POLITICAL INPUT OF THE NUMSA DEPUTY GENERAL SECRETARY TO THE SADTU WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL CONFERENCE – SUNDAY 2 OCTOBER 2011
– WHERE ARE WE IN THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION –
Preface:
I have chosen this theme for my input to the SADTU Western Cape Provincial Congress and wish to contextualize this theme against the background of what the African National Congress said in its Tactics and Strategy Document developed and adopted in Morogoro in 1969;
“…it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation.
Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation. We have suffered more than just national humiliation. Our people are deprived of their due in the country's wealth; their skills have been suppressed and poverty and starvation has been their life experience.
The correction of these centuries-old economic injustices lies at the very core of our national aspirations. We do not understand the complexities which will face a people's government during the transformation period nor the enormity of the problems of meeting economic needs of the mass of the oppressed people.
But one thing is certain – in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals be they White or Black.”
It is quite significant that in 2011;
1. The ANC is busy preparing for its centennial celebrations in 2012
2. We had a critically important Cosatu Central Committee held in June 2011 wherein many important questions for debate arose. Some of the provocative questions and issues which the CC could not conclude related to;
Source
Numsa News