SACP warns it will no longer be a junior partner in the ANC-led alliance

The South African Communist Party (SACP) has warned that it will no longer accept being treated as a junior partner in the ANC-led Alliance, and is prepared to contest future elections independently.

This follows what the party describes as years of marginalisation, policy disagreements, and a failure to implement the core programme of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

Speaking during the SACP’s three-day Central Committee conference in Braamfontein, secretary  general Solly Mapaila delivered a sharp critique of the ANC’s leadership, accusing it of abandoning the Alliance’s shared vision and imposing neoliberal economic policies without consultation.

“We reject to be treated as a junior partner,” said Mapaila. “And those who think that they are junior partners, when they belong to the Communist Party, they are in the wrong party.”

''We are not a junior partner in the Alliance. We have given ourselves fully to the liberation of thiscountry. We have made major initiatives in the struggle for national liberation in this country,including venturing into armed struggle, together with the African National Congress.And we have accepted the leadership of the African National Congress in this regard,'' said Mapaila, 

He said the Alliance’s revolutionary objectives, the eradication of racism, patriarchy, and economic inequality, have been sidelined, with government policies increasingly favouring corporate interests over working-class needs.

“We have now removed, officially, the white minority in positions of power. We’ve got a democracy. But what does it mean for the poor people in the villages? Thirty years into democracy, that’s the point we are discussing, that’s the point we are resolving,” Mapaila said.

The SACP has long called for a “reconfiguration of the Alliance” to ensure meaningful engagement between its partners, the ANC, SACP, and COSATU, especially on strategic questions.

However, Mapaila said the ANC has acted unilaterally on key policy matters, including the adoption of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy in the late 1990s.

“Neoliberalism, when it was imposed on us, there was no discussion about it. We took away the RDP and placed GEAR on the table as an economic policy. No discussion,” he said.

The party blames austerity, privatisation, and the weakening of state-owned enterprises for the deepening crisis in service delivery and inequality. It also claims that its warnings and policy proposals have consistently been ignored by ANC leadership across successive administrations.

“This programme has itself been in crisis under the leadership of our allies, the African National Congress,” Mapaila said. “Our views have been ignored in many instances on how to resolve these problems.”

Tensions around the future of the Alliance have reached a critical point. Mapaila reminded delegates and the media that the SACP’s 15th National Congress resolved that the party should contest elections independently if no progress was made in reconfiguring the Alliance.

“The Congress said, if there’s no configuration of the Alliance, the SACP must contest elections on its own, with or without the configuration of the Alliance,” Mapaila said. “Now there’s no configuration of the Alliance.”

The deadline set by the Central Committee was December 2022, and the party has signalled that it is prepared to act on this resolution if conditions do not change.

Mapaila also pushed back against the portrayal of SACP members serving in ANC structures as merely aligned with the ANC.

“They are ANC members in their own right,” he said. “As much as members of the ANC, they decided to join the Communist Party and pursue a further struggle to deepen this transformation.”

hope.ntanzi@iol.co.za

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