Letter+to+Province

South African Communist Party

 * Johannesburg Central Branch**

Phone (Home): 	011 882 0752 E-mail: 		hypercube@telkomsa.net or Dominic.Tweedie@gmail.com 36 Byron Road, Lombardy East, 2090
 * Secretary: 		Dominic Tweedie

Date: 			March 16, 2005

To: 	SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary, Comrade Vishwas Satgar. 7th Floor, North State Building, Corner Market & Kruis, fax 011 648 8929 To:	SACP Greater Johannesburg District Secretary, Comrade Meisie Sekaledi 9th Floor, Renaissance Centre, Gandhi Square, JOHANNESBURG 2001**


 * Dear Comrades,**

The Johannesburg Central Branch, following discussion in our BGM on March 13th, decided at our BEC meeting on March 16th that as Branch Secretary I should write to both the District and the Province to raise matters having to do with PC and DC meetings.

We are required to send delegates to these meetings and we are more than willing to do so. I think it is true to say that we have provided more delegates per meeting and provided delegates more consistently than any other branch. We are proud of this record and want to continue in the same way.

The problems we are having are not of our making. We consider that there are serious problems which can be summed up as follows:


 * Short Notice of PC and DC Meetings


 * Late Cancellation of PC and DC Meetings


 * Lack of any fixed, published calendar of PC and DC meetings


 * Poor or non-existent communication between the PEC, DEC, and the Branch


 * Short Notice**

Comrades complain that meetings are called at extremely short notice. This was the case for the PC meeting which took place last Sunday.


 * Late Cancellation**

Our delegates went to the previous meeting at the announced time only to find that the meeting had been cancelled, without any notice being received by the branch.


 * Lack of Calendar**

Our branch wants you to know that our own practice of composing and publishing a calendar of meetings for the year in advance has helped us very considerably. COSATU, the ANC, and the SACP at national level do this too. We recommend the practice to you for the DC and the PC, and the DEC and the PEC.


 * Communication**

I had to report to the branch that since being elected Secretary on October 10th last year (and therefore being halfway through my term of office) I have not received a single communication from any higher body addressed to the branch as such.

An important letter concerning the Congress arrangements written by the General Secretary and dated February 1st, to all branches, never reached me. I only found out about it on Tuesday, because I went to the national office to look for the information concerning the Congress.

No e-mails come from Province or District.

Some e-mails do come from the national office, including Umsebenzi Online, and there is the Party web site, Umsebenzi, the AC, and occasionally Bua Komanisi. These keep us informed in a general way.

Our branch suggests that an e-mail list could be maintained by the Provincial and District Secretaries. You could use Gmail for the purpose, which is very convenient and cheap. Even if we got only one message a week from Province and District it would transform the situation.

Let me finish by repeating that we want to support the District and the Province with cadres. We have worked hard to do political education just so we would have the necessary cadres when called upon to deploy people. We are ready. Now we feel we need a little assistance from your side along the lines mentioned above.

Yours in the struggle for socialism,


 * Dominic Tweedie,

Branch Secretary.