SACP+CC+Meeting,+5-6+August+2005,+Press+Statement

South African Communist Party

 * //CENTRAL COMMITTEE//**

3rd Floor COSATU House 1 Leyds Street, cnr Biccard JOHANNESBURG P.O. Box 1027, BRAAMFONTEIN, 2017 //E-mail: info@sacp.org.za// 2000 Tel.: +27 (11) 339 3621/2 //Website: [|www.sacp.org.za]// Fax: +27 (11) 339 4244 +27 (11) 339 6880


 * 07 August 2005**

SACP Press Statement
=Central Committee Meeting, 5-6 August 2005=

The Central Committee of the SACP met in Johannesburg over the weekend of 5-6 August. This CC meeting comes in the context of a number of important national events, including the ANC’s July National General Council, the National Land Summit, a wave of working class strikes, and the SACP’s mobilisation around a credit amnesty for the 2 million South Africans black-listed by the credit bureaux. The CC also discussed the deepening crisis in Zimbabwe and the recent G8 Summit.

The CC also paid tribute to the ANC and SACP stalwart, Cde Lawrence Phokanoka (from Limpopo province) who passed away immediately after the ANC NGC in which he had energetically participated. Cde Phokanoka was one of those very modest, unassuming but highly dedicated South African communists, who served a time in Robben Island and helped mould many of the current senior ANC and SACP leaders and cadres.

The ANC’s National General Council
The SACP participated actively in its own right, as well as through hundreds of SACP members who were ANC and Cosatu delegates in the ANC’s historic NGC in July. The CC reviewed the key decisions of the NGC and noted with appreciation many important resolutions, including:

· an overwhelming and considered rejection of free market assumptions, whether in regard to land reform or labour market deregulation; · a related affirmation of the need to build a strong, worker and poor biased developmental state; · the commitment to upholding and strengthening the ANC as a mass-based liberation movement rooted in its branch structures, an organisation that fosters internal democracy and localised popular mobilisation; · the resounding re-affirmation of the importance and centrality of the Alliance, and of the need to foster a deepening unity in action.

The CC endorsed the position adopted by the ANC NGC in regard to ANC deputy president, cde Jacob Zuma. The SACP commits itself to working with its alliance partners to help to foster respect for the elected national offices of our movement, and sound collective leadership.

The National Land Summit
The CC also assessed the past week’s very successful government-convened National Land Summit. It was a Summit that the SACP has been calling for in the course of our land and agrarian campaign. The CC saluted the important role that many SACP activists played in the preparations and deliberations of this Summit. Part of the success of the Summit is attributable to the fact that it was preceded by a number of provincial land summits.

Key resolutions of the Summit were the rejection of the willing-buyer willing-seller principle, the need for a review of foreign land ownership, and the general call for government to come up with a new strategy to accelerate land and agrarian reform.

The SACP believes that the priority is now to take forward the post-Summit processes. The most critical challenge is that of ensuring the building of People’s Land Committees, so that implementation of the resolutions is driven forward by local communities themselves. Capacity within government departments will also have to be looked at very seriously.

The SACP has been calling for the role of the Land Bank to be reviewed to ensure that its mandate extends much more actively to assisting small-scale farming including co-ops. We believe that land and agrarian transformation must be incorporated into all local government integrated development plans (IDPs).

Credit Amnesty
As part of the SACP’s 84th anniversary celebrations, and in the context of National Credit Bill now before Parliament, the Party has organised a range of organisations in marches and pickets calling for an amnesty for the 2 million South Africans who are currently black-listed by the Credit Bureaux. The majority of black-listed are poor and their plight is forcing them into the hands of unscrupulous loan sharks and thus into deeper financial crisis. Such a high level of black-listed is also seriously undermining many progressive interventions by government around housing, SMME support and generally addressing underdevelopment in our country. The crisis of indebtedness of poor households is a ticking time-bomb, an unsustainable reality that must be addressed with a sense of urgency.

Zimbabwe
The CC expressed its strongest condemnation of the Zimbabwean government’s ongoing inhumane and senseless destruction of homes, crèches and business premises, leaving, to date, some 700,000 people homeless. The SACP has noted the South African government’s recent engagement with their Zimbabwean counterparts around the possibility of extending a credit line to address the financial crisis in Zimbabwe.

