Marxist, XLI, 3, July–September 2025
Document
Reasserting the Revolution in the National Democratic Revolution
Embracing the outcomes of our 5th Special National Congress (SNC) outlining immediate tasks of the Party and the working class in the struggle for socialism, assessing the state of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) through the lens of thirty years since the historic 1994 democratic breakthrough.
On the home front
At the heart of our NDR at present is the urgent task of renewal. That is the task to secure our democratic national sovereignty, with the policy space an apex priority, to dislodge neoliberalism and reassert the revolutionary values of our liberation struggle, to tackle the problems the masses find themselves in.
We believe that by building a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor, to build momentum towards the elements of and capacity for socialism in the here and now, and to tackle the hyper-financialisation of our economy, we will make progress in carrying out this urgent task of our revolution. This anti-imperialist struggle is a struggle to safeguard our national independence and ensure that we build a democracy that serves our people, the majority of whom are the working- class and poor.
There is a deepening neoliberal crisis plunging the country into more uncertainty, surely, exposing the trajectory pursued by the dominant and leading neoliberal tendency in the ANC, cajoling everyone to toe the line in support of the Government of National Unity. (GNU). This situation has exposed a worrying anti-communist tendency from inside the ANC, and even broader sections of the movement. We even hear veiled threats on dual membership and the future of the Alliance. A matter we will pay some special attention to as things are unravelling within the GNU and the contest for the leadership of the current is in full traction.
The intersection of fascism, imperialism,
and neoliberalism in post-apartheid South Africa
The reactionary forces of imperialism and white supremacist ideology have continued to manifest within South Africa, thirty years since the democratic breakthrough. This phenomenon aligns with the broader global resurgence of fascism, epitomised by the Trump administration’s agenda and the neoliberal policies that serve as the ideological scaffolding of imperialism. In the South African context, this agenda is advanced by reactionary forces such as the Democratic Alliance (DA) and organisations like AfriForum, who have inherited and continue to champion the ideological legacy of the Broederbond – a clandestine structure committed to entrenching white supremacy by all means necessary.
The Broederbond, accurately described by Dan O’Meara as an “arrogant, self-chosen elite operating by stealth and intrigue,” constituted the ideological brain trust of apartheid-era fascism. Its cultural aspirations were ultimately overshadowed by its rabid racial chauvinism and neo-fascist designs. As a covert apparatus of Afrikaner nationalism, the Broederbond embedded itself into the economic, political, and ideological structures of South Africa to sustain white minority rule. Today, organisations such as AfriForum serve as its ideological successors, mobilising international campaigns to undermine South Africa’s sovereignty and perpetuate neo-colonial domination.
One of their most insidious recent actions has been the perpetuation of the false narrative that Black South Africans are engaged in a genocidal campaign against the white Afrikaner population. This fabrication found fertile ground within Trump’s administration, leading to discussions about granting white South Africans refugee status in the US – a move designed to delegitimise South Africa’s democratic order on the global stage.
The resurgence of these reactionary forces is unsurprising. They draw from the long tradition of white supremacist unity that historically bound British colonialists and Afrikaner nationalists. This unity was forged through the ideological construct of Swart Gevaar, a fear-mongering tool akin to the anti-Semitic propaganda Hitler deployed in Mein Kampf. Both ideologies relied on racial scapegoating to justify exclusionary and oppressive policies. In the case of the Broederbond, Swart Gevaar was wielded to entrench apartheid and racial segregation, portraying Black South Africans as existential threats to white cultural and economic stability. Similarly, Hitler framed Jewish people as enemies of German purity, using this narrative to validate the Holocaust and the exterminationist policies of the Nazi regime.
Though the specific historical contexts differ, the ideological foundation remains the same: racial hierarchy, fear-based mobilisation, and systemic oppression. These ideological frameworks laid the foundation for the colonialism of a special type that characterised South Africa’s historical trajectory. The persistence of these reactionary forces today underscores the unfinished task of national liberation.
The crisis of the post-apartheid state
The treasonous actions of AfriForum should have elicited a decisive response from the South African state. Instead, we have witnessed a feeble and inconsistent reaction, indicative of the broader inertia that has plagued the post-1994 dispensation. This failure is emblematic of the compromises made during the Codesa negotiations, which resulted in a truncated democratic order incapable of fully dismantling the colonial and capitalist structures that sustain racial and class oppression.
