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Today, at the occasion of this rally, as the SACP we can publicly confirm that we were actively involved in the ANC-led Alliance manifesto drafting consultative process. The unifying effort to accommodate the wide-ranging proposals, submitted orally and in writing, characterised the manifesto consultation. The consensus-seeking consultation is an important pillar of the Alliance’s reconfiguration. It is a strength we need to work together to deepen. This is also essential for renewing and growing the organisation, activism and mobilisation of our entire mass democratic movement. 

To implement the Freedom Charter’s clarion call, “The people shall govern”, we need to strengthen mass organisation and embark on sustained mass mobilisation. In all major policy processes, it is important to solicit the views of the people, the majority of whom are the working class, as we did during the manifesto review and drafting processes. We must institutionalise this. It is also of great importance, going forward, to involve the people to participate in national development, including through the delivery of public goods and services. This should be an integral part of meaningful mass mobilisation to advance and defend progress.

It is a fact that life in South Africa during the centuries-old colonial and apartheid era up to April 1994 was synonymous with life in hell. This holds true more so for the black majority who were racially oppressed and super-exploited workers who faced racial and gender discrimination in the workplace and marginalisation in the economy at large. The beneficiaries of the racist and sexist, exploitative capitalist system do not want any mention of this truth, its consequences and lasting legacy. Their parties are in fact led by white leaders in an African country with an overwhelmingly black population. This is part of the persisting legacy of apartheid. How can we illustrate social progress without showing the difference between the present and past realities of life in South Africa? To set the record straight, the SACP welcomes the commendable progress that is benefitting millions of our people since our hard-won April 1994 democratic breakthrough. It is the right thing for the manifesto to highlight this progress.    

The manifesto is not one-sided, however. It draws attention to the problems that we must solve and the challenges that we must overcome towards a better South Africa. The central thrust, as well as the aims of the manifesto, is progressive. For this reason, besides the consensus-seeking consultative process from which the manifesto emerged, the SACP endorses it. We want to emphasise the following commitments in the manifesto. 

The manifesto commitment to advance a more caring social security system is crucial. This includes the extension and commitment to improve the Social Relief of Distress Grant and to transform it to lay the foundation for a transition to a minimum income guarantee. 

The SACP welcomes the commitment to infrastructure development and financial sector transformation. We need greater progress in both economic and social infrastructure development and maintenance. This should solve the crisis of under-capacity in our logistics systems. It should support industrialisation, large-scale employment creation, and the provision of quality healthcare for all through the National Health Insurance implementation. 

The state should remain a key player in infrastructure development and our national logistics infrastructure, including through an integrated, safe, reliable, accessible and affordable public transport system development. Likewise, the state should thrive in both the passenger and freight rail networks and in our ports. This is also critical to ensure national security.  

Financial sector transformation must move us towards the public control that the Freedom Charter calls for. It must also improve access to finance for productive capacity development and housing, prioritising national development imperatives and serving the people’s financial needs. 

It is crucial to resolve the electricity generation and transmission under-capacity crisis as a matter of urgency. As the manifesto states, temporary interventions are also crucial to stop load shedding while implementing medium- and long-term solutions, including, we want to emphasise here today, a true just energy transition. 

It is therefore crucial to ensure total preventative engineering maintenance at all Eskom power stations, using genuine replacement components and spare parts. The government must clamp down on corruption in the procurement of replacement components and spare parts at Eskom. In the same vein, the government must clamp down on theft of both replacement and new electricity network infrastructure development components and spare parts at Eskom. We must treat both corruption and theft, including infrastructure vandalism, as tantamount to economic sabotage and treason. We need uninterrupted electricity supply to turn around our economy, including through industrialisation. 

The SACP welcomes the importance attached to industrialisation in the manifesto. Building, expanding, diversifying and raising the levels of national production is crucial for employment creation at a scale that will resolve our unemployment crisis. For this to succeed, especially through industrialisation, we need a supportive macroeconomic framework. This includes fiscal and monetary policies, and the Reserve Bank playing a developmental role to ensure balanced and sustainable growth and maximum sustainable employment creation. Trade policy, likewise, must support domestic production development through industrialisation and employment creation. This has sufficiently been recognised during the manifesto drafting consultative process.   

In addition, as the manifesto states, manufacturing localisation through beneficiation of our minerals and primary agricultural and forestry products, as well as fisheries and other marine sources, is essential for industrialisation and large-scale employment creation. What we want to emphasise, using this opportunity, is that industrialisation and maximum sustainable employment creation must be the-whole-of-government function, including through macroeconomic and sectoral policies, provincial development strategies, the district development model and local economic development programmes. We want to emphasise the importance of consolidating a comprehensive industrial policy, using existing sectoral masterplans as the starting point, but with enhanced industrialisation and employment creation outcomes.  

On behalf of the people as a whole, the state must participate in the productive sector as part of our industrial policy and national industrialisation agenda. We must turn around state-owned enterprises to thrive. We need to build a vibrant and growing public economy, including through establishing new public enterprises where necessary in strategic industrial production and digital economy activities. 

Among others, we must not allow ArcelorMittal to shut down the steel productive capacity that South Africa still needs. When push comes to shove, state intervention to save the much-needed steel productive capacity must include re-nationalisation. We must not forget the role played by public funds, such as the Industrial Development Corporation and the Public Investment Corporation, in developing that productive capacity, which we must not allow to go to waste.  

Economic transformation and development must empower the majority of the people, as opposed to being obsessed with empowering a tiny minority at the expense of the majority. Support for worker-controlled co-operatives, collective worker ownership development, and the social economy will contribute meaningfully to mass empowerment. 

The SACP supports the manifesto’s commitments to fight corruption and crime, including gender-based violence and drugs. We need to build safer communities in all respects. 

In conclusion, we reiterate our support for our government’s decision to refer the apartheid Israeli settler regime’s genocide on the Palestinians to the International Court of Justice. We do not know what the final judgment will be, given widespread imperialist manipulation and domination in the hostile international atmosphere. However, we know and support what the interim judgment has said to stop the genocide. The Israeli leaders must comply with the measures that the International Court of Justice has ordered through the interim judgment. We reiterate our support for the freedom of the Palestinian people and their just struggle for freedom.

Issued by the South African Communist Party