The SACP Gauteng Province held its PEC Lekgotla on the 11-13 September 2015 hosted by the Dr. Yusuf Dadoo District of the SACP, in the municipality of Merafong, Carletonville, South of Johannesburg, under the theme, “SACP Gauteng at the centre of working class revolutionary processes”. Our alliance partners Provincial Secretaries addressed the meeting. Merafong can remembered as the base for militant community social struggles and campaigns, led in part by SACP cadres and militants. It is out of this influence that the Lekgotla convened in the district, with a deep focus on the mining sector in our country and globally.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

On the international front, the lekgotla reaffirmed our solidarity with Cuba and committed our party to an engagement with our alliance counterparts, to intensify our solidarity campaign for the lifting of the economic blockade against Cuba. The Lekgotla notes the endurance of subversive attempts by imperialism directed at the Mandela-Castro medical practitioners training program in Cuba. We commend the Cuban people for their unbroken solidarity with Africa during the outbreak of Ebola in three countries in West Africa, and support the Cuban Medical Brigades nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The SACP Lekgotla expressed serious concern about the forced migration flows out of Africa and the Middle East of thousands of refugees, mostly induced by wars of imperialism led by NATO alliance. The political regime change projects and invasion of countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, steamrolled the rise of fundamentalist religious outlooks in the Middle East and elsewhere. We extend solidarity to the refugees and support all actions in solidarity with them.

The Lekgotla also honoured Cde Patrick Baleka who was our member and dedicated his life to the liberatory cause of the Saharawi people. The SACP will continue with its campaign on the referendum for self-determination against Morocco’s colonial occupation of Western Sahara.

We will also prioritise solidarity work against the impervious King of Swaziland King Mswati III and deepen our campaign for the country’s democratisation and release of political prisoners.

THE SACP LEKGOTLA FOCUS ON MINING TOWNS

The Executive Mayor of Merafong Municipality Comrade Maphefo Mogale-Letsie delivered a welcoming address in which she stressed the significance of the year of the Freedom Charter. The Mayor underlined teething problems faced by the mining towns in the district, a common trend in mining communities across the country. She underscored municipality serious decline of revenue, lowering of the productive base, the near collapse of some mining operations within the municipal jurisdiction. The mayor also pointed to huge inequalities in the town including job losses, serious poverty and inequality.

The municipal infrastructure is withering away with declining revenue income streams. Mining towns are generally beset by manifold environmental problems. Merafong area is burdened by sink-holes and dolomitic grounds due to previous years of deep mining. The municipality is encountering precarious water supply and about two of its reservoirs had to be decommissioned.

There’s growth of illegal mining, with many surrounding informal settlements serving as enclaves of illegal mining activities. The SACP is deeply worried by rising crime and sabotage of essential municipal infrastructure.

In this regard the lekgotla agreed on the need for an alternative economy based on the revitalisation of depressed mining towns. The SACP will dedicate time during the Red October month to reconnect with communities and discuss these issues.
We also call for an Alternative economy summit in the province as part of marking the legacy of the late former Provincial Chairperson Cde Nkosiphendule Kolisile. Principal in the campaign should be the focus on mining companies who generally don’t pay their rates and taxes.

CRISIS AND THE STEEL INDUSTRY

The Lekgotla noted a serious downturn of commodity prices affecting precious metals prices and the mining industry. The crisis is accompanied by a silent restructuring both of production and the haemorrhaging of jobs in the industry, resulting in the creation of huge pockets of poverty in society. These developments carry enormous implications for the Gauteng provincial economy.

The lekgotla agreed that our regions will lead mobilisation of the community for the renationalisation of Acelor Mittal and against the extension of bailout packages.

ON THE ENVIRONMENT

The lekgotla underlined the need to draw the working class to the urgency for ecological awareness. As such we received contributions on the measures that should form part of efforts to guarantee secure energy supply and the reduction of Gauteng province reliance on the national grid. As part of this effort we will pay attention to acid mine drainage, the sink-holes and dolomitic parts of Gauteng. We underline once more that these cannot be divorced from decades of deep mining in which imperialist capital was impervious to catastrophic environmental impact in favour of profits.

