SACP
South Africa: `COSATU has waged titanic battles' -- COSATU marks its 25th anniversary
Workers celebrate COSATU’s 25th anniversary. Picture: Gallo Images.
The following speeches, by COSATU's president and general secretary, were delivered at a ceremony in Johannesburg on December 3, 2010, to celebrate the Congress of South African Trade Unions' 25th anniversary.
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By Sidumo Dlamini, COSATU president
December 3, 2010 -- Cyril Ramaphosa was prophetic when he declared that “a giant has arisen!” That giant has grown from 130,000 members when it was launched to well over 2 million paid up members today.
While still barely walking, the young giant launched itself into titanic battles against employers and the apartheid regime. In his speech at the launch, founding COSATU president Elijah Barayi gave apartheid ruler P.W. Botha a six-month deadline to do away with passes. Indeed Botha succumbed and the hated pass laws that had humiliated millions for decades were scrapped. Today we carry proper identity documents.
South Africa: ANC leaders attack COSATU
By John Haylett
November 5, 2010 -- Morning Star -- Relations between the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and sections of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) plumbed new depths this week following a union-initiated Civil Society conference.
The October 27 conference was organised by COSATU and human rights bodies Section 27 and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). More than 50 independent organisations took part, debating how to encourage community-based activism to achieve social justice and improve poor people's lives. [Read the declaration of the civil society conference. Read Zwelimzima Vavi's speech to the conference.]
So far so uncontroversial, but the organisers had agreed to make the conference non-party political, which meant that neither the ANC nor the South African Communist Party (SACP) were invited to take part.
Cuban Communist Oscar Martinez: `Our economic reforms are based on socialist principles'
"We are reorganising the workforce, not firing workers. We are directing them to other areas of work vital for the economy, mainly food production."
[For more analysis and discussion on the economic changes in Cuba, click HERE.]
November 3, 2010 -- Umsebenzi -- A South African Communist Party (SACP) delegation recently visited Cuba a part of its political interaction between South Africa and Cuba, and its quest to build socialism and strengthen ties between it and the Communist Party of Cuba.
Yunus Carrim, editor of the SACP's monthly journal, Umsebenzi, interviewed Oscar Martinez, the deputy head of the International Relations Department of the Communist Party of Cuba. Published below is the full interview, as it appeared in Umsebenzi.
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Yunus Carrim: What is the nature of the economic problems Cuba is currently experiencing?
South Africa: What would Chris Hani say today?
Chris Hani.
South African splinters: From `elite transition' to `small-a alliances'
[The following article first appeared in AfricaFile's At Issue Ezine, vol. 12 (May-October 2010), edited by John S. Saul, which examines the development of the southern African liberation movement-led countries. It has been posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission.]
By Patrick Bond
South Africa's development goals won't be met
While South Africa's pollies and "BEE" elite party, there is lit
By David Masondo, Young Communist League chairperson
September 5, 2010 -- City Press -- There was cautious optimism among many leftists in the African National Congress (ANC) that the ousting of Thabo Mbeki in Polokwane [the ANC's 2007 national conference] might mark a shift towards a much more egalitarian economic policy, including "Black Economic Empowerment (BEE).
Instead, BEE is increasingly becoming too narrow, amounting to ZEE – that is, Zuma Economic Empowerment.
The recent multibillion-rand Arcelor-Mittal BEE deal involving Duduzane, President Jacob Zuma’s son, is another example of how BEE has become too narrow.
To crown it all, the president’s nephew, Khulubuse Zuma, seems to have suddenly become an African imperialist, amassing oil resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
South Africa: Strike ends, workers' anger remains
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On September 6, the major trade unions representing South Africa's 1.3 million public servants and teachers announced that the 20-day strike for higher wages and allowances had been "suspended". See union statements below. Union leaders said the move would allow members to consider the latest government offer. Public servants went on strike demanding an 8.6% pay rise, while the government has offered 7.5%. According to the BBC, workers who came to hear union officials shouted in protest when they
announced that the strike was being suspended. Meanwhile, workers in many other industries are taking or threatening industrial action.
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By Terry Bell, Cape Town
South Africa: COSATU's Zwelinzima Vavi's Ruth First Memorial Lecture
COSATU leader on SACP's 89th anniversary: `Mass power is the best defence'
By Zwelinzima Vavi
August 1, 2010 -- July 29, 2010, marks the 89th anniversary of a revolutionary organ of the working class, the South African Communist Party (SACP).
Being the only communist party in the African continent, the SACP (or Communist Party of South Africa as it was known then) has been a wagon that advanced and carried working-class struggles in the country and also in the continent. The formation of the CPSA is inseparable from the history of the Great October Revolution of 1917 and the launch of the Communist International in 1919.