Compounding this crisis is the spectre of a DA–ANC coalition masquerading under a “Government of National Unity.” This coalition represents the consolidation of neoliberal governance, which has systematically betrayed the aspirations of the working class. The contradictions inherent in this arrangement continue to manifest in policy disputes and internal instability, as seen in the recent debates around VAT increases. The DA’s opportunistic posturing as defenders of the downtrodden is a façade designed to protect middle-class interests and safeguard corporate privileges, while the ANC’s approach has lacked both consultation and foresight.
Assessing the revolutionary trajectory
This year marks 63 years since the South African Communist Party (SACP) adopted The Road to South African Freedom, and 36 years since the publication of The Path to Power. These documents correctly characterised South Africa as a colonial state of a special type, where the indigenous working class remained subjugated under capitalist exploitation despite political advancements. The strategic objectives outlined in these documents remain as relevant today as they were then:
The national liberation of the African people and Black South Africans in general.
The destruction of the economic and political power of the colonial, racist ruling class.
The establishment of a united South Africa where the working class is the dominant force.
The eventual realisation of a socialist South Africa, laying the foundation for a classless, communist society.
The central question of the present moment is whether the forces of liberation have succeeded in dismantling the colonial state and replacing it with a truly democratic and socialist order. Have we undone the ideological poison propagated by the fascist intellectuals of the Broederbond? Have we neutralised the economic and political power of the racist ruling class? Have we ensured that the working class has risen to become the dominant force within the South African state? And, most critically, have we taken decisive steps toward establishing socialism, the indispensable foundation for a future communist society?
Some of the answers to these questions will determine the direction of the revolutionary struggle in the years to come.
The scientific framework for understanding colonialism of a special type in South Africa
A proper analysis of the contemporary South African state must begin with an objective, scientific framework that correctly defines its colonial character. The method of inquiry must remain disciplined, rooted in Marxist-Leninist analysis, and aligned with the foundational principles of historical materialism. In this regard, South Africa’s colonialism of a special type (CST) possesses distinct characteristics that differentiate it from conventional forms of colonial domination while maintaining the fundamental structures of economic exploitation, racial oppression, and imperialist subjugation.
The NDR – Strategic Content of the Revolution
The NDR in South Africa remains the most direct and shortest path to socialism. Its vision, historical mission and strategic objectives were summarised in the Freedom Charter in 1955. The Freedom Charter is in line with the statement of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties adopted in 1960 in Moscow, the Soviet Union, including the SACP. The statement outlines key national-revolutionary, anti-imperialist, democratic tasks to end all forms of colonial and imperialist oppression, domination and exploitation, and to secure national independence, democratic sovereignty, the fundamental right to self-determination.
In South Africa, this national, anti-imperialist, democratic revolution seeks to dismantle the systematic, structural and tendential legacies of colonialism and CST, including apartheid.
Fundamental Characteristics of Imperialist Capital and the Construction of South African Capitalism
Contrary to the organic development of capitalism through revolutionary anti-feudal struggles seen in Europe, South African capitalism was imposed externally – by imperialist centres.
British imperial capital financed the mining industry, establishing South Africa’s
economic subjugation to global monopoly capital.
The colonial state constructed the necessary infrastructure – railways, ports, and communications – to facilitate capitalist expansion.
The military conquest of African nations provided the conditions for political unification
under settler rule, ensuring continued imperialist extraction.
The racially exclusive capitalist system extended and consolidated itself, guaranteeing increased profitability through land dispossession, labour exploitation, and the institutionalisation of racist legal frameworks.
The Revolutionary Task of the Working Class in South Africa
The South African state has never ceased to be a colonial entity. The essential structures of oppression, dispossession, and capitalist exploitation remain firmly in place. As revolutionaries, the central question remains:
Has the colonial bourgeoisie been overthrown?
Has the economic and political power of the colonial racist ruling class been dismantled?
Has the working class risen as the dominant force in shaping the trajectory of South Africa?
Has the path toward socialism been firmly advanced to eliminate the material foundations of CST?
These questions must guide the revolutionary struggle, ensuring that the incomplete liberation process advances toward its necessary resolution – the establishment of socialism and the complete eradication of colonial domination.
The domination of monopoly capital and recruitment of comprador elites.
Today, monopoly capital exercises hegemonic control over every sector of the South African economy. The development of capitalist forces of production has resulted in the substantial growth of a modern proletariat, numerically the largest class in the country. Even in rural areas, agrarian labourers and migrant workers form the overwhelming majority. Despite industrialisation, bourgeois class domination continues, stemming from the colonial oppression of the Black, especially African majority.
In every economic sector – mining, manufacturing, finance, and even agriculture –
monopoly capital prevails overwhelmingly.
