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This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

SACP National Strategy Conference

Johannesburg, 20-23 May 1993:

THE changed global situation, the new national terrain and the SACP's massive growth in membership (from 2000 to 50,000 in under three years) all make the consolidation of a clear strategic perspective essential, and at times difficult.

We made considerable progress in this direction in our December 1981 8th SACP Congress. But, inevitably, there was much unfinished business. For all these reasons, the SACP convened a National Strategic Conference in Johannesburg (20-23 May 1993).

The main objective of the conference was to deepen strategic debate and discussion within the SACP and to consolidate the party around a broad strategic orientation.

The conference deliberately had a workshop character. We were not drawing up a programme, or a manifesto. We were not a resolutions conference. We were also not seeking a cosmetic unity produced by drafting gymnastics.

As it happens, considerable consensus was achieved.

The conference workshopped three main papers:

1. "The Role of the SACP in the Transition to Democracy and Socialism" (see The African Communist, 1st quarter 1993);

2. "Empowering our people and countering the medium term threat of Counter-Revolution and Destabilisation"; and

3. "Towards an SACP International Polic

We publish here amendments and additions to the first paper, and the amended version of the second.

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.