The SACP has paid tribute to the late ANC MP, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, who died at her home in Cape Town on Monday.
The SACP said Joemat-Pettersson had been involved in its structures during the 1990s and was involved in building those structures.
The party said it wanted the Tripartite Alliance to be reconfigured. It said the country faced with a number of challenges, including poverty, inequality and unemployment.It said the government needed to resolve the energy crisis, which was affecting the economy.
“Comrade Tina Joemat-Pettersson was also a member of the SACP and played a crucial role in building the structures of the party in the Northern Cape after its unbanning in the early 1990s. That was one of the toughest periods in our Struggle for liberation, democracy and social emancipation. It was a period during which, through a final push, our national liberation movement with the alliance at the forefront and buttressed by overwhelming support from our people, achieved the April 1994 democratic breakthrough. We will remember Tina Joemat-Pettersson above all else through her contribution in building the revolutionary movement that led the Struggle to defeat the apartheid regime and achieve our April 1994 democratic breakthrough,” said the SACP.
“In memory of her contribution to the just Struggle, the alliance needs to reconfigure itself to move with the times and become stronger at every new moment to resolve the systemic problems of high unemployment, poverty, inequality, crime, gender-based violence, and the electricity under-capacity crisis, all as a matter of urgency,” it said.
It said Joemat-Pettersson was also a member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee. She also served in the National Working Committee.
The SACP said Joemat-Pettersson had served in the government over a long period of time. She was the minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries before she was moved to the energy portfolio.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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