The South African Communist Party (SACP)  Central Committee convened its regular, once-every-four-months plenary from Friday to Sunday, 28 to 30 June 2024, in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. This was the first plenary of the SACP Central Committee following the May 2024 elections. The Central Committee is the highest decision-making body of the SACP in between the Party’s national congresses, which convene once every five years.

The plenary offered the Central Committee a strategic moment to take a significant step forward in comprehensively evaluating the May 2024 elections, within the broader context of a thirty-year review of our democratic dispensation. Our immediate aim is to consolidate a way forward towards configuring our society on a revolutionary basis, drawing lessons from the election outcomes.

Our evaluation is not an event but a thorough, deep-going process. By the end of 2024, the SACP will hold a Special National Congress. This will be preceded by extensive consultation with our structures and members and other working-class and Left organisations. Our approach is not limited to immediate or short-term actions but encompasses medium-term to long-term strategies and tactical tasks, including those that will be presented to, considered and finalised by our 16th National Congress in mid-2027.

The experience and lessons from the May 2024 elections

The May 2024 elections took place amid a myriad of interacting national and international contradictions.

Dominant sections of capital, both domestic and foreign controlled, actively entered the political terrain with the goal of removing the ANC from power by uniting right wing parties into a single force through a pact or charter, and by propping up these and popcorn parties to form part of the imperialist-backed anti-ANC regime change agenda.

For instance, towards our 2024 elections, both the so-called Democrats and Republicans in the United States of America endorsed a bill in their House of Representatives, through their Foreign Affairs Committee, against “The ANC-led South African Government”. South Africa’s progressive international relations, co operation and solidarity policy, especially, but not limited to, the ANC-led government’s support for the Palestinian people against the genocide by the apartheid Israeli settler state, deepening participation in the growing BRICS Plus community of countries and refusal to toe the NATO line in the NATO-provoked war in Ukraine, are among the issues that have irked the United States imperialist bipartisan aggressors against “The ANC-led South African Government”.

Earlier, in June 2023, the European Solidarity Centre and the right-wing Brenthurst Foundation from South Africa staged what was clearly a regime change conference in Gdańsk, Poland. In their declaration, among others, the attendees resolved to “Call out and manage those corporations responsible for manipulating internet and data coverage”.

It is therefore conceivable that internet manipulation, mainly United States transnational corporations which dominate the control of the internet, played a manipulative role as part of the embedded media agenda in our elections. The sponsored attendees from South Africa who took part at the Gdańsk conference included some former and current news and opinion pieces editors and former chief representatives and beneficiaries of the apartheid regime. Some were later engaged extensively as preferred “political analysts” by certain media outlets and broadcasters during our May 2024 election campaign period and immediately afterwards. This happened not by default, but by design. It was therefore a coordinated agenda.

Misinformation and fake news fueled the propaganda that the ANC-led government did nothing for the people over the last thirty years of our democratic dispensation. Media manipulation offered this propaganda an uncritical reception, showering it with extensive coverage.

All of a sudden, the hard-won transition from the racist systems of colonialism and apartheid, the human rights that the transition ushered in, and the commendable social advances realised by millions of our people, were disregarded as “nothing that the ANC-led government has done for the people in the past thirty years”. Sadly, this found government communication flatfooted, partly as a result of austerity. It was therefore not robust in publicising the government’s own progressive legislative measures and achievements for the people.

Not everybody could be fooled by the machinations, however. The political parties that were heavily funded by the domestic white bourgeoisie and foreign-controlled capital from the imperialist collective West, lumped together in the right-wing “Multiparty Charter”, dismally failed to secure at least half of the valid votes to effect a full-blown counter-revolutionary defeat against the ANC. The “Multiparty Charter” was therefore rejected on the ballot by the majority of the electorate. It has since disintegrated. Nevertheless, the support that its parties received in domestic and foreign party-political donations, research propaganda and embedded media coverage did not go down without an impact in our elections, where voter demoralization grew and the voter turnout declined.

The right-wing neo-liberal organization around which the failed and rejected regime change “Multiparty Charter” class project was anchored did not grow: the DA declined in real terms both nationally and in the Western Cape, where it is a provincial governing party, as measured by actual votes. Other parties that were in Parliament during the sixth administration from 2019 to 2024 also declined, with the exception of a fractional gain by one party. Others declined to a point where they did not receive a single seat and are therefore out of Parliament. Hence, although worrisome and requiring great attention, the ANC is not the only party that declined.

