Friday, 30 September 2022

The South African Communist Party (SACP) congratulates its ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) on its successful 14^th National Congress held from Monday to Thursday, 26 to 29 September 2022 in Midrand, Johannesburg.

“On behalf of the SACP, I congratulate the newly elected COSATU National Office Bearers on their election, President Zingiswa Losi, First Deputy President Mike Shingange, Second Deputy President Duncan Luvuno, Treasurer Freda Oosthuysen, General Secretary Solly Phetoe and Deputy General Secretary Gerald Twala. I wish the COSATU National Office Bearers a resounding success in their term of office”, said Solly Mapaila, SACP General Secretary.

The SACP welcomes the resolutions adopted by the COSATU National Congress to intensify the struggle to defend the gains of the workers and fight for their common interests as a class.

The working-class in South Africa is ravaged by high levels of unemployment, poverty, and inequality. For example, in the second quarter of this year, 12,3 million active and discouraged work-seekers were unemployed. Millions of working-class households cannot make ends meet. This crisis of social reproduction results directly from the neoliberal policy regime the government imposed since 1996, the persisting legacy of colonial oppression, inclusive of apartheid, and global capitalist crises, the COVID-19 pandemic included.

Instead of rolling back the domestication of the neoliberal policy prescriptions from institutions controlled by imperialist states that the apartheid regime started imposing in the 1970s, the government maintained the paradigm starting in 1996 when it imposed the neoliberal economic policy called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR). Unemployment rose to crisis-high levels of above 20 per cent in 1996 immediately after the government imposed GEAR and continued to fluctuate and worsen above 20 per cent.

Similarly, the electricity crisis compounded by state capture came about as a result of neoliberal policy failures, besides the legacy of colonial and apartheid exclusion of the oppressed black majority from household electrification for a century from 1894 to 1994.

The immediate task facing the SACP and COSATU, as well as other progressive trade unions and worker organisations, is to build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor and to intensify the struggle to roll back neoliberal policies in the here and now.

The SACP welcomes the resolution adopted by COSATU on the relationship of the working-class and the SACP as a working-class Party to electoral contestation, against the background of the related critical questions of the necessity to reconfigure the Alliance and renew and unite our movement. The SACP will engage and work together with COSATU to articulate the implementation of the resolution and build wider trade union and working-class unity towards socialism.