Enormous power is concentrated in a handful of corporations that control vast economic empires.
Afrikaner-controlled monopolies have emerged over the past decades, merging their interests with the historically dominant English-speaking capitalists.
The role of the state in capitalist preservation
The South African state plays a decisive role in sustaining monopoly capitalism. State-owned enterprises in key sectors – armaments, energy, and transport – function as pillars propping up the entire capitalist economy. The collusion between private monopoly capital and the state has intensified over time, ensuring that economic power remains insulated from the working-class demands for redistribution and social transformation.
Faced with deepening contradictions and the threat of a national democratic revolution, monopoly capitalists have sought to restructure racial domination rather than dismantle it. Their advocacy for “group rights” under various political arrangements masks their underlying strategy: preserving their monopoly over national wealth while securing continued economic dominance through neoliberal restructuring.
The persistence of colonial and apartheid structures
The enduring effect has been the survival of the structural foundations of colonial and apartheid-era governance. The intersection of capitalism, imperialism, racial oppression, and gender subjugation remains intact, continuously reinforced through neoliberal economic policies. Despite progressive legal reforms, the core institutions of economic domination remain untouched.
State organs continue to reproduce colonial and apartheid-era relations through:
Entrenched economic inequalities rooted in apartheid capitalism.
Bureaucratic inefficiencies inherited from colonial administration.
Spatial divisions that sustain economic marginalisation.
Legal and judicial systems that disproportionately favor established elites.
Educational and ideological structures that perpetuate systemic exclusions.
The revolutionary task Ahead
If true national liberation is to be achieved, the monopoly domination of capital must be abolished, and the economic legacy of colonial dispossession must be dismantled. The power configuration that allowed the capitalist class to preserve control while permitting formal democracy must be fundamentally transformed. Only the revolutionary destruction of this economic order can pave the way for socialism – the only framework capable of ensuring genuine emancipation for the working class and oppressed masses.
Breaking the chains of colonial and apartheid-era legacies: a revolutionary path forward. The persistence of colonial and apartheid-era structures continues to define South Africa’s political, economic, and social realities. The failure to radically transform these inherited structures has ensured that racialised capitalism, spatial segregation, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and ideological distortions remain firmly embedded within the system. Breaking free from these constraints requires a revolutionary program that prioritises bold policy shifts, economic restructuring, and cultural transformation.
Economic inequality and skewed land ownership
Land remains the foundation of economic power, yet its ownership remains overwhelmingly in the hands of white landowners – a direct continuation of colonial dispossession and apartheid-era legal frameworks.
Corporate Dominance – The capitalist economy remains firmly controlled by conglomerates established during apartheid, particularly in the mining and agricultural sectors. Economic transformation has been deliberately obstructed by monopoly interests.
Wealth Disparities – The racialised wealth gap continues to deepen, disproportionately affecting Black South Africans, particularly Africans. Unemployment and poverty are systematically enforced through the monopolisation of economic structures by the capitalist elite.
Despite interventions such as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), ownership structures remain largely untransformed. The exploitation of Black mineworkers persists, evidenced by continuing exploitation, retrenchments at will and the brutal labour conditions and repression, as reflected in the Marikana Massacre of 2012 – a violent reminder of the continuity between apartheid-era state repression and contemporary capitalist violence.
Spatial segregation and unequal development
Apartheid spatial planning deliberately confined Black South Africans to townships far removed from economic hubs, entrenching geographic and economic isolation. Today, these divisions remain intact.
Township marginalisation – Areas such as Soweto, Khayelitsha, and Alexandra continue to suffer from chronic underdevelopment, overcrowding, and lack of economic opportunities, despite neoliberal promises of renewal.
Public transport failures – Colonial-era transport models limit mobility, reinforcing economic exclusion. Marginalised communities face systemic barriers in accessing job opportunities due to spatial segregation.
Infrastructure disparities – Historically white areas maintain superior access to roads, sanitation, and essential services, while townships remain deliberately neglected.
Despite cosmetic reforms, township development remains stalled. Government policies have failed to dismantle spatial inequalities, leaving the majority of Black South Africans trapped in poverty- stricken areas.
Bureaucratic inefficiencies and the legacy of colonial governance
State institutions operate within frameworks inherited from colonial and apartheid-era administration, ensuring the slow and ineffective implementation of transformation policies.
Bureaucratic inertia – Colonial governance models still define administrative structures,
preventing meaningful systemic change.
Weak policy implementation – While progressive laws exist, they are routinely undermined by inefficiencies and the deliberate sabotage of transformation programs by embedded reactionary forces.
