The South African Communist Party (SACP) faces internal and external challenges as Secretary-General Solly Mapaila pushes for independence and a break from the ANC-led alliance. Without consensus or resources, the SACP’s plans for independent political participation in 2026 appear unlikely, despite Mapaila’s calls for socialist transformation and anti-imperialist strategies.
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By John Matisonn ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Despite Communist Party secretary general Solly Mapaila’s recent statements that the SACP is on the brink of claiming its “independence” and running its own candidates for office, other party officials consider it unlikely to happen.
What seems to have tipped the scales for Mapaila is the ANC’s decision to bring into government the “the right-wing, neo-liberal DA …. buttressing the entrenched neo-liberal paradigm” of the ANC, which he believes started with GEAR in 1996.
Mapaila told a TV reporter the government of national unity (GNU) he was confident it would not last the full five-year term, and that he plans to engage in bilateral meetings with the third alliance partner, COSATU to explore a change in direction.
This engagement process will reflect the party’s “commitment to secure the success of the anti-imperialist national democratic revolution, which is the basis for our Alliance, and the overall struggle for socialist transformation.”
While the party’s influence is long past its high point, such a break would mark another significant milestone in the decline of the ANC-led alliance that brought the ANC to power in 1994.
But other party leaders poured cold water on the idea, privately confident that he will not have the votes in the party to pull it off.
Mapaila has got ahead of the party a couple of times, including when he recently proposed that “black parties” get together, which older leaders reminded him would break 100 years of non-racialism, more than half that time while the ANC had only black members.
Choosing partners from “black parties” would mean the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Mkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), but most SACP members who are officials in government and ANC jobs at national, provincial and local level oppose breaking with the ANC.
Nor is there unity among communists behind the idea that the EFF and MKP fit their definitions of socialism, since they have different policies on the power of traditional chiefs over land and stigmatise single mothers, for example.
The third member of the tripartite alliance, Cosatu, which works closely with the SACP, faces the same configuration, with Cosatu members also dotted around government.
The result is that despite Mapaila’s combative statements there is neither a party consensus nor the funds for the party to go it alone without getting smashed at the polls. This is likely to prevent a greatly weakened SACP from running independently in the 2026 local elections.
Mapaila’s statement followed a politburo meeting last week, in preparation for a special national congress from 11 to 14 December at which a decision is expected to be taken.
“The key task facing the SACP at its Special National Congress is clear,” Mapaila said. “Assert its independence with unwavering determination in the struggle to end unemployment, poverty, inequality and the system of capitalist exploitation.”
With the fall of the Soviet Union, the SACP has had trouble adapting its ideology, which now focuses on public works projects, social income grants as opposed to austerity, and support for co-operatives and small business. It has also embraced the National Health Insurance (NHI) and the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA Act).
On foreign policy, it supports challenging “the US-led imperialist collective West” in the wake of the rise of China and the recent assertiveness of Russia.
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