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As one of the participant organisations at the 28-29 October 2010
COSATU-convened conference with civil society, the Alternative
Information and Development Centre (www.aidc.org.za and
www.amandla.org.za) is extremely disappointed with the official
response of the ANC's National Working Committee (NWC) to the
conference. We call on civil society to defend their rights of
freedom of association and expression, which the ANC statement brings
into question. In its lengthy statement issued yesterday, the ANC NWC
misrepresented what the conference was about. In doing so, it
displayed extreme paranoia and ineffective leadership that is
reminiscent of the Thabo Mbeki era.

It is regrettable that this important civil society initiative, led
by COSATU, TAC and Section 27 to develop a principled struggle
against corruption and neo-liberal policies, receives this irrational
response from the ANC leadership.

Worse is that the ANC NWC statement casts unfounded personal
aspersions against Comrade Zwelinzima Vavi, the COSATU General
Secretary. With the depth of the socio-economic crises we face in
this country, the AIDC would have expected the ANC NWC to focus its
attention on far more important issues, such as the continuing jobs
bloodbath, than to worry about finding ghosts and enemies under every
carpet in our society.

AIDC believes that the letter, intent, spirit and outcomes of the
conference must be defended. We must not be intimidated and we will
not stand by and let progressive organisations of our people be
attacked by an ANC leadership that is failing to lead society away
from the avarice of greed, neo-liberal service delivery, inequality,
joblessness, and capitalist exploitation.

The ANC NWC statement is in fact a clear call to civil society and
the mass of our people to intensify and sustain disciplined mass
struggles that challenge capitalist power and neo-liberal economic
policies, and that advance pro-poor policies for deepening democracy
and advancing social justice. The fight against, what COSATU has
correctly called the predatory elite, and their efforts to transform
the state into a predatory one, must be resisted with all our
combined strength. In fact, these struggles were at the heart of the
COSATU-civil society conference that the ANC NWC has attacked.

The conference was a significant step in another regard: In endorsing
the goals of, and strengthening COSATU's Growth Plan Towards Full
Employment document, the conference underlined the need to directly
and consistently challenge the continuity of neo-liberal economic
policies. The need to move away from neo-liberal economic policies
has great potential to change the economy and create jobs whilst also
laying the foundation to challenge the exploitative logic of the
capitalist system. None of these are possible without sustained
social mobilisation. Instead of blocking these, the ANC leadership
should be at the forefront of using its governmental power and a
mobilised populace to advance pro-poor economic policies.

The AIDC calls on civil society not to be side-tracked by the ANC NWC
statement. Instead, civil society must do everything in its efforts
to ensure the effective implementation of the conference resolutions.
As the publisher of the Amandla magazine, the AIDC will use the pages
of Amandla to take forward important debates in this regard and
thereby contribute to the strengthening of mass movements for social
justice.

Finally, the AIDC salutes COSATU, TAC and Section 27 for convening
the conference. We further salute COSATU for its principled response
to the ANC NWC statement.