Corruption and patronage – The legacy of elite-controlled governance has fostered an entrenched culture of corruption and mismanagement, diverting state resources away from the working class.
State institutions responsible for service delivery – such as housing and municipal governance – continue to function within outdated bureaucratic structures, leading to the collapse of essential services such as water, electricity, and housing.
Education, cultural imperialism, and systemic exclusion
The colonial education system was designed to serve imperialist interests, marginalising indigenous knowledge and reinforcing Eurocentric ideological hegemony.
Unequal education – Historically Black schools remain systematically underfunded, perpetuating the inequalities entrenched under apartheid’s Bantu Education system.
Western-centric curricula – The education system prioritises Eurocentric narratives while erasing African knowledge systems, languages, and traditions.
Economic elitism – Colonial and apartheid-era thinking continues to dismiss indigenous African economic models, ensuring the unchallenged dominance of Western capitalist structures.
The Fees Must Fall movement (2015–2016) exposed the entrenched racial and class inequalities within higher education. Black students, largely working class, continue to face systemic exclusion, while access to education in indigenous languages remains severely restricted. This moment for radical transformation was missed and even abused for internal organisational matters than for deepening transformation and entrenching decolonisation of curriculum and the education sector as a whole.
Legal and Judicial Frameworks:
The Enduring Structures of Colonial Law
The legal system, rooted in Roman Dutch colonial jurisprudence, remains incapable of addressing systemic racial inequalities, relies on relics of colonial records and thus continues to favour established elites. Every revolution must entrench its law.
Slow land restitution – Legal battles over land claims systematically favor monopoly interests, delaying justice for dispossessed communities.
Judicial inequalities – The legal framework remains structurally incapable of addressing historic injustices, ensuring the continued marginalisation of the oppressed majority.
Communities have spent decades navigating a legal system designed to delay and obstruct meaningful land restitution. These deliberate barriers serve to reinforce capitalist control over land and resources. We need to convene a national convention of the communal property associations to consult on a radical way forward to push for concrete land transfer and ownership by the people.
Political and Governance Challenges:
The Crisis of Neoliberal Administration
The neoliberal governance model inherited from apartheid has resulted in institutional inefficiencies and continued social exclusion.
Weak local governance – The legacy of centralised apartheid governance has ensured the dysfunctionality of local government structures, leaving communities vulnerable to poor service delivery.
Failure to involve communities – Government policies frequently sideline grassroots participation, rendering transformation efforts ineffective.
Working class resistance and revolutionary potential: Worker-led movements and grassroots organisations remain fragmented, limiting their ability to challenge capitalist exploitation and the neoliberal agenda.
Stalled NDR: the NDR has stalled with challenges encountered, with less consensus in the alliance on how to revive it. The ANC-led government – our strategic tool of social transformation – has prioritised capitalist stability over people centred and people driven radical transformation, failing to advance the revolutionary objectives outlined in the Freedom Charter.
Given these realities, it is evident that South Africa remains a bourgeois capitalist state, with economic power concentrated in white hands and foreign ownership. The working class continues to bear the brunt of capitalist exploitation, while the liberation movement struggles to maintain its hold on state machinery and a moral social force.
The path forward lies in organising and mobilising the working class for a second revolutionary takeover of power by the working class – as the ANC led liberation movement is terribly faltering. This requires the unapologetic pursuit of a socialist program that dismantles colonial and apartheid- era class structures, redistributes economic power, and establishes a workers’ state. Only through the radical transformation of the state and economy can South Africa achieve genuine liberation and escape the grip of neoliberalism and right-wing reactionary forces.
In the context of our situation failure to embrace this may give rise to populist forces to hijack the discontent of the masses and lead the revolution – possibly astray, as it could not guarantee its thoroughgoing nature towards socialism – in other words we cannot be guaranteed the force to win elections will be committee to the NDR project, since we also do not own the NDR as we neither do socialism.
On the People’s Red Caravan:
A People’s Movement for Collective-Driven,
Self-Reliant Socio-economic Change
At this present moment of working-class revolutionary struggle, the Red Caravan should seek to revive revolutionary enthusiasm amongst our cadres and communities to stand up and do for themselves. If well conceptualised and driven, the Red Caravan could constitute the first SACP autonomously led platform (without being isolationist) for building and experimenting, perhaps on a wider scale, basic grass roots socialists’ elements with the community-based incentive system. To this end, it is an interesting project on my part, especially, we hope comrades can find it appropriate.
