YCLSA GAUTENG PRESS STATEMENT SEPTEMBER 09, 2013 YCLSA GAUTENG PEC STATEMENT The Young Communist League of South Africa [uFasimba] in Gauteng convened in the 12th Plenary Session of its 3rd Provincial Committee yesterday, Sunday 8 September. The meeting took place just a day after an ordinary Plenary Session of the Standing Political Commission of our National Committee and a successful Provincial Council of our mother-body the South African Communist Party (SACP). The Provincial Committee deliberated on a wide range of issues affecting young people in the province as well as developments in our broad movement as led by the African National Congress (ANC). SACP Provincial Council The Provincial Committee endorsed the perspectives developed by the Provincial Council. The YCLSA will always play an activist role to ensure that the principles, programme and constitution of the SACP are upheld and vigorously taken forward as the clearest ever political guidance in the national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism. The Provincial Committee discussed the continued isolation by some in and outside our broad movement against SACP General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande. It is our correct analysis that the General Secretary is attacked for correctly articulating and elaborating SACP perspectives and policies endorsed by the rank-and-file and the collective leadership of the Party through its regular constitutional meetings, leading bodies and structures. The Provincial Committee resolved that these attacks must be confronted for what they are, an attack against the SACP as one whole and its entire membership. The Provincial Committee reaffirmed an ever correct standing YCLSA resolution to defend the leadership as both a simultaneous step and an inseparable part of the programme to defend our Party. In particular the Provincial Committee has noted that most attacks that are destined to the whole of our alliance as the ultimate target often start with attacks against the SACP. It is in this context that there are increasing attacks against the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) as well. The Provincial Committee therefore called on the alliance to close ranks and leave no quarter to all offensives directed at our movement. In particular tendencies that definitely have the effect of polarising our alliance formations and the simplistic element of scapegoating on complex structural problems must not be allowed to prevail over the unity of the alliance and its individual components as well as a revolutionary resolution of the structural problems experienced either by the alliance or any of its individual components. The Provincial Committee reaffirmed the strategic correctness of the alliance as the most suited form of organisation to the history, challenges and opportunities faced by the South African society. It is, in our view, only our alliance that is the most capable of leading the South African society to eliminate the legacies of colonialism and apartheid and lead our national democratic revolution towards its logical completion, complete political liberation and socio-economic emancipation. Elitist groupings In its Strategy and Tactics adopted in 1969 the ANC correctly declares that its programme of national liberation “must not be confused with chauvinism or narrow nationalism... with the classical drive by an elitist group among the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so that they can replace the oppressor in the exploitation of the mass”. As the YCLSA we are concerned of the rise of elitist groupings in our movement within the province. These groupings are characterised by fierce fights to achieve and maintain control over leadership positions which are used as a platform to drive a private capitalist accumulation agenda based on tenders and deployments. This involves among others erecting vast networks of patronage and the financialisation of democratic processes to benefit loyalist conformists who return the favour by serving as factional election machinery. In the process some opportunism has emerged in certain quarters of some of our working class organisations within the province by a few in the top echelons to line up for prospective patronage from elitist groupings. Among others this tendency involves but is not limited to the opportunist elements stifling the duties and responsibilities of leadership positions in a disparate attempt to appease elitist groupings. As the YCLSA we are calling on the workers and the poor to ensure that they take and exercise full control of their organisations. This must help our entire movement as led by the ANC to prevent the province from slide into the dictatorship of elitist groupings disguised as democracy for our movement and the province. As the YCLSA we believe that the ANC in alliance with the SACP and Cosatu remains a strategic force of the left to combat elitist groupings as it declared in 1969. The ANC has never deviated from this fundamental strategic agenda. In our view, individuals who serve themselves and accumulate millions on top of millions in rand value terms from access to positions in the movement and deployment in the state as well as from corrupt activities while the masses are languishing in deepening exploitation, abject poverty and persisting inequality must be distinguished from the movement and tackled accordingly. It is partly in this context that we as the YCLSA have committed ourselves to campaigning for an overwhelming electoral victory for the ANC as the leading formation of our alliance and national liberation movement. We will make use of this and every opportunity at our disposal to fight against elitist