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The South African Communist Party (SACP) calls on working-class formations, on trade unions, on gender transformation activists, on youth and student organisations, and on community-based organisations. Together, let us build a progressive women’s movement anchored in a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor. This is as essential as reinforcing the vanguard capacity of the SACP and as important as strengthening class conscious trade unions to tackle the multiple crises of capitalism, towards ultimately replacing the system with a just and equal society. 

South Africa is in the middle of an unemployment crisis affecting over 12 million active and discouraged work-seekers. Many of those employed face merciless exploitation in low-wage jobs and precarious work. In gender terms, Black women are the overwhelming majority of the affected. This is neither an accident of history nor an act of nature. It is a legacy of apartheid super-exploitation and a direct result of racialised capitalist patriarchy, as well as its reinforcing interaction with other forms of patriarchy. 

The crisis of unemployment is not the only crisis of capitalism and evidence of its failure and that of its policy regime of neoliberalism. The working-class and poor in our country face the interrelated crises of racialised and gendered inequality and mass poverty. Millions are struggling to make ends meet, to support life itself. They find themselves in a crisis of social reproduction in which, more often than not, the burden of household care activities or unpaid labour falls on the shoulders of women because of the patriarchal relations that sustain capitalist production. Similarly, the electricity crisis that we face impacts more on women in many households, as is the aftermath of the unfolding climate change crisis caused by capitalist production and consumption patterns.

Amid the social distress and dysfunctionality caused by capitalism and its neoliberal austerity, which engenders the desperate living and survival conditions affecting the working-class, women face gender-based violence, including femicide, rape and other forms of violent crimes. There is a correlation between the misery created by capitalism and its neoliberal austerity agenda and the deep sense of powerlessness in which gender-based violence takes place in the face of patriarchy and the massive power of capital. We need a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor to confront capitalism, its systemic problems and their social consequences on all fronts.

The SACP reiterates its strong condemnation of the horrific incident of gang rape and robbery of eight young women in West Village, West Rand, in the last week of July, and all other rapes and sexual assaults that have been committed in our country.

The police must leave no stone unturned to arrest all the perpetrators, to bring them to book for their heinous crimes. Likewise, the National Prosecuting Authority must ensure successful prosecution. The judiciary must impose maximum sentences on the rapists, which the Parole Board must not roll back. South Africa needs more capable correctional services, more effective rehabilitation paths and strict management of reintegration into society. Parole for offenders who later reoffend, committing gender-based crimes again, does not work and must be avoided. 

Rape and other sexual assaults affecting women are a serious problem in South Africa, as the South African Police Service statistics show. For example, there were 42,289 rapes and 7,749 sexual assaults reported between 2019 and 2020. That means there were 115 rapes daily.

We cannot overemphasise the crucial importance of building a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor to advance towards a non-sexist society. Besides work by law enforcement authorities, we need to forge a comprehensive response, including all-of-society mobilisation, education and transformation of the social relations of production to end gender-based violence, gender discrimination and gender inequality. This movement, as part of its objectives, must strengthen the fight for equal treatment of workers, regardless of race and gender, in recruitment, in the workplace, and in the economy at large.

In particular, the private sector has not transformed in terms of real empowerment of workers in general and women workers in particular. It is important, as part of its programme, for the socialist movement of the workers and poor to deepen affirmative action to achieve employment equity in the entire economy and to fight for broad-based empowerment, as opposed to elite empowerment and wheeling and dealing models.

Issued by SACP