We should, of course, believe that the community economy could compensate or develop the material base for the development and emergence of a new social consciousness. In other words, we are attempting to build socialism without state power under our control, hence focusing on the elementary features. “The role of the vanguard Party is precisely that of raising as high as possible the opposing banner, the banner of moral interest, of moral incentive, of the men who fight and sacrifice themselves and expect nothing more than the recognition of their compañeros” Che Guevara from Carlos Tablada’s, Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism
We also need to fill the leadership deficit in communities and build an organisational form to lead collectively with the communities. This could simultaneously develop the social and moral consciousness of the revolution and accelerate self-reliance material base and consequent detachment from capitalism, whilst existing in its broad surroundings. Going to communities on the Red Caravan will imbue within us the spirit of exemplary leadership and, perhaps most importantly, give weight to what we demand for our people. The Caravan will also act as a bridge to reconnect the liberation movement with the grassroots economic programs. This can defeat the fatally discredited movement’s inability to renew itself and rebuild a social contract with the people. This can happen if the ANC is serious about renewal by undergoing serious radical changes.
This process will attempt to outline key tasks of the Party in the struggle of the working class. We should have an intense honest analysis on how to link a party to its traditional support base rooted in unique mass mobilising and Cadre participation in organising (from a principle of Every Cadre is an Organiser) to build a consistent and conscious mass mobilisation capacity, with a clear objective for mobilisation.
Some of the immediate tasks we have is to embark on elementary grass roots mobilisation on the self- reliance and sustainability of communities, to fight food insecurity for food security and sovereignty and household-based community employment to address the immediate material realities of the working class.
We encourage all comrades to join and initiate the Red Caravan across all districts. We call on members of the CC and provincial executives, the districts, our branches and activists, community development specialists and professionals able to provide some community services pro bono. Join the national Red Caravan Project to reconnect with the masses and consult them and jointly tackle with them problems they face. Defend the gains of the revolution and advance working-class interest.
This possibility calls on the SACP to develop extraordinary visions of socialist path of democracy, to pursue new different forms of revolutionary community struggles – action based on their common vision and challenges.
To achieve this, our organisation we must build appropriate capacities to pursue our cause, the struggle for socialism. The South African Communist Party will have to confront these challenges for the class. Through in-depth analysis in engaging our ideological foundations to defeat our class enemy capitalism and its proxies like the Democratic Alliance as well as their politics and illusions.
Remarkably, this moment requires party structures to assert ideological hegemony and organisational strength, presence and visibility in tackling social problems in advancing working class struggles. This moment needs deep reflections and serious engagement with the ideological foundations of our Marxist -Leninist tradition as well as deep appreciation for the concrete realities of our societies given current challenges. This should be a research component of this initiative. The SACP need to maintain anti-capitalist class struggle by focusing on transforming economic power relations, economic inequality between black and white, created by colonialism and apartheid.
In this regard we should avoid unnecessary diversions, including peripheral debates in the name of internal discussions, theoretical debates reversing just recently agreed decisions, we should strengthen the ideas of how to implement the resolutions of the 5th SNC and be all on the wheel. Equally, we should welcome debates but at least decode what they really – reject those that retains the status quo and worsen the conditions of the working class.
Has it been this way since and what could have been done?
Despite highly commendable political and social advances benefitting millions of our people since 1994, years of neoliberal policies have entrenched the legacies of colonialism and apartheid, reinforcing racial and gender inequalities, deepening economic marginalisation and perpetuating systemic poverty and unemployment. These policies have failed to dismantle the structural injustices of colonialism of a special type (CST) and have weakened the state’s capacity for transformative development.
The 2024 electoral loss of the ANC-led liberation forces’ majority represents a significant political setback for progressive forces. This outcome reflects mass dissatisfaction with the failure to address capitalist crises, including unemployment, poverty, inequality, the rising cost of living and high crime rates. It underscores the crisis of working-class representation in electoral politics, driven by voter disillusionment with neoliberalism and state capture. This disillusionment has fuelled a dangerous shift towards ethnic populism and race-based politics.
Delegates reaffirmed that the SACP’s perspective that the coalition arrangement with the neoliberal DA under the GNU betrays our Alliance Political Council agreement for the Alliance partners, the SACP, COSATU and Sanco to be represented in the Statement of Intent Technical Committee and the Negotiating Team. The conclusion to the GNU within a coalition arrangement with the DA as a significant player came because of the unilateralism through which the ANC excluded the Alliance partners’ input in the drafting of the Statement of Intent and in the negotiations process.
