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The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) wish to forward its congratulatory message to the newly elected South African Communist Party (SACP) leadership, led by Comrade Solly Mapaila who was elected unopposed as the General Secretary of the SACP. Comrade Madala Masuku is now the first deputy general secretary and deputy finance minister comrade David Masondo is the second deputy general secretary. Dr Blade Nzimande as national chairperson.  Comrade Nzimande will be deputised by labour Minister comrade Thulas Nxesi. Comrade Joyce Moloi-Moropa returns as national treasurer.

The NUM believes that with these newly elected leaders, the party will continue to play its pivotal role in advancing the interests of the working class and remain strong as a vanguard of the poor workers in the country. 

We are certain that the poorest of the poor will be represented at all levels. The capitalist system has not just created record unemployment, but it drives an accumulation strategy that has led to attacks on the working class, including massive cuts in wages to increase profits. 

The state has responded to this depressing situation and gloomy economy with uncalculated and unnecessary arrogance. In our country like anywhere else in the world, the crisis and the offensive of capital have intensified the exploitation of workers. Millions of workers live below the poverty threshold. Capital has coerced workers into low-paying jobs and vulnerable economic sectors, into casualised, contractual jobs.  

It is clear for all to see with the unemployment numbers, widening inequality, and poverty level that this system cannot be mitigated by neoliberal shock therapies consisting of bailouts, tax subsidies and other incentives. We hope the newly elected leadership will intervene in mitigating the situation that the country is faced with.

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx presented the concept of the vanguard party as solely qualified to politically lead the proletariat in revolution; in Chapter II: "Proletarians and Communists" of The Communist Manifesto (1848), they said: "The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat."

Issued by NUM