Build+YCL+as+SA+political+school+for+communism,+Blade+Nzimande



=Build the Young Communist League as South Africa’s political school for communism!=


 * //SACP General Secretary’s Keynote Address to the 2nd Congress of the Young Communist League – 14 December 2006, EThekwini//**


 * Blade Nzimande, General Secretary, SACP**

Cde Chair, the National Secretary of the YCL, cde Buti Manamela and the National Committee of the YCL, Members of the SACP Central Committee, Leaders and Members of Allied Organisations, our International Guests, Cdes Delegates.

On behalf of the Central Committee of the SACP, we are indeed proud that 4 and half years since 11th Congress of the SACP took a resolution to re-establish the Young Communist League, and exactly three years after your Re-establishment Congress, we are here today at the 2nd Congress of the YCL, with 28 000 members, 56% of whom are female. This is truly an astonishing achievement. It is palpable proof that significant sections of our youth truly understand that their future is socialism and are deeply attracted to communism!

We are particularly proud that you have attracted to your ranks more female members than males and this bodes well for the struggles for women’s emancipation and gender equality. This also bodes well for the SACP itself, in its struggles for the transformation of gender relations.

For all this we wish to congratulate the first-term leadership of the YCL, under the leadership of your National Committee, led by National Secretary, Cde Buti Manamela, as well as all the leadership collectives of the YCL at provincial, district and branch levels.


 * An important landmark and a breath of fresh air**

At the YCL Re-establishment Congress, the SACP in its message said, amongst other things, that “the relaunch is an important landmark in the new history of a democratic South Africa, particularly for the historically oppressed and exploited people of our country”. Cde Zwelinzima Vavi, the General Secretary of COSATU, also challenged the delegates at the re-establishment Congress that the YCL must bring a breath of fresh air and its impact must be felt. Indeed the last three years of the YCL has made a huge impact in our country. We congratulate the re-establishment leadership for a job well done!

The SACP is heartened that right from its re-establishment the YCL has not hesitated in throwing itself into the ongoing class, national, gender and ideological struggles underway in our country from the standpoint of the interests of the working class. Indeed the last three years of our country have seen many complex and difficult challenges both in broader society, as well as within our own movement. The SACP is also proud of the fact that the YCL has now established its structures in all the provinces of our country, and indeed in many districts and localities.

Since the re-establishment of our YCL, we have also unearthed a lot of young communist talent which is also educating itself, through struggle, in the challenges of leadership. This bodes well for the SACP and the future of socialist struggles in our country.


 * The South African Road to Socialism**

In locating the tasks of this Congress, it is important that I share with you some of the very important discussions and debates that took place at our 2006 Augmented Central Committee, especially some points contained in the political report. We think this is important in that it talks to a number of issues raised by your own discussion document.

The primary aim of that political report was to facilitate a debate on our perspectives and vision of, and transition to, a socialist South Africa, as the anchor upon which we need to base our strategy and tactics in the current period and beyond. It is therefore important that you approach your own Congress debates and discussion from this standpoint.

There are a number of reasons why we think we should ground our programmatic perspectives around a South African road to socialism, but I will only highlight what are perhaps the most important ones. Firstly, the aim is to deepen unifying perspectives in the party around a sense of a clear programme that links today’s campaign and organisational work to a socialist future.

Secondly, some of the current debates about the SACP’s relation to state power may actually be about different conceptions in our perspectives on the prospects, possibilities and paths to socialism in South Africa. For instance, if //our road to socialism is a socialist oriented national democratic revolution, then what is the exact connection between deepening the NDR and the transition to socialism as we envisage it now?//

There is also always a perennial danger in national democratic struggles - that of freezing the immediate objectives of the NDR into our longer term strategic objective - building socialism. There needs to be a vision and there need to be programmes that go beyond the immediate objectives of the NDR. Failure to locate the NDR within our overall strategic objective of building socialism, as captured in our 1962 programme, runs the risk of creating a ‘rupture’ between the NDR and socialism, and narrowing our strategic and tactical goals into what some comrades have called ‘building socialism through the ANC’. Indeed there is an important issue that needs to be surfaced in our own discussions, on the place and role of the ANC in relation to the struggle for socialism. At the same time, focusing exclusively on the question of building socialism, without understanding the immediate terrain of the NDR, runs the risk of some utopian and idealistic path to socialism. Unfortunately, both these tendencies are to be found within our own Party.

