Umsebenzi special centenary issue published in July 2021 (COURTESY)

A Latin American writer shares a story of him picking a poster in a library which has an African saying written on: Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will glorify the hunter.

And a movement in our country has a slogan that is just as telling: Nothing about us without us!

Listening to and reading what’s happening in the Russia-Ukraine conflict triggered by NATO expansion makes us appreciate better the wisdom of these stories and 
the significance of the theme of this gathering.

Peace is a necessary precondition for an effective development path anywhere.

Had it not been for the many progressive modern platforms of other voices of the left broadly including progressives, the story of what’s happening there would be very different.

Accelerating our effective presence in cyberspace where many of our citizens have access to has been our big challenge to pursue our domestic and internationalist agenda.

The backlogs of infrastructure in working class areas and high costs of data compound this challenge.

Complementing personal communication with people wherever they are with modern means of engagement is critical. The opportunities, nevertheless, have also increased for interacting across our many different boundaries.

With our historical production of different publications, despite being banned and terrorized and then going underground, creatively pamphleteering and disguising publications, we beat the enemy so to speak.

Today we have created websites, are active on social media, and we produce e-posters. The theoretical journal African Communist, and the online Umsebenzi (the worker) plus their print version speak to our modernizing agenda.

In addition, we conduct classes on our political agenda regularly on virtual platforms, which are recorded and made available on our website. They are The Jack Simon Party School’s the Josie Mpama Webinar, a gender equality platform, and the Michael Harmel Webinar on Internationalism.

In the battle of ideas, contesting stories that are falsely told about class 
struggles is urgent, as is promoting socialist ideas.

Building capacity to ensure creativity in this ever-changing environment is crucial. We regard modernization as responsiveness to appropriate continuity and change. We mustn’t allow good ideas to die from stagnation when we have the choice to continually improve.

Reaching out to and hearing from the people we serve and our friends are crucial through these new media and are part of this combat. This is so also at district level where initiatives are emerging.

Our theory of the South African Revolution, which we share with our allies in the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Union, remains that it is a national democratic revolution, which aims to resolve 
the continuing race, gender and class contradictions.

The level and depth of political organization is crucial to this task. By modernizing we enable these institutions to be strongly responsive to an ever-changing environment.

Failure to be responsive to this changing environment leads to loss of confidence by people we lead. It is therefore urgent we develop strategies to renew our organizations and political parties.

This being our centenary year, which we share with you, maintaining continuity and making change appropriately is the task.

Vigilance over the security of our systems is an absolute necessity given the ability of others to be disruptive, to campaign for as much sovereignty as is possible in an interconnected, increasingly integrating world.

Our commitment is to pursue our aspirations for a society that cares.

We say in the SACP, socialism is the future, build it now.

Put people before profits.

The author is a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP), and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa