Life+of+a+deputy+-+building+on+our+small+gains,+Sibusiso+Mchunu

=**LIFE OF A DEPUTY: building on our small gains**=

**Sibusiso Mchunu, 22 October 2007**
The time has come once again whereby the Party advocates the Red October, month campaign. Over the year this Red October campaign has yielded some fruits but not to the desired effect of the Party. Some of these smalls' gains had been on the new National Credit Act, the Public Transport campaign, Banking Sector and other various campaigns.

But we cannot yet claim that we have arrived at our desired goals with these campaigns, but at least we do know that we do have small gains. Although our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not yet been overcome, has not yet reached the stage of a culture, that has receded into the distant past. I say culture deliberately, because in these matters we can only regard as achieved what has become part and parcel of our culture, of our social life, our habits. We might say that the good in our social system has not been properly studied, understood, and taken to heart; it has been hastily grasped at; it has not been verified or tested, corroborated by experience, and not made durable, etc. Of course, it could not be otherwise in a revolutionary epoch, when development proceeded at such break-neck speed… [1]

In the transport sector we have seen and noticed that the bourgeois were quick to exploit the loopholes and we have seen the introduction of On-ramp robots (signals), High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) and the mooted tollgates in Gauteng. All these is done purporting that the state is doing it for the goodness of the public when in fact it is littered with privatisation pot-holes to enrich obviously unless one is blind the few. The HOV has cameras that will not be maintained and monitored by the state in order to generate more work for the unemployed but this will be privatised together with the roads as tollgates.

The state has taken a sharp detour (and shifted its focus) on the paramount of accessibility and affordability of public transport, before encouraging and introducing HOV. In my opinion it will have been easy to first provide reliable public transport and then HOV so that it became easy for anybody to use public transport, as we would have fewer vehicles on the road. It is time we did something about it. We must show sound scepticism for too rapid progress, for boastfulness, etc. We must give thought to testing the steps forward we proclaim every hour, take every minute and then prove every second that they are flimsy, superficial and misunderstood. The most harmful thing here would be haste. The most harmful thing would be to rely on the assumption that we know at least something, or that we have any considerable number of elements necessary for the building of a really new state apparatus, one really worthy to be called socialist…etc. [2]

As we approach festive period the road carnage will rise, but we see very little measures being introduced to reduce fatalities. We also know that, this will not come anytime soon because monopoly capitalist (insurances; of vehicles and people) will be out of business if drastic measure were to be introduced. Any intervention must be friendly to business and it should never hurt business, credit rating of the country and careless about people as long as big business makes profit at the expense of it citizens, all is well.

We need to ask questions as to whether the new and old drivers are they adequately prepared (trained) to take control of modern vehicles (which might need different skills emphasis) with all its cleverness fitted or are we still using old curriculum with no relevancy to our time? Has Arrive Alive campaign not reached its cul-de-sac? Our trucks are not fitted with Tachograph, a gadget that is able to record the speed of a vehicle for a week or month with hours driven, maintenance check, resting periods, and easy to use by any traffic officer on the roadblock, why?

What happens to the money charged as part of fuel levy? What happens to the money charged for (re) licensing of vehicle every year? What happens to the money from speed traps? Why is the Department of Transport every year always-return funds to the Treasurer?

We know our tusk very well that we should at every turn be able to educate, mobilise and organize. What elements have we for building this apparatus? Only two. First, the workers who are absorbed in the struggle of socialism. These elements are not sufficient educated. They would like to build a better apparatus for us, but they do not know how… Nothing will be achieved in this by doing things in a rush, by assault, by vim or vigour, or in general, by any of the best human qualities. Secondly, we have elements of knowledge, education and training, but they are ridiculously inadequate compared with all other countries…In order to renovate our state apparatus we must at all costs set out, first, to learn, secondly, to learn, and thirdly, to learn, and then see to it that learning shall not remain a dead letter, or a fashionable catch-phrase (and we should admit in all frankness that this happens very often with us), that learning shall really become part of our very being, that it shall actually and fully become a constituent element of our social life. In short, we must not make the demands that were made by bourgeois Western Europe, but demands that are fit and proper for a country which has set out to develop into a socialist country… In order that it may attain the desired high level, we must follow the rule: "Measure your cloth seven times before you cut." For this purpose, we must utilise the very best of what there is in our social system, and utilise it with the greatest caution, thoughtfulness and knowledge…It is high time things were changed. We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all. [3]

Our research units and Communist University (political education) should be aggressively used to achieve this (to educate, mobilization and organize), in order to prepare our basic units so that the branches are always ready to grapple holistically with challenges on our road to Socialism in our lifetime.

Socialism is the Best ___ Sibusiso Mchunu

[1] V. I. Lenin: Better Fewer, But Better, 1923 [2] V. I. Lenin: Better Fewer, But Better, 1923 [3] V. I. Lenin: Better Fewer, But Better, 1923