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We, the 180 delegates from the length and breadth of the Province of Moses Mabhida, KwaZulu-Natal Province, representing the SACP Provincial Executive Committee, districts and branches of the SACP representing our communities, especially the working-class and peasants, and the Young Communist League of South Africa (YCLSA), came together, constituting the SACP Moses Mabhida Provincial Council. We met at eThekwini Technical and Vocational Education and Training College, Asherville Campus in Durban.

Delegates representing the Central Committee of the SACP attended the Provincial Council, which received messages of support from the representatives of the YCLSA, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the African National Congress (ANC) in the province.

The Provincial Congress analysed and discussed the emerging tendencies and challenges facing the SACP and which the Party must confront decisively. It is crucial for the SACP to ensure and strictly maintain Marxist-Leninist discipline to advance our programme to complete the national democratic revolution, our strategy for immediate transformation and development, and deepen the South African Struggle for Socialism.

We convened after the National Congress of COSATU laid bare the challenges facing the Alliance. The Alliance must address the challenges as a matter of urgency.

The Provincial Council convened after our Party’s 15th National Congress held in mid-July, the 101st anniversary celebration of the Party at the end of July and the beginning of August, and the launch of the Red October Campaign in October, which focuses on “Land, Food and Work” as its theme. These major events occurred against the background of a major onslaught facing the working-class and workers in the workplace as capitalist bosses restructure operations to maximise profits.

In the public sector, including municipalities, the situation is difficult for the workers as well. Neoliberal measures and political factionalism linked with the activities of the tender lords are a serious problem.

The return of dismissed Ugu and Newcastle municipal workers

The Provincial Congress welcomed the massive victory of the workers who have returned to work after they were dismissed in droves by the Ugu and Newcastle Municipalities.

Engagements within the Alliance to secure the re-instatement of the workers fell on deaf ears after the powers that be, after those who controlled the two municipalities from inside and outside, did not co-operate.  The SACP salutes COSATU which had the full support of the Party for leading the workers’ struggles, including taking the unfair mass dismissals to court.

Forced to be the sacrificial lambs, the workers were dismissed as a result of internal ANC factional infighting, arrogance, and associated corrupt tendencies. 

In taking forward the programme adopted by our Party’s 15th National Congress, we will strengthen our alliance with COSATU in our province to continue defending workers and leading their struggles to fight for their rights.

We denounce the ideas that workers are “drunkards” when they raise pertinent and call on the ANC in the province to distance itself from the utterances of its Provincial Treasurer.

Electricity shortage crises and load-shedding

Rolling load-shedding has become a norm, resulting in major blackouts and plug-outs, which is highly problematic. Both the government and Eskom have not resolved the problem.

Instead of ensuring adequate funds to maintain existing Eskom power stations, ensuring the completion of the Medupi and Kusile power stations, and building new publicly owned power stations to ensure self-sufficiency to serve the energy needs of the people developmentally, the government is still following the thrust of the neoliberal energy policy initially adopted in December 1998 under the auspices of the 1996 GEAR class project.

The neoliberal energy policy prioritised liberalising new power generation capacity in favour of insinuating profit-driven private power producers called “Independent Power Producers” in the space. As a result of its failures, the policy is one of the major factors that have resulted in the ongoing load-shedding.

Moreover, where profit-driven interests, including finance capital, which deals in loans take root, the public is forced to pay for the profits. This is one of the key drivers of the rising cost of electricity.

Reconfiguration of the Alliance

The Alliance in its current form and content has been dislodged to the periphery in driving the national democratic revolution in the province. Alliance relations are at an all-time low. The question is: Whose interests does this serve? 

Our class adversaries are happy with the Alliance being marginalised because they know that this will give them an advantage. Factionalists, looters and entrepreneurs are among the adversaries of the working-class. They see the Alliance as a barrier to their corruption and self-enrichment agendas. They believe they can win the ANC through factional contestation and permanently win elections through it with the support of the Alliance partners to pursue their agenda. They are lying to themselves. 

The Alliance, as the strategic political centre, must collectively drive the national democratic revolution. A failure to reconfigure the Alliance to fulfil its historical mission will spell disaster. The working-class will have no option but to seek new solutions, as there can be no principled unity with criminals, thugs and opportunists.

Neglect of flood victims, and the state of delivery of public goods and government services

Critical public infrastructure is deteriorating, deeply concerning the SACP in the province. This results from aging infrastructure, poor maintenance and poor quality affecting new infrastructure.

Many people are still denied access to essential services, including, but not limited to, water and sanitation, food and electricity (including through load-shedding) and other essentials, not to mention the life-saving clinics and hospitals, due to the deterioration and destruction of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and railways.

Emerging from the Provincial Council, the SACP in Moses Mabhida Province will strengthen working-class mobilisation to deal with the problems affecting public infrastructure and seek justice and care for the victims of the floods that hit the province. This campaign will include confronting the failure to spend provincial and municipal infrastructure budgets, resulting in the funds being returned to the Treasury while the people direly need the infrastructure and the work that comes with its construction, maintenance and securing.

