SACP Political Bureau Statement, 29 June 2010
WELL DONE SOUTH AFRICA!
The Political Bureau of the SACP held its scheduled monthly meeting in Johannesburg yesterday, June 28th.
The meeting of the PB afforded the leadership of the SACP with an opportunity to evaluate the ongoing organisational and campaigning work of the SACP since our special national congress in December last year, and to discuss progress within our ANC-led alliance following a series of Alliance Political Council meetings as well as bilaterals. Also on the agenda of the PB was a “half-time” evaluation of SA’s hosting of the soccer World Cup.
At a time when many other political formations are in decline and are showing serious signs of factional degeneration, the SACP’s unity and membership continues to grow significantly. Current membership stands at over 105,000, making us by far the second-largest political party in SA, after our ally the ANC. Our membership growth is directly linked to our community-based activism and a range of campaigns spearheaded by the Party. Our current campaign against corruption has clearly struck a powerful chord amongst a wide range of South Africans. Together with a wide range of forces we will be intensifying this campaign in the coming months by focusing on the blockages to service delivery to poor communities – many of these blockages are directly related to “tenderpreneurship” and other corrupting practices.
Contrary to an impression sometimes created in the media, Alliance unity, particularly at the national level, has generally been considerably consolidated over the past two and a half years. Alliance unity is not about a shallow feel-good sentimentality, but about principled activism around a shared strategic programme. Over the past year the SACP has consistently distinguished between the great majority of ANC leaders, members and supporters, on the one hand, and a small group of wreckers who do not want to see ANC, still less Alliance-wide unity consolidated. The SACP believes that the narrow sectarian agenda of this small group has increasingly been exposed, as they have become more desperate and brazen. Their exposure and marginalisation bodes well for consolidating unity across our movement, and, indeed, for building the widest, patriotic, nation-building effort within our country.
In this latter regard, the PB noted with great approval the many positive achievements in evidence on the ground within our country over the past two weeks of the soccer World Cup. The South African government and the people of SA have united together, like never before, to host hundreds of thousands of international guests from other parts of Africa, and from third and first world countries alike. Our international guests in their majority have also played their part, mingling with township communities and staying often in relatively modest accommodation. They are helping to remind us that they want to celebrate SA for what we are – a developing country with many challenges – and not for some illusory second-hand copy of the developed north.
The organisation of this World Cup has been different from most others in that government in all spheres has played a much more central role than, for instance, in Germany in 2006. This was necessitated by the scale of infrastructural development – notably with new stadiums and a wide range of new transport-related infrastructure. The SA Police have also had to step in on an even larger scale than originally planned as a result of private security failures (linked, of course, to labour brokering and casualisation). What we have seen has been a developmental state in action, rallying the widest range of South Africans around a common vision and a common task. Of course, beyond mid-July the key challenge will be how to build on the momentum and experience gained. This, in any case, is not an issue that has been deferred to mid-July, from the start we have sought to ensure that we use the World Cup to lay down a transformational legacy in our towns and cities. This will particularly be the case with public transport.
But if government along with the Local Organising Committee need to be congratulated, it is, above all, ordinary South Africans from across the spectrum who we need to be saluted. What the last few weeks have once more demonstrated is that millions of South Africans, black and white, desperately want to feel part of a unifying programme of action. Let us build on this momentum by focusing our collective energies on the challenges we all face as a nation – jobs, transforming health-care and education, rural development, and fighting the scourge of crime and corruption.
We need the same focus in tackling the above priorities as we did with the FIFA World Cup – a state-led action buttressed by mass activism.
Well done, South Africa! The SACP is proud to be a communist party, an internationalist party, AND, not least, South African!
Issued by the SACP
Malesela Maleka, SACP Spokesperson, 082 226 1802
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