The DA is a neoliberal party against the NDR’s transformative objectives and has been the champion of austerity and privatisation policies in Parliament in its opposition to our movement.
The DA has done so under conditions where decades of neoliberal economic policies – epitomised by GEAR and subsequent austerity measures – have entrenched poverty, inequality and unemployment while weakening state capacity for transformative development. These policies have also failed to address environmental degradation, gender-based violence and femicide, and structural racism, deepening capitalist social and economic crises and threatening to derail the revolutionary content of the NDR.
The SACP has rejected the idea that the core of the post-1996 neoliberal policy trajectory represents “good policies” that are failed by a lack of implementation. The neoliberal policy trajectory is an exploitative capitalist path aimed at profit maximisation. It was under this trajectory that the workplace has been restructured, workers dismissed and privatisation and outsourcing entrenched. In major metropolitan municipalities, and at other spheres of the government, as well as in public entities, tenderisation has undermined state capacity.
At present, more so since the undermining of our manifesto after the 2019 elections, the neoliberal policy trajectory has increasingly focused on achieving micro-economic liberalisation to “open up” major state sectors, such as the network infrastructure sectors, for exploitation by private interests through capitalist competition.
It was in this context the high radio frequency spectrum was privatised in an auction to the highest bidders under the pretext of de-monopolising the information and communication sector. This has served to entrench the monopoly as the dominant commercial interests in the sector are the ones that captured the lion’s share of the spectrum. The Fifth SNC reaffirmed the SACP’s rejection of neoliberalism, no matter how it is disguised.
Report of the 5th Special National Congress
We arguably held a successful SNC – a watershed in the direction of the SACP in the prosecution of the NDR and the struggle for socialism. Of course, this was not without challenges, including financial and political and organisational. We came out with a new impetus to pursue the working- class struggle for socialism. We should give proper feedback to our structures on the outcomes and not spin and even start new debates seeking to reverse what we resolved.
Economic and social crises
South Africa’s persistent economic and social crises highlight the structural failures of capitalism. Chronic unemployment, now consistently exceeding 30 per cent, and higher youth unemployment represent a structural crisis condemning millions to economic exclusion. De-industrialisation, precarious and informal work and profit-driven policies worsen the situation. This is the perspective adopted by the Fifth SNC in assessing the conditions facing the working class.
The SNC said the conditions of the working are getting worse under freedom, leading to the masses questioning the value of freedom stolen by the political elites of comprador bourgeoisie.
Our health system remains one of the most unequal globally. Meanwhile, the DA opposed to the advance towards the National Health Insurance, is now the strategic partner in government. A private healthcare system serves a largely a white minority at 72% and Black people at 10%, while the underfunded and overcrowded public system serves the majority. In other words, the current medical aid schemes represent apartheid practice under democratic government.
This inequality, rooted in neoliberal policies prioritising profits over health, leaves millions, especially the majority of whom are black workers and poor, with women affected the most, without adequate healthcare and delipidating hospital infrastructure. That is why we need the speedy implementation to the NHI and call all our MECs of Health to support hospitals and improve their capacity to serve the people, through appropriate delegation of powers to hospital CEOs to manage hospitals efficiently and properly.
The SNC further reaffirmed the SACP’s analysis, that inequality in wealth and income – already among the world’s highest – continues to widen. Essential public services, including education and infrastructure, risk collapse under austerity and systemic corruption. Power outages – load shedding and load reduction, water shortages and failing infrastructure expose neoliberal governance failures, further eroding the dignity and quality of life for the working class and poor, majority Blacks – Africans, Indians and Coloureds.
The SNC reaffirmed that capitalism entrenches inequality and poverty while driving environmental degradation, gender-based violence and rising social violence. Only socialist transformation can dismantle these oppressive systems and build a future prioritising equality and dignity.
The SNC reaffirmed that capitalism entrenches inequality and poverty while driving environmental degradation, gender-based violence and rising social violence. Only socialist transformation can dismantle these oppressive systems and build a future prioritising equality and dignity.
Key resolutions from the Special National Congress:
Reaffirming the NDR as the strategic path to socialism
The SNC resolved that the SACP as part of the revolutionary working-class movement and its allies in this struggle, especially the Socialist Axis, should:
Ground the NDR in the Freedom Charter’s vision and socialism’s principles to address social and economic crises, environmental degradation and CST’s structural legacy.
Mobilise urban and rural workers and the poor around a common programme ensuring working-class leadership in advancing the NDR and socialism.
Reject narrow nationalist and bourgeois reformist agendas that derail the working class from its historic mission.