Notably, its decline has occurred despite the commendable progress realized by millions of our people since our hard-won transition from the apartheid regime to the current democratic dispensation in 1994. This progress includes human, workers and women’s rights, the construction and free allocation of houses to beneficiaries, the expansion of access to education at all levels, through initiatives such as the no-fee-paying schools’ policy, the school nutrition program and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (which funded over five million students). It is a fact that there were also other social advances, including the commendable expansion in household electrification for millions who had been excluded for over a century from 1894 to 1994, as well as expansions of access to water, sanitation and social security, including grants, and more.

One of the key lessons from the outcome of the May 2024 elections is that there are other decisive factors in perceptions that inform voter behavior. For instance, the commendable progress made under the ANC-led government gradually came under pressure from a myriad of countervailing factors. These include neo-liberal policy prescripts, corruption and crime, notably corporate capture of the state, industrial-scale looting and destruction of key public infrastructure – such as electricity, water, rail, roads and social infrastructure, like schools. Load shedding also played a negative role. All this undermined the capacity of the state to serve the people diligently. Neo-liberal restructuring, corruption and deliberate mismanagement, including what appeared to be internally coordinated sabotage in public entities, forced one public entity after another into financial and operational crises.

Some public entities were pushed to the brink of collapse while others, such as SAA and the SA Post Office, virtually collapsed and were placed into business rescue. In the middle of the election campaign, the SA Post Office, acting no differently from capitalist bosses in the mining and other sectors, embarked on retrenchments, affecting thousands of workers. The SA Post Office, under the direction of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, took its cue from what happened earlier at SAA under the direction of the Department of Public Enterprises.

Also, South Africa is not a war zone, but there are just so many communities in which gun shots cause sleepless nights. Armed criminals seem to be in charge, unabated, with state capacity to fight crime absent on the spot when all this happens. There are just too many families in these communities who live in fear, insecurity and helplessness. This is part of the conditions under which the May 2024 elections took place.

The combined negative impact of neo-liberalism and corruption, notably including austerity and corporate capture of the state, on the material conditions and perceptions of millions of people contributed to sustaining and, in other cases, worsening capitalist-created problems inherited from the colonial and apartheid era, such as unemployment, poverty and class inequality.

Unemployment shot up to crisis-high rates above 20 per cent annual minima as defined by the official rate, excluding discouraged work-seekers, in 1996, the same year in which the government adopted the neo-liberal economic policy called Growth, Employment, and Redistribution as “cast in stone”, “non-negotiable”. As it worsened over the years, the official unemployment rate reached 32.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, affecting 8.2 million active work-seekers. Total unemployment, defined by the expanded rate, which includes discouraged work-seekers, reached 41.9 per cent in the same quarter, affecting 12.1 million active and discouraged work-seekers combined.

While South Africa registered progress in reducing the poverty rate from 71.1 per cent in 1993 to 60.9 per cent in 2010, and further to 55.5 per cent in 2020, at this level, poverty remained a crisis, still affecting far too many people.

Inequality continued, also at crisis-high rates. The top 1 per cent of earners took home almost 20 per cent of income and the top 10 per cent took home 65 per cent, according to a 2022 study by the World Bank. This meant that 90 per cent of South African earners took home only 35 per cent of the total income.

The impact of unemployment, poverty and inequality still reflected the persisting racialized, gendered and spatialized, uneven capitalist development legacy of the colonial and apartheid era, with black people the worst affected. Within this population reality, women are the majority, according to statistics from Statistics South Africa.

Similarly, the World Bank study underlined that white people remained more likely to find work, and work that pays better, than black people. As the May 2024 election results show, the DA and the FF Plus still constantly win votes in predominantly white voting districts, with the DA, between the two, being the most favoured beneficiary of this racial identity politics.

Back to the study just cited, female workers, with black females the worst affected, earned about 30 per cent less than male workers. Urban workers earned about twice as much as those in the countryside. South Africa was the worst of the top ten countries with the highest wealth inequality.

In addition, neo-liberal attacks on collective bargaining, both in the public and private sectors, negatively impacted the working class. At SABC, an unresolved collective bargaining dispute continued, undermining workers, with management reacting negatively towards the progressive trade union movement.

The impact of neo-liberal restructuring, most affecting the working class, whose high population density is in metropolitan areas, contributed to declining support for the ANC as the governing party. Notably, this occurred in metropolitan provincial centers first.

Disunity within the ANC, inclusive of opposition to renewal and accountability, primarily driven by the state capture faction, which has since broken away, contributed to the ANC’s decline, actively forming part of counter-revolution through the MKP splinter. On the other hand, the neo-liberal faction maintained its paradigm, including austerity, during the worst cost-of-living crisis facing the working class. The August 2023 National Treasury austerity letter, stopping all new infrastructure projects and government recruitment, among others, was in essence driving the ANC out of power.

