South South Summit 1999 Document: Message from the South African Communist Party
Posted on November 18 1999 |
On behalf of the Central Committee and the entire membership of the SACP, 1 bring you warm and fraternal greetings. We are indeed deeply honoured as the SACP to have been invited both to address your very important conference and be able to participate in its proceedings. As the SACP we wish to salute the Jubilee 2000 campaign for its courageous stand and campaigns in the interest of the working people and the poor of the South. Indeed you have also scored enormous achievements in placing the question of debt and poverty at the centre of international debates and capitalist globalisation.
There are number of lessons that we have to build upon from the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which 1 hope this conference will deliberate upon, and take very concrete and specific resolutions. First and foremost for us a campaign like yours has come to show that there is only and only one source of the increasing poverty in the world today - capitalist greed and the capitalist system as a whole. Globalisation is nothing, no matter how it can be couched, is simply the domination of the world by the interests of the rich - principally transnational corporations and international gamblers, the speculators - at the direct expense of the interests of the immense majority.
Secondly, and related to the above, your campaigns have further highlighted and underlined the reality that the biggest threat to humanity today is poverty, which is not an accident but an integral component of globalisation. Globalisation can only deepen if poverty also becomes globalised. This is clearly an unsustainable system that needs to be fought by all progressive forces in the world today. But neo-liberal ideology and its measures of poverty continue to distort the realities of poverty such that millions of poor people are today excluded from the category of the poor. For instance we need to challenge and question the measure of more than $1 a day as not being part of the poor. This means that if one earns $2 dollars a day those people are not poor. This is clearly ridiculous. Much more disturbing about the application and definition of poverty is that this measure is only used for developing countries. In the Western Countries, the measure for poverty is the minimum living level, which, in many instances, is 10 times more than the measure used for developing countries.
The third, and perhaps most important lessons from the struggles of Jubilee 2000 is that capitalism and the neo-liberal ideology is not as invincible or inevitable as it presents itself. The fact that the G8 is today talking about debt relief for poor countries - cynical as some of their proposed measures are - is no doubt due to the struggles that mass formations and Jubilee 2000 have been waging. This also goes to show that the mass mobilisation of the mass of the people is the only sure route to challenging capitalist globalisation. Campaigns that have also been waged in our country against the exploitative practices and daylight robbery of transnational corporations, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry, has also led to the US feeling the heat in its attempt to blackmail the South African government under the pretext of patent rights.
The fourth and important lesson that we need to learn from the Jubilee 2000 campaign is that contrary to the ideologues of neo-liberalism, there is an alternative to the
Washington consensus, and indeed there is an alternative to a system based on greed and corruption. The key foundation of that alternative is to mobilise the mass of the ordinary working people and the poor to take up issues that are in their interests. The alternative is that third world debt must be written off. The alternative is to democratise our governments in the developing world to articulate the interests of the majority of the people rather than as instruments of a small elite as is the case today in most countries. The alternative is that a mass driven transformation process, instead of privatisation, liberalisation and the looting of the assets of the state by elites.
In fact, the claim that there is no alternative is in itself part of the neo-liberal ideology. The high priests of neo-liberalism claim that there is no alternative to privatisation, yet their only approach to state assets is precisely to investigate only those options that will lead to only one outcome -privatise and liberalise. Those technocrats will never investigate alternative ways of strengthen mass and state led development options, and yet they turn around and say there are no alternatives. What this means therefore is that part of our struggles is to intensify ideological work and challenge these notions by reaching out to the mass of the working and poor people in the developing world.
Our South African situation
In the first five years of democratic rule, which many of you helped to bring about through the anti-apartheid movement, has witnessed some major advances to address the needs of the majority of the people of our country. We have seen millions of people have clean drinking water for the first time, access to primary health care through the government's clinic-building programme, millions of telephone connections, thousands of new classrooms, support to thousands of higher education students who come from poor backgrounds, and so on. These achievements should not be underestimated, particularly in a hostile global environment. One very important lessons from these advances is that it is an aggressive state-led programme that has brought about these significant changes, and not through the so-called free market and privatisation.
