South African Communist Party

Message on the 28^th annual commemoration of Joe Slovo passing away

Delivered by the SACP General Secretary, Solly Mapaila

Avalon Cemetery, Johannesburg, 6 January 2023

Today marks the 28^th year since we lost this gallant revolutionary, Joe Slovo, an activist member and leader of our entire liberation movement, on 6 January 1995.

The electricity crisis and load-shedding

We commemorate Slovo amid a devastating load-shedding. Three years after Slovo passed away, the government adopted a White Paper on Energy, in December 1998. This marked the post-1994 beginnings of the devastating load-shedding we face today. This load-shedding is therefore not only a direct result of state capture activities at Eskom. It is also a direct result of the failed neoliberal policy paradigm. Under the White Paper on Energy adopted in December 1998, the government chose to not invest in new public power generation capacity as an immediate priority. This decision was against the imperative to build electricity supply self-sufficiency to keep pace with the impressive post-1994 electrification rollout.

The government prioritised leaving new power generation capacity building for private power producers, the so-called “Independent Power Producers”, and to unbundle Eskom to facilitate the procurement of power from the profit-driven interests. This stance was part of the macroeconomic framework, especially fiscal policy. The government prioritised austerity, cutting budgets in a way that affected key economic and social transformation and development imperatives.   

By the time the Medupi and Kusile Power station build programmes came to the fore, it was too little, too late. Old power stations, built under apartheid, were obviously aging. They started breaking down more and more frequently, also failing to cope with the electricity needs of people and the economy within a decade after the government adopted the December 1998 White Paper on Energy. Meanwhile, the construction of the two, badly designed, power stations missed completion deadlines, suffered from poor work, undermining quality standards, resulting in unsustainable cost overruns, contributing, in no small measure, to the rise of the Eskom debt crisis. 

The government must resolve the electricity crisis and stop the load-shedding as a matter of urgency. It has been emphasised the transmission grid is important for electricity supply security. This is correct. However, the source of the current load-shedding lies in electric power generation incapacity. This shows that generation capacity is important for electricity supply security. For example, one reason we are given by both Eskom and the government as being behind the current load-shedding is sabotage by contractors in outsourced operations.

To secure electricity supply security, those contracts must be terminated. Every critical aspect of power generation capacity at Eskom must be in the hands of Eskom, not contractors. Those outsourced critical power generation operations must be insourced. The state cannot rely on profit-driven contractors, as well as the outsourcing the saboteurs profiteer from, to ensure electricity power generation security.

Adequately resourcing preventative maintenance at Eskom to avoid plant breakdowns must be strengthened as a matter of urgency and as an apex priority. This will go a long way in reducing load-shedding due to breakdowns.

Equally important, the state has to invest in new electric power generation capacity, instead of continuing the neoliberal path that prioritised investment in new electric power generation capacity by the profit-driven private power producers.

Economic challenges, crises, transformation, and development

The economy in our country is continuing to struggle, with policy inability to overcome the persisting high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Unemployment affects a population of approximately 12 million active and discouraged work-seekers. Unemployment in South Africa rose to and worsened above crisis-high levels greater than 20 per cent by the narrow definition that excludes discouraged work-seekers since 1996 after the government adopted the neoliberal policy called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) in that year. Considering discouraged work-seekers, unemployment has been higher than the official rate, throughout.

Nearly half of the total, and over half the female population, subsists at an income below the upper bound poverty level.

Wages and grants have not been increasing at a rate commensurate with the rising costs of living.

The majority of our people, who live in poverty, are under even greater strain as fuel and food prices have been soaring to unprecedented levels as a result, among others, of the imperialist sanctions imposed on Russia by the US-led NATO regimes.

Besides their active participation in the war they have provoked in Ukraine, the US-led imperialist regimes have weaponised sanctions. They use sanctions as weapons of active engagement in the war in Ukraine, besides the military hardware and technical support that they have been deploying in the war, respectively, actively supporting Ukraine, but primarily using it as a fodder for their imperialist expansionism and insatiable appetite to control every part of the world and the world-economy.

The imperialist sanctions imposed on Russia, which is a major oil producer, like those imposed on Venezuela, the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world, have driven up oil prices. This has translated into rising prices for consumer goods, including, notably, food.

South Africa must exercise its democratic sovereignty. It must buy oil from Russia and Venezuela directly. The US and its imperialist nexus of evil, its Western European allies, must not dictate to us where we can or cannot buy oil, fuel, and other important inputs in production and social reproduction. Our national interests, with the workers and poor at heart, matter. We must stand up for our rights, as a people, and self-determination, as an independent democratic republic.        

