Tripartite Alliance collapse will precede ANC’s: John Matisonn

Key topics:ANC–SACP conflict erupts as communists plan to field rival candidatesTripartite Alliance fractures expose deeper ideological and generational splitsAlliance tensions threaten ANC morale, unity, and local election prospects.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By John Matisonn.ANC delegates jeering at an alliance partner South African Communist Party leader, threats to expel its members from the ANC, and fears of SACP “sleeper agents” in ANC campaign meetings point to the next phase of the ANC’s decline.As a result of these conflicts, the ANC’s tripartite alliance with the SACP and labour federation Cosatu had its worst national event yet at the three-day general council meeting of the ANC.Although the track record of SACp candidates in recent by-elections suggests they will not make a significant dent in ANC votes, this development is nevertheless important because of its effect on both ANC morale and campaign volunteer recruitment in next year’s local elections. Public disruption by delegates at this important national event is usually a good sign of where the uncontrollable tensions in the party lie. Going into the NGC, it was assumed the potentially divisive conflict would be around the presidential succession, in the battle between frontrunners like Deputy President Paul Mashatile, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula and other names being floated by leaders unhappy with these choices, but this time those differences were well controlled.Instead, the conflict erupted from the more urgent threat that the SACP will field its own candidates in next year’s local elections out of frustration that the ANC has side-lined it from decision-making..Significantly. SACP leader Solly Mapalia chose not to attend, leaving first deputy secretary Madala Masuku to endure the heckling from ANC delegates angry at the prospect that running SACP candidates will cost the ANC votes at a time when they are already vulnerable. When Masuku declared that the ANC was being “overcome by bourgeois class interests” he was roundly booed.The absence of the SACP leader from the event suggests he knew a rebuke was coming. But the SACP has remained determined to run its own candidates, which means they will be competing directly with the ANC for votes.That decision will pit former loyal allies against each other, and the sources of ANC campaigners, especially in Cosatu, will be reduced.This conflict reflects not only a split between the two organisations but a split within them, especially within the SACP, where older leaders led by retired SACP leader Blade Nzimande, who remains in cabinet, represent different interests from the hungry generation that succeeded him. At the heart of the conflict is an ideological contradiction that has compromised all three parties to the alliance. While styling itself the revolutionary voice of the poor, the most prominent feature of the alliance’s “transformation” agenda benefits instead the black middle class – BEE.This government policy has incentivised investors to create black owners, but not black workers, and Cosatu and the SACP have endorsed that policy, holding marches in favour of BEE in the guise of “the workers’ revolution”. As economic conditions deteriorate, this contradiction has come to the fore. Even now, new ANC members must go to a political school where they are taught about the central role of transformation to the National Democratic Revolution, especially BEE, but nobody in the leadership has confronted the fact that it makes no sense, particularly in the Marxist terms used in the NDR. .In reality, the ANC has repeatedly rejected pressure from the left to go into more debt to provide more benefits to the poor or to strengthen the state’s control of commercial institutions including new banks. These are some of the SACP’s demands.The ANC leaders around President Cyril Ramaphosa have consistently dodged that bullet by refusing to relinquish power to an alliance structure they would not dominate.The SACP has taken a firm decision to run candidates in the 2026 local elections, and on December 1, the ANC’s highest decision-making body between congresses, the National Executive Committee, responded by ruling out dual membership out of fear that “sleeper agents” would attend ANC strategy sessions and report the outcomes. It’s unclear if the ANC will go ahead and expel members, or simply try to exclude them from election meetings.

Tripartite Alliance collapse will precede ANC’s: John Matisonn

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