08 April 2013SACP Brian Bunting District Council Declaration
The SACP in the Brian Bunting District (Cape Metro) convened, on Sunday 7 April
2013, its 1st District Council, a constitutional gathering of branches, which
was attended by more than 85 branch delegates as well as representatives of
Cosatu affiliates and Provincial Executive Committee members.
The District Council applauded the South African Government for convening a
successful fifth BRICS summit in Durban where importantly the establishment of
the BRICS bank was approved. This is a major advance in shifting the global
economic balance of forces. It provides an alternative development funding
instrument away from the parasitic Britton Woods institutions such as the world
bank and International Monetary Fund. These liberal institutions extend loans
particularly to post-colonial countries, with conditionalities imposing
structural adjustment programmes which dictate cutting social spending, trade
liberalization and de-regulation meaning less government involvement.
Council further commended the South African Government for its diplomatic
efforts in Zimbabwe through SADC which has brought about the implementation of
a constitutional referendum paving the way for that country to hold free, fair
and democratic elections. We acknowledge that the working class of Zimbabwe
will greatly benefit in conditions of political tolerance, peace, stability and
economic prosperity. The SACP rejects the repugnant attitude of the West
towards Zimbabwe and the continued imposition of sanctions.
We salute the bravery of the Parachute One Battalion in the Central African
Republic (CAR). We salute these 13 men in uniform for their heroic honour to
fight the ambush by Rebels in Bengui. They did not dishonour our flag and they
did not betray our commitment to the cause of peaceful and free Africa without
imperial interests. We are concerned about the contribution of colonial and
imperial forces in that country and in particular in the ambush against our
soldiers who were there to train and professionalize the Military of that
country. An investigation, by the African Union, of the presence of other
foreign military forces in CAR who aided the rebels is warranted.
On the on-going debate about the National Development Plan. We assert that GEAR
was similar to other IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes
implemented elsewhere in the developing world. SACP and cosatu rejected GEAR as
it clearly did not originate within the movement evidently sponsored by the
Washington consensus. It emphasized privatization which resulted in massive job
losses as well as twin evils of sub-contracting and casualisation which meant
de-unionization, exploitation and increased vulnerability of workers. The SACP
and Cosatu opposed fiscal discipline, deregulation and trade liberalization
espoused by GEAR which had disastrous consequences for the country's
industries, workforce and socio-economic development. The trade-liberalization
in particular sounded the death-knell of our manufacturing and textile
industries which still haunts our economy to date.
GEAR adopted a high skills - high productivity paradigm without concomitant
investment in education as well as skills training and development as a
prerequisite. These were the paradoxical weaknesses of GEAR which the SACP
identified and challenged. The SACP challenged the 1996 class project for
arbitrary abandonment of the Reconstruction and Development as a living dynamic
consensus driven document and unilaterally adopting a neo-liberal approach
through GEAR.
In the current phase, some publicly attack the SACP for supporting the broad
thrust of the NDP. As the SACP we refuse to be manipulated into a debilitating
false competition created by our detractors between government instruments ie
the New Growth Path, IPAP 2 & 3 and the NDP. These policy instruments and
frameworks contain very progressive policy approaches to unravel underlying
persistent features of the Colonialisation of a Special Type in our economy.
Fixing education and investing in skills development, research and innovation
are explicitly promoted in the NDP and these are requirements for a sustainable
economic growth.
People who isolate the reference to "consumption spending and investment"
ignore progressive approaches in education, social safety net, social or living
wage, NHI, free education and infrastructure development and beneficiation of
our mineral endowments. These are prominent pillars highlighted in the NDP
which will grow the economy, create sustainable jobs and reduce inequality and
eliminate poverty.
The SACP will not engage in reductionism but will combine theory and practise
consistent with Marxism-Leninism and therefore apply the laws of negation of
negation in the context of the NDP. Put simply the SACP will embrace what is
good and working and improve on weaknesses whilst contesting and rejecting
neo-liberal offensive seeking to change the NDP into a whole neo-liberal
document.
Urgent transformation of the higher education terrain is required to change the
existing landscape in order to transform the content and quality including
transforming the values away from consumption, crass-materialism, competition,
neo- liberalism and exploitation. University Councils are a contested terrain
of ideological struggle and communists in broader society including Young
Communists in Student Representative Councils must flood these Councils and
transform them. Cape Peninsula University of Technology and University of the
Western Cape are due to appoint Vice Chancellors and therefore the class
conscious cadres should be identified and appointed. Institutions of higher
learning are engaged in knowledge production which is not value or
interest-free and therefore the progressive leadership needs to be installed to
shape the content with progressive values.
In the City of Cape Town and indeed Western Cape under the Democratic Alliance
(DA) we have witnessed the dramatic decline in capital spending in the working
class communities. Expenditure on infrastructure such as storm water and roads,
bulk sanitation, housing and electricity has declined hence our communities are
frustrated and engage in violent protests for services and socio-economic
transformation. Working class residents in areas such as Gugulethu,
Khayelitsha, Chatsworth, Phillipi, Langa are suffering daily from wide-spread
raging fire disasters which affect residents in informal settlements and
backyard dwellings. This is a resultant effect of failure by the DA to provide
housing with safe electricity for heating and cooking as well as water and
roads.
We declare the April month as Chris Hani Month, a dedicated and selfless
leader, former SACP General Secretary and ANC NEC member. As the SACP, we will
intensify our mobilization work in communities to reject the DA as a government
of the privileged few middle class interests at the expense of the poor. We
will lead heightened demands for better services and effective removal of the
DA from power.
SACP cadres will, during this 20th Annivessary of the dastardly and cowardly
assassination of Chris Hani, boldly engage and mobilize communities to protest
and root-out DA elements who manipulate working class communities for their
political gain. We will further advance our campaign to rename the Cape Town
Airport as Chris Hani International Airport. We reject the undisguised
opportunism of the DA to name certain obscure streets after heroes of the
liberation movement when the DA were in fact collaborators of the apartheid
regime which killed and imprisoned these heroes. This includes the declaration
by De Lille of 2013 as Mandela year when the revolutionary values Mandela
represents are the total opposite of what the DA stands for.
In this "Year of the District", as Brian Bunting District we will strengthen
our branches through consistent political, theoretical and ideological
education in order to heighten the hegemony in the battle of ideas . We will
further mobilize the 4 000 strong membership of the SACP in our District to
have 20 volunteers in each voting district in order to ensure ANC victory in
the 2014 elections.
We declare this "Year of the District" as a year of heightened activism and
consciousness in opposition to the neo-liberal DA in order to reclaim the
Western Cape and the City of Cape Town.
Forward to ANC victory forward!
Contact:Sonwabile Ngxiza: Media Liaison071 451 1329
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