The South African Communist Party (SACP) on Wednesday reiterated its support for a universal basic income grant and its support of the national strike action convened by the labour federation Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

Cosatu, the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), the Federation of Unions of South Africa (FEDUSA) and the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) have ordered their members to stay home today in all provinces, as they protest corruption, gender-based violence and unemployment.

The strike also coincides with the thirteenth Global Day for Decent Work and seeks to highlight the plight of workers during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

The union federation said the working-class struggle was indivisible and it called on unorganised workers to join unions and the struggle to fight against economic exploitation.

Besides fighting immediate battles for improvements, and against retrenchments, the real fruit of building workers’ unity lay in the struggle to end the exploitative system of capitalism, corruption, racism and sexism, it said.   

“The SACP resolutely supports the demands for, and is fully part of the struggle for, gender transformation and equality. We are intransigent against gender-based violence and want to see the perpetrators hunted down and held to account. We want to see an end to patriarchy and gender-based violence. We want complete and universal social emancipation,” it said.

On the issue of corruption, the union said South Africans needed to rally behind State transformation to build a capable democratic developmental State.

It called for all South Africans to intensify the fight against corruption, criminality and gender-based violence.

“We want to see successful prosecution [of perpetrators of gender-based violence], and those found guilty sentenced to severe prison sentences. We want to see those who acquired assets or wealth through corrupt means face the might to the Asset Forfeiture Unit,” the SACP said.

The party said inequality and poverty had deepened because of the capitalist crisis bought on by Covid-19 and the interrelated crisis of the system’s preceding the current crisis.

“This is among the many reasons, in the launch of our Red October Campaign 2020–2021, we reiterated our call for a minimum income guarantee, among other measures. A universal basic income grant should be part of the minimum income guarantee,” said the SACP.

It has also called for grants in the form of productive interventions aimed at enabling access to work for all.

It says many unemployed South Africans can thrive if supported with incentives for productive activity, for example in agriculture and farming, with seeds, implements and technical capacity building.