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The South African Communist Party (SACP) extends its warmest congratulations to the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest liberation organisation in Africa, on the occasion of its 112th founding anniversary on 8 January 2024. We express our profound appreciation to the ANC for spearheading our liberation struggle following its founding in 1912. The SACP, as the second oldest political organisation in South Africa, formed nine years after the ANC, played a crucial role as a reliable partner throughout the complex, difficult, and challenging journey of our liberation struggle. 

Established in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa, committed to the liberation of the racially oppressed black majority, gender equality and the empowerment of women by dismantling patriarchal domination, the establishment of South Africa as a non-racial and non-sexist democratic republic, and ending capitalist exploitation of the working-class, regardless of race and gender, through a socialist struggle, the SACP forged its alliance with the ANC following the adoption of the Resolution on the South African Question by the Communist International in 1928 based on extensive discussions with South African Communists. During its annual conference held in Johannesburg in December 1928 and January 1929, the Communist Party formally ratified the resolution. The Party went on to establish the alliance with the ANC, and the Alliance includes the progressive trade union movement, which also played a pivotal role in our liberation struggle. 

The history of our victory against the apartheid regime in April 1994, rooted in the mobilisation and overwhelming support of our people, would be incomplete without a recognition of the leading role played by the ANC in our liberation struggle. Likewise, the history of our hard-won democratic rights, enshrined in our constitution, would be incomplete without acknowledging the pivotal role played by the ANC. The SACP further recognises the role played by the ANC as the governing party since our April 1994 democratic breakthrough in ensuring the delivery of the massive social advances that benefit millions of our people. 

The commendable democratic gains include the homes provided free of charge to the workers and poor, who were and are still excluded by the capitalist property market due to their inability to afford homes as commodities – an exclusive preserve for those who can afford or are eligible for mortgage bonds. There has been a significant expansion of access to education at all levels, ranging from the foundation phase to secondary schools – with school feeding schemes for children from poor households – and to post-school education and training at colleges and universities.

There has also been a rise in the number of clinics and expansion of access to healthcare covering the formerly oppressed. Furthermore, there has been an extension of access to water, electricity, and roads, particularly in rural areas that were overlooked during racist oppression – whose beneficiaries are notably concentrated in political parties led overwhelmingly by white leaders, like the DA, underscoring the enduring legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

Our Alliance needs to undergo a reconfiguration and, together with the entire democratic national-revolutionary landscape and constituencies of our liberation struggle, must unite more than ever before to safeguard the achievements of our democratic transition and further advance the national democratic revolution. This becomes imperative as beneficiaries of apartheid and the so-called homelands, established by the apartheid regime, and backed by imperialist forces, re-unite post-1994 under the reactionary agenda termed a “multi-party charter”, originally the DA’s so-called moonshot pact.

To ensure a successful reconfiguration, our Alliance must unite behind a change in policy direction, encompassing a new macroeconomic framework and an adequately funded high impact industrial policy, to drive beneficiation, industrialisation and large-scale employment creation to resolve the unemployment crisis currently affecting over 11 million active and discouraged work-seekers. The new policy direction should include transforming the Social Relief of Distress Grant into a universal basic income grant and improving it as we move forward. This will contribute to poverty alleviation and should form part of a wider poverty eradication strategy as an apex priority in the new policy direction. 

Furthermore, the new policy direction should advance a public pathway to overcome the electricity crisis and stop load shedding sustainably. As part of this effort, the government must prioritise building new state-owned power generation stations, with greater attention to carbon capture and sequestration and renewable energy sources. The public pathway should extend to the imperative to rebuild and expand the passenger and freight rail networks, greater trade ports and both inward and outward logistics capacity. 

The new policy direction should encompass a more decisive approach and greater capacity to prevent, combat and investigate crime and corruption, including gender-based violence. 

Three decades into our democratic dispensation, progress toward realising the economic clauses outlined in the Freedom Charter, particularly regarding state ownership in the economy, generally, and a central role in the banking sector, remains elusive. To propel our democratic transformation and development, our nation requires accelerated transformation of the financial sector, with the establishment of a developmental state banking sector as an immediate priority.

Our people expect greater progress. This requires a renewed ANC within the framework of a reconfigured Alliance anchored by the widest possible patriotic unity. 

Issued by the South African Communist Party