What is to be done?

During consultation in the Alliance, and equally important through open public statements, the SACP made clear its proposal for an ANC-led minority government with the features of a government of national unity. The ANC advanced its proposal for a government of national unity with the features of a minority government. Thus, despite the differing nuances, in principle both proposals refer to a government of national unity.

The SACP outrightly rejected a coalition with the DA or the MKP, maintaining strategic consistency against the counter-revolutionary neo-liberal and state capture agendas.

The DA sought to fabricate veto power for itself in pursuit of a grand coalition with the ANC, involving the IFP, under the guise of the so-called “sufficient consensus”. In its ploy to lock out other parties and thwart the advance to the formation of an inclusive government of national unity, the DA resorted to unconstitutional demands for DA cadre deployment and capture of the Deputy President’s position and a maximum number of government departments – run separately in a parallel DA-controlled cabinet section. The DA’s aim was to usurp power through this trickery and thus undermine the will of the people – who voted for the ANC to continue as the largest political party by electoral support.

The Central Committee welcomed our Political Bureau intervention to tackle the DA’s gatekeeping grand coalition trickery, veto power and other untenable demands. To this end, the inclusive process followed by the ANC to form the government of national unity played a major role. The increased number of political parties that subsequently came forward to support or participate in the ANC-led government of national unity also contributed to render the DA’s self-centered maneuvers ineffectual, leaving its insatiable appetite for veto power unsatisfied.

Going forward, the working class should not allow the inclusive composition of the government of national unity to serve as an entry point for a rightward shift in government policy and legislation development in parliament.

Going forward, the working class should not allow the inclusive composition of the government of national unity to serve as an entry point for a rightward shift in government policy and legislation development in parliament. The immediate task facing the working class is, therefore, to strengthen progressive trade unionism, organize the unorganized, build better and more effective political, community-based and sectoral organization, expand unity and consistently mobilize to confront any such rightward shift.

It is imperative for the working class to stand up and defend the democratic gains and commendable social advances, dismissed as “nothing” by reactionary and counter-revolutionary networks, that the workers and poor, and generally the formerly oppressed, have realized over the past thirty years. The workers and poor must assert themselves more than ever before as both a class in itself and a class for itself.

It is essential to ensure that no political center of power, not least, but not limited to, the government and parliament, exercises that power without the unifying input, influence and impact of the working class. To this end, the SACP will strengthen its efforts to build itself to become stronger and larger, to develop and deepen its vanguard role, including by intensified laboring at all times to achieve this working-class unity, both in perspective and action, through organization and deep-going mobilization. Forging a popular Left front and building a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor has become more relevant. This will serve as an insurance for the working class in the shifting balance of forces and sharpening class contradictions and contestations on all fronts, going forward.

Following the Central Committee plenary, the SACP will, therefore, immediately embark upon more extensive consultations with other working-class and progressive worker and civil society organizations in pursuit of such working-class power and a shift in the balance of forces in favor of the working class. This is crucial for the government to serve the majority of our people, being the working class itself. To do this, government apex priorities must include large-scale employment creation, poverty eradication and a radical reduction of inequality. To achieve this, a high-impact industrial policy towards structural transformation and industrialization, sufficiently supported by fiscal, monetary, international trade, infrastructure development and other policies, is imperative.

A comprehensive social security system, including a decisive advance to a universal basic income grant, is equally important as an apex priority. Implementation of the National Health Insurance, which the President recently signed into law, must be an indispensable part of our comprehensive social security system and human development policy. This should be accompanied by further expansions in access to education at all levels and the pursuit of a skills revolution.

The progressive thrust of the ANC’s May 2024 election manifesto outlines other key priorities that must be implemented to serve the people. These include commitments to financial sector transformation, the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund, the adoption of prescribed assets, adequate support for co-operatives to thrive in all sectors of the economy alongside SMMEs, accelerated land redistribution, a progressive agrarian reform, ensuring national food security, tackling the high cost of living, resolving the energy crisis and ensuring uninterrupted electric power supply, fixing our ports and rail networks, expanding access to water and sanitation, guaranteeing safety and security in our communities and economy, clamping down on corruption and crime, ensuring accountability, advancing gender equality and cracking down on interpersonal and gender-based violence. A stable governance environment will go a long way in supporting these priorities.

The SACP Central Committee received a report from the Secretariat on initial consultations towards a national dialogue. In endorsing the idea, the Central Committee plenary attached great importance to thoroughgoing mobilization, similar to the process followed to develop the Freedom Charter, to ensure national democratic revolutionary transformation and development outcomes.

