Fundraising

Induction, Part 6a

Fundraising

The function of the Treasurer is crucial to fundraising, but it is not fundraising.

The Treasurer provides a safe place to conserve the funds that have been raised. This is a pre-requisite for successful fundraising. Without it, the funds will disappear.

Therefore it becomes a rule that all funds raised are passed to the Treasurer, and it is the duty of all concerned to be sure that a record has been created, in the form of a Voucher.

Expenditure of the funds raised must take place by decision of the collective, and must be recorded properly as such, and in all detail.

The Levy

The Party requires all its members to pay a levy, in an amount calculated in relation to the member’s income. It is what is otherwise called, in religious organisations, a tithe.

What happens to the levy money?

The levy money goes to the centre, and is spent by the centre. Some of the money is used to pay the salaries of full-time Party workers at the Provincial level, at the discretion of the Party centre.

No part of the levy money is likely to return to the levels below Province (District, Sub-District, Branch and Unit).

This goes to reinforce the necessity of fundraising as part of any function or activity. One good example is literature. Literature for the Party has a political meaning, first. But, literature should not be an expense for the branch. It should generate a surplus.

Literature

The circulation of literature is a revolutionary priority, one that Lenin in particular wrote about.

In some other communist parties, a position of Literature Secretary is maintained as a branch office-bearer ranking with the Chairperson, Secretary, and Treasurer.

In modern circumstances, where media of communications are changing, this function needs constant thought and re-thinking.

Literature – text – has to be sourced and/or written, and transmitted, and this movement of text needs to be reciprocated by a movement of resources in the opposite direction, so as to cover costs.

The Internet, with practically zero marginal cost of use (meaning the next use costs next to nothing), gives the impression of being altogether cost-free. But in fact, content production is fully labour-intensive. It increases only in proportion to the direct input of human labour.

The tools of the trade are not cost-free, and they have to be replaced on a 3-year cycle.

At the same time, this production can be quite localised, as well as being part of absolutely global networking.

The prizes go to those who can aggregate inputting capacity, which is labour-intensive. Co-operation is the key, and money collection is crucial to the cohesion of any collaboration of this kind.

Lenin on organisation of the Party

Lenin faced similar concerns to those that we are faced with today in South Africa in 2013. Of course, there was no Internet. But there was a strongly-expressed relation between the local and the national, and Lenin asked, during the controversies that followed the Second Congress off the RSDLP that has split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, but which resulted in the loss to Lenin of his magazine Iskra.

In the attached document, (Part B from Chapter 5 of Lenin’s 1902 work, “What Is To Be Done?” Lenin puts the matter like this:

“Unless we train strong political organisations in the localities, even an excellently organised all-Russia newspaper will be of no avail. This is incontrovertible. But the whole point is that there is no other way of training strong political organisations except through the medium of an all-Russia newspaper.”

This course is intended as an Induction into the world of the SACP. In this world, there are two poles, the local and the national. In between, there are Districts and Provinces but the crucial parts are the Branches, and the National centre. This much is as it was in Lenin’s days.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Can A Newspaper Be A Collective Organiser?, Lenin, 1902.

The Party is not an NGO

Induction, Part 6

The Party is not an NGO

The Party’s Production

What the Party produces is communication.

The Party researches, discusses and prepares, formats, lays out, prints, and distributes words, pictures and “text” of all kinds. All of its processes go one way – towards communication.

Communication has costs. Communication costs are our main costs. And communication is labour-intensive.

This is the background to this part of our Induction course, which covers Fundraising and Events.

No Funders, No Donors, and No Sponsors

The Communist Party is not an NGO, and so there are, as a rule, no funders for the Communist Party of the kind that fund the usual NGOs. Such funders give for their own reasons, and to pursue their own agenda, which generally is not our agenda.

The working class must pay for its politics, and the closer the working class comes to its revolutionary objectives, the more this will be true; so we must get used to it.

Therefore we begin with the presumption that there is no ready-made source of disinterested or charitable funding. We have to get used to managing without such imaginary sources. We have to look for sources of funding who are interested.