Of course it is important to make the point that our strategic slogan ‘Socialism is the future, build it now’ remains our most creative and appropriate approach to the task of deepening the NDR towards a transition to socialism. But we need to enrich and refine this programmatic slogan, and develop appropriate tactics at appropriate times in order to advance the struggle for socialism, both in the here and now and in the future.

Also we need to further elaborate and create effective conceptual and programmatic synergy between ‘the national democratic revolution’, ‘socialism is the future, build it now’ ‘our medium term vision’, etc. This can only be done if we begin to locate all these within the framework of defining our vision for socialism, and the South African road to socialism. Failure to do this has the danger of limiting our perspectives largely to ‘deepening and consolidating the NDR’ or ‘building elements of socialism’ in a manner that is disconnected from how we conceptualise a transition to socialism in South Africa and type of socialist society we envisage.

We are also surfacing this conception to underline the fact that there is a struggle to be waged, in other words, a road to be travelled towards socialism; nor are we lost in the opportunistic pragmatism of ‘managing capitalist relations’. The idea of a ‘road’ is used to underline the fact that we have transformational and revolutionary responsibilities and objectives, and therefore every step we take should be guided by these (socialist) objectives.

We are however conscious of the fact that the idea of a South African Road to Socialism maybe misconstrued as an attempt to come up with a rigid blue print of a step by step, seamless move towards socialism, where every step will be predictable in the course of this struggle. It may also be read as an approach that merely treats the NDR as simply an instrument towards socialism, as if its objectives are in themselves not important, albeit being simultaneously a terrain of struggle for socialism. This is not the intended meaning of the concept of road being used here, but an expression of the fundamental need to link current struggles to our overall struggle and objective. This concept is also used as a means of further debating and clarifying our strategy and tactics the current period, as well as further debates on the links between the national democratic revolution and a transition to socialism.


 * Our socialist vision – in brief**

Socialism is a transitional society in which production for social need increasingly prevails over production for private profit. The socialist sector will include various forms of democratic state ownership (including municipal ownership) as well as a variety of forms of social ownership, including cooperatives. There will also be a vibrant petty commodity and service sector liberated from the domination of big capital by working in close cooperation with the public sector. A socialist economy will also be characterised by democratic, participatory planning, including, where appropriate, devolved planning at the localised levels.

The political conditions for a decisive advance in this direction are building the capacity, power and consciousness of the working class and urban and rural poor, advancing the class struggle, and ensuring that the state comes under the firm hegemony of the working class and its allies to be shaped to serve the interests of these classes as the basis of serving the interests of society as a whole.

A decisive socialist advance within our country is the only secure basis for definitively abolishing the special colonial features of the persisting capitalist accumulation path in our country – including all the core objectives of the NDR itself. These include abolishing a racialised and “dual” economy, a racialised “dual” labour market with crisis levels of unemployment, casualisation and under-employment, racialised land hunger; a racialised wage gap; and racialised poverty and systemic inequality; and all the underlying gender content of this racialised duality.

Socialism will roll back the hegemony of the capitalist market, and actively decommodify basic needs like education, water, electricity, accommodation and public transport – by either making them free or available at prices that are not based on capitalist profit maximisation.

A socialist South Africa, in which the priority of meeting social needs is dominant, will enable us to more effectively engage with the greatest challenge of human civilisation in our epoch – the rapid destruction of the physical and biological material conditions for human survival. A socialist South Africa

Therefore the political economy of socialism is that of a working class-led economic and political dispensation, whose primary purpose and overriding aim is to serve the interests of the workers and the poor.


 * The national democratic revolution as our most direct route to socialism**

We are faced with a challenge of seeking to consolidate and deepen a socialist oriented NDR on a terrain that is both globally and domestically dominated by capitalism and an increasingly militaristic character of US imperialism.

Your ‘Strategy and Tactics’ Discussion Document correctly raises the question of reclaiming a socialist oriented NDR, as the most appropriate route towards socialism. Perhaps this is the fundamental question facing the SACP and the working class as a whole, and is a key consideration in our own Medium Term Vision (MTV).

Ours is also a struggle for socialism in the absence of the countervailing global balance of the Soviet bloc of socialist states, but in which over the last decade a wide range of other countervailing forces have emerged – including wide-spread social movement mobilisation against neo-liberalism and imperialist militarism; a growing wave of electoral rejection of neo-liberalism (not least, but not only in Latin America); the powerful economic emergence of “middle ranking” powers (India, Brazil, Russia) that are not part of the traditional imperialist bloc; the economic rising star of China, and, here domestically, a political context where the liberation movement, of which we are a part, has ascended to state power.