Revolutionary discipline

Revolutionary discipline is a critical part of every Marxist-Leninist organisation, such as the SACP. Members must ensure that they not only clothe and feed themselves, but they must read, understand and practice revolutionary discipline in activity, including private life. The Provincial Council therefore welcomed the adoption of constitutional amendments establishing the Central Ethics Commission and Discipline Inspectorate in the SACP.

Social and economic situation

Capitalism in South Africa is incapable of resolving the multiple crises of public health, climate change and its endemic economic crisis, including the rising cost of living. Over two-thirds of our people live below a R50 per-day upper-bound poverty line. The realities of life in any rural settlement, township, or informal settlement provide the harsh evidence of what most of our people experience on a day-to-day basis.

In terms of race, it is the black people who suffer the most. In terms of class, they are the working poor and the unemployed. In terms of gender, over 50 per cent of them are females. The legacy of racial discrimination and its class and gender dynamics persists.  

Our economy in KwaZulu-Natal Province is still struggling to emerge from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the July 2021 riots, looting and destruction of infrastructure, and April 2022 floods that claimed the lives of over 300 people and destroyed thousands of homes and infrastructure. 

We call upon the Premier and the Executive Mayor of eThekwini to address this injustice as a matter of urgency.

Workers have been battered by another blow. Fuel and food prices have been rising as a result of imperialist regimes weaponising and imposing sanctions on major oil economies and provoking and sponsoring conflicts in different parts of the world, not to mention Ukraine. We will strengthen our anti-imperialist struggles and the overall struggle for a just and peaceful world, while strengthening political action in our province in pursuit of our Party’s programme for a policy change against neoliberalism. 

The neoliberal posture and agenda of the so-called “offloading” or strategic partners deeply concerned us as delegates to the Provincial Council. These are code words and phrases for the privatisation and liberalisation and have already affected SAA, Eskom assets such as its land, and Transnet, among others. It seems the standard technique of privatisation identified by Noam Chomsky is in session: Defund, make sure that things do not work, make people angry because of that, and hand over the affected public entity in part or in whole to a private company. This was best exemplified in the strategy used by Margaret Thatcher in Britain when she privatised the railroads.

The SACP will engage with COSATU to convene a joint Transport Indaba to find solutions to the large-scale destruction of the rail infrastructure and road congestion.

We will strengthen our work against the neoliberal agenda in favour of the national democratic revolution and the goals of the Freedom Charter.

Political Killings

We are concerned by the increasing spate of what appears to be political killings in KwaZulu-Natal, more especially in regions such as eThekwini, Moses Mabhida and eMalahleni.

The SACP is calling on the Alliance to raise awareness and isolate the thugs and mercenaries.

Law enforcement authorities must leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of the killings.

The plight of the Swazi people

We will enhance the serious stance we have adopted against the autocrat, the absolute monarch in Swaziland, Mswati III. It is our revolutionary duty and responsibility to support the struggle of the people of Swaziland for democratisation, the release of political prisoners and un-banning of political parties.

Working with progressive forces, we will embark on a visible programme against, prior and during Mswati’s attendance of the coronation of the new Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini.

Mental health, joblessness, substance abuse, suicide, and crime

We are facing a serious challenge of mental health. Repossessions by banks, retrenchments, unemployment, poverty and inequality are all the outcomes of the brutal capitalist system and among the major factors behind the mental health epidemic.

The SACP has committed itself to work side by side with the YCLSA in convening an urgent joint meeting to discuss campaigns to address the problem of mental health and confront capitalist exploitation, also working with COSATU.

Institutions of higher learning

The Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) has seen Student Representative Council electoral defeats at university and Technical and Vocational Education and Training college campuses.

Noting that institutions of learning are a microcosm of what obtains in our communities, the Provincial Council has called for the Alliance to pay serious attention to the need to unite the PYA. This should include intensive work to strengthen student-worker alliance programmatic platforms in campuses.

SACP and COSATU on elections

The SACP and COSATU should forge a strong socialist axis, as part of the SACP 15th National Congress programme to build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor. This should include forming an advanced cadres committee to look at the modalities that will favour the socialist axis and broadly a popular left front regarding electoral processes. To this end, working together with COSATU and other progressive and worker formations, the SACP should co-ordinate a scientific survey to assess the perspectives of the people on the ground.

The SACP in the province will adopt a programme to build the socialist axis and a broad left movement within the framework of the SACP programme to build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor.

Celebration of the 100 years of Moses Mabhida in 2023 October

The Provincial Council noted with great excitement the 100 years of Moses Mabhida (11 October 1923 – 8 March 1986). Mabhida was a loyal, dedicated and disciplined revolutionary and leader of the SACP who contributed immensely to building the Communist Party. This centenary celebration of our leader should inspire us to emulate the revolutionary conduct that consistently defined the character of communists as the most advanced detachment of the South African struggle for liberation, democracy and socialism.

Newly elected SACP Moses Mabhida Provincial Chairperson

The Provincial Council elected John Nene, the Acting Provincial Chairperson, to the position of the new SACP Moses Mabhida Provincial Chairperson. Nene replaces James Nxumalo, who was elected to the SACP 15th National Congress Central Committee in mid-July. The Provincial Council wished Nxumalo and the entire collective of the newly elected SACP Central Committee well.

Issued by SACP Moses Mabhida