The Marxist
XXXX, 1–2
January-June 2024
DOCUMENT
Political Report of South African Communist Party: Defining the Post-Election Challenges and Tasks Facing the Working Class, the SACP and the Left Broadly
The following are the excerpts from the Political Report of the
SACP’s Central Committee meeting held on 28-30 June 2024.
During the previous Central Committee Plenary, in defining
the contemporary challenges facing the South African working
class and, consequently, the tasks of the SACP, we asserted that
the South African revolution was facing a defining moment.
This defining moment emerged in the context of the May 2024
elections. We were heading towards the elections then, and the
election campaign was intensifying.
The working class suffered from entrenched multiple crises
of capitalist economic and social reproduction, making life
unaffordable for the majority. The cost-of-living crisis persisted
amid interrelated crises, such as high levels of inequality,
unemployment, and poverty. We called on the liberation movement
to embark on a mission to rescue the National Democratic
Revolution from a potential setback and the verge of counter-revolutionary defeat. This was our clarion call, with the interests
of the working class in mind, beyond the narrow conception of the
class during elections merely as voters.
We indicated that we are under twin threats from counter-
revolutionary offensives brewed and fermented both from inside
and outside the movement.
MONOPOLY CAPITAL: EXTERNAL THREAT
In no particular order, the one threat, which is from outside,
emanates from monopoly capital, which seeks profitability at all
costs. Monopoly capital does not regard the ANC as a vehicle
to drive and sustain profitability given the deepening crisis of
social reproduction and believes that this time, our revolutionary
movement cannot compromise by guaranteeing such profitability
without facing a severe setback and even ultimate collapse.
In responding to this, the revolution must tamper with the
profitability of capital and sufficiently respond to the needs of
the masses who are failed by a capitalist economy by building,
strengthening and expanding the role of the public sector. We
need to see the state actively participating and enhancing its
participation in the economy, building and diversifying people-
driven economic interventions supported by measures to achieve
a thriving public sector. The exploited and poor masses expect
such decisive interventions. There is no other better way, lest the
masses be led astray by populist forces.
DISUNITY AND COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY SPLITS:
INTERNAL THREAT
The second threat, which comes from inside the movement,
includes the moral decline of ANC leadership of society,
organisational weaknesses, continuing factionalism, lack of
progress on organisational renewal to regain some credibility, and
social decay, culminating in a conducive climate for a counter-
revolutionary breakaway party, using the joint ANC and SACP
liberation army symbols by former President Jacob Zuma in
pursuit of self-interests.
We sought to interrupt this counter-revolutionary agenda
within the democratic framework of elections. Our characterisation
of Zuma’s conduct and agenda as counter-revolutionary irked
some of our comrades, who believe we are isolating the poor
masses who voted for him.
REACTION BY MONOPOLY CAPITAL TO
THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE ALLIANCE
Our call for the reconfiguration of the Alliance to achieve
programmatic unity and greater strength poses a threat to monopoly
capital’s accumulation interests. This dominant section of capital
has actively lobbied politically to block the reconfiguration,
undermine the strength of our Alliance, and, if they can, as they
always try, break the Alliance apart through policies that favour
their accumulation interests. Sections of capital have concluded
that their accumulation interests will be better served with the
ANC out of power.
The dominant sections of monopoly capital have undertaken
other efforts to bolster right-wing anti-ANC opposition through
funding, electoral pacts, media propaganda and other activities
aimed at either displacing the ANC from power or reducing its
support from above to below 50 per cent.
The electoral parties, such as the MKP, created by elements who
have defined themselves outside and against the ANC from within
its ranks, seek to achieve similar ends. Any attempts at pleasing
the strategic adversaries of our movement through either conduct
or policy, including choices that stand to aid their accumulation
interests, will be tantamount to political suicide.