For the SACP, especially since the adoption of the Native Republic Thesis of 1928 (‘A struggle for a native republic as a stage towards a socialist South Africa’), we had always understood the national democratic revolution as the most direct route to socialism. The latter perspective was fully elaborated in our 1962 programme, ‘The Road to South African Freedom’.

The concept of a ‘national democratic revolution’ emerged from within Marxism-Leninism in its analysis of the unfolding national liberation struggles in the 20th century. The NDR has historically been understood as a revolution led by progressive motive forces (mainly oppressed and exploited) to defeat repressive and colonial regimes and build people’s democracies, as both an objective in itself, but in circumstances also where, due to domestic or global balance of forces, such a revolution is unable to immediately proceed to socialism. This could be because the motive forces are either not strong or conscious enough to drive the revolution towards socialism or other objective factors pose a limitation to a transition to socialism.

The above was indeed the SACP understanding of the NDR which was also shared by many inside the ANC itself. This however did not mean that the SACP had conceived the NDR merely as a stepping stone or an ‘instrument’ towards socialism. The SACP has always understood and accepted that the very immediate objectives of the NDR – the liberation of blacks in general and Africans in particular, and the building of a non-racial and non-sexist society – were important objectives in themselves. It is for this reason that, contrary to the arguments of our left and right detractors, the Alliance is still important, since the main objectives of the NDR have not been achieved, despite progress made since the 1994 democratic breakthrough.

At the same time the SACP has consistently and correctly argued that the national and gender contradictions cannot be fully resolved within the confines of a national democratic revolution that does not advance to socialism. It is for this reason that we have approached the challenge of consolidating and deepening of the NDR from the perspective of our strategic slogan ‘Socialism is the Future, Build it Now’.

For the ANC, a perspective also shared by the SACP, the national democratic revolution meant the achievement of a non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society. In addition the ANC, much as it might not have shared all the perspectives of the NDR as articulated by the SACP, had always understood the SACP’s perspectives on the relationship between the NDR and a transition to socialism.

The Alliance shared the perspective that much as the NDR was not a socialist revolution, but it was not a struggle for capitalism either. This shared perspective was deepened through the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1995, which, whilst not a socialist document, envisaged a radical transformation of society including major restructuring of the capitalist system itself in favour of the overwhelming majority of our people. This shared perspective was also strengthened by the ANC’s commitment to a working class bias as captured in the Morogoro Conference as well as what is contained in the ‘Green Book’, which our CC discussion document refers to.

If the NDR is for us, the shortest and the most direct route to socialism, clearly we have to look intensely into the experiences of national democratic revolutions in the 20th Century, as well as study closer other struggles that characterise themselves as national democratic revolutions (especially, but not exclusively, in Africa, Asia and Latin America). We also need to systematically tease out the unfolding character of our very own national democratic revolution.

It is consistently from this perspective that we should approach the NDR and the tasks arising there-from. Whilst understanding the ANC’s emerging understanding of the NDR and its tasks, our point of departure must be from the SACP’s perspectives. //But a tactical (perhaps within even strategic consequences) challenge for the SACP is what happens, as seems clearly to be the case, that the 1996 class project that is dominant both inside the state and in our movement, is beginning to radically redefine, if not in theory, certainly in practice, the NDR as implying pursuance of a capitalist oriented path – NDR as managing capitalist relations. A question that is worth asking is whether this path is temporary, given a particular appraisal of the domestic and global balance of forces, or is it becoming entrenched, thus seriously threatening any possibilities for a socialist oriented NDR?//

In practice, what is happening is that because the NDR was never a socialist programme, it therefore is increasingly taking a capitalist route. The NWC response to our discussion document is virtually explicit on this point:, ‘managing of capitalist relations in line with the logic of the capitalist system’. It is important for the SACP to frankly and honestly grapple with these questions.

This therefore poses the question (perhaps a tactical one as well) is that having identified some of the key features of this 1996 class project, what is our response to it? Also, is its dominance perhaps a reflection of our own weaknesses in propagating and struggling for a socialist oriented NDR, without however at the same time risking breaking the Alliance?


 * Ideological contestations within the SACP: Deepen ideological work and adherence to democratic centralism**

It is also important, as part of elaborating on our strategy and tactics, to assess the extent to which the SACP itself, and of course the YCL, is being broadly contested, by who and the form that such contestation takes.

