FEW political groups in the democratic world are still regarded by commentators and the media as a meaningful factor while having as little substance as the SACP.
The famous vanguard party of the liberation movement has now become the rearguard party but still struts around like a tattered rooster, crowing as if the yard still belongs to it. It is determined to be the last pure communist party in world history.
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 the EFF.
Since 1994, the SACP has been part of the Tripartite Alliance with the ANC and Cosatu. Instead of preparing the ground for a purely socialist future, a “national democratic revolution”, the ANC has progressively moved further away from socialism, nationalisation, and the dominance of the working class.
Top leaders of the SACP have been in key positions in the ANC’s cabinet for those 30 years – and still are.
The national chairperson of the SACP, Blade Nzimande, is the minister of higher education, and the deputy minister of finance, David Masondo, is an SACP 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?
A final break between the ANC and the SACP has the potential to allow the ANC to finally refine its policies on the economy honestly and without fear, rather than preaching socialism yet applying market-friendly policies in practice.
ANC policy could thus become a clear example of social democracy – and simultaneously formulate a more realistic foreign policy that serves South African interests rather than ideology and nostalgia.
The SACP threatens at every national congress to participate in elections as an independent political party. Nothing has come of this – well, in 2017, the SACP did field candidates against the ANC in a by-election in Metsimaholo (Sasolburg) and won three out of 42 wards. That was the first and last time.
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 by implementing the outcomes of the Special National Congress across all fronts of struggle and power contestation in society, including the electoral front. The time for bold, militant action has arrived.”
And: “For far too long – dating back to July 2007 – the SACP has pursued the reconfiguration of the Alliance from within … In our determination to build broader working-class unity, strengthen our efforts to forge a popular left front and build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and the poor, we will also engage with other progressive worker and left formations, including trade unions.”
The SACP still blames the “1996 class project” for all the country’s failures. This refers to the ANC’s Gear (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) policy spearheaded by Thabo Mbeki. The SACP stubbornly ignores the hard reality that Gear had led to the best performance of the economy to date.
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.
If the SACP wanted to exploit voters' dissatisfaction with the ANC, it should have done so before Jacob Zuma formed his Umkhonto we Sizwe Party. MK is now the only real haven for ANC dissidents – even EFF defectors.
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) control 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 GNU. But the SACP’s fierce campaign against the current GNU means it strongly bolsters the hand of the neo-RET (radical economic transformation) faction (read: Panyaza Lesufi et al), which advocates 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? Or anybody apart from a tiny political 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.
♦ VWB ♦
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Max du Preez is the editor-in-chief of Vrye Weekblad. He was the founding editor of the original Vrye Weekblad.
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