SACPblackStar.jpg SACP Statement on the Occasion of the Red October Rally As delivered by Cde Blade Nzimande eMalahleni, Mpumalanga Province, 29 November 2015 Transform the Financial Sector! [Text will follow later] Free the media! [Text will follow later] Unite the working class, our communities, and our movement! As the SACP we congratulate COSATU for holding its National Congress this week. The Congress was successful. In many ways it managed to lay a strong foundation for COSATU to focus on its programmatic tasks and historical mission. At the Congress, COSATU gave play to freedom of discussion, including transparent voting in terms of its rules as a trade union organisation and a mass, elementary formation of the workers. This is the essence of worker democracy. Focus must now be on implementation - that is unity in action, unity of action! The SACP does not take seriously the news story by the Mail and Guardian published on Friday, 27 November on some problematic comments (which do not deserve to be repeated especially in our statements) attributed to the newly elected COSATU General Secretary Comrade Bheki Ntshalintshali. When the newspaper contacted us for comment, we followed our ordinary procedure to confirm with COSATU whether those comments were valid. We were satisfied by the response we received from COSATU and gave the Mail and Guardian a feedback which the paper did not bother to cover in the story. The SACP congratulates the newly elected National Office Bearers of COSATU and will continue to work with the federation and its affiliates in a proper and principled manner. We will continue strengthening our efforts to unite organised workers under the banner of COSATU! We will organise the unorganised under the banner of COSATU! The relationship between the SACP and COSATU is strategic and structural. It was built not in newspapers. It was not built by newspapers. The relationship between the SACP and COSATU was built in the struggle against capitalist exploitation; in the struggle against colonial and apartheid oppression; in the struggle against privatisation, casualisation and labour brokers, and, above all; in the struggle for socialism. This relationship has outlived many newspapers and will continue to outlive others. The relationship between the SACP and COSATU is also beyond any individual leaders. Undisputed history is there to prove it - we need not belabour this historical fact. Rather than some news story that has the effect of sowing confusion and fermenting tensions (the so-called alliance tensions but which are trumped up in the media), we believe in COSATU's written and publicly spoken word. In this regard the federation's declaration read out to its National Congress by the newly elected General Secretary Comrade Bheki Ntshalintshali as well as its resolutions on the relationship between the SACP and COSATU speak volume about the depth of our relationship. The SACP welcomes these perspectives of COSATU! The SACP says, let cement the unity of COSATU and the Party as well as our alliance and the rest of our broad movement. We need this unity perhaps more than ever before as we move forward. Comrades, whatever challenges and difficulties we may have in the alliance in this province, let us not walk away from the ANC. The ANC is no private property of anyone, but is a people's movement. Let us join the ANC and fight gate keeping as agreed to at our last Alliance Summit. We also urge the ANC to find a smoother and more effective way of managing leadership transitions. Surely it cannot be that each time there is a leadership transition the ANC and indeed the alliance as a whole suffer strain. And the common denominator in such periods of leadership transition is an intense attack on the SACP and the working class by elements who position themselves as the so-called kingmakers. Let us take our cue from uMalume Moses Kotane and Uncle JB Marks: Let us advance and defend the unity of the working class, and that of the working class and other progressive forces as well! Our Augmented Central Committee held from 20-22 November made a clarion call that we must go out and build an activist, larger, but quality SACP. Only the working class is best capable to defend and advance its own interests. No other class will perform this function! Issued by the SACP National Office, from eMalahleni, Mpumalanga Province, 29 November 2015 Contact: Alex Mashilo, National Spokesperson, 082 920 0308 -- -- 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] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