These may be our own members, and individuals who are, as the saying goes, “close to the Party”. They may include Trade Union structures at various levels. Or, they may include class forces that are not working-class, but who see their interests coinciding with those of the Party.

Managing without, and living off the land

The Party must manage without funds coming from above it. There is no “Manna from Heaven” for the Party.

The Party must to a large extent “live off the land”, and pay as it goes. At local level especially, it cannot spend money without raising money.

Party members meet with each other, and they meet with other structures. While doing so they pay their own way, treating party business as part of their lives. This is one part of “living off the land”.

To the extent that the Party needs to go further than this basic level of activity, of individual party members communicating using their own resources, then it must gather the means close at hand.

This means that the Party is, and must be, supported by the close community where it exists.

Close in time

The local Party will not usually be able to hold substantial funds over time. The idea of raising funds separately in time from the expenditure that the funds are raised for, is not the best model upon which which fundraising should conceived.

Rather, the fundraising effort and the activity upon which funds are going to be spent, should as far as possible be one and the same thing.

This principle can be taken one step further and made routine. We can then make it a rule that all activities of the Party should be fund-raising activities.

Accounting should be central, and it should be normal that there will be a surplus on all activities undertaken, which will be conserved by the Treasurer. In this way, the Treasurer’s function becomes crucial to the fund-raising effort. But the Treasurer is not a fundraiser.

Actually, the Treasurer should be the last person to be involved in fundraising, as such. The Treasurer is the keeper, and not the raiser of funds.

Let us look at this in practice, remembering that we have already said, above, that what the Party produces is communication. Let us look at some different kinds of communication.

Branch

At all Branch and Committee meetings (BGM, BEC and Sub-Committee Meetings), money should be collected and passed to the Treasurer of the Branch, without exception. It should be normal that these collections generate a surplus over expenses. Vouchers should be generated, records kept and reports made, in the manner indicated elsewhere in this part.

Literature and Merchandise

World-wide, the Communist Parties have a tradition of being book-sellers and hard-copy news-and-opinion outlets, for its own members and for its community. The SACP needs to reverse the priority from money-making to propaganda; but having done so, then to make more money than before from these activities.

The same applies to merchandise. The Party should not try to sell general clothing, but should sell for the occasion. The occasion should drive the sales. Sell for wearing on the day, and not for taking home.

Solidarity speech

You are invited to attend a meeting, and make an input. You ask for a contribution to the Party. Why not? The Party can only exist if it is supported by the working class. We do not have to apologise for that fact. Asking for funds for the party should be normal.

Local Public Meeting

Likewise, if the party holds a Public Meeting, it should call for contributions, at the door, by collection in the crowd with buckets, and by direct request from the platform.

How to do a collection

One way to do a collection from the platform of a meeting or a rally is to use good-humoured and popular person, and have that person call for large notes. “Who is going to give R200? Come on all you government officials. Come on all you senior managers” And so forth. Even if you only get one public sight of a R200 note, it sets the example for the next round, which is the call for R100 notes. Then the shouter gets so many of those, and waves them around. There can be jokes. There could be a song. Then the next round calls for R50s. Time is taken. A good atmosphere4 is cultivated. Then the R20s. Then the R10s. People can give twice. There is no rule that says because you gave R100, you cannot give R20. And so it goes until the fundraiser asks for all the metal cash money in the house.

The fundraiser needs helpers with buckets.

This method of fund-raising from an audience works well and it makes people feel good.

The money must go straight to the Treasurer, and here can also be seen, again, the reason why the Treasurer is not a fundraiser.

• A suitable reading-text text has not yet been found.

Spreadsheets

Induction, Part 5c

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are the same as “tables”, “tabulations” and “schedules”. They are arrangements in rows and columns. This way of arranging data (on paper) has been used for hundreds of years.

Such tables are everywhere around us. Common examples are calendars and year-planners; bus and train timetables; team lists; television schedules; collection sheets; wage slips; price lists; restaurant menus; parts lists, cutting lists and bills of quantities.

