*Young Communist League of South Africa* *Gauteng Province 2011 Year End Statement*
* * *Friday, 30 December 2011*** * *** Tomorrow, 31 December 2011 is the last day of the calendar year 2011. As the Young Communist League of South Africa in the province of Gauteng we would like to take this opportunity to thank the many young people we have worked with in the province in this year, 2011, communists and non-communists together, and our allies, to advance and defend the struggle for socialism and the national democratic revolution, respectively. This has meant that we actively take up struggles to revolutionise the immediate aims, enforce the momentary interests of young people particularly as part of the working class. Among others we advanced our struggles against the deepening exploitation of labour by capital, labour brokers, casualisation and perpetual temporarisation of work. We formed part of the struggles to achieve decent work, improve working conditions and worker income with a historic mission to abolish the all exploitative wages system. We shall continue this work and intensify it in 2012. Our combatants are actively part of the trade union movement. Unlike sectarians, they are professional revolutionaries. They never divorce engagements in trade unions from communist activism and party work. For our combatants, communist activism is the dialectical interconnection that guides their engagements, least in the trade union movement and the workplace, but in all other key sites of power including the Communist Party itself in which they are actively involved and which they accord the respect due to it. Wherever our combatants are, in the revolution as their profession, they recognise that the Communist Party is present in action. * * *E-tolling:* As the Young Communist League of South Africa in Gauteng, in 2011 we also confronted the issue of e-tolling, which remains a problem that must be tackled going forward in 2012. As we confront the issue of e-tolling we shall champion the development of accessible, reliable, safe and affordable public transport as guided by the Communist Party. * * *Education:* We carried out the Joe Slovo Right to Learn Campaign with distinction, and are looking forward to the announcement of the 2011\12 Matric results on 5 January 2012. With our work as a contribution, the activist Gauteng education department and members of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), among others, we have good reasons to believe that learners in Gauteng performed well. One of the challenges confronting basic education in the province is that of improving learner competences to read, with comprehension, and to write. Coupled with this challenge is that of improving performance in mathematics and natural sciences. We shall be there on the ground and work zealously with all the stakeholders to achieve expected outcomes rather than grandstand and point fingers. In general, our historic mission relating to education is to liberate curriculum, inclusive of the content of learning and teaching, from bourgeois domination. It is as such that we seek to achieve free, better quality education and training up to the university level. We recognise that our government has since 2009 despite all constraints imposed on state revenue by the global economic crisis made a remarkable progress towards the realisation of free, quality education. Further education students, who were previously excluded in absolute terms, are in particular now covered by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). But more, their inclusion exempt those qualifying, *from paying fees*. We welcome the review of the NSFAS with progressive measures that lead to free education at further and higher education bands in line with *The Freedom Charter*. We remain committed to the strategic objective of free, quality education that serves the needs of society rather than a tiny minority of capitalists who consume the knowledge produced and skills acquired through exploitation of labour. In 2011, we have seen certain elements hijacking the campaign for free education to advance their factional agendas directed at the Minister of Higher Education and Training as both our General Secretary in the Communist Party and member of the national executive and working committees of the African National Congress (ANC). This factional manoeuvre had linkages with the New Tendency and some elements that failed to collapse the 3rd National Congress of the Young Communist League held in 2010. In 2012 we shall leave no stone unturned should such factional manoeuvres resurface regardless of their mask. * * *Strategic challenges facing young people:* Close to education and training, the challenges of unemployment, inequality, poverty and HIV/AIDS top, and underpinning all of them, capitalist exploitation of labour, top the list of the challenges facing young people in our province. In order to deal with these challenges we will convene Gauteng Province Jobs for Youth Summit by the end of the first quarter 2012 as part of our efforts to make a meaningful contribution to the development of our society. * * * * *Organisational advancement:* In the organisational and political terrain, our branches in Gauteng formed part of the successful Third YCLSA Provincial Congress held in November 2011. Our congress reaffirmed the correctness of the Medium Term Vision (MTV) as elaborated in the South African Road to Socialism (SARS) in terms of which the Communist Party seeks to build working class leadership in the community, the workplace and the economy in general, the ideological terrain, the international terrain and most importantly in the state as the most concentrated form of political power. The year 2012 and the period up to 2014 shall be an era of intensified political education and ideological training as part and parcel of building the Young Communist League and ensuring that its input in policy processes is well informed. * * *Gauteng is the province of all: * Statistics South Africa shows that of all South Africa’s provinces, Gauteng has the highest gain of people, mostly the youth, from other provinces and countries. Most, among others want access to further and higher education and training, employment, and settlement next to their places of work and study. As the YCLSA, we would also like to welcome the many other young people who will join us in Gauteng from across other provinces and countries, and, also wish them a happy and prosperous new year in the province we would share with them as ours jointly. We humbly appeal to all young people to stand up and join the revolutionary and progressive formations of the young people and students of South Africa: the YCLSA, the ANCYL (African National Congress Youth League), in schools COSAS (Congress of South African Students), and in further and higher education and training institutions SASCO (South African Student Congress). In the same line, we appeal to those who are workers to join COSATU affiliated trade unions. All these formations, including, the Communist Party as the vanguard of the South African working class and the ANC as the organisational leader of the national democratic revolution and leading formation of the South African society, give young people a cutting edge opportunity to meaningfully be involved in the struggle to shape the direction of our society and fight the New Tendency, rightwing demagogues, among the threats facing the national democratic revolution. * * *Best wishes to all young people and their progressive and revolutionary objectives in the New Year, 2012!*** *Issued by Gauteng YCL SA*** * *** *Contact: *** * *** *Matankana Mothapo, YCLSA Gauteng Spokesperson **- **0827590**900* -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