The Cabinet

The Cabinet as announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday evening, 30 June 2024, is, above all else, largely a consequence and reflection of the shifting balance of forces flowing from the May 2024 election results, as well as both the positive and negative reactions from parliamentary parties to the ANC’s invitation to form part of the government of national unity. Positive responses, the number of seats in parliament and participation in the consultative process played a role in the extent of the parties’ inclusion in the Cabinet and among the deputy ministers. Negative responses led to non-participation, also contributing to the composition. The composition of the Cabinet and deputy ministers also reflects a compromise, a function of the balance of forces not favourable to the working class.

The SACP can also confirm that there were consultations in the Alliance. Like in other cases, consultations did not mean agreement on everything: absolute agreement is perhaps guaranteed only in a graveyard. Now what is important is for the government to serve the people, with the working class as the majority, which must build its organizational, technical and political capacity to impact on the direction that the government must follow and hold it and parliament accountable on the basis of working-class apex priorities, of which some we have just summarized.

Independent electoral commission

The SACP Central Committee endorsed the Party’s Political Bureau post-election stance on the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). While commending the IEC on its election management, the Political Bureau expressed deep concern regarding the issues that affected the elections on the commission’s side. These issues include the major technological breakdowns, especially, and largely, in African communities. These breakdowns contributed to delays in voting and system downtime disruptions during the counting process. The Central Committee reiterated the call made by the Political Bureau for an investigation into why these problems occurred.

The investigation must also include examining where the IEC sourced the technology it used. If it was sourced from another country, the investigation must assess that country’s attitude and its relations with ours at the time of the May 2024 elections and the implications that attitude may have had. The investigation is crucial to prevent future disruptions and secure the credibility of our elections, safeguarding our democratic national sovereignty.

The Central Committee added that the investigation should determine whether the technology used by the IEC was or could have been attacked through malware, viruses, hacking, other cybersecurity breaches, or software attacks that could compromise data integrity or result in data manipulation or corruption.

Besides engaging with our allies about the call and advancing it publicly, the SACP will seek a hearing with the IEC to discuss responses to this call. Thereafter, we will determine the next course of action.

While austerity impacted the IEC and needs to be rolled back in the interest of protecting the people’s hard-won democratic right to vote, the IEC could have done better in its awareness and voter education campaigns about new provisions such as Section 24A voting. The effect of Section 24A may account as part of the factors that contributed to a low voter turnout. In terms of this section, a voter could vote outside of the voting district where they registered but were required to notify the IEC between 15 March 2024 and 17 May 2024. Voters who could not do this for variety of reasons were turned back and did not vote. They were therefore excluded from exercising their right to vote. This needs to be addressed, going forward.

International solidarity

The SACP Secretariat met with the representatives of the people and government of Cuba led by the First Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa on the eve of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s inauguration. Based on the report received, the Central Committee reaffirmed the SACP’s all-rounded unwavering solidarity with the heroic people and government of Cuba against the United States-led imperialist aggression, including the illegal economic, financial, trade, investment and political blockade of Cuba and foreign occupation of the Cuba territory of Guantanamo Bay by the United States regime. The SACP will continue advocating for a comprehensive solidarity package from the South African government and peace-loving people for Cuba.

To take forward the SACP’s internationalism, the Central Committee expressed its solidarity with the people of other countries facing imperialist aggression, among others, including the people of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia in the Americas and Syria and Palestine in the Middle East.

The SACP has welcomed the decision by the government of Cuba to join the South African case against the genocide on the Palestinian people by the apartheid Israeli settler state. The pursuit of this case to the end, towards the freedom of historical Palestine, must continue as part of the South African government’s international solidarity and human rights efforts.

The Central Committee further reaffirmed the SACP’s unwavering solidarity with the people of Western Sahara against colonial occupation by the imperialist-backed Morocco and the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy.

Condolences to the families of the SANDF

The Central Committee expressed the SACP’s message of condolences to the families of the South African National Defence Force members who were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The SACP wishes those injured a speedy recovery and reiterates its call for the silencing of the guns and development of a peaceful environment in our continent.

Images: South African Communist Party members (Facebook); South African Communist Party members (Facebook); SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila by (Facebook); SACP smiles (Facebook); YCLSA National Committee Member Thabile Lenkwane casting her vote (Facebook); SACP event (Facebook); President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses African Mining Indaba 2023 by GovernmentZA ((Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic CC BY-ND 2.0 Deed).); SACP (Facebook); SACP condemns eviction of people from their homes by elitshanews.org.za (Creative commons).

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