National Planning Commission

Statement by President Jacob Zuma on the appointment of Commissioners to the National Planning Commission; Presidential Guesthouse, Pretoria

30 April 2010

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe

Minister Trevor Manuel,

Ladies and Gentlemen of the media,

Last year we announced that the new administration would do things differently and would work consistently to change the way government works, in order to improve service delivery.

A key aspect of this exercise was to introduce effective planning as well as monitoring and evaluation capacity in the Presidency, to guide these functions in government.

Today we are pleased to announce the names of the members of the National Planning Commission, who are tasked with producing a national development plan and development vision statement for the country.

The Commission, assisted by a full-time secretariat will develop well-researched, evidence-based proposals, cutting across the three spheres of government and across ministries and departments.

They will produce reports on a range of issues that impact on our long term development, such as water security, climate change, food security, energy security, infrastructure planning, human resource development, defence and security matters, the structure of the economy, spatial planning, demographic trends and so forth.

While each of these areas of work relate to an aspect of government¡¦s work, the Commission is asked to take an independent, cross-cutting, critical and long term view of these issues.

This exercise will enable us to make government¡¦s policies and plans are more coherent and focused on achieving the type of society that we all envisage.

The revised green paper on the National Planning Commission sets out the roles and responsibilities of this Commission.

Members of the commission represent various areas of expertise and reflect a diversity of experiences and perspectives.

The Commissioners are appointed in their personal capacities and do not represent any organisation or stakeholder.

MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION

Minister Trevor Manuel will chair the Commission and feed its work into Cabinet and government in general.

The Deputy Chairperson will be Cyril Ramaphosa.

The other members of the Commission are as follows:

- Bobby Godsell

- Elias Masilela

- Jerry Vilakazi

- Noluthando Gosa

- Jennifer Molwantwa

- Mike Muller

- Mariam Altman

- Chris Malikane

- Vivienne Taylor

- Marcus Balintulo

- Vuyokazi Mahlati

- Malekgapuru Makgoba

- Joel Netshitenzhe

- Anton Eberhard

- Bridgette Gasa

- Thandabantu Goba

- Phillip Harrison

- Ihron Rensburg

- Jerry Coovadia

- Karl von Holdt

- Mohammed Karaan

- Tasneem Essop

- Pascal Moloi

- Vincent Maphai

These individuals bring a broad range of expertise to the work of the Commission.

This includes expertise on finance, industry, telecommunications, biotechnology, water engineering, rural development, governance, energy, education, health, food security, and climate change, among others.

The work of the Commission will commence immediately.

The first meeting is tentatively scheduled for 10 and 11 May 2010 and will report on an ongoing basis to Cabinet.

We congratulate these men and women and wish them all the best in their work as they guide the country towards sustainable development and prosperity.

They are assured of our full support as government.

We urge all key sectors in the country to support their work as well as to ensure an improvement in the quality of life, especially of the poor and marginalised.

We also wish to thank those members of the public who made nominations and to those who volunteered their services to the country.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Our monitoring and evaluation function in the Presidency is also functional.

Central to this is the conclusion of performance agreements with Ministers.

The Deputy President and I spent yesterday meeting with Ministers individually to discuss and sign their performance agreements.

We will continue the exercise today until we conclude the process with all 34 Ministers.

The Ministers will cascade these agreements to their Deputies and Directors-General to ensure the entire government reads from one script with regards to what is expected during this term.

We are convinced that our vision of changing the way government works will truly yield results.

I thank you.

Organised as Working Women

Organised as Working Women

We have seen, by working through the readings of Kollontai, Lenin, the Comintern and the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW, or FSAW), that the class context, and also the South African liberation-movement context, makes the clear understanding of women’s mass organisation very critical. 

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 6 May (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: FEDSAW yields to ANCWL on NEC and membership, in 1955 

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To sum up: Women are not a separate class, which can be organised against men. Women are not exempt from class struggle, but are as divided by class as men are, and divided into the same classes as men are. Yet women, and working women in particular, do have a common basis for organisation as a distinct and self-conscious mass.

Reminder: Women’s Charter

CU, No Woman, No Revolution, Part 4

Reminder!

Women’s Charter

The Women’s Charter of 1954 (one year before the Freedom Charter) stands as a monument to South African women’s determination to organise independently as women, but this is an aspiration that has yet to be realised.

Women’s Charter

CU, No Woman, No Revolution, Part 4

Women’s Charter

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 29 April (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: 1954 Women's Charter

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On 17 April 1954, fourteen months before the Freedom Charter was adopted in Kliptown on 16 June 1955, the Federation of South African Women adopted the Women’s Charter (linked below).

The 3CCI gets it wrong

CU, No Woman, No Revolution, Part 3

3CCI gets it wrong

The Third Congress of the Communist International (3CCI), 22 June to 12 July 1921, seems to have had a peculiar flavour to it, if the documents on women from that congress (linked below) are anything to go by.

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 22 April (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: Comintern on Women.

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Whereas the 2CCI of the previous year had shown its awareness of the necessity of democratisation, so as to create a collective “Subject of History” out of the unorganised masses, in 1921 the situation was practically the reverse, at least as far as the women were concerned.

“The III Congress of the Communist International is firmly opposed to any kind of separate women’s associations in the Parties and trade unions, or special women’s organisations.”