ON THE ANC

The Lekgotla received an important political message from the ANC and will continuously engage perspectives it advances. We reiterate our commitment to rebuild strong relations with the ANC and also to facilitate sound relations in the district of Tshwane between our party and other alliance partners. We hope to convene bilateral with the ANC and Cosatu in order to develop urgent solutions on areas of controversy on the basis of principles of our movement.

ON COSATU

The Lekgotla congratulates the newly elected provincial leadership of Cosatu.
The party also discussed the need to deepen its influence within the trade unions in the province. The SACP throws its full weight behind the Cosatu national stayaway on the 7th October. Amongst the key issues to be highlighted are Job losses, public transport system and decent work. The campaign will also take up the traditional financial sector demands for community reinvestment legislation, for prescribed assets legislation, low bank charges and limited bond repayment terms so the working class can pay off their properties in not more than 5 years.

Cosatu agreed to be more active in the SACP Know your neighbourhood campaign, in particular through the activism of Cosatu locals. The party will work closely with Cosatu in monitoring the action on labour brokers.

ON THE YCL

The Lekgotla received the YCL organisational report. It welcomed the program of action of the YCL that will see the revitalisation of its structures and decided on extending its principled support.

ON PARTY BUILDING

The lekgotla received a comprehensive assessment of the state of the organisation report mainly focussing on the work of our districts and party branches in the implementation of our program of action and campaigns. A number of challenges could be identified for correction. Principally these challenges relate to weaknesses in ideological training and correlates to the exponential growth of our party. The party, due partly to its financial sector campaign has found itself increasingly in the service of a base much wider than the working class.

The lekgotla is satisfied by enormous progress in the area of party building across the province, although beset by unevenness in the implementation. We agreed to pay greater attention to under-performing party structures and deepen ideological support. We welcomed the newly appointed district organisers across all 5 districts in the province.

CORRUPTION

We will intensify our campaign to combat corruption, corporate capture of our movement and the influence of blood money in our politics.

SACP FINANCIAL SECTOR CAMPAIGN

In the light of the burgeoning of speculative financial activities in international markets, the Lekgotla agreed to engage intensively with the SACP discussion document on Financialisation. We therefore tasked both our structures and the Economic Transformation Commission in the province, to engage communities and make specific proposals on the course of action by the province. Greater attention must be paid to the social necessity for a huge cooperative and strong movement in the province, especially in the banking sector. We have to address the role of Post-Bank in this regard and re-evaluate the gains of the Mzansi account. Despite some victories against red-lining, we are witnessing as a backlash from the capitalist crisis, a strong resurgence of pyramid scheming and mashonisas. Much more disturbing is the malignant anarcho-corruption linked to the financial and property sector in which sophisticated syndicates prey on the working class. They operate through mainly the appropriation of counterfeit judicial and state administrative functions, where fraudulent title deeds, court orders, interdicts, affidavits and other legal documents are produced are used to evict working people families and uproot them from their livelihoods. The syndicates then rely on other arms of the state to see through the fictitious judicial orders, leading to police guaranteed execution of these orders. We have to debate the notion of and implications of the withering away of certain key functions of the state in the light of this growing anti-state anarchic corruption.

The financialisation of the health sector continues to be pursued by monopoly capital through private medical schemes that are linked to the major financial institutions listed on the JSE as demonstrated by the recent approval of an exemption framework to the Medical Schemes Act to create the legal space for the establishment of low income medical schemes. These low cost benefit options are targeted at bringing an additional 15 million people from the working class communities and low income earners into a financialised health sector controlled by private monopoly capital. These low income medical schemes offer a minimum and inadequate package of benefits and will be introduced in January 2016 to bolster a devouring financial black hole of the greedy private medical schemes industry. National Health Insurance (NHI) is the only viable policy instrument that will ensure that the working class is protected from a financialised health sector and will afford the working class financial risk protection. The Medical schemes have used sophisticated instruments to effect corporate capture of the Regulatory System and to gate-keep in preventing the speedy implementation of NHI. The SACP calls for the speedy implementation of the NHI and will urge the working class to reject the low cost benefit options.

