THE SA Communist Party has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa and his administration to continue with the COVID-19 social relief of distress grant to help the poor ahead of his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday.
The party said the continuation of the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant will go a long way in mitigating the impact of the pandemic forcing more people into destitution, in the context of an absence of a comprehensive social security system.
“The continuation of the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant should be institutionalised as a step towards establishing a minimum income guarantee and building a comprehensive social security system,” the SACP said in a statement.
This week the party lambasted the government for being too slow in the procurement of vaccines and only focusing on Western Vaccines.
The SACP’s first deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila the procurement of vaccines shouldn’t only focus on the procurement of Western vaccines, urging government to also look at Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine.
“The journal for vaccine is saying it’s now okay and can go up to 90% efficiency. We must look at the procurement of Sputnik V because it’s available but the South African government is too slow. We must also look at the nine Chinese vaccines and not only be controlled at procuring Western vaccines,” said Mapaila.
The party said it expected the measures to be announced by Ramaphosa on Thursday to drive structural economic transformation and broader social development.
To achieve this, the SACP said those measures must be consistent with, and decisively advance the alliance’s shared strategic perspective to place our democratic transition, economic and broader social transformation and development into a second radical phase.
Other specific sectoral measures that the SACP would like to hear Ramaphosa announce include:
- a more decisive state-led public infrastructure development, social and economic, at scale;
- industrialisation;
- transformation of the mining industry through state intervention to ensure the developmental impact of mining and minerals beneficiation as a pillar of industrialisation;
- agriculture expansion and agro-processing value chain development as part of our industrialisation strategy;
- radical land redistribution and rural development to support agrarian transformation, combine agriculture with manufacturing, and systematically eliminate unequal development between rural and urban areas;
- And, as a key pillar of driving a qualitatively different, inclusive growth path, adequate support for innovation, research and development to alter our terms of international trade towards localisation and expanding domestic productive capacity as a strong element, thus systematically eliminating the persisting colonial type dependency on the import of finished scientific and technological products, including the digital platforms associated with the deepening and widening technological revolution.
(Source: INSIDE POLITICS)