The 1996 class project is indeed contesting our allied formations, albeit not the only one. In the case of the SACP, one latest expression of this is the claim being bandied about by some within our ranks warning of an imaginary ‘re-Stalinisation’ of the SACP. We must understand this for what it is; the manifestation of the contestation of the direction of the SACP by the class project, and it is underpinned by a combination of things.

It is underpinned by an attempt by some within our ranks to create independent and parallel SACP structures, that are not accountable to, and not bound by the decisions of, the SACP as a whole. Put differently it is an attempt to create ‘liberated zones’ for the 1996 class project, as part of contesting the very soul of the SACP. It is an attempt to frighten the SACP from legitimately demanding the most principled implementation of its programmes and campaigns.

Furthermore, much as we have correctly raised the question of the class contestation of all our organizations and the dangers of using governmental or organizational positions to dispense patronage, there are pockets of these within our own Party. In some instances we must admit that we do have a problem of some within our SACP leadership collectives and members who are nothing more than business and patronage networks. In addition in some instance some of our campaigns (eg building of co-operatives) are being appropriated for private personal accumulation. These are the appendages of the 1996 class project within our ranks, and the actual basis for the imaginary claims of ‘re-Stalinisation’.

We also have to face the reality that within our own ranks there are attempts to appease the 1996 class project, given the realities of patronage rewards that is sometimes associated with this, and given the reality of practices of parasitic capitalism fairly widespread within our own broad movement.

We must also continue to fight against the associated practices of those who want to use their positions in the SACP as a platform to gain positions in the ANC or government.

Of late we are also seeing a new tendency in the SACP, whereby, in pursuance of some of these opportunistic practices, some inside our ranks are increasingly talking to the media as faceless sources, leaking information from our internal meetings and discussions. We must strongly condemn this practice and do all we can to expose those that are engaged in these tendencies.

In dealing with these issues it is important to deepen ideological work within the party, and expose such practices wherever they happen. We must however avoid dealing with these issues bureaucratically or should we allow a free for all. The answer to this is to insist on strict adherence to our principles of democratic centralism.

Part of reclaiming a socialist-oriented NDR is to reclaim its values, and to deepen moral renewal within all our organizations by promoting values of social solidarity and exposing all attempts to transform the SACP into an instrument of patronage or to access individual business opportunities.


 * The dangers of parasitic capitalism**

The above are a reflection of a much deeper challenge in our struggle to consolidate and deepen the NDR; that of fighting against parasitic capitalism within the ranks of our entire movement.

Parasitic capitalism, simply defined, is a ‘system’ where access to governmental office is used to access resources/business opportunities, either within the state (tenders) and/or in private business.

By its very nature, parasitic capitalism is thoroughly corrupt. One of the most serious threats to our national democratic revolution is the deepening corruption in our society, both in the public and private sectors.

A key task for the movement as a whole, and we expect the YCL to play a prominent role in this regard, is to intensify the struggle against corruption. We should consciously seek to incorporate the struggle against corruption into all our campaigns. For example, in the struggle for the transformation of the state and the building of a developmental state, the struggle against corruption within the state must be placed at the centre.

If there is one cancer, other than HIV/AIDS, that threatens to steal the future of our youth IT IS CORRUPTION. It therefore must be fought at all levels. We hope your Congress will discuss this matter thoroughly and come up with some concrete strategies and wayfoward. In dealing with this matter we should also critically evaluate the extent to which there maybe a deep interconnectedness between the accumulation regime underway in our country, the model of BEE we have and parasitic capitalism.

The YCL also has a special responsibility to deepen its ideological offensive against the increasingly dominant capitalist values in society, especially the offensive directed at the youth through all forms of media and other messages. The ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality is going to swallow the future of our youth, unless this is actively combated. No amounts of insults must divert us from a principled exposure of corrupt practices, wherever they take place, including use of state office to access opportunities for private personal accumulation!

