The South African Communist Party (SACP) has taken a swipe at credit granters for embarking on a frenzy of “willy nilly giving out credit cards and enticing unsuspecting consumers through millions of cellphone messages and letters, offering what appears to be cheap credit” to the workers and the poor.
The organisation said in its new year message on Wednesday that it was seriously concerned about the “rampant consumerism that is being fostered by, especially, the commercial sector in our country”.
This, according to the SACP, is worsening the indebtedness of South Africans and thus “creating a ticking time bomb and a false bubble of growth that is bound to burst in the near future”.
“In this regard the SACP also wishes to strongly criticise the [South African] Reserve Bank for responding to the above by increasing the interest rates, thus making the workers and the poor pay a heavy price, whilst the modern loan sharks continue to make even more money from the indebtedness of our people.
“This is practically turning the festive season into a season of ‘credit infesters’. It is also clear to us that this credit frenzy is deliberately being embarked upon by the capitalist loan sharks ahead of the coming into effect of the National Credit Act.”
The Act aims at changing current legislation regulating credit granting.
“We therefore call upon government and the Reserve Bank to focus their energies on comprehensive control mechanisms over the predatory behaviour of the credit granters, and not punish the workers and the poor with forever rising interest rates,” the organisation said.
The SACP also praised the working class for the “numerous struggles they waged in defence of their rights, a living wage and decent working conditions”.
“We particularly salute the sacrifice of workers in the security industry, who embarked on what was perhaps the longest strike since the advent of our democracy, as well as other heroic workers’ struggles in many other sectors of our economy.
“The SACP continued to notch important victories in its campaigns, including the signing into law of the National Credit Act, including provisions for the legal regulation of the credit bureaux for the first time ever in our country. The Umzansi account, a product of the SACP-led financial sector campaign, also reached three million accounts.”
The party said that whilst it welcomed the fact that South Africa’s economy was growing, “the number of jobs that are created are far from our objective of at least halving unemployment by 2014, and the quality of the very minimal jobs created during 2006 leaves a lot to be desired”.
“They are mainly highly casualised and low-paying jobs, a far cry from our demand for quality jobs and sustainable livelihoods.
“We are unfortunately ending the year with another threat hanging over the heads of the working class, with the announcement of massive planned retrenchments at South African Airways [SAA].”
SAA announced recently that it planned to retrench 1Â 000 employees due to high operating costs.
About HIV/Aids, the SACP said it “warmly welcomes the renewed determination by the government in combating the HIV/Aids scourge and the emerging consensus amongst all on the strategic and practical way forward in this regard”.
“The HIV/Aids scourge is one of the most serious threats to the consolidation of our democracy, and it specifically has a devastating impact on the youth and women. We should continue to wage the struggle against the HIV/Aids pandemic also as a platform to take forward the struggle for gender equality in society, as the spread of this pandemic is also reinforced by patriarchy and oppression of women in society.
“Let us make 2007 the year for intensified mass mobilisation to ensure that our democracy is not hijacked or stolen by the rich and better off in society, but that it is a democracy with, for and by the people,” it concluded. — I-Net Bridge