The South African Communist Party (SACP), a longtime ally of the governing African National Congress (ANC) has decided to contest the 2026 local government elections in its own name.

The move, confirmed at the mid-December Special National Congress of the SACP, marks a resolute break with the ANC. This was prompted by the latter’s decision to join the right-wing Democratic Alliance (DA) in a Government of National Unity (GNU) following general elections in May of this year. The ANC had failed to win the 50% of the vote needed to form a majority government, limping home with just 40%. This was its worst performance ever, having won more than 60% of the vote in nearly every election since it competed as a legal party for the first time in 1994, when South Africa held its first democratic elections following the end of white-minority apartheid rule.

For the SACP and the other key partner in the alliance with the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the decision by the governing party to team up with the DA and a cluster of smaller, centre-right parties in a unity government is the culmination of an incremental slide towards economic neoliberalism and austerity.

This has its roots in the invidious position South Africa has been stuck with in trying to undo the harm of decades of apartheid and centuries of colonialism. Caught between the rock of diktat by international monopoly capital from without and the hard place of entrenched racialised inequality at home, the social and economic reforms of successive ANC governments, though substantial as far as they go, have failed to tackle crisis levels of poverty, unemployment, and violent crime.

The National Democratic Revolution (NDR), the progressive development of the country initially envisaged by the ANC and its allies, has been a stop-start process, and now seems to have ground to a halt. “The NDR has been in a stagnant position for a long time, largely because of the defensive struggles of the working class in the context of a rampaging neoliberalism,” the SACP said in a Central Committee report at the end of November.

Despite setbacks, the SACP and COSATU have upheld the alliance with the ANC and have campaigned for it in elections. They have repeatedly called for a “reconfiguration” of the alliance that would reassert the ANC’s traditional left-revolutionary orientation, putting the NDR on a more transformative footing. But this overhaul has proven elusive and the ANC’s alliance partners feel shut out from decisions taken by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC executive on the way forward. The decision to get into bed with the DA was the last straw. “We are not leaving the relationship, but we are freeing ourselves from the abuse. We will now engage independently as an organisation,” SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila told delegates to the special national congress.

Exactly how the relationship will withstand the SACP’s independent contestation in the 2026 local elections remains to be seen. There is a lot of membership overlap between the party and the ANC and some SACP members hold positions in national, provincial, and local government as ANC representatives. The mass media, almost wholly hostile to the ANC, has gleefully latched onto this as a sticking point, unable to grasp the dimorphic nature of the ANC as both a broad movement and a political party.

For the SACP, there is no insuperable contradiction. Contesting elections independently is an effort to bolster the traditionally left-progressive identity and concrete action of the ANC as a movement. “We have no intentions to weaken the ANC. If there is anything, we want to strengthen it. This loss [the GNU] highlights two things and the objective condition of where we have weak leadership when the living conditions of the people have worsened. When you are a liberation movement, you must use your power to improve the lives of your people,” said Mapaila.

As the editorial in the latest issue of the SACP journal the African Communist points out, the party is treading a new path that requires much nuance and dexterity: “There are many implications and challenges ahead, not just for the SACP but also for the ANC and COSATU and broader trade union movement … [W]hat is clear is that the all-round crisis in our country means that we cannot simply sleep-walk nostalgically along the same path. But how the SACP conducts itself in this challenging moment will require considerable strategic and tactical finesse.”

A big part of the crisis — intertwined with the impacts of burgeoning poverty, unemployment, crime, and corruption — has to do with the hollowing out of South Africa’s democracy.

Some 22.7 million registered or eligible voters out of a voting-age population of 38.9 million citizens didn’t bother to vote in the general election. The ANC’s depleted majority was “won” with just 6.6 million votes (16.4 per cent of eligible voters), meaning that a silent majority of South Africans felt sufficiently alienated from the country’s young democratic process to stay at home. There’s a pervasive feeling among people in poor urban and rural townships and communities that there’s no point in voting because it doesn’t change anything. This is a challenge for the SACP as it attempts to be more visible at a grassroots level and fill the vacuum created by a government-level failure to engage with a support base it ruinously took for granted.

Part of this disaffection has led to breakaways from the ANC, in the form of the ethno-nationalist, populist parties of the Economic Freedom Fighters and former President Jacob Zuma’s MK Party. Both can be seen as symptoms of a malaise that needs urgent redress.

The SACP aims to do this through a popular left front that brings together all forces that desire progressive change, including those that have not traditionally had much time for Communists.

The feeling beyond the party that the time has come for a new approach was in part reflected by the presence at the SACP Special National Congress of former President Thabo Mbeki.

The party has often been highly critical of the policies enacted during the Mbeki administration, which it terms a neoliberal “class project.” But Mbeki’s speech to the Congress was welcomed. He called for an inclusive “national dialogue” on the social and economic crises facing South Africa and said that the SACP’s participation in this would be crucial to ensure that the voice of the working class and marginalized is heard.

Image: SACP General Secretary, Cde Solly Mapaila, delivering the Closing Address to the SACP 5th Special National Congress by South African Communist Party (Facebook)

Comments