Building the socialist axis and the popular left front
Further, the SNC resolve that the Party should:
Form a left axis for socialism, anchored by the SACP and COSATU, in partnership with progressive political organisations, trade unions and social movements.
Establish broad sectoral fronts addressing critical issues such as youth development, environmental justice and gender-based violence.
Advance campaigns prioritising state-led industrialisation, public employment programmes and community-driven economic development.
Promote African unity, resist imperialism and foster global progressive co-operation.
Contesting local government elections
The SNC reaffirmed the resolution of the SACP’s 15th National Congress to contest elections if the Alliance is not reconfigured, following the many years we have tried to achieve the reconfiguration through engagements within the Alliance. The continued lack of Alliance reconfiguration has resulted in the working-class partners of the Alliance being undermined and poses an existential threat to the integrity of the working-class allies. The situation where major political developments and policy directions are decided against or without the input or participation of the working-class allies of the Alliance is dangerous to our existence.
After a thorough assessment, the SACP Augmented Central Committee in March and April 2023 decided what the SNC has reaffirmed, to:
Contest the 2026 local government elections independently to address the working class and poor’s representation crisis.
Ensure working-class voices and struggles drive local governance.
Challenge neoliberal policies like austerity and privatisation to
restore public ownership and prioritise community-driven development.
Empower communities to control local governance through participatory structures.
Reconnect the Alliance with grassroots struggles, aligning it with the NDR’s revolutionary objectives.
Promoting National Dialogue
Through Popular Mobilisation and Participation
After discussing the proposal for a National Dialogue, the SNC resolved to support national dialogue as a process inspiring active participation from the masses to confront and overcome capitalism’s multiple crises.
The SNC tasked the SACP to build working-class consultative momentum as part of the National Dialogue process, to ensure that the outcome will reflect the aspirations of the working-class based on the Freedom Charter and the need to advance, deepen and defend the NDR, using the National Dialogue as a key site of struggle. We have also resolved to use this process to advance our resolutions to forge a popular left front and build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor. Our ally in the Social Axis of the Alliance, COSATU, is the first organisation in our consultative approach.
Bilateral Meeting with COSATU
We held our first successful bilateral meeting with COSATU since the era of the GNU and the joint working-class leadership political school convened by the Chris Hani Institute, which assessed the 2024 general electoral outcome and challenges facing the liberation forces. Importantly, we used the meeting to brief our comrades in COSATU about the outcomes of our 5th Special National Congress. It was clear that even from COSATU, such a briefing was long overdue. To this end, we also addressed the COSATU CEC soon afterwards.
We agreed on the need to develop closer working relations, for the sake of the working class and not much for the leaders, but for rescuing, deepening and advancing the NDR in our advance to socialism. In our discussions with COSATU we called for a break with the lethargy of collective failure to meet constantly and implement joint decisions from our meetings. And emphasised the need to insist on prioritising the implementation of our agreed manifestos with the ANC even in this reality of the betrayal with the GNU regime choice.
We equally accepts that given a long period of practice, now a way of revolutionary life within our ranks and activists and the general acceptance of leadership from the ANC, and further enhanced by our common program the NDR – with the immediate aim of democratic transfer of power to the oppressed majority – and the common platforms in interdependent leadership, there will never be unanimity and we are not seeking it either.
COSATU had since posted that address to their CEC issued a statement reflecting on this matter and agreed to convene a Special Central Executive Committee meeting in April to discuss this matter at length and provide guidance to their Central Committee latter in the year. We should also say that the issued statement calls for the SACP to unite COSATU, a task we have done all through. However, read differently, it may create impressions that by contesting elections we are dividing COSATU, like we indicated, this matter concerns all components of the alliance.
Since the COSATU Congress decision, we have relied on guidance from COSATU on this matter, having decided so from the CC. COSATU seem to feel excluded from the talks we are having with the ANC. We had assured them that we are discussing in the context of our 15th Congress resolutions modified by the 2023 Augmented Central Committee and reaffirmed by the 5th Special National Congress. This uncertainty about our talks with the ANC should not isolate the federation and even SANCO. So the sooner we move towards the Alliance engagements the better.
We equally accepted that there will be dissonance but within the realm and framework of our democratic mandates and responsibilities. To this extent this matter of the SACP taking part in elections independent of the ANC affects not only the rank-and-file membership across the alliance but even leaders, including inside the SACP itself.
What is clear, though, is that we have broken with the practice of being patronised by the political elites across the alliance, with twisted loyalties to the people and double speak to leaders. We have broken the chains of patronage to defend the working class from state violence through austerity measures and privatisation of strategic services in the hands of the state to capital.