ALIGNMENT WITH CAPITAL
The government chose alignment with capital, disregarding
warnings led by the SACP in the Alliance. This happened, for
instance, in network infrastructure. While we supported the
need to sort out the crisis in network infrastructure, including
electricity generation, rail, ports and water, the government
chose liberalisation in favour of participation and competition
by profit-driven interests and auctioned off, thus privatised, the
high-frequency broadband spectrum in the telecommunication
or digital connectivity infrastructure sector. The direction that the
government has chosen goes the private way.
It is neoliberal, rolling back or systematically diminishing state
participation and substituting it with collective private enterprise
monopoly or competition among sections of private capital. The
role of the state is distorted to be that of paving the way for, and
thus being at the service of, private enterprise to thrive. This
revisionist agenda in our movement contradicts the Freedom
Charter, especially the Chapter’s economic clauses regarding
monopoly industries.
The issue is whether we are naïve or consciously ignoring
the realities that we face. In addition, the problematic direction
the government has chosen is compounded by the continued
imposition of austerity, also called fiscal consolidation, leading up
to the May 2024 elections. For instance, the August 2023 letter by
the National Treasury instructing departments, public entities and
provincial governments to stop new infrastructure development
and recruitment of personnel, among other austerity measures,
contributed to driving the ANC out of power.
HIGHLY CONTESTED ELECTIONS
Pundits proclaimed the May 2024 elections to be South Africa’s
most highly contested national and provincial government elections since April 1994. In April 1994, our liberation struggle
forced the apartheid regime to concede to universal suffrage. We
won the first democratic elections with a decisive majority, over
60 per cent.
While many aspects of society have changed since then,
others have not changed or have only changed a little. This is
especially true for the economy and property relations, more so
ownership. Notably, a reformist current that gained dominance
in our movement, as discussed in our Party Programme, ‘The
South African Struggle for Socialism’, has embarked on a tangent,
shifting away from revolution to reformism. Related to this,
imperialist forces have strengthened their agenda to prevent the
South African National Democratic Revolution from succeeding.
Recently, the heightened imperialist offensive involves a
reaction to the ANC-led South African government aligning
itself with the expanding BRICS, now the BRICS Plus. As part of
exercising our national independence and democratic sovereignty,
the government has established and is continuing to develop its
relations with China and Russia within the BRICS Plus international
cooperation and through direct bilateral relations. This has led to
the imperialist US Congress agreeing on a bill aimed at punishing
the ANC-led South African government.
The US-led bloc of the imperialist West and its stooges are
opposed to not only South Africa but Global South countries
exercising their independence by building relations with China
and Russia and strengthening with others.
The stooges include a reactionary network which convened
in mid-2023 in Gdańsk, Poland; on a counter-revolutionary
basis, they themed, ‘Against authoritarianism and in defence of
democracy’. Their Poland workshop was attended not only by
right-wing elements from South Africa but also representatives
from organisations such as Renamo and Unita, which have killed
people through counter-revolutionary wars and other attacks and
destabilised Mozambique and Angola, respectively.
In our situation, the imperialist West wants a South Africa that
follows a different international relations and cooperation policy.
Such a policy will be subordinate to and take its cue from what the
US-led imperialist west sets as its foreign policy agenda.
To achieve their aims, the imperialist West has been driving
a regime change agenda against the ANC and its allies. While
the material conditions of millions of the unemployed and poor
who live in underdeveloped, least developed and under-serviced
areas of our country have contributed immensely, it is a fact
the imperialist forces have partially contributed to the ANC’s
electoral decline through a wide range of strategies and significant
resources. The imperialists supported both the old and new right-
wing parties and coordinated funding and other material support,
including media coverage and research propaganda, against the
ANC.
The continued imperialist interference in South Africa’s
internal affairs, not least the elections, constitutes an immediate
and continuous serious threat to our national independence
and democratic sovereignty. Having failed to fully dislodge the
ANC electorally, given that, notwithstanding its decline, the
ANC remains the largest electoral party by voter support. The
imperialists have intensified their onslaught against the ANC
on the post-election terrain. This attack has been clearly visible
in coalition formation. It includes threats by certain sections of
capital to withdraw investment and weaken our currency.