groupings, opportunism, and exploitation which is the main driver of the inequality, poverty and unemployment that are inherent in the capitalist system and which brunt is most suffered by the youth. The untimely death of former economic development MEC The Provincial Committee once more conveys the YCLSA’s heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of former Gauteng economic development MEC Nkosiphendule Kolisile, his driver and a bodyguard who tragically died in a fatal accident on July 20. Nkosiphendule previously served as one of our first National Committee members after re-establishment and as SACP Gauteng Provincial Chairperson. As the YCLSA we noted with concern that there are some who used the untimely death of Nkosiphendule to praise him by condemning the living, to the extent in particular instances of attacking previous SACP decisions. In the process, wrongful things that must be decisively discouraged in our revolution were artificially interred, and the praises appeared as if they were the only truth. The YCLSA agrees with the SACP Provincial Council resolution that praises as such must not be allowed to hide wrongful things that must be isolated and highlighted to discourage any one in our struggle to engage in and repeat them. It is in this context that as the YCLSA we would like to set the record straight and come out in defence of SACP decisions that have been attacked in public. We were part of the SACP when the Party adopted corrective decisions to address the conduct of Nkosiphendule when the comrade deviated from Party discipline. All of the decisions were absolutely correct. There is no individual in the Party and the movement who should be above the collective standards of discipline. On the contrary, divisions and anarchy are brought about in organisations when an individual wants to be measured against his or her own “values” as opposed to, and when there is either a breakdown in or lack of respect for, the collective standards of discipline. A different logo was insolently used in the YCLSA Gauteng inaugural congress in 2005. The YCLSA had to address this. Between 2007 when Nkosiphendule was SACP Provincial Chairperson until he was suspended there was consistent factional mobilisation against SACP Central Committee decisions, thereby a violation of one of the fundamental communist principles of democratic centralism. More and more the Party in the province was divided. The SACP has to address this. While one of the major tasks facing the SACP was and remains building Cosatu and its affiliates strong and uniting workers on an industrial basis under the principle of one industry one union, Nkosiphendule was involved in forming a separate union the South African Private Security Workers Union. This constituted a direct violation of our Party programme on trade union organisation. The Party reserved the right to censure a comrade when it becomes necessary. When the comrade does not stop with the tendency of ill-discipline the Party reserves the right to take further disciplinary action including suspension. Thanks largely to the YCLSA for taking a leading role arising out of its 2nd Provincial Congress (August 2008) for declaring, launching and sustaining a relentless offensive against factionalism and ill-discipline within the ranks of the Party. As the fruit of this work the SACP in Gauteng is today stronger, more functional and currently enjoys one of the highest levels of unity. The Party in Gauteng is thus no longer inwardly focused on problems but plays its vanguard role. The appointment on Timothy Nast must be reviewed The Provincial Committee discussed the appointment of former Midvaal mayor Timothy Nast and reached a conclusion that the appointment must be reviewed. As part of the SACP supported by alliance partners including the ANC we held various marches to the Midvaal local municipality when Nast was a mayor, to protest against apartheid-styled separate development in which black people, in particular the working class and the poor, have up to now been marginalised by the DA in that municipality. The appointment of Nast as Chief Director for Infrastructure Planning in the Planning Commission of the Gauteng provincial government may have the effect of condoning the agenda of the DA in Midvaal. The international context The world is in the state of war. Imperialist states, at the forefront of which is the USA and its automatic European allies and France, are responsible for bloodshed and regime changes in many parts of the world, not least Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Central African Republic, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are as responsible for the sufferings and hardships that people in many parts of the world are experiencing, not least in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Middle East, Western Sahara, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and indeed the rest of Africa. We condemn the USA, its allies and puppet regimes for their support and collaboration in pursuit of regime change, the on-going civil war and immanent military assault on Syria. We call on all the progressive peoples of the world to unite against all forms of imperialist offensives and terrorisation of society. We will mobilise our members and the youth to take part in the marches and pickets directed at the embassies of imperialist states in our province, and we will take a leading role in organising these marches. Issued by YCLSA Gauteng Province, Johannesburg For more information contact: Alex Mashilo YCLSA Gauteng Provincial Secretary Cell: 082 9200 308
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 07:04:47 +0000
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