Yes to the sovereignty of the people!

The SACP Central Committee met this weekend (preceded by a Policy Dialogue with 180 delegates from around the country) and has issued its statement. See the link below. The entire document is a substantial rehearsal of communist principles with detailed reference to the specifics of the present situation in South Africa, and to the tasks of the other partners in the Alliance. This document will lift Party morale and help set the course for a successful and historic 12th National SACP Congress in July.

Here are some highlights of the document:

“…what is impeding substantial progress is the continued colonial character of the economic growth path within which we remained locked.

“This growth path… actively reproduces under-development.

“…policy development without mass mobilization and participation is bound to fail.

“The exact modalities of the SACP’s involvement within an ANC Alliance [election] campaign will… be a matter of intra-alliance discussion and agreement.

“The 12th Congress will consider, amongst other things, a range of proposals around the restructuring of the SACP, particularly to ensure that our elected structures are more firmly rooted in activity-based responsibilities, and also that our basic, branch-level structures are more compact and more rooted within localized communities.”

Needless to say, the document outrightly rejects any suggestion of “an SACP go-it-alone stance that simply plays into the hands of those who dream of break[ing] the alliance and marginalizing the SACP.”

The Communist University will convene on Wednesday, February 28 at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, 3rd Floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, to discuss the draft of the document discussed at the Augmented CC in November 2006 called “The South African Road to Socialism”. That document in its final form is set to be published in a new “African Communist”, soon. It may be that comrades will think it better to wait for the definitive version. In any case, the current CC statement will also be made available.

Nearly a year ago Judge Mohamed Jajbhay told the Johannesburg Metro Council that it must not throw people on to the streets. The Johannesburg Council took the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and the case was heard this week. The verdict is “reserved”, meaning that the SCA judges are thinking about it before giving their decision.

If the SCA reverses Jajbhay’s historic judgment, the Metro council will without doubt attempt an orgy of evictions in Johannesburg, and the evicted people will need organised support on a scale not yet seen.

But if the Jajbhay decision stands up as it should, then the Metro Council will just have to get down and do what it is supposed to do, and that is to accommodate the people who make their living in the Inner City, and stop trying to harass and hound them in the hope that they will disappear from the earth.

It seems that crooks have been helping themselves to peoples’ pension funds for years in this country. It also seems as if the law has as a rule taken a very long time to catch up with such crooks. Wiseman Khuzwayo, journalist and struggle veteran, writes up the low-down for the Business Report on a scandal involving at least two entities, Alexander Forbes and Lifecare (see the link below). It seems that the National Prosecutions Authority (NPA) is not keen to take this one on, and has had to be bolstered up by a “private prosecution” involving the Financial Services Board (FSB) and Business Against Crime, a business-oriented NGO (BONGO).

Comrade Wiseman does not quite make clear why the NPA is not stepping up to do its proper job by itself. A good guess would be that the NPA has blown its budget on its very expensive, failed, politically partisan pursuit of Jacob Zuma. This would also explain why we have not heard a peep out of the NPA yet in the matter of the 50,000 widows and orphans frauded of benefits paid for out of lonely mineworkers’ meagre wages, by J Arthur Brown, Danisa Baloyi and others in the “Fidentia” imbroglio.

Click on these links:

Yes to the sovereignty of the people, SACP post-CC Statement (1837 words)

Jajbay judgement appeal verdict soon, Russel Molefe, City Press (737 words)

FSB, BAC fund private prosecution, Wiseman Khuzwayo, B Report (863 words)