The path forward: reasserting the “revolution” in the “National Democratic Revolution” – or the “R” in the NDR
The crisis facing the NDR can only be resolved through mass mobilisation and working-class leadership. The following key interventions are necessary:
Reconfiguring the Alliance on a revolutionary basis, guided by the goals of the Freedom Charter
The working class needs to consolidate a left-axis that prioritises socialism, bringing together the SACP, COSATU, other supportive organisations within our movement, progressive social movements and grassroots formations to regain the lost ground, reposition the SA revolution and advance to socialism. That’s the only path assuring workers, and the broader working class and all the people of socio-economic justice and complete freedom without the life of misery imposed by capitalism and its captures political elites – the comprador bourgeoisie.
Not only a class in itself but also a class for itself
The SACP has resolved to contest local government elections in 2026 while remaining part of the Alliance. There is no contradiction between the two positions. The Alliance was founded on a revolutionary programme. Ours is not an electoral alliance but a strategic alliance founded a long time ago based on a revolutionary programme before the ANC contested elections in 1994 with the support of the SACP and other Alliance partners. The situation that has developed, with the ANC choosing compromising coalition arrangements with its strategic adversaries and contradictory parties, necessitate the new tactical considerations with respect to electoral contestation by the SACP.
To confront the crisis of working-class representation that has developed in the absence of progress on the reconfiguration of the Alliance, class conscious workers need to support the SACP’s resolution to contest the local government elections in 2026. It is crucial for the working class to realise that it is not only a “class in itself” – a population of people sharing similar economic and social conditions, but also a “class for itself” – a population of people organised and actively pursuing its own interests, demonstrating class consciousness. In class struggle, there is no class except a consciously united working class that will take a lead in advancing, deepening and defending its interests.
We believe that the working class has been undermined as the main social force driving the national democratic revolution and changes and been relegated to a mere periphery of been invited to justify the decided positions of the political elites. We could not further risk the complete disillusionment of the working class to the NDR and the liberation forces as demonstrated by their absence in the general elections.
Bilateral meeting with the ANC
We held a long overdue bilateral meeting with the ANC just couple weeks ago. We had an extensive discussion focused on the state of the NDR, the economy, international developments and the reconfiguration of the Alliance and the SACP decision to contest the coming local government elections.
We issued a joint statement in this regard, which reflected to a greater extend the cordial yet robust discussions we had. We agreed to reconvene at the level of the PB and NWC and possibly have full CC and NEC meetings later to conclude some bilateral matters and rebuild trust and common perspectives on a wide range of socio-economic questions.
For the first time the ANC acceded to driving a neoliberal economic policy in government. This was a good step as we never agreed to this as they vehemently denied it. We agreed to set up an economic task team to prepare an economic workshop to deepen these discussions.
We also agreed to further take up the Alliance reconfiguration matter to an appropriate forum of the Alliance. We could not agree to withdraw our contest of the local government elections. This is a matter they were to seek a mandate from their NEC so we can continue the talks in an expanded form as the PB and NWC.
The Fifth SNC emerged at a decisive moment for our country and the working class. In memory of Chris Hani, at the time when his assassin was released from prison following a November 2022 Constitutional Court order. We have officially written to the president and the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development to call for an Inquest on the circumstances leading to comrade Chris Hani’s assassination. We rededicated ourselves to defend, advance and deepen the NDR towards socialism. We have committed ourselves to confronting capitalism’s crises, challenging neoliberal policies and building a better future based on our commitment to a socialist transition.
Having outlined the challenges of this critical moment, we need to go back to the period in which we defined the moment to consolidate the NDR against the backdrop of a difficult international situation. The document referred to above further said that “the character and tasks of the SACP should, then, be defined to a large extent by the kind of socialism we hope to build, and by the related perspectives we have of the path to that kind of socialism. But the nature and tasks of the SACP also need to be informed by the character of the class we hope to represent”.
The NDR is not just at a crossroads, it has stalled. Either it advances towards socialism through decisive rupture with neoliberalism, or it is permanently insinuated into a reformist, bourgeois- nationalist project that serves the interests of a few in collaboration with established capital but in the name of the entire historically oppressed black majority.
Only revolutionary working-class struggle in alliance with categorically supporting forces can reassert, advance, deepen and defend the NDR and chart the path towards socialism, with and for the workers and the poor.
Indeed, we should exclaim that for us it is either socialism or capitalist barbarism: Socialism or death! Victory is certain!