OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday
THOUSANDS of South African Communist Party (SACP) supporters have taken to the streets of South Africa’s major cities to demand easier access to bank loans for the country’s poor as part of its Red October campaign – and are threatening more action should the banks refuse.
In Johannesburg some 5000 members of the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) marched on the offices of the South African Banking Council and demanded banks ease loan conditions by December 15.
“We are calling on them to … serve the very people who need help,” SACP spokesman Mazibuko Jara said. “If they refuse, then we will continue on our mass mobilisation campaign.”
SACP deputy secretary general Jeremy Cronin, who led some 500 protestors in Cape Town to parliament, said 26 marches were held countrywide to protest discrimination against mainly black poor communities.
It forms part of “Red October” celebrations marking the 1917 Russian revolution, and comes as the campaign of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), an alliance partner of the SACP and COSATU, for December 5 municipal elections kick into swing.
Several of the marches were addressed by prominent ANC members. Western Cape ANC leader Ebrahim Rasool accused banks of racism, saying they even refused loans to their black employees because they were seen as too high a risk.
“Unless we can get the banks right, get them to support small business and eliminate racism in their ranks, our country will continue to struggle along,” he said.
In the east coast city of Durban, where some 2000 people protested, the ANC’s S’bu Ndebele said banks were “hypocrites” as they preached economic growth yet refused to help small enterprises or the informal business sector.
The Banking Council last month in parliament admitted that banks had a practice of refusing home loans in poor, high-risk areas.
The council was presenting a submission on a bill which aims to force financial institutions to disclose details of their lending patterns.
According to a government-commissioned study, 61% of blacks and 38% of coloured South Africans live in poverty, while the housing ministry says between nine and 13.5 million people lack proper housing. – AFP