Communist University

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 9, No. 7, 21 April 2010

Red Alert

Strengthening the ideological capacity of the working class: An urgent political task

           

Blade Nzimande, General Secretary

"Capitalist influence must be rooted out in the fields of ideology and culture, and a new type of intellectual must be trained, devoted to the welfare of the people and to socialism - The Road to South African Freedom

The intensity of the class struggle both inside our movement and in broader South African society requires that the working class takes bold and decisive actions to take ideological work and the battle of ideas to higher levels, now and going into the future. The battle of ideas is a battle we dare not lose, as this is critical in driving a radical national democratic revolution as our direct route to socialism. This task must be carried out and work intensified both inside and outside the organized formations of the working class.

Print on Demand and “Just World Books”

Print on Demand and “Just World Books”

An innovation in publishing

The Communist University has been using a “print on demand” for several months now, by arrangement with the Jetline Print on Demand company. Jetline has uploaded a large number of Communist University “short texts”, and made them available via their outlets and hence to study groups all over South Africa. To find out more about this very economical CU service, click here (see top of right-hand panel).

“Just World Books”

  

Now, an e-friend of the CU, Helena Cobban of Washington, DC, USA, who is the proprietor of the longstanding Middle-East-oriented blog “Just World News” (JWN), has taken the Print On Demand publishing concept to another level.

Comintern to Women of the World

 

Comintern to Women of the World

The Third Congress of the Communist International (3CCI) took place from 22 June to 12 July 1921 (see the great Communist International archive on MIA).

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 22 April (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: Comintern on Women.

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The main part of the linked document is “Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women: Theses”. It begins by recalling that the two previous CCIs (in 1919 and 1920), as well as two International Conferences of Communist Women, had all deliberated on women, and states that “it is in the interests of the working class that women are drawn into the organised ranks of the proletariat as it fights for Communism.”

Let’s talk about these things…

Let’s talk about these things…

‘No Woman, No Revolution’

Sibusiso Mchunu, Off the Cuff, 15 April 2010

The JHB Communist University has just finished its first series on Basic Communism as the introductory to our University study. In the Communist University we use short text (for each week) and we have been meeting without fail since the University opened on the 20, 2010 January.

Socialism impossible without the women - Lenin

Socialism impossible without the women

If we do not draw women into public activity, into the militia, into political life; if we do not tear women away from the deadening atmosphere of household and kitchen; then it is impossible to secure real freedom, it is impossible even to build democracy, let alone socialism.

Lenin, Third Letter from Afar, Zurich, March 1917

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 15 April (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: Lenin on Women.

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The above quote from Lenin [pictured, speaking in the open air in the revolutionary year of 1917] expresses as clearly as can be the full meaning of our series title: “No Woman, No Revolution”.

Time for rural people to experience change: Gugile Nkwinti

 ANC Today, 9 April 2010

Progress Report | By Gugile Nkwinti

It is the time for rural people to experience the desired change that we have all talked about

The resolution of the 52nd National Conference of the ANC (December 2007) on agrarian change, land reform and rural development, confirmed the ANC's acute awareness and sensitivity to the centrality of land (the land question) as a fundamental element in the resolution of the race, gender and class contradictions in South Africa.

National sovereignty is defined in terms of land. That is why, even without it being enshrined in the country's supreme law, the constitution, land is a national asset. That is where the debate about agrarian change, land reform and rural development should, appropriately, begin. Without this fundamental assumption, talk of land reform and food security is superfluous!

We must, and shall, fundamentally review the current land tenure system during this Medium Term Strategic Framework period. This we shall do through rigorous engagement with all South Africans, so that we should emerge with a tenure system which will satisfy the aspirations of all South Africans, irrespective of race, gender and class.

Pitfalls of national and class struggle

Chris Hani Memorial Lecture delivered by Buti Manamela, National Secretary of the YCLSA, at J Dumane Hall, Vosloorus, 9 April 2010

Chris Hani Memorial Lecture

“The pitfalls of national and class struggle: what role for the youth”

The Struggle Continues

One of the most heroic, brilliant and consistent leader and revolutionary of the ANC, SACP, the working class and the poor - Martin Thembisile “Chris” Hani was assassinated 17 years ago on the 10th of April. The assassins, Waluz Jaluz and Clive Derby Lewis, where later apprehended through information received from a white woman, a neighbour of the Hani family, and confessed their political motives.

Women: Revolutionaries

Women: Revolutionaries

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We meet in the UJ Doornfontein Library. The next session will be as follows: 

• Date: 8 April (Thursday)
• Time: 17h00 sharp to 18h30 sharp
• Venue: The Library, University of Johannesburg, 37 Nind Street, Doornfontein, Johannesburg (former Technikon Witwatersrand). Cars enter from the slip road to the left of the bridge on Siemert Road.
• Topic: The Social Basis of the Woman Question.

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International Woman’s Day was proposed 100 years ago by Alexandra Kollontai’s contemporary and comrade, Clara Zetkin [pictured above], at the Second International Women's Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1910.

Diamonds and Gold

Diamonds and Gold

South Africa’s most conspicuous commodities are sold into markets that are rigged. What the exact net effect is upon the South African economy of this market-manipulation is, is hard to find out. But it seems worthwhile to seize a couple of new opportunities to record some evidence and reflect upon the question. These opportunities have been created by the published writings of interested parties, internationally available on the Internet, some of which are linked below.

Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti

Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti

Emily J. Kirk and John M. Kirk, Counterpunch, 1 April 2010

Media coverage of Cuban medical cooperation following the disastrous recent earthquake in Haiti was sparse indeed.  International news reports usually described the Dominican Republic as being the first to provide assistance, while Fox News sang the praises of U.S. relief efforts in a report entitled "U.S. Spearheads Global Response to Haiti Earthquake", a common theme of its extensive coverage.  CNN also broadcast hundreds of reports, and in fact one focused on a Cuban doctor wearing a T-shirt with a large image of Che Guevara, and yet described him as a "Spanish doctor".