The high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality persisting in South Africa, as well as the rising costs of living driven, among others, by imperialist sanctions (which affects us in more ways over and above the rising costs of living), all take place in a country considered being the most unequal in the world, compared to 164 countries. The wealthiest 10 per cent of the population in South Africa owns 80 per cent of the wealth, on the one hand. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of our people, the workers and poor, are propertyless.

The impacts of unemployment, poverty, inequality and the rising costs of living in South Africa are racialised and gendered, based on the legacy of the racist colonial and apartheid rule, exploitation and oppression that prevailed in the country.

The high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality, and, consequently, the rising costs of living mostly affect black people, women, men, and young people, in the same way as it is black women and men and their children who live in squatter camps, overcrowded townships and under-developed rural areas in former Bantustans. We want to use this fact to caution against “analyses” of gender relations, one of them liberal, devoid of, or blind to, the race and class content of gender realities.  

The material conditions of black women, especially the workers and poor, continue to reflect the triple legacy of patriarchal domination, racial oppression and class supper-exploitation. This is case in almost all major economic and social indicators.

When we put forward policy alternatives, including a change in policy direction, we therefore do so with the full understanding that each policy must integrate the elimination of the legacy of racial oppression and gender domination as its key objective.

Yes, South Africa needs a change in policy direction to overcome the persisting high levels of racialised and gendered unemployment, poverty and inequality. The government should counter the rising costs of living, address the impact of costs of living on the workers and poor through caring policies, including price controls, as opposed to the Reserve Bank hiking interest rates uncaringly—without regard to the impact on the workers, poor, lower to middle strata of the middle-class.   

Instead of raising interest rates when inflationary pressures are driven by external factors, such as imperialist sanctions and external wars, the Reserve Bank must actively play a developmental role. It must support industrialisation and sustainable employment creation at scale to bring down unemployment.

So far, the monetary policy regime followed by the Reserve Bank since Parliament adopted our current constitution in 1996 has failed, with distinction, to deliver on the central bank’s constitutional mandate to help South Africa achieve balanced and sustainable growth. A new accountability framework is required to hold the Reserve Bank accountable on this constitutional mandate, and on industrialisation and sustainable employment creation at scale.

Our strategy to build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor must take this call forward as part of the key objectives to achieve structural transformation, inclusive development and meet the material needs of the people, of whom the majority are the workers and poor. The mandate of the Reserve Bank must include sustainable employment creation and supporting national production development, not least industrialisation.

For the national democratic revolution to succeed, and for our movement to retain democratic power, it must develop total productive forces as rapidly as possible to meet the needs of the people. Increasingly, the people do not vote based on a sentimental attachment to past revolutionary role, such as the liberation struggle, important as that is. More and more, the people, especially the new generations, vote based on policy responses to their material conditions and aspirations. For instance, no one can argue, successfully, that the electoral decline of the ANC is based solely on subjective factors. As a matter of fact, it is based, and in no small measure, on objective factors.  

Our programme of action for 2022 includes deepening wider transformation of the financial sector. The banking sector in our country is dominated by profit-driven oligopolies, a handful of commercial banks. The state has no effective footprint in this critical sector. Monetary policy transmission overwhelmingly depends on the profit-driven banking oligopolies. As part of our financial sector transformation campaign, we will intensify the objective for the government to build a public banking system, comprising national, sectoral and regional banks, all functioning on a developmental basis, to serve the people.

The government must also foster an enabling environment for the co-operative baking sector to grow and thrive. To this end, there must be radical changes in the regulatory and legislative framework. There must also be direct material support.  

While pursuing structural transformation in the financial sector, as in the rest of the economy, we will continue to fight for the commercial banks to reduce financial service fees and interest rates, including on home loans. In the ultimate analysis, the commercial banks handle public deposits from the government, other state institutions and members of the public. The banks do use the public deposits as their sources of funds in extending credit, making money from interest rates. The public reserves the right to be treated fairly by the banks, as opposed to being exploited financially.

It is unacceptable for a bank to so-called “buy” a house for R10 or R100, evict the affected family, and then sell the house to a third party at market value, profiteering from injustice. That is nothing but pure theft, criminality, corruption at its best. For a bank to be ordered by a court of law as it recently happened to restore the house to its rightful owner is absolutely correct, but it not enough. The banks must be charged with the criminality and prosecuted like other criminals. 

Also, the exorbitant compound interest regime, followed by the commercial banks on home loans and the associated unscrupulous evictions, are unfair and financially exploitative. This must come to an end as well.

Regarding social policy, the key working-class demand we want to underline today is that the government must not terminate the Social Relief of Distress Grant at the end of March 2024. The government must maintain the Social Distress of Relief Grant and improve it towards a universal basic income grant.

In memory of Joe Slovo, the SACP will strengthen its Land, Food and Work Campaign it launched in October 2022, as well as the related efforts to secure integrated human settlement in both rural and urban areas. Rural development must return to the status of an apex priority, including investment, infrastructure and production development, in addition to integrated human settlement and other development programmes.

