There are few political groups in the democratic world with as little substance, yet still regarded by commentators as meaningful players, as the SACP.
The famous vanguard party of the liberation movement has now become a rearguard party, but it struts around like a tattered bantam rooster, crowing as if the yard still belongs to it. It is determined to be the last pure communist party in world history.
In South Africa, all parties adhering to Marxism have been pushed to the periphery by voters since 1994: the PAC, Azapo, Black First Land First, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party – and now even the EFF.
Since 1994, the SACP has been part of the Tripartite Alliance with the ANC and trade union federation Cosatu. Instead of preparing the ground for a purely socialist future – the “national democratic revolution” – the ANC has progressively moved further away from socialism, nationalisation, and the dominance of the working class. Yet top leaders of the SACP have been in key positions in the ANC’s cabinet for those 30 years – and still are.
The national chair of the SACP, Blade Nzimande, is the minister of higher education, and the deputy minister of finance, David Masondo, is a deputy general secretary. Gwede Mantashe, minister of mineral resources, Buti Manamela, Nzimande’s deputy minister, and Andries Nel, deputy minister of justice, are all members of the SACP’s central committee.
Will these individuals, along with the significant number of SACP members in the ANC’s national executive committee, campaign for votes for the SACP against the ANC in 2026?
The SACP threatens at every national congress to participate in elections as an independent political party. Nothing has come of this – though, in 2017, it did field candidates against the ANC in a by-election in Metsimaholo (Sasolburg), where it won three out of 42 wards. That was the first and last time.
A final break between the ANC and the SACP has the potential to allow the ANC to finally refine its policies on the economy with greater honesty, rather than preaching socialism but applying market-friendly policies in practice. The ANC could thus become a clear example of social democracy – and simultaneously formulate a more realistic foreign policy that serves South African interests, rather than ideological and nostalgic ones.
A ‘radical shift’
Next week, the SACP will hold its Fifth Special National Congress in Boksburg. In a pre-congress statement, the party says: “The key task facing the SACP at its Special National Congress is clear: assert its independence with unwavering determination in the struggle to end unemployment, poverty, inequality, and the system of capitalist exploitation.”
The statement continues: “The status quo will not end without a radical shift. This requires a decisive change not only in policy but also in the political organisation and mobilisation of the working class. The Central Committee will assert the independence of the Party into action … across all fronts of struggle and power contestation in society, including the electoral front. The time for bold, militant action has arrived.”
Since 2007, the SACP argues, it has tried to “reconfigure” the alliance from within; now, to build a “powerful, socialist movement” it will “engage” with other progressive worker formations, including trade unions.
The SACP still blames the “1996 class project” for all the country’s failures. This refers to the ANC’s Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy, spearheaded by Thabo Mbeki. The SACP stubbornly ignores the hard reality that Gear led to the best performance of the economy to date.
Not to mention that unions have sharply declined in membership and influence over the past decade and are deeply divided, so a “powerful, socialist movement of the workers” is somewhat of an absurd fantasy. Some union leaders are filthy rich capitalists.
For more than three decades, the SACP was the slavish follower of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. But Russia and the other states that formed that union have all turned their backs on socialism – even China, Vietnam and Cuba are no longer purely socialist states. Only North Korea still adheres to the kind of orthodoxy for which the SACP fights.
Enter MK
If the SACP wanted to exploit voters’ dissatisfaction with the ANC, it should have done so before Jacob Zuma formed his MK Party. MK is now the only real haven for ANC defectors – not to mention EFF deserters.
Read my lips, Solly Mapaila: there are no viable “left formations” left in South Africa.
The SACP claims to have about 200,000 registered members, but there is no reason to believe that all, or most of these voters would actually vote for the SACP in an election. According to historian Tom Lodge, author of Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party 1921-2021, unemployed young people are the largest social group from which the SACP draws its recruits.
Almost every facet of MK’s policy, approach and leadership runs counter to what the SACP stands for. The SACP’s analysis of the anarchy and looting in KwaZulu-Natal in July 2021 and MK’s current positions support this.
But if the SACP fields candidates against the ANC in the local elections of 2026, it could siphon off ANC votes and perhaps ensure that MK (and the DA) end up controlling a significant number of local authorities, which will have implications for the ANC’s struggle against MK in the general election of 2029.
No-one could have expected the SACP to be excited when the ANC chose the DA as its main partner in the government of national unity (GNU). But the SACP’s fierce campaign against the current GNU means it strongly bolsters the hand of the neo-RET factions such as that of Panyaza Lesufi, who advocates for a GNU with MK and the EFF as the ANC’s partners.
The SACP may live in an ideological fantasy world, but its leadership must surely realise that such a GNU would be a death blow to the economy, the rule of law, the constitution, and constitutional democracy. MK and the EFF do not stand for a pure socialist order, but rather for a system of corrupt patronage.
How would this benefit the working class?
The brutal, hard realities of South Africa today no longer have room for the nostalgia and romanticism of the communists who over the decades have shaped ANC policy and dominated its armed forces.
This is so 1980s. Sala hantle ka ho sa feleng, comrades.
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