However, South Africa is still threatened by the very same things it seeks to overcome. Poverty still remains one of the biggest threats in consolidating our democracy and meeting the needs of the majority of our people. For instance about half of South Africa's population - the majority of whom black - still live in dire poverty. The rural areas still constitute some of the poorest areas in our country. We are also experiencing a process of massive job losses, brought about by a variety of factors, the core of which is capitalist globalisation and an apartheid legacy of capital-intensive production process, in a country with more than 30% unemployment.
On this question of job losses it is necessary to point out that, the capitalist bosses are treating these job losses as necessary so that tomorrow we can create more jobs. This is the logic that as the SACP have consistently challenged throughout the year. Despite this, the capitalist bosses are still calling for more flexible labour markets, so that they can further exploit workers, and this is already being accompanied by massive casualisation of jobs. Much more serious is that there is an intensified attack on organised workers for fighting to defend their jobs on the grounds that they are fighting against the interests of the poor. In other words workers are asked to accept poverty as a strategy to fight poverty - the most weird of capitalist logic one has ever come across. This is an attempt to separate the struggle against job losses from the struggle against poverty. It is for this reason that the SACP has identified the fight against job losses - whether in the private or public sector - as a matter of strategic priority in the fight against poverty. A struggle against job losses is a struggle against poverty, contrary to the claim of neo-liberal ideologues.
Indeed one of our biggest challenges in fighting against poverty is the question of the apartheid debt. It is estimated for instance by the Reserve Bank that the government debt has increased from R80bn in 1989 to R300bn rand in 1996. The most sinister aspect of this debt is that it is largely debt owed internally to pension funds and insurance companies. Billions of rands are being consumed by the manner in which the Government Employees Pension Fund is structured and funded. It is for this reason that the SACP has identified the restructuring of the funding of the GEPF as one of the priority issues that will have to be addressed. It is also important to point that the role of mass organisations, NGOs and Jubilee 2000 has played no small role in highlighting the urgency to relook at the pension fund.
The strategic challenges facing the working people and the poor
Perhaps it is important that one concludes this short input by pointing out at some of the key strategic challenges that face progressive forces in the world today.
a. Of strategic importance is the question of international solidarity. A meeting like you are holding today is vital as part of building this solidarity. As the SACP we are calling for the building and consolidation of an international front for the eradication of poverty, in which the debt question should occupy centre-stage. We need to unite ordinary mass of the people in mass struggles against the plunder of the developing world by the transnational corporations and the developed countries, using their instruments in the form of the IMF and World Bank.
b. As part of this international front against poverty, it is also time that we co-ordinate and deepen our campaigns to focus on the IMF and World Bank, as well as institutions like the WTO, so that the interests of the poor increasingly occupy a centre stage.
c. Much more importantly we need to wage mass struggles for the building of people's power throughout the globe through the mobilisation of the poor and working people against capitalist barbarism and plunder of the resources and environment of our globe
d. A question, which is of strategic importance, is the need to forge a new strategic alliance between mass movements and progressive political parties throughout the world. This is important in that mass movements on their own, without a strategic approach to the question of state power and the nature of the states we have today, will not be able to make maximum impact. Similarly progressive political parties that are not linked to mass movements or gradually alienate themselves from the mass of the people will not be able to use state institutions in the interests of the poor. These strategic alliances, particularly in the South, should be forged in such a manner that we do not repeat the mistake of turning mass formations into mere transmission belts for political parties. It is for this reason for instance that as the SACP we have adopted a conscious approach to forging very close links with mass organisations and the NGOs in order to strengthen the struggle against poverty in our country. I hope that this question of strategic alliances will form an important part of your deliberations.
e. Lastly, 1 hope you will also discuss the need to broaden your struggles beyond questions of debt to actually challenge the very exploitative structures of the international economy as the real cause of poverty in the world today. As the SACP we pledge our full support to your struggles, and will be an active component in building this international front to challenge the roots and foundations of inequality and poverty in the world today
With these words, we welcome you all to our beautiful country, and wish you a very successful conference.
Blade Nzimande
General Secretary
South African Communist Party
|
|
|
about us 
