives and their various associations (eg. NCASA and SACCOL), and lobbying for legislation. We have also been involved in extensive work in trying to build capacity to support existing and new co-operatives. This work has yielded significant results, not least that our government and a number of provinces are beginning to prioritise co-operatives as a crucial vehicle for sustainable livelihoods. Some of the major advances made in this regard, include the draft legislation before parliament on co-operatives.

4.3.4 However there are number of challenges in this regard. What activities should our structures be involved in to support existing and building new co-operatives? How do we integrate the concept of co-operatives into our cadre development work?


 * //4.4 International solidarity campaigns//**

4.4.1 Consistently since 1990 (and before of course), the SACP has played an active, and sometimes a leading role in a range of international solidarity campaigns. This work is part of our internationalism, a core principle of the SACP. It is also part of building our own cadres and our own mass base, consolidating and deepening an internationalist consciousness. In the early 1990s, when the Cuban revolution was particularly threatened, the SACP played a vanguard role in South (and southern) Africa in the Cuba solidarity campaign. Many communists and SACP branches continue to be active in FOCUS. The Party also played a vanguard role in South Africa around East Timor and West Sahara. Those struggles have either been won, or have now been taken up more consistently by our government and broader movement. The SACP has also played a pioneering role in developing South African solidarity with the struggles of the Swazi people. We continue to actively support democratic Swazi forces.

4.4.2 The SACP played an active role with a broad front of formations against the imperialist invasion of Iraq, and we have also taken up Palestine solidarity with our allies – this has been an important struggle for the South African revolution itself – helping to secularise and popularise the challenges of the Middle East – and not allowing a local fundamentalist Islamism to hegemonise the issues.

4.4.3 In the past year and a half (basically since the SACP delegation to Zimbabwe in December 2003), the SACP has been playing an active and sometimes leading role in the Zimbabwean solidarity struggle here in SA. We have engaged our allies, and we have helped to build a broad network of progressive formations, including faith-based and human rights organisations, in the Zimbabwe Solidarity Network. The YCL has also assumed a very active role in this campaign – taking it to campuses and into youth formations. The SACP has also engaged a wide range of Zimbabwean formations in an ongoing way. Our strategic endeavours have been focused on:


 * ensuring that democracy and human rights struggles are not monopolised by centre-right liberals in the South African (or Zimbabwean) public debate. We have advocated a perspective of defending democracy and human rights from the class position of the Zimbabwean working class and poor, in the first instance.
 * engaging the prime political players in Zimbabwe, seeking to push the terrain of debate away from a shallow politics that pits a demagogic “African” nationalism against a liberal civil rights politics. While our endeavours directed at ZANU PF have borne little fruit for the moment, we do believe that we have had some (but an uneven) impact upon MDC and the ZCTU in encouraging them to locate themselves much more squarely within a patriotic, national democratic and, perhaps, even socialist, or at least left-leaning paradigm.
 * taking forward the debate on the lessons of ruling party decay, and seeking to provide a class analysis of these tendencies, evident in Zimbabwe, but also in many other post-independence (and post-revolutionary) societies.
 * locating the Zimbabwe crisis within the wider perspective of the challenge to take forward the continental NDR, building popular motive forces capable of driving a progressive and sustainable continental democratisation and development.

4.4.4 What are the lessons of our international solidarity campaign work? How do we ensure that provinces, districts and branches become more active on this front? Have we prioritised the right issues?


 * 5. Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign: Access to basic services**

5.1 The anchor for all our campaigns from this year towards our 12th Congress must be the “Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign”. The aim of the campaign is to ensure that communists understand and learn from the problems and challenges facing their own neighbourhoods. The target of this campaign is for each party branch to do ongoing door-to-door work to understand and act upon all the problems and challenges facing every household in the neighbourhood. Clearly the campaign should not be seen as a stand-alone – independent of our financial sector and land and agrarian reform campaigns.

5.2 This campaign has also been adopted as an Alliance campaign. We will formally launch this campaign on the last day of this Congress.

5.3 The main challenges facing the Party include the following:


 * How do we ensure that each and every branch is involved in this campaign?
 * What are the immediate challenges for districts and provinces to co-ordinate this campaign?
 * What are the key issues around which we should be engaging households and our communities?
 * How do we use this campaign to build strong CPFs, SGBs and Ward Committees?

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