//The challenge we want to pose to our country and our movement as a whole is simply this: People must choose between, on the one hand, being public representatives and government officials OR, on the other hand, being business people. Combination of the two is unacceptable, and is the fundamental basis of parasitic capitalism and corruption. Whilst declaration of private interests by public or government officials in parliamentary type registers is a step in the right direction, this is not enough. One simply cannot claim to be a representative of the workers and the poor during the day, and be a capitalist at night, exploiting the very same workers and the poor one claim to represent! At the very least public representatives and government officials who have business interests must publicly declare these for all our people to know!//

In addition all our political formations in the Alliance at least must have a register of private business interests. Otherwise all the complaints about greed and crass materialism shall remain an empty call and merely moralization with not substance or decisive intention to deal with this issue. This is the only basis towards defeating parasitic capitalism and corruption! Otherwise we will see the continued perversion of that great slogan of South Africa’s organized workers that ‘An injury to one is a business or political opportunity for others’!


 * The tasks of the YCL: A political school for communism**

The best way through which we can characterize the tasks of the YCL is that it must consciously build itself into a political school for communism in our country. What do we mean by this?

Firstly, the YCL must consciously seek to recruit and educate the widest possible strata of our youth on socialism and prepare them as cadres and future leaders of the SACP. This should necessarily entail consistent and ongoing Marxist-Leninist education as one of its prime tasks. As the YCL moves into its second term it must build its organizational capacity to conduct ongoing political education at all levels of its structures. This will go a long way towards production of a conscious communist cadre inside the SACP itself.

However, for the YCL to be the political school for communism it must not limit itself to theoretical discussions, important as these are, but must also be a campaigning and activist organization. As Lenin said, theory without practice is sterile, and practice without theory is blind. The YCL should throw its full weight behind SACP campaigns and consciously seek to place youth issues at the centre of these campaigns, eg youth co-operatives, accessible and affordable finance for young people to build sustainable livelihoods, access to land for young people, safe and affordable public transport for scholars, etc.

In undertaking the above tasks, the YCL need to ground itself in the Medium Term Vision (MTV) of the SACP, which amongst other things seek to make the second decade of our freedom a decade for the workers and the poor. Our MTV directs the SACP to intensify and lead the struggle to build working class hegemony in all key sites of power and influence in society. The MTV has further been concretely elaborated by the SACP as meaning building working class hegemony in five key sites of power: the state, the workplace, the community, the economy and the ideological struggle.

The challenges of building working class power and hegemony in these five key areas must not be treated mechanically, as if these were clearly separate arenas of struggle. Whilst recognizing the distinct features of each of these arenas of struggle, and without collapsing one into the other, they are deeply interconnected struggles. For instance there is a thoroughly deep relationship between the state and the economy.

//The framework within which to link these five terrains of struggle is to consistently approach our political tasks from the standpoint of the three, deeply interrelated contradictions that the NDR seeks to address: the class, national and gender contradictions in their interrelationship.//

For purposes of anchoring the tasks of the YCL, you will also have to prioritise struggles in each of the five principal terrains of struggle:

The state – The primary struggle in this regard is that of the transformation of the post-apartheid state into a developmental state, capable of intervening in the economy principally in favour of the workers and the poor. It is must not be a state that is reduced to managing capitalist relations in line with the logic of the capitalist market. But it must be a state driving an overarching transformation programme to benefit the overwhelming majority of our people, with a working class bias, in line with the character of the national democratic revolution. For the YCL it is important to ensure that it is a state that prioritises the needs and interests of young people, those primarily drawn from the ranks of the workers and the poor.

The economy – The YCL needs to mobilize youth to wage an offensive for the transformation of the accumulation path underway in our country. This means that we have to dislodge the logic of restoration of capitalist profitability as the policy orientation of our economy and the main platform of the 1996 class project. We must struggle for an economy that prioritises lowering the cost of living and not ‘lowering the cost of doing business’ as its priority, through job creation and effective absorption of youth into the economy.

The workplace – Flowing out of the above the YCL has a particular challenge of fighting side by side with the trade union movement against the superexploitation of the youth in the workplace, as they are the victims of casualisation, retrenchments and some of the worst labour practices. Within the above context for the YCL to be a political school for communism it must pay special attention to the organization of young workers. Statistics show that more than 60% of the 40% unemployed in South Africa are youth. The YCL also needs to help in the organization of the increasingly casualised workers, many of whom are young women. In this way the YCL should also seek to contribute towards strengthening the trade union movement in its efforts to organize young workers. //The bedrock of the YCL must be young, organized workers!//

The community – Our communities have a huge layer of predominantly working, poor and out of school youth, both in the urban and rural areas. It was this youth, especially the urban section, that was critically in the 1976 youth and student struggles, and subsequently drawn into armed and mass activity into the 1980s, acting as a dependable ally to working class and mass struggles. It is this youth that if we do not mobilize around its needs it may as well be the Achilles heel of our revolution. The YCL needs to pay particular attention to this youth, especially in the large urban areas – the township youth.