Understanding of spreadsheets is for practical purposes “intuitive”. These arrangements are so familiar as to appear “natural” and “obvious”, and this is part of their intention.

Spreadsheets can concentrate a lot of data on a single page. They can be used to sort (i.e. “analyse”) data and to summarise it down to totals and a single grand total.

This item is intended to introduce and to objectify the broad idea of spreadsheets. The next stage will be for more comrades to begin to use this form of working.

Some simple rules will make your spreadsheets better. Try to keep them on a page, both horizontally and vertically. Use as few columns as possible. Use the biggest font possible. If you use colours, use very pale ones.

This item completes our fifth part on office processes. There could be much more to say about these and other ones, including more about computer software. But the main point here is that numbers of us, if not all of us, must learn, and must continue to learn how to do such basic operations. Classes can and should be occasions where knowledge is shared. The common aim should be to build up and internal collective bank of expertise, so that when required, action proceeds efficiently and smoothly.

Office processes have been perfected under the bourgeois dictatorship, mainly as instruments of power over the working class and other classes. To overthrow the bourgeois ruling class will require that the proletariat masters, and exceeds in mastery these common processes.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Spreadsheets, Tweedie, 2013.

  

Report-writing, Correspondence and Filing

Induction, Part 5b

Report-writing, Correspondence and Filing

This item is here by request. People wanted an item on report-writing.

As we have pointed out in the previous item, preparation is the key to the composition of any text. The difficulty of writing arises from lack of preparation. Somebody who is well-prepared and who has researched and organised material will find it hard not to write.

Please therefore read the text together with the previous one.

“Report-writing” leads naturally into the matters of correspondence in general and of filing, so the text touches on those.

Then, this item is used to mention several more “necessary capacities” and open them for discussion. These are Computers; Layout; Venue; and Timetable.

All these items are related in the sense that they are matters of conscious design. Comrades need to be conscious of them, and be able to discuss them and make decisions about them, and not just take them for granted or regard them as difficult or impossible to improve or change.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Report Writing, Correspondence, Filing and other skills, Tweedie, 2013.

Note-taking

Induction, Part 5a

Note-taking

The above illustration is of a “Mind Map” made by Tony Buzan.

Buzan makes his living out of spreading study techniques, and we recommend them. Another of his techniques is “The Buzan Organic Study Method”.

Buzan’s web site is at: http://www.tonybuzan.com/

The attached document is a review of Buzan’s 1974 book, “Use Your Head”.

Note-taking

The argument for note-taking is that comrades who are required to write, or to prepare any kind of material, need to be able to order their thoughts. Implied in this is the idea of research. Comrades must be able to find out what they need to know for any particular project, and hold that knowledge in a form such that when they need to use it, they can readily find it again.

We will return to the matter of report-writing in the next item of this part. For this part, let us try to take up in a concrete way, Tony Buzan’s conception of the whole complex of learning, fast reading, remembering, and noting, and by implication what follows, which is composing and writing.

The problems of writing are best solved before the writing is done. The ordering of the material in a rational, organic way, prior to writing, leaves the writer with relatively little to do other than to mechanically put the marks on the paper.

Please read the attached. It will help you.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Tony Buzan, Use Your Head, 1974 (Conspectus by D Tweedie).

Double Entry Book-keeping

Induction, Part 5

Double Entry Book-keeping

In the introduction to this course we noted that:

“Double-entry book-keeping was developed during the Italian Renaissance, in Florence and in Genoa, and was for the first time described as a system by Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan Friar and friend of Leonardo da Vinci’s, in Milan.”

Historically, double-entry book-keeping coincided with the rise of the bourgeois class over the last 500 years. It is one of the better products of bourgeois development.

Double-entry book-keeping enables individuals and corporations to maintain a constant, detailed record of all their claims and obligations, the consequences of all of the transactions that they perform.

The beneficial owner of any business possesses the assets, minus the liabilities. Taking the owner into account, all of the balances on the books, positive and negative, should cancel out.