Joe Slovo dedicated his revolutionary life and times fighting for a caring government and caring economic and social policies, towards socialism. The measures we have committed ourselves to advancing are very much in line with seeking transformation towards a democratic developmental state not as an end in itself but as a means to an end with caring economic and social policies.

Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no real revolutionary movement  

Joe Slovo was not only a member and leader of the SACP. He was also a member and leader of the ANC and the joint ANC and SACP wing of the armed struggle, uMkhonto weSizwe, the MK. He contributed immensely to the major documents elaborating the theory of our struggle for liberation and socialism, including but not limited to the Freedom Charter and the first ever ANC Strategy and Tactics adopted in Morogoro, Tanzania, in 1969. Let us remember. It was in Morogoro where the ANC for the first time opened its membership ranks to activists from other national groups.

In joining the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed black majority, Slovo was advancing the principle of non-racialism, which the Communist Party was the first to introduce and advance before all else in South Africa both theoretically and practically. Slovo was taking forward the Party programme towards socialism, which he dedicated his entire politically active life to achieve.

In memory of Joe Slovo, we must defend the advance towards a completely non-racial South Africa, against the many backward tendencies that have emerged, such as narrow nationalism, chauvinism and the reassertion of racist attitudes and tendencies in our country. In one united voice, we must condemn the racist behaviour by the white men who have been charged with crimes, including attempted murder, after allegedly assaulting black teenagers trying to use a resort swimming pool in December 2022.

Concerning renewal and unity: If there is one point we wish to emphasise today, in memory of Joe Slovo, that is that there will be no real renewal and unity of the ANC and our entire movement without a revolutionary theory. For the renewal and unity process to succeed, the movement must throw neoliberalism under the bus, in the same way as it must dismantle the networks of state capture and deal a decisive blow to other forms of corruption. Also, the renewal and unity of the movement will be incomplete without the reconfiguration of the Alliance.

The relationship of the SACP and the working-class at large to state power is part and parcel of the core tenets of the renewal and unity of the movement and reconfiguration of the Alliance. In delivering the Political Report to the 55^th ANC National Conference in December 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa correctly drew attention to the process on this matter taking place in the SACP. The formulation the President used was not covered in the official text of the report he delivered. He clearly urged the ANC to pay attention to this question in a frank manner.

During the first quarter of this year, 2023, the SACP will convene a Special Central Committee Plenary to receive a revised report on the implementation of its 15^th National Congress resolution on the SACP and state and popular power, including electoral considerations. The resolution is clear the SACP must more effectively contest elections without or without a reconfigured Alliance—in other words, if the Alliance remains not reconfigured, if there is no tangible progress towards the reconfiguration process.

The Alliance cannot exist as an ineffectual article of faith. Its reconfiguration must give play to collective leadership of the national democratic revolution, based on consensus-seeking Alliance consultation and collective accountability. There is no single reason, in principle, why we cannot work together if we are indeed allies.   

The international situation and messages of solidarity

The international atmosphere is dominated by hostility. The US-led NATO imperialist provoked war in Ukraine is one of the many indicators of the hostility. The imperialist regimes are engaged in the same agenda in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. At the centre of this imperialist agenda is, as we have said, an insatiable appetite to maintain world dominance and hegemony, to subordinate and control all countries, and to exploit their resources and labour. To counter this agenda, we need to build a world peace movement and intensify our anti-imperialist struggle. The working-class and its allies must intensify this struggle in every country, region and continent. We will do our part, as the SACP. Within this framework, we call for an end to all imperialist machinations, wars and aggression in every part of the world.

We express our solidarity with the people of Cuba against the criminal US blockade of Cuba and occupation of Guantanamo Bay.

We express our solidarity with the people of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and others in Latin America struggling against the US-led imperialist subordination, subversion and attacks.

We express our solidarity with the people of Western Sahara and Palestine against occupation and exploitation of the occupied territories by Morocco and the apartheid Israeli regime, respectively.

We express our solidarity with the Kurds against oppression in various countries in the Middle East. We call for the release of Abdullah Öcalan and express our support for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish Question.

We express our solidarity with the people of Syria and Lebanon against imperialist machinations, occupation and exploitation of their countries or occupied territories. 

Our immediate challenge in Southern Africa and Africa at large is to build a strong and united working-class movement. This includes revitalising the African Left Networking Forum, the ALNEF. We will carry out both tasks more decisively.

There must be peace in Sudan and Southern Cameroon, and a transition to democratisation in Swaziland. Therefore, we express our solidarity with the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy. We call for a peaceful resolution of the situations in Sudan and Southern Cameroon. We strongly condemn state terrorism in Cameroon against the people of Southern Cameroon.