We have seen this whenever right-wing forces did not get their
way in the post-election negotiation process. There were attempts
at forcing the ANC to concede to their demands, effectively
seeking a conformist ANC, by stealth and fear-mongering —
using the threats by capital to attack our economy. This onslaught
is inherently worse against the Communist Party, above all else,
and other left organisations in alliance with the ANC in elections.
Now more than ever, our revolutionary working-class Party
must emerge and lead the masses — including by deepening our
effort to forge a popular left front and build a powerful, socialist
movement of the workers and poor — to win the battle of the class
struggle on the ground. As the organised workers’ experiences
have shown, the working class cannot win battles in boardrooms
if it has not won those battles on the ground. This applies to the
SACP as well.
The outcomes of the May 2024 elections highlight that the
negatives that have taken centre stage against our will and struggles
in the 30 years of our democratic dispensation have reached a
point where they overwhelm the positives, culminating in the
loss that the ANC has experienced through its electoral decline.
The negatives include the turn to neoliberalism by the reformist
tendency in our movement in the 1990s, the neoliberal dominance
in our public policy space and its results in the material conditions
of our people, including persistent high rates of unemployment,
poverty, inequality and related high levels of crime, significant de-
industrialisation, corporate capture and other forms of corruption.
Elevating the negatives at the expense of the positives has become a
key feature of anti-ANC politics, opposition and an entry point of
imperialist attacks. This has become hegemonic, taking advantage
of the impact of the negatives on the material conditions of the
people. In the process, the right-wing prescribes more of the same
policy measures that have caused the problems.
Despite our efforts at securing a decisive electoral majority
to avoid the further decline of the ANC, we are now in it. In
addition, depending on how the ANC and the Alliance will handle
this situation, the ANC and, by extension, the Alliance might be
dislodged going forward. This moment calls for accuracy in our
political assessment of the reality we have now entered and tactical
and strategic calculations with the utmost clarity. Any error in
this process, whose outcomes might as well be determined by the
attitude of the forces of reaction (counter-revolution) against our
movement as the force of action (revolution), will culminate in
consequences with far-reaching implications, which is why an
emotive assessment will be unhelpful.
THE ANC’S ELECTORAL DECLINE BY NUMBERS OVER THE YEARS
The ANC’s loss of votes tells a particular story.
1994: 12,2million: 62.6 per cent of valid votes
1999: 10,6 million: 66.4 per cent of valid votes
2004: 10,9 million: 69.7 per cent of valid votes
2009: 11,7 million: 65.9 per cent of valid votes
2014: 11,4 million: 62.2 per cent of valid votes
2019: 10,0 million: 57.5 per cent of valid votes
2024: 6,5 million: 40.2 per cent of valid votes
Bear in mind that with population growth, the number of
potential voters will increase over these 30 years. Notable is the
moderate drop-off of voting numbers through the Mbeki years,
although the corresponding per cent performance went up (as a
function of the voter turnout), reaching the highest since 1994
based on the reference voter turnout. In contrast, there was a
strong surge in the actual votes the ANC received in 2009 (post-
Polokwane), which was relatively maintained in 2014. There was a
drop-off in 2019 despite some ‘Ramaphoria’, and then there was an
overly dramatic decline of 3.5 million this year.
In terms of participation by registered voters, this year, only
58.5 per cent of registered voters participated. This is the lowest-
ever voter turnout in national and provincial elections since 1994.
Add to this the current 14 million South Africans of voting age
who are not even registered as voters (the great majority being
young and black), and you get a massive 40 per cent of potential
voters, whether registered or unregistered, who didn’t vote in 2024.
One of the great rallying calls of our struggle — ‘one person,
one vote’ — has, it seems, increasingly become an irrelevance for
what is now approaching nearly half of adult South Africans. Is
this dramatic loss of interest in party political electoral democracy
an irreversible trend? What are the implications of this for the
country, for the ANC, and the SACP? We will try to raise and
answer some of these questions later in this input.