Put in another way, if all the “debits” are added up, they should total the same as all of the “credits”. The “mobile sculpture” in the image above illustrates this idea quite well.

Cash Book

Small businesses, and entities such as political parties and their branches, do not usually maintain a full “ledger” of accounts all the time, but they record their transactions in a “Cash Book”.

A Cash Book is the minimum form of continuous record that can be sufficient to reconstruct a full record or “ledger”, expressed as a Balance Sheet and an Income and Expenditure (or Profit and Loss) Account.

A Cash Book can be summarised as a Receipts and Payments Account, for reporting purposes.

Branches, as well as all higher structures of the SACP, ANC and trade unions, must be able to account for funds given to them, kept by them, and used by them.

At the very least, each structure must keep a Cash Book.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Keeping a Cash Book and other accounts, Tweedie, 2004.

Entrepreneurship, Trading, Markup and Cash Flow

Induction, Part 4b

Entrepreneurship, Trading, Markup and Cash Flow

In the Umsebenzi Online of 30 June 2010, the SACP General Secretary, Dr Blade Nzimande, wrote that we must “Fight Tenderpreneurs to defend entrepreneurship!!”

The GS wrote: “Entrepreneurs, found in co-operatives, small and medium sized businesses, are all those who genuinely and honestly go about doing business, including tendering for government work.”

The attached short article by Professor Michael Morris, published in 1996 in the Business Day, describes entrepreneurship and also debunks a number of misconceptions about it.

Morris wrote, among other things, that: “The entrepreneurial individual recognises a trend, a possibility, an unmet demand. He or she comes up with a concept for capitalising on the trend or demand and does so while the window of opportunity is open.”

Morris also says: “Entrepreneurial individuals are opportunity-driven, not resource-driven.”

Business is driven by the customer. It is not true, as Jean-Baptiste Say used to believe, that supply creates its own demand. The entrepreneur’s job is to identify demand, where demand means people wanting goods or services, who are ready and willing to pay for them promptly, and at a price that will ensure a profit to the entrepreneur.

Trading

Co-ops in South Africa tend to be set up with the expectation of producing first to sell later. Whereas being an entrepreneur means securing the demand before making (or buying) the supply. The entrepreneur is a trader. As Dr Blade pointed out, co-ops, too, have to be entrepreneurial.

The market is crucial, but contrary to what the bourgeois ideologues keep on saying, the market is not free, or open. It is we, the opponents of monopoly capitalism, who are the true “free-marketeers”. Small businesses, including co-ops, to survive, must have access to markets that are not dominated by predatory monopolistic market manipulators. And if they are selling to the state, they must be paid on time and in full. These conditions barely exist in South Africa, which has historically been monopolistic in the extreme, and whose government is a notoriously slow payer.

Markup

When a producer of goods or services goes out to sell, the price asked is determined in normal circumstances by calculating the cost of the product, and then adding a “markup” that is a percentage of the cost. In most businesses, markup is typically around fifty per cent of cost, but it could as well be 100%, or 25%. Only in very high-volume trading, such as in some lines, in some supermarkets, will markup be significantly lower than 25%.

The concept of markup is not the same as the concept of profit. In the first place, markup is calculated as a percentage of cost, whereas profit is calculated as a percentage of price. So the raw, or “gross profit” equivalent of a 50% markup is 33%, for example.

But “gross profit” is also not actual profit. The real profit of a business will be calculated after the trading is finished, and it will be less by, among other things, the cost of any goods that cannot be sold for lack of demand, or for any other reason.

Cash Flow

What is most important to the survival of a business is “cash flow”. So long as cash is coming in, a business can keep going, but when the cash stops coming in, it must collapse, very quickly. In this sense, a business can do without profit. It can make losses for an indefinite amount of time, until the day when there is no more cash.

Conversely, a business can collapse even if it is profitable, if there is no cash to keep it going. This can happen if payment is delayed, for example. To avoid such a thing happening, businesses have to look ahead and plan, using a “Cash Flow Forecast”. What is called in popular terms a “business plan” is actually a cash-flow forecast.

