2007+SACP+Augmented+Central+Committee




 * SACP Press Statement, 2 December 2007**

=2007 SACP Augmented Central Committee=

The augmented Central Committee met in Johannesburg over the weekend of 30th November – 2nd December 2007. This was the final meeting of the CC for the year.

The CC was held in the context of heightened tensions within our alliance partner, the ANC, with just two weeks to go before the 52nd ANC National Conference in Polokwane. The CC reaffirmed the SACP’s principled position that the electoral contest within the ANC is an internal matter and the Party will not be backing any particular candidate or list. However, the SACP is also not a disinterested observer, and the CC further endorsed the perspectives articulated in the Party’s ‘Open Letter to ANC Members’. The Party is adamant that things cannot go on as they are within the ANC and between the ANC and its alliance partners. Either there must be a change in the ANC collective leadership, or there must be a change of heart in that leadership.

We believe that underpinning the pattern of nominations emerging from the ANC’s Provincial General Councils last weekend, and from the ANC’s Leagues, is a converging concern from a significant majority of ANC branch members and cadres. The call for a renewal of the ANC that was apparent in the ANC’s 2005 National General Council, that was reiterated clearly in June this year at the ANC’s National Policy Conference, has now been repeated and with greater insistence and intensity.

What are thousands of ANC delegates saying in essence? The SACP believes that there are many factors at play, but they all converge around one fundamental concern. Over the past decade the mass participatory traditions of the ANC have been run-down, consultation with and involvement of communities have been sidelined, and an unceasing offensive against alliance partners unleashed. From a wide range of quarters – the youth and women sectors, MK veterans, many deep rural areas – there is a single basic refrain. Enough is enough, things cannot continue in the same way.

Without mapping these dynamics crudely into social realities, it is obvious that the divisions that have opened up in the succession debate are not unrelated to one of the most dramatic social features of the post-1994 period. Notwithstanding some important advances in terms of social grants and other poverty alleviation measures, inequality in South Africa ranks among the worst in the world, and while this inequality remains starkly racialised, the most dramatic gulf that has widened in the past decade is within the African community itself. It would be surprising if these developments did not express themselves in one form or another in the run-up to Polokwane. The SACP remains committed to working with the ANC to solidify the unity of the people’s camp, but the lesson of the last years is that such a unity cannot be sustained on the terms of the narrow interests of a new elite of bankers, of speculators, of the holders of multiple directorships working hand-in-glove with established capital and a technocratic elite in the state.

In discussing the prevailing situation, the CC underlined the importance of understanding these underlying issues. The leadership style against which there is now such a considerable groundswell is one that is directly linked to a strategic agenda closely associated with the 1996 undemocratic imposition of GEAR on the ANC, the alliance and our country. The strategic project is premised on the erroneous assumption that government’s main mission is to facilitate capitalist growth, regardless of the quality of that growth, in order to be able to deliver, top-down, some poverty alleviation measures. This assumption has required the deliberate demobilisation of the ANC as an active, mass-based formation, the attempted marginalisation of the Alliance, and even of parliament and NEDLAC. Policy-making has been concentrated in a series of unelected presidential councils.

The SACP is well aware that those who disagree with this analysis will seek to portray our positions as ‘macro-populist’, as displaying a reckless disregard for public resources and sustainable economic governance. Our response is quite clear – the very circles within the ANC and government who are preaching to us about fiscal sustainability are the ones who have squandered billions on an ill-considered arms procurement package, and billions more during their compradorial flirtation with Coleman Andrews and the purchase of a fleet of Boeing 737s. It is these very forces who have messed up the transformation of the telecommunications sector through the privatisation of Telkom, including a crude primitive accumulation process that benefited leading elements within the ANC. It is these circles who privatised ISCOR, so that we now have to buy our own steel from the Mittal family at a 30% premium. The same forces have squandered billions more on Coega and Gautrain, and they have landed us in a hugely costly recapitalisation of Eskom whose costs have been massively compounded by years of procrastination while they flirted with various privatisation schemes. We do not think that these circles are well-placed to read us lessons on the dangers of fiscal indiscipline.

The CC calls for a principled approach to the ANC’s 52nd National Conference. We call on ANC delegates to use the conference to elect a collective leadership that is willing and able to re-build the ANC and help reconfigure the Alliance as a dynamic political centre.

Unfortunately, one of the consequences of the heightened tensions within the ANC has been all manner of deeply concerning realities. The CC condemned the way in which the serious question of the struggle against gender-based oppression and discrimination has been vulgarised into a question of who is placed where on which list. The SACP fully supports the great importance of affirming women comrades at all levels, but we reject the reduction of this critical struggle to an elite game of personal positioning.

The SACP has been receiving numerous reports of large amounts of money being used in an attempt to sway ANC delegates. We condemn this practice and call on comrades to expose it without fear or favour. We call for an end to the corrosive politics of money and patronage. It is precisely this kind of politics that has produced the current back-lash in the first place.

Along with many other South Africans, the SACP is deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding the suspension of the Attorney General, Vusi Pikoli. The SACP calls for the Ginwala Commission to hold an open inquiry and to proceed expeditiously with its work. If, as the Constitution requires, a report is released to the public via Parliament it is critical that the report contains both the submission of government and the submission made by Pikoli. A dark cloud of suspicion and concern hangs over this whole matter, and only an expeditious and transparent process will help to settle the matter.
 * The Pikoli Matter**

The CC received and discussed extensive reports on the first phase of our Red October Campaign directed at the state of our public health-care system. In all provinces, the SACP (working closely with COSATU affiliates and other unions in the health sector) has undertaken numerous visits to public hospitals and clinics, held meetings with management and staff, and interacted with surrounding communities.
 * Red October Campaign – for a revitalised public health care system**

Notwithstanding the dedicated work of many health-care professionals, it is clear that our public health-care system is under huge strain. A burgeoning private health-care system, that services a minority, consumes the great bulk of resources, and benefits from professionals trained within the public sector. It is imperative that we re-build our public health-care system, that we move rapidly to the implementation of an National Health Insurance system, and that we re-build morale that has been battered by down-sizing measures and ill-advised contracting out of service. We need to greatly improve resourcing. The SACP believes especially that we need to encourage much greater community activism and participation in hospital boards, and clinic committees, and we are committed to helping build community-based health forums. We also believe that our public health facilities should be more pro-active in their outreach to surrounding communities, including having open days to foster public engagement and support.

In the course of our hospital visits we have encountered some encouraging examples of effective management-worker cooperation, but we have also been besieged with many accounts of abuse, including work-place sexual abuse. Empowering workers and communities is the key to rooting out all manner of managerial abuse.

The SACP will be sustaining our public health-care campaign into the new year and beyond, and we will be working closely with our comrades in government as we proceed.

The CC joined millions of fellow South Africans and others around the world in marking International Aids Day, in expressing our solidarity with those infected and affected by the pandemic, and in committing ourselves to an unceasing struggle to ensure accessible treatment and care, and for the expansion of the campaign around prevention. The SACP fully supports the National Strategic Plan. Our own Red October campaign is, of course, closely interlinked with these objectives. The SACP also commits itself fully to working in solidarity around the 16 days of activism against violence against women and children.
 * International Aids Day**

The SACP CC also re-affirmed its commitment and participation in the **16 Days of activism** against violence and abuse against women and children. We have already mobilised our structures, through our Red October, to actively take foward this important campaign.

Issued by the SACP


 * For information Contact:

Malesela Maleka SACP Spokesperson -082 226 1802**

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