DISAFFECTION WITH ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION
WAS NOT UNIFORM
The general statistics of growing voter alienation mask a more
complex reality. Levels of turnout differed significantly according
to race, and given South Africa’s realities, also in terms of class
and strata within the classes. Some estimates suggest that in the
2024 elections, white turnout was 71 per cent, Indian turnout 61
per cent, Coloured turnout 58 per cent and African turnout just
55 per cent. The 16 per cent difference between white and African
turnout is especially noteworthy. It also tells that in class terms, the
deepening sense of alienation from party political electoral politics
is likely associated with those facing the most severe social and
economic marginalisation.
That said, it is important to note that the DA declined in terms
of actual votes compared to the May 2019 elections, as did other
parties that were represented in parliament from 2019 to 2024
(except for a marginal gain by one party). To appreciate this point,
moving from the particular (decline of the ANC) to the general
(decline not only of the ANC but also of the other parties that
were represented in parliament in the previous term) is crucial to
understanding the general sense of voter alienation among all the
affected parties.
THE RISE OF THE REACTIONARY TENDENCY OF ETHNO-
NATIONALISM AND THE PERSISTING LEGACY OF RACISM
The MKP’s dramatic electoral rise in KZN (and parts of
Mpumalanga and Gauteng) and the PA’s performance, particularly
in Coloured townships and rural areas outside of Cape Town, are
an indication that not all socio-economic marginalisation will
necessarily result in electoral apathy.
Social and economic marginalisation can (and should) be
mobilised around on a principled class basis, whether for electoral
or other campaigning purposes. And this is, surely, a key task of
the SACP. But as the MKP and PA cases illustrate, the socially and
economically marginalised can also be mobilised on a chauvinistic
ethno-nationalism.
For instance, some estimates suggest that the May 2024
election saw a 60 per cent African turnout in KZN. In contrast,
African voter turnout in the other traditional ANC heartlands —
the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Northwest — was around 51 per
cent.
In KZN and parts of Mpumalanga, the MKP was able to
mobilise popular strata on the reactionary dream of an ethnic
kingdom returned to its ‘former glory’. But it also tapped into
feelings of marginalisation and alienation. It exploited these
legitimate feelings by asking popular strata to identify (and many
clearly did identify) their own sense of marginalisation with the
‘unjustly persecuted’ Zuma, KZN’s ‘finest son of the soil’.
It is important to note that identity politics and the associated
voter response are not limited to the MKP and the PA — and are
not always underpinned by social and economic marginalisation.
This is highlighted by the continuing shared voter support between
the DA and FF-Plus in predominantly white voting districts.
The identity politics that benefit the DA and the FF-Plus is
rooted in the history of racism and its lasting legacy. Rather than
social and economic marginalisation, the voter support that the
DA and the FF-Plus share in predominantly white voting districts
— where between the two, it is the DA that leads on a countrywide
basis — is anchored in the history and lasting legacy of white
privilege and economic advantages, which, it could be said these
voters seek to preserve through their vote. In this regard, the
DA’s neoliberalism serves the same racial agenda as the FF-Plus’s
conservatism.
Mobilisation against
As these cases illustrate, successful popular mobilisation
(whether for election purposes or otherwise) typically depends
not just on some vague promise of a better life or lists of past
achievements but also on tapping into resentment, fear or anger,
and with the identification of some clearly designated opponent.
In the case of MKP, anti-ANC mobilisation took the form of
demagogic ethnic populism.
However, a wide range of other opposition parties also
anchored their electoral mobilisation on negative campaigning
based on stirring up fears. In particular, the DA set itself up as
the only force capable of preventing the ‘nightmare scenario’ of
a tie-up between the RET faction of the ANC and the EFF. On a
ticket to ‘Rescue South Africa’, it mobilised around bringing the
combined ANC and EFF vote below 50 per cent. This was ably
supported by mainstream commercial media, among others,
Media24, a subsidiary of Naspers, an apartheid-era mouthpiece of
the Broederbond and Afrikaner-controlled monopoly capital. This
agenda also received significant funding from capital.
