SACP+May+Day+Message+2006



=SACP May Day Message, 2006=

We are celebrating May Day 2006 after having completed the celebration of the life and revolutionary contribution of Cde Chris Hani, who was cowardly assassinated 13 years ago. The SACP has held successful celebrations in most of our provinces. We celebrated the Chris Hani month, by amongst other things focusing on the task of building People’s Land Committees as key drivers of land and agrarian transformation to benefit the workers and the poor of our country.

Our Young Communist League has also used the month of April to launch its Defiance Campaign – a defiance of capitalism! – on the basis of its Ten Youth Demands, highlighting, amongst other things, the issue of unemployment amongst youth and the need to intensify the struggle against HIV/AIDS.

Towards a strong Southern African trade union and working class movement
We are also celebrating this May Day in the wake of successful demonstrations in supporting the struggle for democracy in Swaziland. The SACP joined the COSATU-led demonstrations at all the border posts between South Africa and Swaziland. We wish to congratulate COSATU for their principled internationalist stance and further highlighting the urgency to address the situation in Swaziland.

We therefore also wish to use this May Day to call upon our government, the Southern African Development Community and the African Union, to give urgent attention to the situation in Swaziland, and pressurise that government to embark on a genuine process of democratisation. We also call upon all progressive forces in the world to join in solidarity with the struggle for democracy in Swaziland.

The SACP also calls for the broadening of our solidarity work with Swaziland to include solidarity and building of strong trade union and a strong working class movement in our Southern African region. It is clear to us that in many countries in the region the trade union movement and working class formations have become weaker since independence. It is in the deepest interest of South Africa’s working class to see the development of a strong working class movement in the continent as a whole, but especially in our region. We therefore call upon COSATU to intensify its work with trade unions in the region, and the SACP will also play its part in building networks and links with working class formations in our region.

Consolidating workers’ struggles for an offensive against capitalism
Like last year, we are again celebrating May Day in the midst of some of the major battles and struggles by South Africa’s working class. In the last few months Transnet has been rocked by some of the major strikes in its history, led by COSATU’s South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union. Of particular significance in this action was the participation of a number of unions some of whom representing white workers in this parastatal; an expression of inter-racial worker solidarity in recent working class struggles.

We are also celebrating this May Day in the midst of strikes by Telkom workers and workers in the security industry. Telkom, once more, is proving to be one of the most notorious employers, unilaterally imposing decisions above the heads of the workers and still engaging in apartheid practices of locking workers out. A privatised Telkom, something we warned and struggled against, has become nothing but a predatory capitalist entity, whose role is not longer the rolling out of telephony and information and communications technology to the majority of our people, but maximising profits for its shareholders. This unfortunately has also been opportunistically done in the name of black economic empowerment (BEE), whose outcome has been an enrichment of a small elite (black and white), whilst simultaneously impoverishing the majority, through retrenchments and unaffordable communications services.

The struggle of the workers in the security industry deserves the support of all the workers in our country. These are workers whose working conditions have hardly changed since apartheid. They guard the capitalists’ millions of rands and their properties, yet they get paid peanuts. Security workers also work long hours, without adequate compensation and their conditions of service leave a lot to be desired.

The security industry in our country is still dominated by some of the most backward sections of the capitalist class. In addition this sector of our economy is increasingly dominated by former apartheid security apparatchiks who have now found a new niche in the security industry. It is partly for this reason that employers in the security industry are attempting to employ the old apartheid labour practices, that of seeking to divide workers by entering into illegitimate agreements with sweetheart unions, who represent only a minority of the organised workers in this industry. We must not allow these apartheid labour practices to flourish in any sector of our economy. The SACP will stand side by side with workers in the security industry, until their legitimate demands are won.

It is for these and other reasons that the SACP is going to be throwing its full weight behind the next round of actions to take forward COSATU’s jobs and poverty campaign during this month!

As we said last year the current working class struggles are an expression of **three** interrelated developments in the economy of our country especially since 1996. Firstly, these struggles are a reflection of the growing gap between rich and poor, including the pay of the executives as opposed to those of workers, and the consequent growing inequality in our society. Secondly, they reflect a growing intransigence and arrogance by management, especially in the wake of economic policies that have largely benefited the capitalist class.

Let the people’s will triumph over money
Thirdly and deeply interlinked to the above, the current working class struggles are a response to the growing culture of entitlement and greediness amongst the rich in our country. This culture has been fostered through narrow BEE and domestic and global economic policies that have intensified the exploitation of the working class, as manifested through increased productivity, the rising profitability in many sectors of our capitalist economy, casualisation of workers and the job loss bloodbath of the past 10 years.

A related matter is that of the growing relationship between sections of our cadres in government and the private sector, especially through BEE. The SACP, whilst respecting the right of the ANC, as the ruling party, to interact with business, is concerned about the establishment of the ‘Progressive Business Forum’; a forum of the ANC and business. Our concern arise from the fact that the question of the relationship between the ANC or government and business still requires a thorough discussion within both the ANC and its allies, as per the resolution of the ANC NGC last year. Such a forum cannot be established without firm guidance from such discussions, which we were hoping to take place at least at the ANC’s National Policy Conference later this year.

The question of the relationship between the ANC and business is not a matter for the ANC alone, much as we expect the ANC to provide leadership in the regard. It is also a matter for the Alliance, as we have consistently raised this problem many a times and in many forums. It is also a matter of public interest as the relationship between government and the private sector is of interest to all South Africans.

It is because of these concerns that the SACP wishes to reiterate its call for urgently opening a debate on whether public representatives and public servants should be involved in business activities. In fact the one of the biggest threats to our national democratic revolution is that of the close relationship between sections of our government and the private sector. It is the SACP’s considered views that we should separate public service from private accumulation by people serving the public. We call upon COSATU to support this call, and that we work together to ensure that this matter is dealt with by the Alliance. We need to defend our revolution from being run over by individual private business interests and capital, and ensure that the people’s will triumphs over money.

The struggle against HIV/AIDS
The SACP fully welcomes and supports COSATU’s theme for this May Day; intensifying the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The SACP wishes to use this May Day to reiterate our stance that HIV causes AIDS, and that we need to mobilise the workers and the poor of our country to promote awareness, education, prevention and treatment of this scourge. It is the task of the working class to ensure that we reduce the scale of infection and provide adequate treatment for those of our people who are already HIV positive.

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The SACP considers all the above as at the heart of contemporary working class struggles. Such struggles to us need to be harnessed to ensure that we do indeed beginning to build a momentum for, and elements of, socialism in our country. In order to achieve this overall objective, as well as tackle the challenges outlined above, the working class needs to build all our alliance organisations into a strong force for change.

Workers need to build a strong ANC, and that is why we support the call by COSATU for workers to swell the ranks of the ANC. We call upon COSATU to develop a concrete programme to ensure that this does indeed happen, rather than remaining a call.

We also need to build a strong SACP, rooted amongst the workers and the poor of our country. We need to strengthen the joint programmes between the SACP and COSATU, including intensifying political education of the working class.

We also need to ensure that we strengthen COSATU itself. A critical challenge in this regard is to give support to weaker affiliates of COSATU, as well as ensuring that we organise vulnerable workers, including farm and domestic workers. This strengthening of COSATU is important in order also to ensure that we work towards our objective of building a single federation for our country. The increasing inter-racial and inter-sectoral co-ordination in current working class struggles needs to be consciously used as a platform towards a progressive single trade union federation.