The+revolution+is+on+trial+5,+Nzimande+speech+to+SADTU+NGC



=The revolution is on trial (5): Build working class hegemony to implement free and compulsory education up to matric and reclaim control of workers’ funds for job creation and poverty eradication=


 * //Notes for address at SADTU National General Council by SACP General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande, 7 November 2007//**


 * Introduction**

The SACP is once again deeply honoured for the invitation to come and address this august body, a parliament of the working class, the supreme and leading body of educators of our country. We are again addressing your gathering under the theme that our revolution is on trial, and therefore it requires decisive working class intervention and leadership.


 * Building the SACP as the vanguard party of the working class**

We are addressing your congress in a matter of few months after our very successful 12th Congress held in Port Elizabeth. Our congress was successful precisely because it spelt out a very clear programme of the tasks and challenges facing the working class in the current period into the immediate future. Our congress was a success also because it significantly increased the number of trade union and working class leaders into its primary leading organ in between its congress, the Central Committee.

Our Congress also used its sitting to cleanse and renew itself, as is necessary of all genuine revolutionary political parties of the working class, in order to ensure that its leading organs are renewed by getting rid of anti-working class elements within its own ranks, who would always try to project themselves as part of the working class when in fact they are part of an anti-working class, and especially anti-communist elements who are all out to destroy the working class and its unity, whilst serving a bourgeois agenda, whilst wearing the skin of the working class. Our 12th Congress, like our mothers’ castor oil, got rid of all those elements that pollute our bodies, in order to ensure that we truly reposition our party as a true vanguard party of the working class.

At our 12th Congress we adopted our programme, ‘The South Africa Road to Socialism’, whose main content is that of building working class hegemony in key sites of power and influence in society, with priority being given to six sites of power:

If the working class is to play its role as the leading motive force of the national democratic revolution (NDR), it has to ensure that its power, influence and leading role have to be felt within the state. Part of building working class hegemony within the state is that of strengthening the power of progressive trade unions, like SADTU, at all levels and institutions of the educational state apparatuses. In order to build a revolutionary developmental state, a progressive trade union like SADTU, as well as other progressive public sector trade unions, has to be strengthened as the leading motive force for the transformation of the state.
 * 1. The state**

Strengthening progressive public sector trade unions, like SADTU, in the state must not merely be limited to recruitment of education workers, but must be based on clearly articulated programmes of action and objectives. Central to these objectives must be a struggle for the provision of free and compulsory education at least up to matric level, and possibly including the first tertiary qualification. We are of the view that we now have adequate resources to provide quality, public and free education at least up to matric as a necessary component of building a developmental state.

A fundamental requirement for building working class hegemony within the state is that of ensuring, in line with the historic mission of the ANC and its alliance, guided by the Freedom Charter, that the state itself must maintain its bias towards the working class. In the current conditions it means radically transforming the vision and practical programmes of the state away from ‘lowering the cost of business for business’ to lowering the cost of living for the overwhelming majority of our people, and transforming the role of the state into disciplining and redirecting the capitalist market to serve the interests of the workers and the poor.

It must therefore be the task of this NGC to define the tasks that need to be undertaken for SADTU to play a leading role in building a developmental state from the standpoint of education as part of building working class hegemony in the state. What this means practically is that the struggle for quality public education must also be seen concretely in terms of contributing towards building working class power in the state. In other words there can be no developmental, working class-oriented state without public, quality, free and compulsory education, just as there can be no quality, free public education without a working-class led developmental state.

The most critical task of the working class in the current period is that of building working class power in the economy. Our economy still remains colonial, with the same old white bourgeoisie at the helm. Ours in the current period is that of having political power without economic power.
 * 2. The economy**

One of the key c hallenges in this regard is that reclaiming working class power in relation to workers’ pension and provident funds. These funds are being used to enrich a small elite, black and white, with no effective working class influence over these. This is one of the most critical challenges for the working class.

In relation to SADTU, the Public Investment Company, which is responsible for the investment of the Government Employees Pension Fund, is increasingly being used to fund empowerment deals to benefit primarily the white bourgeoisie, together with elements of the black sections of the bourgeoisie, without any benefit to the workers and the poor. It is really scandalous that public sector workers have no say over all these.