Overall it is the strong ties between the belligerence of comprador private capital allied and imperialism that drives the undermining of the introduction of the national Health Insurance (NHI).

The SACP in the province will during the October to November, formally launch a robust campaign against the financial sector by marching to the representatives of the financial sector.

TOWNSHIP ECONOMY

The lekgotla” discussed the provincial government concept of “Township Economy’, in which a community based transformation of the legacy of colonialism of a special type, is driven within the townships, to industrialise, to empower the working class from narrow bourgeois accumulation regime and to roll back the monopoly of the capitalist market. A successfully driven township economy is not feasible through the BEE mode of accumulation. It can never take off without the dominant participation of massive cooperatives run by our people. One of the critical conditions of the township economy is the construction of a state corresponding to this enormously transformational content within the township economy and a strong solidarity foundation.

KHUTSONG KNOW-YOUR-NEIGHBOURHOOD CAMPAIGN

The Provincial Lekgotla conducted an intensive door-to-door community visit and the “Know-Your-Neighbourhood-Campaign’ in Khutsong. Community members have expressed real concerns and frustrations over basic the intermittent disruption of basic municipal services such as water, functional clinic service including other infrastructural services such as road infrastructural maintenance. It is often the secondary effects of bad infrastructure that is more compromising. The accumulation of dust on poorly maintained roads can have negative health implications.

Were also worried about the description of crime in the area and will revive our people’s power organs on community safety and security.

MK REBURIALS

We welcome the reburials in the past few weeks of a number of our MK cadres and heroes who were victims of brutal elimination by the apartheid regime hit squads and assassins. The missing remains of Mzwakhe Moses Phato and Archie Lethoko, Lolo Sono and Siboniso Tshabalala have been positively identified, repatriated and reburied, closing painful chapters in the memory of their family lives.

ON POLICE KILLINGS

The Lekgotla condemns a wave of dastardly killings of police in around Gauteng province and in several parts of the country. A deeply worrying escalation of cold blooded police execution trend is visibly manifest in these killings.

This trend corresponds to the growing and generalised vilification of all police in society at the behest of the mainstream media and some crooked politicians.

Were also deeply disturbed by what appears to be a positive correlation between the killing of police and an unimpeded growth in contraband automatic weapons and small arms proliferation, discovered by police in recent months.

We agree with POPCRU idea of what is essentially a call for popular mobilisation whilst rejecting from every quarter, appeasing calls for Hollywood-type knee-jerk responses. We shall embark on an alliance political program focussing on police killings, to appreciate the role of police and create more social awareness.

Given how badly Gauteng is affected, our provincial lekgotla will consider a motion for a safety and security summit in the province with a focus on community based intelligence gathering and organs of peoples power to reign in these criminals.

Government must address with its regional counterpart, the collective regional security in the light of growing comprador displacement of violent crime across regional borders.

These crimes can partly be attributed to bedevilled economic aspirations of lumpen sections of our societies from aborted national democratic revolutions. The most overriding driver of violent crime is the stubborn reality of bourgeois centralization of the wealth of our countries by rich powerful mainly white male elite in the case of South Africa and its African comprador class counterpart in other African countries.

In this regard the liberation and working class forces have a particular imperative to revitalize the key radical motive forces for thoroughgoing national liberation transformation.

We convey our deepest condolences to the families and friends of police casualties.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS

We must ensure strong ideological preparations and document our perspectives on local government elections. The province will unleash our Red Brigades to take an overriding organisational lead in mass mobilisation.

ON IDEOLOGICAL TRAINING

The province will shift towards fortnightly political education sessions which must be repeated in districts and branches. The ideological commission will work with other relevant commissions on local government elections and the mobilisation of the working class.

Issued by the SACP Gauteng province