In a statement issued after the SACP's annual augmented central committee (CC) strategic planning session held in Boksburg in Ekurhuleni this weekend, the party reaffirmed its unwavering commitment to the struggles against gender-based violence.

"Already two years ago we launched our Red October Campaign focusing on gender-based violence, as it was becoming clearer to us that unless our structures and society as a whole are mobilised we may be overwhelmed by this scourge."

Children were also affected and a multi-pronged strategy was required to deal with the problem. 

"Next month, October 2019, we are launching our Red October Campaign 2019–2020 to build a variety of organisational fronts to primarily confront gender-based violence in society and other challenges in our communities, as well as in local government, and defend our democracy," the SACP statement said.

The CC also strongly condemned the acts of violence, looting, and other criminal activities perpetrated early this past week and the week before, mainly in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Several shops belonging to foreign nationals, mostly, but as well as to South Africans, were looted in Gauteng and others burnt by criminal elements.

In KwaZulu-Natal, trucks and other heavy and extra-heavy vehicles were used to erect blockades in certain areas of the national roads infrastructure network, thus clearly engaging in acts of sabotage.

"There can be no justification whatsoever for these and other criminal acts, regardless of what the underlying causes are. The CC reiterated the SACP’s consistent call for decisive lawful action to be taken against acts of criminality, including gender-based violence, gangsterism, murder, drug dealing, human trafficking, as well as abduction and sexual abuse of young women."

The criminals, both foreign nationals and South Africans alike, should be hunted down and held to account to the full might of the law without any fear, favour, or prejudice. Criminal law had to be strengthened, including through harsher imprisonment terms, to decisively rid society of crime, "all this duly taking into account the human rights based-society we seek to build", the SACP said.

"It is also clear to the SACP that unless the issue of drugs and substance abuse is also dealt with, we would not deal with criminality in society in general. What sometimes comes across as xenophobic attacks results from the failure of law enforcement agencies to deal with drug dealing by some of the foreign nationals as well as South Africans and the resultant anger in our communities."

The SACP further called upon all the people living in South Africa to desist from taking the law into their own hands. "Instead, we need to forge a widest possible patriotic front to defend our Constitution and democracy, and to work together in programmes such as the SACP initiated campaign against violence in general and gender-based violence in particular," the statement said.

ANA