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The Central Committee of the SACP met in Johannesburg over the weekend of 27th-29th August. The public service strike and the SACP's position and responsibilities in this regard were discussed at some length. The CC also engaged with some of the ANC's discussion papers for its forthcoming National General Council, and the challenge of media transformation.

The public service strike
The CC calls on government and the unions to ensure that there is a very speedy resolution to the strike. It is about to enter its third week now and the longer it is prolonged the more everyone suffers and the danger of unbridgeable positions becoming entrenched increases.

The SACP once more reiterates its conviction that the demands of the public service workers are legitimate and we support them in their struggle for just remuneration. In particular, we note that the wage gap in the public sector between the highest paid echelons and the lowest is 91 to 1. Although the gap in the private sector is even wider, we cannot deny that the public sector wage gap is shameful, and every effort must be made to progressively close this unacceptable gap.

In this regard, the CC calls on government to set an example by ensuring that there is a collective moratorium on salary increases in the upper echelons of government.

The SACP also joins COSATU in condemning acts of indiscipline on the part of some striking workers. Neglect of ICU patients, including new-borns, the turning away of ambulances, threats of physical attacks against students and fellow teachers by teachers - all of these acts punish fellow workers, the children of workers, and the poor in general. These forms of gross indiscipline detract from the legitimacy of the struggle, and divide, rather than unite working class communities.

The public sector is absolutely critical to the developmental state we are seeking to build. We cannot allow relationships within the public sector to be reduced to narrow employer-employee stand-offs. From all sides, government and unions, we need to recognise, foster and affirm the professional vocational responsibilities of those in key sectors like health-care, education and policing.

Indeed, none of us can afford to continue conducting public service negotiations in this way. Whatever the outcomes of the present strike, the ANC-led Alliance partners need to sit down, engage frankly with each other, and analyse the reasons for these destructive and all too frequent stand-offs in which neither the unions nor government necessarily emerge with enhanced popular credibility.

Among the issues that need to be discussed is the vexed issue of public sector bargaining. Unlike a private sector wage strike, where the battle is over how to apportion surplus between profits and wages - in the public sector, the budget is predetermined and adjustments mean reallocating out of other priorities. Whether these other priorities are legitimate priorities or not is a matter for debate, but it does mean that there is a degree of inflexibility built into the process. Public sector wage bargaining should precede the passing of the budget, and we need to find means for doing this, which must also involve measurable commitments to enhanced productivity and public service. Another area that requires urgent attention is the effective definition of and consensus upon what constitutes "essential services".

The strike and the housing question
It is no accident that in both the current strike, and in the previous parastatal sector strikes, the demand for an improvement in the housing allowance has loomed large. Most categories of formal sector workers, including public service workers in key areas like education, health-care and policing, fall into a housing limbo. They do not qualify for government subsidised RDP housing on the one hand, but they cannot afford private bank mortgages on the other. The problem has been greatly aggravated by South Africa's housing price inflationary bubble - among the worst in the world. According to this year's The Economist house-price indicator, SA's average house prices increased by a massive 389% between 1997 and 2008, making SA the worst performer among the 19 countries surveyed (the next worst were Ireland 193% and Spain 184%).

Increases in the housing allowance paid to public service workers might help alleviate some of their problems at an individual level, but the housing crisis requires a much more comprehensive approach. The housing price bubble is driven considerably by property speculation and very weak urban planning and regulation. The state must exert much more effective land-use management, and the state must drive more equitable human settlement patterns - involving mixed-income and mixed-use development, and the abolition of the physical and social chasm between townships and suburbs. Our development finance institutions, the PIC and the private banks must invest in this effort to transform our towns and cities. The SACP's long-standing call for a publicly-owned housing bank must be implemented.

We will be re-invigorating our Financial Sector Campaign, with a key focus on these issues. The SACP launched the Financial Sector Campaign ten years ago, and it is time to bring stakeholders back to a national summit, not only to assess and critique progress made, but also to plan how the financial sector should contribute to our national developmental goals in the next ten years.

