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SACP statement on the 28th anniversary of our 1994 breakthrough

South Africa has an oligarchy, whose members are wallowing in whopping amounts of monumental wealth. While heaping up multi-millions of rand in dividends and executive remuneration, the oligarchs intransigently deprive the workers, the downtrodden exploited in the economy, of any notable improvements in their terms of employment including wage increases. Here we are referring to the likes of Sibanye-Stillwater CEO, Neal Froneman, who the company paid an astronomical R300 million in 2021 as its annual report reveals.

The SACP expresses its unwavering support for the National Union of Mineworkers and for the co-operation it has forged in struggle with the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, in pursuit of the common interests of the downtrodden at Sibanye-Stillwater. The two unions are leading a strike declared on 9 March 2022 by the workers, which has today entered its 47th day.

Under the leadership of Froneman, who without doubt wants millions for himself, as showed by his 2021 annual pay, Sibanye-Stillwater is offering the workers increases of merely 7.8 per cent to their peanut wages in year one, 7.2 per cent in year two and 6.8 per cent in year three of a three-year bargaining cycle starting in 2022. The workers have rejected the insult. They are continuing with their industrial action, actively confronting inequality in the distribution of production income.

Uncritical economists and commentators in the print media, on television screens, on radio, and on the internet say the workers are unreasonable and Froneman is the reasonable man. This is obviously gibberish to any standard of social justice. The workers who have had to embark on the strike at Sibanye-Stillwater will not in their entire hard-working life receive the multi-millions in rand value terms that the oligarch and his counterparts in other sectors received in just one year, 2021.

At MTN, which together with Vodacom makes up a duopoly in the mobile information and telecommunications technology (ICT) network sector, the CEO Ralph Mupita was paid R84.2 million in just one year, 2021. Like other behemoths in the ICT network sector in other parts of the world, the duopoly raked in huge amounts of profits during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when many sectors were under lockdown and an increasing number of people worked from home, with digital connectivity and mobile data as key means of production. The ICT network behemoths drove up the cost of mobile data and other digital communication pathways, relying on their dominance. The auctioning of the high frequency broadband spectrum will deepen the Vodacom and MTN duopoly, its top two beneficiaries or capturers of the lion’s share.

The working-class and other progressive sections of our society need to deepen the struggle to achieve transformation in, de-monopolise and diversify the ICT network sector and every other sector of our economy. Another key developmental imperative in the ICT network sector is to bring down the cost of mobile data and digital connectivity. Just like water, the source of life, the high frequency broadband spectrum and mobile data are key means of production and are increasingly taking the centre stage in every economic activity and broader social transformation and development.

Compare the staggering personal acquisition of wealth by the oligarchs in the mining, information and telecommunications technology network sector, and in other sectors such as the banking sector and the pharmaceutical sector, with the likely elimination of the miserable R350 Social Relief of Distress grant—if the government will not extend it beyond the end of March 2023. This is a painful reality which must be challenged through workplace distributive and broader political struggles, including redistributive struggles.

Which is why, on this day, the 28th anniversary of our 1994 democratic breakthrough, the SACP reiterates its call that the government should extend the Social Relief of Distress grant beyond the end of March 2023 and gradually improve it to build a foundation for, and transform it into, a universal basic income grant.

In 1994, while others proclaimed, “Free at last!”, the SACP stressed the struggle had to continue, with the transition we achieved in that year a democratic breakthrough, a new basis for intensifying our uninterrupted struggle towards lasting freedom, complete social emancipation and a just, equal society. The position the SACP adopted is as relevant as ever, considering the lived experience of the masses 28 years later.

For sure, there are commendable gains benefitting millions of our people in housing, education, healthcare, social grants, electricity coverage, social infrastructure, and in other areas. However, there are two major problems.

The first problem is that South Africa has a population of 12.5 million active and discouraged work-seekers who are devastated by a long-term structural crisis of systemic unemployment and the failure of the neoliberal policy prescriptions. Together with millions of others, they are devastated by the crisis of social reproduction (the inability to support themselves because of the endemic crisis of capitalism) and the persisting high levels of poverty and inequality.

The second problem is that many of the post-1994 social gains are now under the real threat of erosion because of neoliberal policy prescriptions and state capture. The national electricity utility, Eskom, for example, has been weakened by both neoliberal macroeconomic policy orientation and state capture. Neoliberalism started first under the economic policy called GEAR, imposed in 1996. At the end of that decade, a White Paper on Energy was adopted under the neoliberal GEAR trajectory, depriving Eskom of investment in new, developmental power generation capacity to keep pace with the commendable massive electrification expansion of post-1994.

It is because of both neoliberalism and governance decay, mismanagement and looting under state capture that South Africa is frequently plunged into rolling nationwide load-shedding, did not build capacity for a just green transition and is facing frequent breakdowns in old power stations which are increasingly costly to maintain. The unfolding digital industrial revolution and trends in energy transition in the production process and products, such as the transition underway in the global automotive industry towards new energy vehicles, require a massive amount of consistently reliable power generation—sensitive to the environment. As things stand, South Africa is hamstrung by ailing, unreliable and insufficient power generation capacity. Needless to mention the failure to meet energy needs of the people and drive inclusive growth in the here and now.

To meet the economic and broader social transformation and development needs of the masses, we need to forge widest possible working-class unity and patriotic and left popular fronts, to tackle the manipulation of the basic wealth and resources of our country and exploitation by sections of individuals and elitist groupings, be they white or black. Intensifying the struggle against neoliberal and state capture networks and their agendas and safeguarding our policy space and democratic sovereignty are the integral strategic tasks of this just struggle.

The SACP calls on the working-class and progressive strata to unite against exploitation by the oligarchs and the crisis levels of mass poverty, unemployment, social reproduction and the inequality that the oligarchs are deepening. The oligarchs are deepening all these problems, including through retrenchments. 

On this day, the 28th anniversary of our April 1994 democratic breakthrough, the SACP once again says: “A luta continua!”