We agree with our government that, as South Africans, both for moral and pragmatic reasons, we cannot just sit back while our neighbouring country implodes. It is, therefore, correct to explore a wide range of possible interventions and engagements, from government interaction to people-to-people solidarity. The possibility of assisting with a loan should be seen within such a context.

We are, however, extremely concerned about the danger of a loan amounting to little more than extending the crisis-ridden shelf-life of anti-worker, anti-poor authoritarian policies and practices. We call on our own government to show the maximum resolve in ensuring that there are very clear requirements attached to any loan. These requirements must include guarantees that the loan will not be squandered on elite consumption or repression. But the requirements must also embrace a much wider package of commitments with clear time-lines. These wider issues must include:


 * an immediate halt to the wanton destruction of homes and community facilities;
 * the scrapping of anti-democratic legislation, including legislation directed against the right to assembly and against media freedom;
 * an inclusive negotiation process on constitutional reform.

These wider issues are, in fact, essential for resolving the present financial crisis. There is no sustainable path out of this crisis without creating the conditions for an open and patriotic intra-Zimbabwean dialogue that draws in the political parties, the trade union movement, the faith-based and other key sectoral and social movements.

In advancing these requirements, the SACP notes the track-record of broken promises, deliberate delays and a general lack of seriousness in seeking a patriotic resolution from certain quarters in Harare, including the recent adamant refusal by President Mugabe to even talk to the MDC.

We are sure that the South African government is in agreement with our general analysis of the situation. We urge it to be firm and vigilant in its engagement. Above all, we urge our government to share its perspectives, including its approach to a possible loan, with the people of South Africa. Public South African support for our government’s initiatives and attached requirements will be an important leverage itself on the key protagonists in Zimbabwe.

The CC further welcomed the initiative of the South African Council of Churches as an important contribution to people-to-people contact and solidarity between South Africans and Zimbabweans. As the SACP we have always called for an increase in such activities, and that as South Africans we must not be selective in this regard. Church-to-church contact is as important and legitimate just as worker and trade union solidarity is between South African trade unions and its counterparts in the region without any imputation of secret agendas in such solidarity.

The current wave of worker strikes in South Africa
The CC discussed the current wave of worker strikes across a wide variety of sectors – including municipal, mining, steel, retail and transport workers. The SACP salutes the militancy of workers, the important instances of inter-racial worker solidarity; and the growth of a broad public impatience, not with striking workers, but with the arrogance of management and bosses. In this latter respect, we note widespread public concern about gross salary, bonus and share-option rewards that the bosses are giving themselves at the expense of worker remuneration. These developments help to raise wider questions around the accumulation path underway in our country, and about the need to advance a perspective not just of increased growth, but of a different kind of growth.

The SACP joins the trade union movement in condemning isolated incidents of worker indiscipline – the trashing of streets and the destruction of property is simply counter-productive to working class struggles. However, we particularly note wide-spread instances of management arrogance in the course of strikes – not least from public and parastatal managers. There have also been a number of over-the-top interventions by S APS and private security personnel, in which excessive force has been used against workers. We have raised our concerns with our colleagues in the relevant government departments. These things have absolutely no place in the industrial relations dispensation of our democracy – the struggle for which was spearheaded by the working class itself.

August 9th – National Women’s Day
The CC takes this opportunity to salute the ongoing struggles of the women of our country – particularly working women. In the course of our campaigns over the last few years (the land and agrarian campaign, the struggle for sustainable livelihoods and communities, the coops campaign, the campaign for the transformation of the financial sector) we have consistently found that it is working women who are in the fore-front of organisation and struggle. We call on all our members to participate actively in this week’s events to commemorate National Women’s Day.

The YCL Policy Conference
The CC also received a report on the forthcoming YCL Policy and Strategy Conference to be held later this week. This is an important initiative by young communists to freely debate and develop policies on matters affecting the youth of our country, and the SACP will do all to ensure that this Conference becomes a success.


 * CONTACT:**
 * Kaizer Mohau**
 * Media Liaison Officer**
 * South African Communist Party (SACP)**
 * Tel: 011 339 3621/2**
 * Fax: 011 339 4244/6880**
 * Cell: 082 805 1085**
 * Email: Kaizer@sacp.org.za**
 * Website: [|www.sacp.org.za]**