Thursday, August 18, 2016

YCLSA Statement on Local Governmental Elections: When Super Structure Ignores Base the Results Are Disastrous
Young Communist League of South Africa (YCLSA)

"Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the people. Every word , every act and every policy must conform to the people`s interests , and if mistakes occur , they must be corrected - that is what being responsible to the people means" Mao Tse Tung

The 03 August 2016 Local Government Election in our country has been a watershed election. It is the election ever since the 1994 breakthrough the people have voiced their dissatisfaction to the movement and there is a sizeable decline on the vote for the African National Congress. Let me try to explain what do I mean this is the decline on the vote for the ANC. As a communists having gave myself a time to analyses the results, I came to conclusion that indeed when super structure ignores the base the results can be disastrous. As communists also I came to my mind that we must never separate ourselves from the majority of the people or neglect them by leading only few progressive contingents in an isolated and rash advance, but we must take care to forge close links between the progressive elements and the broad masses. This is what thinking in terms of the majority means.

Let me try to explain what we mean when we say these Local Government Elections since 1994 breakthrough is the decline in the vote for the African National Congress: As an organization, we have lost some of the key municipalities in these local government elections. Qualitatively the aggregate outcomes politically point that what I term as the strategic loss of key municipality. This is attributed by three types of voters; First, those who voted for the African National Congress, Secondly those who abstained to vote but if voted were going to vote for African National Congress and Thirdly, those who voted for the opposition to portray their dissatisfaction to the African National Congress. My explanation is also trying to say generally, we have been winning but declining in terms of percentage but these elections results for us showed a sharp decline. But overall, we won elections at no point we must succumb to what the public image portrays as if we lost the elections as the result of Metros that is not through, what is through is that we won elections but we are declining. This decline is a global crisis of representation, it`s whether you look at US, Venezuela, Italy and Greece, and generally there has been a decline in elections and crisis of representation.

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