Banks and other lenders are hardly concerned about whether a borrower will make profits, or not, but they do want to know if principal can be paid back, with interest. They want to see how the cash will flow. They want to be sure that on the due date, the business will have money to pay. This is what they look for in a business plan (Cash Flow Forecast).

Illustration: “Entrepreneur” means one who “holds together”, as the ring in the picture holds together the chains. Most especially the business entrepreneur holds together demand and supply.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Dismissing myths of entrepreneurship, Morris, 1996.

The Law of Contract

Induction, Part 4a

“Leviathan”, vision of The State, Thomas Hobbes 1651

The Law of Contract

Property, the State, the suppression of women, and the Law of Contract come into being at the same moment in any given society, though these developments happened earlier in some societies than in others.

The above illustration is a detail from the Frontispiece (made by Abraham Bosse) of the Englishman Thomas Hobbes’ book “Leviathan”, published in Paris, France, in 1651, the year before Jan van Riebeeck came to the Cape.

The image is a representation of The State, and Hobbes’ book describes The State in this composite form for the first time in the book. This State is the combination of all and the guarantor of all.

Among other things, this State enforces Contracts, and through the enforcement of Contracts, it guarantees the rights of the holders of property.

When people negotiate a contract (i.e. when an offer is followed by an acceptance), the contract is enforceable by the State through the law courts. A contract freely entered into by two individuals is therefore enforceable by the State.

Please see the attached document for more on Contracts, and for an explanation of the variation of practice of Contract Law that provides for Tenders.

Juristic Persons

Contract law was developed to deal with the trading relations and the property of individual human beings.

The term “Juristic Person” refers to an entity, or institution, that is treated under the law as if it was a single human being. These are also referred to as “corporations” (from the Latin “corpus”, meaning “body”). Their existence is defined by various laws governing the creation of companies, co-operatives, trade unions, municipalities, NGOs and other kinds of corporate associations.

Juristic Persons can be parties to contracts. They can sue and be sued in the courts of law. They can be fined and punished in other ways (but not imprisoned). They do not die like biological human beings do, but they can be “wound up” so that they no longer exist.

Political parties can be Juristic Persons, if they choose to be. The SACP is one.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Contracts and Tenders Explained, Hypercube, 2004.

Negotiation

Induction, Part 4

Negotiation

The procedure of the Communist University in its previous courses has worked well, but is not so easy to follow consistently in this fourteenth course.

We have nearly always been able to present up to four alternative texts in any week, using one of them as the default leading text. The introductions (openings to discussion) have been written like short book reviews of the original material that is given in the form of files.

We have continued to do this in the first three parts of this “Induction” course, but as we come to the fourth part, it becomes less convenient.

This part is broadly concerned with Corporations, including both co-operatives and companies. The next three parts will deal with Office Processes, Fundraising and Events, and Mass Organisations. We do not have the same kind of stock of original texts for these topics as we do for political ones. This being the case, the order is somewhat reversed. In the four items making up a weekly part, we may be obliged to start with more preliminary matters, and work up to a conclusion, instead of taking the main item first.

In live discussion, we will have to try to take all these four items into account.

In the case of Negotiation, we are taking it this time as a pre-requisite for understanding business. It will be followed in this part by Contract and Company Law plus Juristic Persons; Entrepreneurship, Trading, and Markup; and Co-operatives and Joint-Stock Companies. The four items will be constructed as a series with the intention of creating an outline of corporate entities, including but not limited to trading entities. Political parties, trade unions and similar entities also have some of the attributes of corporations formed under the law, as do NGOs.

We are still using the MIA document on Negotiation (attached and downloadable via link below) that we have used in other courses. It describes negotiation in terms of trade union practice. But negotiation happens in all kinds of different situations. Negotiation precedes contract.

The document described many of the practical realities that can take place during the approach to a “deal”. The deal itself will be a contract. We will look at formal contract law in the next item.

Negotiation is a universal skill used in any kind of business. What may be learned for the purposes of trade union business, will be applicable in many other circumstances, including circumstances of private individuals.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Marxists Internet Archive, Negotiation.

Sub-Committees and Task Teams

Induction, Part 3c

Sub-Committees and Task Teams

So far, for the purposes of this first iteration of our course, we have not yet found a good document discussing sub-committees and task teams. We await the discovery of a suitable discussion text. Please assist if you can.

Sub-committees are an integral part of the overall structural system that is used by political parties, parliaments and councils, businesses and co-operatives. Sub-committees are normal.

In the South African Communist Party, the Central Committee is a sub-committee of the National Congress, and the Political Bureau is a sub-committee of the Central Committee.

“Working Committees” such as the National Working Committee of the ANC, are sub-committees, and in that specific case, a sub-committee of the National Executive Committee. Similarly, a Provincial Working Committee in the SACP is a of the corresponding Provincial Executive Committee.

In a Branch of the SACP or the ANC, the Branch Executive Committee (BEC) is a sub-committee of the Branch, and is therefore subordinate to the Branch General Meeting (BGM).

In the SACP, the Provincial Working Committee reports to the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC), and the PEC reports to the Provincial Council or to the Provincial Congress.

In practice such sub-committees have a lot of freedom, but the above is the constitutional position and it becomes the practical position if and when there are disagreements between main committees and their subordinate structures. In the case of such disagreements, higher structures rule, and lower ones submit.

Task teams, or ad hoc committees, may be set up to perform tasks of limited duration.

Specialised sub-committees may be formed for the delegation of particular, but on-going, responsibilities. Such could be a Political Education Sub-Committee, or a Fundraising Sub-Committee, for example.

In sub-committees, all the functions of any structure are reproduced, but because sub-committees are usually smaller in numbers, it may happen that functions have to be combined in the same individual. A “Convenor”, for example, might have to combine the functions of Chairperson and Secretary.

• To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.

Minute-taking

Induction, Part 3b

Minute-taking

It is part of a Secretary’s responsibility to make sure that records of meetings are kept. Such records are called “minutes”.

The Secretary of an organisation or structure within an organisation will very often be the one to take minutes, but sometimes another person could do it, under the instruction of the Secretary. In some organisations, there may be an official called a “Minute Secretary”, whose job it is to keep the minutes, thus setting the Secretary free to take a more active part in the meetings.

On other occasions, an ad hoc “scribe” might be appointed to minute a gathering.

It is therefore a normal part of what a cadre might be asked to perform. So it is advisable to consider what might be involved, so that one can do this thing, if and when called upon.

The attached document has been compiled as a general and common manual on minute-taking. It is printable as an 8-page booklet.

In any particular case, in whatever organisation one might be working, it would be as well to look at how the minutes of that organisation have previously been done. This is so as to know what they are used to, but not to make one shy about improving practice in that organisation, if such improvement is necessary.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Minute-taking.

Secretary, Chairperson and Treasurer

Induction, Part 3a

Secretary, Chairperson and Treasurer

In the SACP Constitution, the duties of the General Secretary, National Chairperson and National Treasurer are spelled out in detail (see the extract reproduced below). But for Provincial, District and Branch Office Bearers in the SACP, although the three positions are all mentioned, the detail is not given.

For a general discussion of what these elected officers are supposed to do, in the SACP, one must draw from the national level and treat it as the model for the lower levels of structure.

Party members are also involved in the ANC, the trade unions, other mass organisations and many other structures. There is some variation, but in general the functions of the three principal officers are similar in all organisations.

The attached document is adapted from a page on the Internet, chosen from among many similar ones on the topic. It can serve to represent the standard thinking on the roles of the three main officer positions, even in quite different types of organisation, and in different countries.

President is another name for Chairperson. Secretary-General and General Secretary are both in fact Secretaries. Treasurer-General means Treasurer. In this item we are not discussing nomenclature, but only function.

Leading Role of the Secretary

In the SACP, as in most Communist Parties, the Secretary is the leading office bearer, and therefore is the political leader at any level. The Secretary is continuously involved with nearly everything that happens, both at meetings, and in between meetings.

