The South African Communist Party’s Red October campaign will focus this year on fighting hunger and demanding food security for all, the party said on Tuesday.
It said the campaign will be based on four pillars, including demanding accelerated land and agrarian transformation to help ensure access to land for food production and food security.
The campaign will also focus on the basic provision of proteins and vitamins, especially for the poor.
”In this regard, we will be campaigning for food gardens and to this end the provision of an extra amount of free water for poor households with such gardens.
”In addition, our campaign will focus on the release of urban land to build community gardens,” the SACP said in a statement.
The programme will highlight the problem of high food prices, especially basic foodstuff for the poor.
It will also call for an expansion of school feeding schemes, especially for more vulnerable children.
”Particular attention will be paid to a campaign to expand the school feeding scheme through to high school, fighting against corruption in some of the existing school feeding schemes and the building of cooperatives around these schemes.
”Our campaign will also seek to lend a hand to the national campaign of the Department of Social Development to identify and provide basic needs for the more vulnerable children, including orphans,” the party said.
In addition, the SACP said, the month will also be used to intensify its campaign for a credit amnesty for all, which will include pickets and demonstrations.
The campaign will also be used to ensure an overwhelming majority for the African National Congress in the upcoming local government elections.
The SACP said hunger is the focus of the programme because according to a 2003 United Nations Development Programme survey, 48,5% of South Africans lived below the national poverty line. A 2004 Human Sciences Research Council survey estimated 57% or 25,7-million South Africans lived in poverty.
The campaign will be officially launched on October 8, which has been declared Red Saturday.
The day will see symbolic occupation of land in all the provinces. The national launch will take place in Brits in the North West, preceded by a night vigil to highlight the hunger of land for the majority of South Africans. — Sapa