There are other respects in which the plight of workers, including public sector workers, needs to be addressed beyond just basic wage increases. There are a number of social wage measures apart from housing that must be addressed - including the affordability of health-care and access to higher education for children from the working class. Even for those workers who may befortunate enough to have access to medical aid, typically funds run out long before the end of the year. In this regard, the SACP calls on government to now move rapidly with the implementation of a National Health Insurance scheme. Let implementation of an NHI be one of the key outcomes of the present strike.

The ANC's National General Council discussion papers
The CC received inputs on and debated some of the ANC's NGC discussion papers. In the coming weeks the SACP will consolidate its comments and perspectives on these papers with a view to engaging in the broader public debate in the run-up to the NGC and indeed in the NGC itself.

A few preliminary remarks on these papers are, however, required. In the first place there are several issues that the CC welcomed. Some of the papers dealing with challenges of factionalism, ill-discipline, corruption and tender-preneurship within the ANC are to be commended for their candour. Also to be commended and supported are new recommendations on how to tighten up on disciplinary sanctions against those engaged in factionalist activity.

Missing, however, in this particular discussion is the link between these problems and some existing government policies - notably BEE codes. Yet, here again, the CC noted positively that across several NGC discussion papers, the hugely destabilising impact of narrow BEE practices, codes and statutes is picked up - but without really drawing together the obvious consequences. In the course of the run-up to and in the proceedings of the NGC, the SACP intends to engage with what we believe is a very wide consensus that narrow BEE (essentially equity hand-outs), is not only perverse and non-transformational, but also at the root of many of our own movement's internal problems.

One recent study by Jenny Cargill estimates that some R500-billion has been diverted from both private banks as well as public funds like the PIC and the IDC in order to enrich a small handful of well-connected individuals. Not only is this a tax on growth and development, it is also the very money that then comes back into our organisations in order to support disruptive factional activities. We need to use the NGC to build a wide consensus in favour of genuine broad-based empowerment and affirmative action and against the current perverted narrow BEE practices - much of which is written into law.

In taking up a struggle to abolish narrow BEE, we underline that our stand is a principled one. It should absolutely not be confused with current factional attacks on leading ANC and government comrades, attacks that are paradoxically being led and funded by elements who themselves are the beneficiaries of exactly these kinds of narrow BEE deals.

The CC also noted with some concern that the quality of many of the NGC documents is uneven. For instance, the economic discussion document falls behind the resolutions of the ANC's 52nd Polokwane National Conference and on significant progress made by government on the basis of these resolutions in developing the pillars of a new growth path - not least the Industrial Policy Action Programme 2.

The SACP will be participating in the ANC's NGC in order to help strengthen the collective leadership and unity of the ANC and our Alliance. We will vigorously struggle against all attempts to divert the NGC from its critical policy consolidation role, by diverting it into factional power plays and unseemly and premature 2012 electoral battles.

Media Transformation
The CC reaffirmed the Party's position that we want to work together with our colleagues in the media to help to build an even more vibrant, dynamic and diverse media. This task is integral to the overall struggle to advance, deepen and defend our democracy.

There are many challenges confronting our colleagues in the media. The dominance of the print media by three powerful capitalist corporations (Newss24/Naspers, the Independent Media Group, and Avusa) is one challenge. This often places substantial commercial pressures on journalists. In the case of one of these near monopolies, the Irish-owned Independent Media Group, some 40million Euros have been siphoned out of SA each year in the recent past. There have been resulting retrenchments of senior journalists, the juniorisation of newsrooms, and impossible work-loads placed on reporters. This has had a tangible impact on the quality of reporting.

Our public broadcaster has suffered from years of under-funding and an over-dependence on commercial advertising revenue. It has also been the victim of political manipulation and financial plundering in recent years.

The media also faces threats from a growing anger and intolerance on the part of some in government and the ruling party. There may well be those who want to see the media curtailed in order to suppress information about corruption and incompetence. However, the media needs to ask itself to what extent it is unwittingly playing into such an agenda by often assuming the role of official opposition, and by giving acres of love-hate coverage to the very forces who are running with a demagogic anti-democratic and anti-media agenda. All of this can lead unwittingly into a self-confirming paradigm about a majority party and its government hell-bent on suppressing the media. Together, we need to work to avert this kind of outcome.