Chairperson

The previous item has dealt with the Chairperson’s function in detail. Here, we can note that in the ANC, the Chairperson is always the senior office-bearer, and so in the ANC the Chairperson has more scope to impose upon the meeting.

In COSATU Unions and in COSATU itself, the President is in theory the senior position, and the President (Chairperson) is a “worker leader” who is not employed by the union, and who does not draw a salary from the union. Mostly these workers retain their former jobs.

But in the COSATU form of organisation, the Secretary (General Secretary) is the head of the full-time employed establishment of the organisation, and is therefore the employer (hiring and firing) of the staff and the person to whom the staff report.

The COSATU form of organisation has proved to be vulnerable to conflict between President and General Secretary.

In general, the duties of the Chairperson are lighter than those of the Secretary or Treasurer, being in the essential task confined to presiding at meetings. It is also easier for somebody to deputise for the Chairperson than for the other tasks. But it is a very important function, nevertheless.

Treasurer

The treasurer should make sure that the assets of the structure are kept securely. These include not only cash but also non-cash assets such as a banner, for a typical branch-level example. The treasurer must be able to produce an account of the assets, usually in the form of a Receipts and Payments account for the year and Balance Sheet as at the year’s end, at least.

The treasurer need not personally be the book-keeper and should never be the fund-raiser. Fund-raising is a task that falls upon the organisation as a whole.

Convenors, Co-ordinators, and Organisers

These titles can be useful where there is a clear sub-division of responsibility within a structure, but they can also be a sign of weak organisation. This is particularly the case when they are used as substitutes for Chairperson or Secretary. There can really be no substitute for those offices.

Convenor is a useful designation for the leader of a small task team. Organiser is a good term for someone whose responsibility is to recruit and expand the organisation.

“Co-ordinator” is not a word that fits well in any structure. It is best not used, ever. The problem with such words is that they do not assist to define the organic and necessary functions, but on the contrary, are intended to blur the distinction between functions. As such they are anti-organisation and for that reason should be avoided.

From the SACP Constitution:

11. Duties of the General Secretary

The General Secretary shall be the leading National Office Bearer of the SACP according to conditions determined by the CC. The General Secretary shall be an ex officio member of all party structures and shall:

11.1 Keep (or cause to be kept) the minutes of all CC and PB meetings and such other books, records and archives as may be required.

11.2 Attend to the correspondence of the CC and PB.

11.3 Maintain regular personal and written contact with all the provinces and keep the membership informed of the work of the CC and PB.

11.4 Ensure that members of the CC are kept informed of the work of the PB in between meetings of the CC.

11.5 Draw up (or cause to be drawn up) all reports and documents as may be decided upon by the CC or PB.

11.6 The Deputy General Secretaries shall, as directed by the CC, taking into account their respective portfolios, deputise for the General Secretary in respect of all the functions set out above.

12. Duties of the National Chairperson

The National Chairperson shall rank after the General Secretary as a national office bearer of the SACP and shall be an ex officio member of all party structures. The National Chairperson shall:

12.1 Preside at all meetings of the CC and PB in conformity with the constitution and other rules and procedures adopted by these bodies.

12.2 Have a deliberative vote only.

12.3 The Deputy National Chairperson shall, as directed by the CC, deputise for the National Chairperson in respect of all the functions set out above.

13. Duties of the National Treasurer

The National Treasurer shall:

13.1 Under the direction of the CC and PB take all necessary measures to ensure that the SACP is provided with sufficient means to carry out its political and organisational tasks.

13.2 Dispose of such funds as the CC authorised by general or specific mandate.

13.3 Be responsible for the safe-keeping and administration of all property and monies of the SACP.

13.4 Keep such books and accounts as will clearly record and reflect the financial position of the SACP and submit statements of income and expenditure to the CC and PB at intervals to be determined by the CC and PB.

13.5 Under the direction of the CC present audited financial statements and written financial reports to the Congress.

13.6 Be the convenor of a Finance Committee appointed by the CC.

• The above is to introduce an original reading-text: Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurer, SCVO, 2010.