“We are calling upon the Ministry of Finance to make political interventions to save the poor from an economy that suppresses them on a daily basis,” said South African Communist Party (SACP) General Secretary Solly Mapaila as he led the march to the headquarters of the National Treasury in Tshwane on Friday.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) has embarked on what it calls a people’s march to the National Treasury in Pretoria against the high cost of living.
The SACP is joined by their alliance partners the African National Congress (ANC) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
The party delivered a memorandum of demands to the Ministry citing austerity measures and unemployment as concerns.
Mapaila explained that the march was essentially against the high cost of living as the working class and the poor are in a crisis under the present economic dispensation whereby, they can’t afford basic necessities of life.
“We have a memorandum that exposes necessary interventions that can be implemented to make sure that our people survive under the present harsh economic conditions,” said Mapaila.
“The present capitalist economic system creates unemployment whereby cheap labour is used as jobs are scarce and the system has what is called an army of unemployed people from which it can choose and pick cheap labour to make more profit” he said.
“Our march is also a march against capitalism and neo liberalism which are systems that are practiced by our Treasury at the moment, and we demand that the government and the National Treasury must prioritise job creation,” he said.
“There is more and more capitalism, and we therefore need a change of mind set by the government because we are not going anywhere under the present system; there’s more budget cuts, more unemployment and more poverty,” fumed Mapaila.
“It is a shame that after the advent of democracy in 1994 our government embraced the same neo liberal capitalist system that has been used by the apartheid regime,” he said.
“The RDP programme was discarded and replaced by systems which were put in place by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and now the reality of capitalism-inspired unemployment has hit home,” he said.
Mapaila pointed out that the SACP has been marching to the Treasury for many years now regarding several demands but acknowledged that there have been some successes in their marches, like in the case of the National Health Insurance (NHI) programme which has now become government policy.
Gauteng ANC Chairperson and Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi also attended the SACP march and told Tshwane Talks that if every government entity did its job as required then there would be no need for people to send their children to private schools for better education, or spending money on burglar doors for safety reasons, or buying generators to access electricity, and that this would lead to people saving money and be able to alleviate the high cost of living.
“We are attending this march because the demands raised by the SACP resonate with those of our government,” he said.
Hammanskraal Cosas chairperson Goodguy Mahlangu told Tshwane Talks at the march that the government must reduce the cost of living because this is a burden to many people and that it is something that everyone can see, including those who are in government.
“For instance, the price of bread must be reduced so as to make it affordable for our parents to give us provision when going to school,” said Mahlangu.
“I have been sent as the deputy director general to come and collect the memorandum of grievance and demands.
I have signed for it, and I will make sure it reaches the minister, and I will implore upon him to respond to the demand and grievances because we don’t want to see anyone hurt,” said deputy director general at National Treasury Stadi Mngomezulu.
The following is a copy of memorandum: