South Africa: Let's Build a Powerful Socialist Movement for Workers and the Poor in Honour of Comrade Chris Hani

10 April 2023
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Johannesburg)
press release

Special Note: Happy 37th Anniversary to COSATU. Formed December 1985

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union [NEHAWU] joins millions of South African in commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the passing of the Former General Secretary of the South African Communist Party [SACP], Comrade Chris Hani.

This year marks 30 years since the cold-blooded heinous assassination of Comrade Hani by the rightwing Polish Fascist Janus Waluś that nearly brought the country on the brink of Civil War and derailing the national transformation project in our country.

The anniversary occurs a few month after the Constitutional Court delivered its repulsive judgement granting parole to the assassin Waluś on the 21st November 2022. Indeed, as NEHAWU we echo the call by our vanguard party for an inquest into Chris Hani's Death for his family to get justice and absolute truth about his killing.

We are commemorating Chris Hani today in the midst of a perpetual systematic and structural crisis of capitalism that has fostered extreme poverty, skyrocketing levels of unemployment and inequality. The system of capitalism prioritises the profit over people at the expense of the working class and the poor.

The complete failure of the capitalist system in responding to challenges which confront humanity necessitates an urgent alternative to the barbaric system and that alternative is Socialism. Comrade Chris Hani dedicated his life to the ideals of socialism. Hence, more than ever before, we need to build a strong vanguard party of the working class that will be the forefront of waging working class struggles through building a powerful socialist movement for workers and the poor.

This will require a Party that is rooted amongst workers and the poor leading campaigns on many fronts which include amongst others; campaigns against austerity measures, financial sector campaigns, campaign on the introduction of a universal basic income grant, campaign on the national health insurance, and campaigns against privatisation of state owned entities, etc. There's an urgent task at hand for the SACP to mobilise the motive forces of the National Democratic Revolution for its historic forward movement.

Indeed, as NEHAWU we will be working with the Party in carrying out that imperative task of building a powerful socialist movement for workers and the poor. We will honour Comrade Chris Hani by contributing to the repositioning of the party as a campaigning organisation that is rooted amongst workers and the poor and in all sites of struggle.

Let's Build A Powerful Socialist Movement for Workers and the Poor in Honour of Comrade Chris Hani.

Read the original article on COSATU.

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