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Downloaded from the Within COSATU Affiliates V September 2003 BuaKo Volume 3. N0.3 Information Bulletin of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party Deepen the Strategic Relationship between the SACP and COSATU, With and For the Workers and the Poor SACP ADDRESS TO COSATU Contents 8TH NATIONAL CONGRESS by Blade Nzimande, SACP General 1. SACP Address to COSATU 8 th Secretary, 16 September 2003 National Congress -1 Cde President, Willie Madisha, Cde 2. 2003 Red October Campaign - 13 Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary and all COSATU national office-bearers, leadership 3. Dora Tamana Savings and Credit of COSATU affiliates, leadership of the ANC Co-operative - 6 present, Cde Jeremy Cronin and the SACP delegation, local and international guests, cde delegates. As the SACP we are deeply Everyday, on the TV, radio and in the print honoured by the invitation to come and media, there are multiple signs of distress, of address your congress. This occasion might go creeping bourgeois values, of a sharpening down in history as one of the most important factionalism within our own liberation congresses in the history of this Federation, movement. For the past 10 years we have this, the 8th Congress of the Congress of moved forward collectively, we have notched South African Trade Unions. up victories, we have made significant resource transfers to the poor, but still we remain locked into a ravenous, barbaric Why? capitalist accumulation path. We have to go forward, but we cannot just go forward with Coming just 7 months before the end of the hope and good intentions. We have to first decade of our freedom, this Congress systematically, consciously, militantly rescue comes at a time in which our revolution stands our national democratic revolution from its at the cross-roads. Since 1994 there have been present imprisonment within a persisting many advances for the working class and poor capitalist accumulation path. of our country, there have also been defeats and persisting crises for workers and the poor Unless, the working class leads, working - one million formal sector jobs have been lost programmatically and in action with the in five years, workers have been casualised widest range of the mass of the urban and rural and informalised, household income in­ poor, unless this is done, the promise of 1994 equality and mass poverty have worsened. will collapse into agendas of narrow self­ 1 enrichment, and general confusion. The SACP However, in other respects, working class is prepared to work with all potentially power has been weakened and diluted in this patriotic and progressive forces - but one thing period, especially by the staggering number of is clear, the bourgeoisie, the emergent jobs lost in the formal sector (more than 1 bourgeoisie and the emergent bourgeoisies, million), and by other drastic restructuring separately and together are incapable of measures directed at the working class charting a way out of our persisting crisis of (casualisation, informalisation, etc). This underdevelopment. The working class must major and brutal restructuring of our lead! economy, in which the working class and working class communities have borne the brunt, has, in fact, been under way in our 1. THE EMERGING WORKING economy since the mid-1970s. But, in many CLASS MEDIUM TERM VISION respects, the process has been accelerated and also extended into new sectors (retail, finance As we speak, structures of our Party are and, critically, the public sector) since 1994. preparing to start a debate on the Party's However, two and a half decades of labour- medium-term vision discussion document. shedding restructuring has left a persisting Simultaneous with this is the COSATU legacy of systemic, structural unemployment discussion document "Consolidating Working with levels of unemployment around a Class Power For Quality Jobs - Towards staggering 40%. 2015", which will be discussed at this Congress. The Party's medium-term vision The trajectory of post-1994 transformation discussion document seeks to develop a has been contested by a variety of class forces, working class vision for the next 10-12 years. including from within the Alliance itself. It asks what kind of society do we want to see There has been a notable, if still relatively in South Africa by the end of the second weak, emergence of new black capitalist and decade of our freedom in 2014? upper middle strata closely related to and dependent upon the new democratic state and Nearly a decade after our 1994 breakthrough it the ANC-led alliance. These developments is critical that the trajectory of what has been have, naturally, impacted upon the policy achieved and the trajectory of where we are perspectives and internal contradictions going, or of where we should be going, is within the new democratic state, and our assessed strategically from a working class movement. perspective. The majority (black) sector of the working The 1994 democratic breakthrough secured class and these emergent upper middle and state power for a fundamentally progressive, bourgeois strata have shared interests, not