Foreword from the President

Dear Comrades Receive our revolutionary greetings from the HQ of SASCO on behalf of the 20th National Executive Committee of SASCO. We wish to first and foremost welcome you to the second semester of 2017 academic year, a year in which our NGC declared to be a year to “sharpen the Cader, a year of decommodified quality and free education.”

The first semester has passed, the organisation remains united, resolute and focused on our commitments and resolutions from the Mafikeng Congress, National Policy Conference and National General Council.

The key to the NGC Resolutions has been our branding and communication amongst our structures from NEC to Branches.

We have towards the end of the last semester hosted a successful gala dinner in honour of Mma Doris Miya and raising money for her retirement as well as for SASCO activities. In the same event, we managed to launch the new and revamped SASCO website, and SASCO App, which will enable us to adapt to the demands of the 4th Industrial revolution. The digital age and space need our attention and participation, least we wish to stay behind. It is this platform that will assist us to run Moithuti, NEC Bulleting and Red Spark journals. We shall not fail, in this regard, starting with this edition today.

The edition comes just two weeks following the missed deadline of fees Commission report, we have received confusing information regarding its release; from the president saying the report is ready when opening the ANC national policy conference, to him saying he is yet to receive the report when he closed the same policy conference a week later. We must indicate that we have made various attempts to get clarity on this question and hope that by end of the week, such will be provided. Failure to give us clarity will result in us hitting the streets in demand of the report.

The ANC policy conference has come to pass, we fought and won some battles, key amongst them has been the commitment to implement fee free education by 2018. The period 2017 should be used to get the money and change policy, all progressive forces must remain disciplined and focussed, for the end is near.

Historically SASCO has been regarded as the intellectual hub of the mass democratic movement because of our ability to write and raise issues sharply glued with ideological clarity, with the astute ability to critique the current status quo unambiguously nor through factional and simplistic lenses.

SASCO has a revolutionary duty to advance, deepen and expose the current economic contradictions which emanate from the capitalist relations of production using Marxist-Leninist tools of analysis.

Our theoretical journal will come out in September and would respond to a number of theoretical questions the movement is dealing with, including our stances of Radical Socio-Economic Transformation and the whole issues of Monopoly Capital in the South African context and other related systematic issues.

We call upon all our structures to continue using the month of July to do their compulsory community work.

Let the battle of ideas begin!!

Let Great minds of our student movement pen their ideas.