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The South African Communist Party (SACP) congratulates the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on a successful national congress and its election of its national leadership led by Phillip Vilakazi as President and Comrade Mpho Phakedi, elected as General Secretary. We congratulate the collective as a whole on their election.

The SACP reaffirms its position to work together with the NUM and all workers in the working-class struggles against neo-liberal economic restructuring, including retrenchments in the mining and other sectors. The NUM Congress presents an opportunity for the working class to galvanise its efforts towards defeating the forces that stand in opposition to the national minimum wage, attacking our collective bargaining framework and waging resistance to the National Health Insurance, among other neo-liberal assaults on the working class and poor.

The SACP is concerned by the proliferation of illegal mining activities both in the formal and informal sectors, impacting upon the health and safety of workers while at the same time deepening the exploitation of the most vulnerable groups within the working class. The SACP reiterates its call for the clamp-down of illicit minerals trade and financial flows in the extractive sector and calls upon the state to verify each particle, composition, weight, and value of each mineral extracted in South Africa. This is the only way to confirm if the mining houses are sincere in their declaration of the minerals that they have extracted in our country, and to ensure that they pay the correct amounts of tax and royalties.

Towards true ownership of our natural resources by the people, the SACP repeats its call for a review of mineral royalties to reaffirm the clarion call of the Freedom Charter that the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people. This, in turn, demands unity of the working class, across union and federation affiliation, for the dismantling of monopoly capital’s iron grip on our economy.

Issued by the South African Communist Party