It is important to note that despite all that, the DA did not
grow but declined by over 100,000 actual votes, from over 3.6
million in 2019 to below 3.6 million in 2024 on the national ballot.
Its marginal per cent terms increase is not a result of additional
votes but a function of a significantly declined voter turnout.
Therefore, we cannot conclude that its fear-mongering campaign
was successful when, in fact, it declined itself.
THE ANC AND SOUTH AFRICA’S PROBLEMS
What increasingly prevailed as the dominant discourse certainly
within all the mainstream media was that South Africa’s problems
(inequality, unemployment, criminality) were due to ‘service
delivery failures’ (that is, basically some form of mismanagement)
caused, in turn, by ‘ANC corruption’ and ‘cadre deployment’.
This narrative has already been around for several years and is
summarised in the content of the Report of the Commission of
Inquiry into State Capture as a function of the main narrative from
the testimonies the Commission heard. But even in this case, it
is important not to ignore the contradictions from the May 2024
election results.
For example, the MKP, despite being led by a man heavily
implicated in the state capture class project and extensively
exposed (including singled out by the political parties that have
since declined) in both the media and the Commission’s report,
still managed to attract a significant number of votes.
This suggests that issues of corruption do not always deter
voter support. It highlights the complexities of voter behaviour,
where other factors, such as identity politics, loyalty to a cult of
a personality, patronage networks, or disillusionment with other
political options, may outweigh concerns about corruption. This
phenomenon underscores the need for a deeper understanding
of the motivations behind voter choices in contexts marked by
corruption and political scandal.
There can be no doubt that corruption, particularly in its
high point of state capture, has undoubtedly gravely weakened
the possibilities of effective national democratic transformation.
However, the key determining factor behind South Africa’s multiple
crises lies elsewhere. Notwithstanding the important role played by
the Commission, it singularly failed to unpack, or even mention,
how unemployment, inequality, and poverty are reproduced by
the untransformed, systemic features of South Africa’s highly
financialised, capitalist political economy exacerbated by years of
post-1996 neoliberal austerity policies. Unfortunately, key parts
of the ANC, precisely complicit in decades of anti-people, anti-
working-class neoliberalism, are incapable, or simply unwilling,
even to acknowledge this reality. Asked what he expected would
change regarding economic policy after the elections, outgoing (and
incoming?) Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said: ‘Nothing’.
The socio-economic context of the May 2024 election
While there are, no doubt, many factors that explain the ANC’s
loss of its parliamentary majority in the May 2024 elections, two
issues stand out. The first is widespread corruption and looting.
As noted, this was the narrative that drove most opposition party
campaigns and media coverage, and the fact that this was indeed
a reality created a major vulnerability for the ANC. The other set
of issues, as noted above, is encapsulated in the phrase ‘service
delivery’, implying a widespread sense among the electorate that
too little had been achieved to improve the material lives of the
people.
Let us look at the following facts and figures, for example:
• Unemployment on the unrealistic ‘strict’ definition stood
at 32.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, significantly
higher than the 29.1 per cent recorded in the fourth
quarter of 2019 (which was itself a time that saw a job loss
bloodbath leading the SACP to dub it the ‘crisis before
the crisis’). In fact, the Stats SA report tabled during
the election campaign recorded an increase of 0.8 per
cent over the level in the third quarter of 2023. On the
more realistic ‘expanded definition’, the unemployment
rate stands at 41.9 per cent per cent, while youth
unemployment is over 60 per cent. Moreover, Stats SA
also reported that the proportion of the unemployed in
‘long term’ unemployment rose from 67 to 77 per cent —
meaning that nearly 80 per cent of the unemployed have
been without a job for an extended period. All in all, there
are now 12 million people without jobs forced to eke out
an existence in survivalist activities of one sort or another.
• Nearly half the population (49.2 per cent) and more than half
the female population (52.2 per cent) subsist on incomes
below Upper Bound Poverty Level.
• A World Bank study published in March 2022 ranked South
Africa as the most unequal of 164 countries surveyed, with
an income Gini coefficient of 0.67 and 10 per cent of the
population owning more than 80 per cent of total wealth.
What these figures tell us is that while there may have been
some ‘recovery’ from the Great Recession of the Covid-19
pandemic measured in terms of stock exchange prices or GDP, for
large parts of the working class and the poor, there has decidedly
been no recovery either from the Covid-19 crisis or from the ‘crisis
before the crisis’ that existed in 2019.
Rolling back neoliberal right-wing tendency, right-wing
populism, demagogy, an ethno-chauvinism
The Party must entrench mass mobilisation to roll back the
decline of revolutionary movements and progressive forces on the
one hand and the rise of ethno-chauvinist and tribal organisations
on the other hand. This could be a terrain to build new fronts to
mobilise against the rise of right-wing and populist, fascist forces
who easily hoodwink the masses, particularly during a period of
economic crisis.
Our tasks must include engaging with all sections of the
working class, including those who find themselves in reactionary
organisations. We should intensify our work in the trade union
movement and rebuild our waning presence. One of the immediate
platforms for intervention could be a popular left front towards
the National Dialogue proposed by former President Mbeki
and endorsed by President Ramaphosa during his inauguration.
However, we must be careful about a situation where others may
seem to have moved on, separately framing the National Dialogue
with no or limited consultation.
A GNU IN NAME, A CENTRE-RIGHT ANC-DA COALITION IN
REALITY OR A NEW CLASS ALLIANCE TAKING SHAPE AWAY FROM
THE ANC’S HISTORICAL ALLIES?
While the rise of ethno-nationalistic populism was a significant
factor in the May 2024 elections, its impact on the makeup of the
government has rebounded. While the ANC’s stated preference
was for a Government of National Unity, in practice, this appears
as an ANC-DA centre-right coalition.
While the actions of the MKP and EFF played a role in leading
to this outcome, this was always the preferred option of the neo-
liberals within the ANC, as well as of the bourgeoisie in general
and finance capital in particular. The last-minute agreement
between the ANC and the DA assures the DA of at least six cabinet
posts. More problematically, the agreement between the ANC
and the DA includes the notion of ‘sufficient consensus’, with
‘sufficient consensus’ explicitly defined as 60 per cent. This appears
to be connected to the electoral results of the ANC and the DA
combined.
Hence, the impression that while there is reference to the NGU
in name, in reality, it either appears as an ANC-DA coalition or has
the ANC and the DA at its core. In addition, in its manoeuvres,
the DA has interpreted the situation to enable it to usurp effective
veto, suggesting that the ANC cannot take or implement a decision
unless the two as the ‘60 per cent agree’. We reject this proposition
with the contempt it deserves. If it prevails, it will be nothing by
a sellout arrangement. The ANC seems to fear that independence
may lead to disinvestment and a collapsing currency, while the DA
seems concerned about a left influence on the ANC, which has
now been rejected by capital.
We should be under no illusions. A coalition arrangement
involving a rightwing force such as the DA will seek to lead a sharp
shift to the right — including advancing ‘on steroids’ the kind of
neoliberal policies which, the SACP has argued, have underpinned
the crisis that led the movement to lose its majority. There were
signs of such an ambition even before the election. For example,
the recently re-appointed South African Reserve Bank governor
argued for a tightening of the inflation target from the current 3
to 6 per cent to between 2 and 4 per cent. The DA’s ‘framework’
for its participation in coalitions, as well as calling for it to occupy
key positions in parliament and ‘strategic’ ministries, calls for
the budget deficit to be brought to 3.5 per cent of GDP or lower
in three years and the debt to GDP ratio to be reduced to 67 per
cent by 2031 after peaking in 2025/6. It also calls for Eskom to be
unbundled, ports to be concessioned, and a mineral rights regime
to be ‘reformed’.