Media Appeals Tribunal
The CC discussed the ANC's Media Appeals Tribunal proposal. The CC expressed its support in principle for the proposal and makes the following specific recommendations about its role and composition:

• The proposed tribunal is an appeals tribunal - i.e. it is not about pre-publication censorship.
• It needs to be an independent body - independent of party political, governmental, and narrow commercial media interference.
• While the current proposals suggest that the tribunal should be appointed by Parliament, the SACP agrees that we need to guard against the danger of political manipulation of the process. (During the last year of Mbeki's presidency, for instance, a sound multi-party consensus in committee on a new SABC Board was undermined by presidential interference.) For these reasons, the CC proposes that a selection panel for the tribunal should include a range of representative structures from the media itself.
• The key role of Parliament should be less in the appointment function, and more in the possibilities Parliament offers for creating a public space in which to have an ongoing national debate about progress in developing and democratising our media and setting standards for reporting. For this reason, the CC proposes that the tribunal should be required to table six-monthly reports to Parliament on appeals submitted to it and on the rulings that it has made.

The CC further noted and commended the recent flurry of attempts from within a number of publications to improve their own self-regulatory standards. An independent media tribunal and self-regulation should not be seen as polar opposites but as complementary endeavours to improve the quality of journalism and therefore the vibrancy of our democracy itself.

The Protection of Information Bill
The CC noted and welcomed the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee's indication this past week that it will not rush this Bill through Parliament and will seriously consider the many concerns raised about it.

In particular, the SACP agrees with many in the media and elsewhere that we need to ensure that there are effective mechanisms to ensure that the classification of government information is not abused to cover up corruption and incompetence. In noting that the current version of the Bill does seek to criminalise such abuse, we agree that the safe-guards for ensuring that this kind of abuse is detected are not sufficiently entrenched within the Bill in its present form.

In noting all of this, we should now seek to have a calm and considered discussion around how sensitive information should be handled within our democracy. One of the factors undermining the possibility of such a considered discussion has been the media's deliberate conflation of the appeals tribunal and the Bill.

What often passes for "investigative" journalism is really the whole-sale leaking of sensitive, often unprocessed intelligence and criminal investigation material. We cannot blame the media for using this material - although often there is little attempt to double-check or seek balance. The prime blame must rest with those involved in making these leaks. We accept that there have been occasions in which genuine whistle-blowers in government, frustrated at political interference and the blocking of investigations, have made material available to the media.

However, what has happened in the recent past has had very little to do with genuine whistle-blowing, and rather more the very dangerous political factionalising of our country's intelligence and wider criminal justice institutions. This holds out enormous dangers for our democracy and needs to be nipped in the bud. Any protection of information legislation needs to be directed primarily at political and corrupt business abuse of sensitive government information - and not at the media. While dealing with these dangerous tendencies might deprive the media of some apparently juicy stories, we call upon our colleagues in the media to recognise that ultimately all of our freedoms, including media freedom, are threatened by rogue elements within the state.
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The state moves against corruption
The CC welcomed President Zuma's announcement of a dedicated investigation of several government departments by the Special Investigations Unit. The CC also saluted the recent arrests of several prominent individuals and the seizure of properties by the Hawks and other organs of the state. The CC believes that there are connections between these events and serious challenges of corruption in Ithala Bank. The CC commended the role played by the SACP's KZN provincial structures in spearheading the campaign to expose corruption in Ithala Bank, and we trust that the past week's arrests are just the beginnings of a much wider investigation into corruption.

African Left Network Forum
The CC received a report on the SACP's successful hosting of the African Left Network Forum on the 19-21 August in Johannesburg. The meeting was attended by some 70 organisations, including 28 left political parties from across the continent. 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the beginnings of the decolonisation process in our continent. The Forum agreed that some important advances had been made in parts of our continent, but everywhere the hand of external forces supported by their local agents is at play, undermining democracy and development. Many of the parties we were meeting with, from Swaziland to Rwanda and Tunisia and Morocco are forced to operate either in the underground, or in a grey area of semi-legality.

The CC saluted the people of Kenya for the adoption this past week of a progressive new Constitution. This Constitution has been won on the ground in struggle, once more confirming that democracy is not something that can be bestowed from above. It always has to be won and defended by the people themselves.

Hamba Kahle cde Mthuthuzeli Tom
The CC conveys its heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and comrades of cde Mthuthuzeli Tom, the former NUMSA president.