Year of the District

Induction, Part 10

Year of the District

We have not yet discovered a document dedicated to the “Year of the District”, but what we know is that it refers to the Districts of the South African Communist Party, and not to the Voting Districts.

According to the SACP Constitution, a District, consisting of not less than 10 branches, is formed by a Provincial Executive Committee, according to a policy framework drawn up by the Central Committee, after consultation with the PECs, to determine the boundaries of districts.

The SACP constitution was amended at the 13th National Congress, in July 2012, to allow for the formation by District Executive Committees of Sub-Districts consisting of not less than 500 members or 5 branches.

Below the Districts and the Sub-Districts (where these exist) are the Branches of the Party. The SACP Constitution says: “The basic structure of the SACP is the branch, to be formed at a residential area or workplace, and every member shall be obliged to belong to a branch.”

The attached document is the chapter on “Strengthening the Vanguard Party” from the “South African Road to Socialism” (SARS) document, passed at the same 13th SACP National Congress.

Among other things, the SARS document says: “All our branches must be based on voting districts” (page 124).

The attached document is extracted, without any editing of the text, from the full SARS document, which is downloadable from the SACP web site, or by clicking this link (744 KB PDF). The text does contain some obvious errors and incomplete sentences.

On page 124 and 125 of the SARS, a scheme of political schools is laid out. The Communist University has prepared material in a format that can be used in political schools of any practical size. These are half-day modules. They can be used for single half-day schools, or put together to create schools for up to a week or even more, if required. The number of half-day modules that are prepared at this point is ten. They can be downloaded by clicking here, and scrolling down to the bottom of the page (the half-day course links are numbered 51 to 60). Two more half-day schools are in preparation. One will be based on this Induction course; the other will be based on the Education course.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: SACP SARS Chapter 11, Strengthening the Vanguard Party.