multi-class, national democratic power bloc in least in the consolidation of an effective, which the working class has been a significant powerful, non-racial, democratic state capable factor. Over the last decade, as a direct of intervening and strategically directing the consequence of the breakthrough, very economy, whose commanding heights significant constitutional, legal and continue to be dominated by established institutional power has been shifted towards domestic capitalist forces, and by the working class. There have also been major, transnational corporations (who would prefer if uneven, resource transfers (housing, to see a lean state whose principal activities electricity, water, telecommunications, health­ would be limited to creating an investor care, education, social security, land) to the friendly climate and protecting existing working class and to working class dominated bourgeois property rights). Our multi-class ruling bloc also shares a general vision of and communities. 2 a common interest in regional and continental class by then must be having a decisive and development, overcoming the existing qualitative impact on all key sites of power patterns of imperialist accumulation and and influence - particularly political, mass and underdevelopment. economic sites of power - such that no significant centre of power in society can ... However, the strategic nature of the exercise that power without a significant input democratic state's interventions into the from, and centrally taking into account the economy, the region and continent are, class interests of, the working class" (Bua themselves, contested within the Alliance Komanisi, July 2003, Volume 3 No.l p.3). itself, and this contest reflects different class interests. Should BEE be narrowly or broadly In relation to the ideological struggle, the defined, not just in theory but in practice? Is SACP's discussion document on the medium the restructuring of state owned enterprises term vision calls for: "Building a conscious geared to consolidating a more effective cadre able to impact on state institutions and development state and parastatal sector, or is policy, economic and mass formations in it, again, about creating business opportunities favour of the workers and the poor." Most for emerging elites? critically, the document states that: "In the same way that the locomotive and bedrock of However, while working class strategies face the struggle against apartheid was the serious challenges, there are important organised power of the working class, any positive factors upon which we need to build. further qualitative advance in the NDR is Our ANC-led liberation movement, while dependent on the power and political contested, remains fundamentally rooted consciousness of that working class" (Bua amongst the working class and poor. The Komanisi, July 2003, p.4). working class forces, at the point of production and in communities, unleashed in Through this ongoing discussion, the Party the struggle against apartheid, while partially intends to make it possible for the trade union destabilised by objective and subjective movement to grapple with current challenges factors, remain a significant national factor from a consistently working class perspective with important organisational and in order to tilt the balance of class forces in mobilisational revolutionary experience. The favour of poor and working people. To emergent capitalist and upper middle strata reaffirm the realisation of the emerging remain weak and highly dependent on state working class vision, let alone winning the power, which, in turn, depends upon electoral struggle to build socialism, is not possible success and therefore a relatively unified and without deepening the socialist outlook, mobilised mass base. The globally dominant consciousness and confidence of the working ideological prescriptions are totally incapable class in order that the working class turns its of addressing the socio-economic challenges daily struggles into a general offensive against of our society. the legacy of colonialism of a special type and the building of moment towards, capacity for, In response to these developments, what does and elements of socialism. the medium-term vision discussion document of the SACP say? To quote: "We cannot... guide, lead and grapple with the 2. BUILDING INDEPENDENT current period and all its developments, as WORKING CLASS POWER IN well as the second decade of our freedom, SOCIETY: SOCIALISM IS THE unless we develop a medium term vision... The fundamental goal of the SACP for the FUTURE BUILD IT NOW! next 10-11 years should be that the working In order to realise our medium term vision, 3 more than ever before we need a coherent, danger of stagnating with all of the working class-driven programme (essentially consequences that will bring. The challenge is a conscious class struggle) to transform the how do we use the substantial elements of current accumulation regime into a different political and mass power we have to realise growth and development path that favours the these economic breakthroughs towards workers and the poor.
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