The ideological struggle – The real test on whether the YCL truly becomes the political school for communism is in the battle of ideas. The YCL must act as the school for the ideological offensive against capitalist ideas in society. There are a number of deeply interrelated tasks in this sphere, and it is a sphere that clearly cuts across the other terrains of struggle. But one of the priorities in this regard is that of prioritizing the struggle for the progressive transformation of the curricula both in schools and institutions of higher education. The YCL should indeed insist that amongst other things modules of historical and dialectical materialism are taught in our schools as well as modules promoting values of social solidarity and selfless service to develop our country without any expectation of personal reward. Also need to intensify struggle to disrupt the current elite consensus that ours is a permanent capitalist path, benefiting the white elite together with emergent sections of the black elite. This consensus does not only threaten to undermine the NDR, but most critically it constitutes the single biggest threat to a better future for our youth.


 * On the SACP and state power**

It is from the above perspectives that we should approach the current debate on state power in our formations. We must pose the question correctly. The fundamental question is not whether the SACP should field its own electoral candidates, albeit within the context of maintaining the Alliance. The fundamental question is how we build working class hegemony and power in all these key sites of power, including the state. The question of whether this involves an electoral route for the SACP must be subjected to this overall goal.

The reason the SACP approaches the issue this way, is that an electoral route is but one element of a broader strategy to build working class hegemony in society. It is indeed possible to field one’s own electoral candidates without that translating much into building working class power. We should therefore not make the mistake of reducing this debate into a single strategy, that of an electoral option. If we achieve the main objectives of building working class hegemony in society, we would not even have to debate the question of an electoral option; it would emerge on its own.

There is no question that as a political party, the SACP may decide to contest elections. The immediate question is whether taking such a route, say in 2009, will advance or retard the goals of building working class hegemony in society? What should be our immediate priorities now, is to follow an electoral route immediately or to focus on building working class hegemony, including inside the ANC itself? The timing of such decisions are as important as the decisions themselves!

We therefore urge you to debate this question very soberly, taking into account our overall strategic objective as outlined in the MTV, as well as subjecting this to the debate on strategy and tactics. You should not make the mistake of treating the electoral question in isolation from the strategy and tactics of the SACP required for the contemporary period. But the question must be debated, and debated thoroughly. Your views will also be incorporated into the Central Committee Commission processes in the lead up to our 12th Congress.


 * Some other critical organizational challenges:**


 * Building a strong Progressive Youth Alliance and a strong SACP**

The SACP notes with satisfaction the fact that right from its re-establishment the YCL joined and has become an important player in the front of progressive youth organizations in our country, under the umbrella of the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA)

Within the context of the PYA, the YCL must consciously seek to build a special relationship with the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), participate in its structures, also as part of building a stronger ANC. We welcome the drastically improved working relationship between the YCL and the ANCYL and seem to have gone beyond the initial mutual suspicions between these two formations. The relationship between these two youth formations of our allied organizations is of a strategic nature, and its must be a relationship driven by mass activism.

Of course the YCL will not be able to achieve all these tasks if it does not prioritise the strengthening of its own structures, and build itself as a mass communist organization of the youth in our country.

One of the most critical tasks of the YCL is that of seriously contributing in building a militant and campaigning SACP. It is of no use to boast about strong YCL branches in areas where there are either no SACP branches at all, or where these exist they are very weak. Where there is an YCL branch it is important that those members of the YCL who are also members of the SACP build Party branches. Without a strong SACP there can be no YCL or a struggle for socialism in our country!

As part of building a strong SACP it is important that the YCL must at all times defend the SACP line, and defend the integrity and programmes of the SACP from all those forces that want to weaken, or even defeat, our Party.

The SACP hopes that the YCL will use this Congress to thoroughly reflect on all the issues raised here.

We are however confident that our YCL, in the true tradition of Ufasimba, will be able to rise to the challenge. We are indeed proud of our SACP 11th Congress resolution to re-establish the YCL. It is a resolution that couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment! will use its Congress to identify clear priorities and programmes for the next three years, especially the challenge of cadre development, the struggle for educational transformation and the fight against the HIV/AIDS scourge.


 * We wish you a successful Congress! Malukhule uFasimba malukhule!**

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