These funds were in the recent past used to enrich a small black and white elite in Telkom, and now with a planned takeover of Johncom by the very same class forces. Why are you quiet and unable to challenge these scandalous transactions? Your own money is being used to finance enrichment and a programmed to undermine the working class, yet you are still unable to challenge this.

Let this NGC, for once, take a decisive resolution to work towards reclaiming these workers’ funds to be redirected towards job creation and poverty eradication. SADTU has a particular responsibility in this regard. The time for keeping quiet is over, and let us build working class hegemony over these funds in order to build working class power in the economy!

One of the most critical challenges facing the working class in the workplace is that of challenging managerial unilateralism in the workplace. Let us work towards the establishment of workplace transformation forums to develop policies on career pathing, promotions, selections and appointments criteria, gender policy and parity, in order to transform our workplaces in line with our developmental agendas. Part of these policies must fight against the sexual exploitation of women, discrimination based on gender, as well as patronage and use of positions of power to advance personal and parasitic agendas. In addition, we must defeat the tendencies of SADTU being used by the education bureaucracy to co-opt SADTU leaders and turning SADTU into an instrument for promotions into the education bureaucracy.
 * 3. The workplace**

Let us build working class power to transform the workplace to serve and advance the interests of the workers!

The fourth terrain in which the working class must build its hegemony and power is that of the community. It is important for the working class to ensure that its own struggles in the workplace, for free, quality and public education is not just limited to workplace struggles but that it is owned and driven by the communities as a whole. We need to go back to connecting workplace issues to broader community struggles for free and quality public education. This means that SADTU needs to be part of the community struggles to achieve these goals.
 * 4. The community**

Fundamentally related to the above is the forthcoming ANC national conference. Much as this is a matter for the ANC and its delegates, but the working class, as the single most organised constituency of the ANC, we must take an active interest on the outcome of this conference. We want a leadership of the ANC that will puruse and deepen its working class bias, strengthening of the alliance, reconfiguring this alliance in line with the post-1994 realities. It cannot be that we all campaign for the ANC but leaving key policy decisions to a small coterie of ANC leaders to decide everything. We do indeed need change in Limpopo and have a leadership prepared to seriously engage with all these issues. We must reject an ANC leadership not prepared to seriously engage with its allies and only deal with it as an ‘ultra-left’. In short we need a new leadership of the ANC that will reinvigotate the Alliance. Continuation with the status quo in the ANC leadership can only be a disaster to the Alliance and the national democratic revolution. We indeed do need change, and a fresh start!

The SACP is again continuing with its 8 year old Red October Campaign. This year we are reviving our focus the struggle to build an affordable and accessible public health system. We intend visiting every public hospital and clinic to find out what is happening, and produce a register of needs in relation to our public health system. In addition we want to focus on the private health care system, and mobilise all our communities to bring pressue on this and ensure that every South African has access to medical help at the nearest health institution! We call upon SADTU to support this campaign!

SADTU has an important role to play in the overall struggle to build the ideological capacity of the working class to build working class hegemony in the whole of society. Part of this struggle is that of cleansing our organisation of opportunists, business unionists and communists who camouflage themselves as working class leaders.
 * 5. The ideological**

SADTU, as representatives of educators have a particular role to play in moulding our youth in line with the interests and ideological orientation of the working class as the leading motive force of our revolution. This means, amongst other things, deepening the relationship between the SACP and SADTU. This should be, as has always been the case, an organisational relationship, and not a relationship between individuals who may happen to be leading these organisaitons at any point in time. Reducing this relationship to individuals is a distortion of our historical relationship, and an opportunistic tendency aimed at destroying the fundamental class basis of this relationship! To reduce organisational relationships to individuals is in essence COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY!

An important dimension of building working class hegemony as part of the struggle against imperialism and its neo-liberal orthordoxy, is that of deepening our internationalis work. We wish to congratulate Thulas Nxesi on his re-election as President of the EI as a reflection of the role that South Africa’s working class continues to play on the international arena. A key challenge that we face is how we harmonise all the work of the alliance partners on the international front so that we continue to uphold the anti-imperialist stance of our movement as a whole.
 * 6. Deepen internationalist solidarity**


 * From: http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?include=docs/sp/2007/sp1107.html**

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