CPS 4TH ANNUAL NATIONAL CONFERENCE. 31-0-2015 The Communist Party of Swaziland will be holding its 4th annual National Conference from 3rd to 6th April 2015 at Mlumati FET in Mpumalanga province, South Africa. This year the conference theme is Intensify Mobilisation for Mass Defiance Against the Mswati Dictatorship. The key issue is to deepen opposition to the autocracy in Swaziland to make a qualitative change in the level of defiance of its bans, clampdowns and persecution of the movement for democracy. In particular, we need to escalate defiance of the proscriptions on political parties and the liberation movement. Some 50 delegates will attend the National Conference, including activists from inside Swaziland and from among our members in exile in SA. They will discuss practical ways of improving the struggle against the Mswati autocracy in the broader strategic contexts of fostering freedom, democracy and socialism in Swaziland. Political activity remains banned, trade unions are being suppressed, there is no free media or freedom of expression, human rights are disregarded, women's rights are minimal, traditional culture is steeped in obscurantism designed to intimidate and coerce our people into fearing the feudal monarchy. All these persecutions imposed by the regime are designed to keep it in power and to extract as much wealth as possible from the country for the ruling elite. Our conference will receive reports on the situation in Swaziland and the effort to create a revolutionary situation leading to the total dismantling of the royal autocracy. We will examine progress reports from the previous congress resolutions and review the performance of the CPS in fulfilling its mandate. We will also receive messages of support from fraternal and solidarity organisations. A main point of struggle this year is the unbanning of political parties, which we outlined in our New Year message. Defiance of the regime must be targeted especially to this end. We are unlikely for now to force the regime into establishing democracy, but instead may be able to push it to a 'tipping point' at which it will be faced with the inevitability of its demise. It may then concede certain demands on democratisation in an effort to assure its own survival. These may in turn provide further leverage for the democracy movement to oust the regime altogether. Of course, there is no blueprint for change that we can automatically follow. Much will depend on the quality of pressure exerted on the regime from outside - international solidarity, the international community (SADC, AU, UN etc), and neighbouring states, as well as the variable actions of individual states or power blocs. We need to discuss these aspects of our struggle and the likely scenarios we should anticipate. The regime's self-preservation efforts are intensifying - especially its need and appetite for hard cash - and are at the same time galvanising opposition to autocratic rule. The regime's recent acts of repression against the trade union movement are merely hardening the resolve of the organised working class to pursue social and economic change as the only way to improve the conditions of workers and the poor. Only democracy and total freedom of assembly, expression and social and economic rights enshrined in a new dispensation can lay the basis for a positive future for Swaziland. The alternative is more of the same of what our people now face, which is servitude, and imposed poverty, disease and underdevelopment. It's time to put an end to the tragedy of waste and suffering our people have to endure at the hands of Mswati and his regime. Contact Kenneth Kunene General Secretary Mobile: +27 72 594 3971 Email: [email protected]
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