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The South African Communist Party (SACP) salutes the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest liberation organisation on the African continent, on this important occasion, its 108th founding anniversary.

Our alliance with the ANC dates back to the late 1920s following the adoption of the historic Resolution on the South African Question by the Communist International in the second half of 1928. The Communist Party ratified the resolution a few months later at its annual conference held in January 1929 in Johannesburg. We have since dedicated our efforts on building the alliance as an active expression of unity against colonial oppression and imperialist domination. The ANC played a leading role in our liberation struggle, for the most part in alliance with the Communist Party as well as the progressive trade union movement.

Together we fought against colonialism, imperialism and the apartheid regime which came to power in 1948. The gallant efforts of our people, and their invaluable activism and support, including in the formation of the mass democratic movement, delivered the death knell of the apartheid regime in the early 1990s.

Together we rallied behind the organisational leadership of the ANC in elections since the first democratic general election held in April 1994, mindful of the great importance of unity as the weapon of victory and the consequences of disunity. We defeated colonial, apartheid, imperialist and post-1994 attacks aimed at disintegrating our alliance.

The SACP reaffirms its commitment to our principled and programmatic unity and therefore to the alliance as well its reconfiguration process across the board – that is, at levels. Our shared objective for the reconfiguration is to deepen the alliance’s strategic relevance both in theory and practice, thus move with the times, and rebuild our movement as a whole towards completing the course of liberation, achieving social emancipation and securing collective prosperity with and for our people.  

Since 1994, our successive democratically elected ANC-led governments advanced important social programmes, including massive rollouts of access to housing, electrification, clean drinking water, education at all levels and social grants. These and other social advances benefitting millions of our people, especially the working class and the poor, were anchored in the culture of the human rights our national liberation movement enshrined in our country’s Constitution.

Working together, we can achieve more.

We are currently in the midst of high rates of inequality, poverty and unemployment. At present, unemployment affects 10.3 million active and discouraged work seekers. All these problems are the direct results of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. Their material basis and daily reproduction are however firmly anchored in the system of capitalism and its endemic crisis. As if that were not enough, state capture and other forms of corruption have become a serious threat to our democratic dispensation and national development. Associated with the problem is the malady of factionalism. To overcome these problems, we must go to the root, rather than merely focus on the effects.

Working together we must move the national democratic revolution, our shared programme of national transformation and development, into a second radical phase. We must give the national democratic revolution profound expression in policy making and content and advance, deepen and defend the democratic transition to the end. It is important to build strategic discipline in our movement and the state and hold to account those entrusted with organisational and public power. In particular, we must deal a decisive blow to corrupt elements.

The SACP wishes the ANC many more revolutionary years to come.

Issued by The South African Communist Party