The implementation of any or all of these and other neoliberal
measures would see policies that achieve completely de-
contextualised macro-economic ratios from the IMF playbook,
which trump all other considerations, and privatisation by
stealth proceeds apace. Underlying this is an evident ambition by
prominent figures in finance capital that the coalition could finally
‘free’ President Ramaphosa from the shackles of ‘the left’ in the
ANC and create conditions for a more decisive programme of
neoliberal structural reform.
No doubt, many in the bourgeoisie will be seeing the coalition
with the DA operating under the fig leaf of a GNU as the vehicle for
such accelerated neoliberal reform. This is at the heart of the crisis
we face, at the heart of what is possible. We have now fully arrived
at the crossroads, and our intention must be clear — to either
continue the road of carefulness or adopt outright vacillation,
of trepidation, of the fear of capital, of selling out the working
class with weak bourgeoisie theoretical justifications. This is the
moment that the left itself should see as furnishing an opportunity
to deepen and sharpen class contradictions to de-couple the South
African revolution from the grip and control of capital.
Our key task in the period now unfolding is to combat any
rightward shift in government and the policy space and assert a
national-revolutionary democratic transformation programme.
This must be backed by mobilising the class on the ground.
Unlike previously, this time around, capital has arrogantly
entered the political terrain actively and directly sought to remove
the liberation movement headed by the ANC and its allies from the
government. Not only has capital funded several political parties
to dislodge the ANC but has unapologetically agitated for a change
of government, among others, using a variety of media outlets,
social platforms, think tanks and research. The issue is whether
the liberation movement sees the opportunity to fully assume
responsibility for its mission without constraints of commitments,
if any, to capital, which, for decades, has weakened the posture of
radical transformation of society?
One of the features of the May 2024 election was the relative
absence of working-class politics — except through the influence
of the SACP and Cosatu on the ANC Manifesto and as reflected
through the distorted prism of the militaristic and personality
cult driven by populist and proto-fascist organisations, among
others. Others correctly called this a crisis of representation for
the working class: in other words, the absence of a clear working-
class party contesting the elections and shaping the alternative to
the myriads of bourgeoisie parties, old and new.
More than that, these developments have the potential to be
seen as an open door for the bourgeoisie to mount a counter-
revolution against gains made by the working class on different
fronts: the NHI, minimum wages, and social grants among them.
While lip service may continue to be paid to the need for Industrial
Policy, any assigning of the Department of Trade and Industry to
the DA is likely to see active Industrial Policy measures giving way
to de-regulation and tariff liberalisation. We must stop this from
happening.
Such a conjuncture requires working class formations to
strengthen their capacity to confront the new challenges that will
arise on a terrain that will significantly differ from that in the
recent past. The SACP is committed to building a left popular front
as a vehicle for more effectively driving campaigns and building
greater working-class influence in all sites of power.
Most importantly, the SACP has to redefine its independent
role during this period to tackle multiple challenges on different
terrains. In approaching this task, we may want to reflect on the
following:
• Working class influence has declined significantly as a result
of both objective and subjective factors. Objective factors
include the reorganisation of production during the era of
neoliberal globalisation that weakened industrial unions
across the world, coupled with trends like outsourcing
that also weakened union power. Subjectively, the
fragmentation of the trade union movement into
competing or even rival unions and federations — the
product both of experiences of struggles in particular
sectors and issues like the relationship to a governing
party — need to be acknowledged as having significantly
reduced the power and influence of trades unions.
• The high levels of long-term unemployment reflect a reality
that much of our working class is located not only in
factories that are easy to unionise but also in survivalist
activity in the so-called informal economy and casual
work. While good work is being done by some comrades
and organisations in this space, neither the SACP nor
most of the labour movement have much of an impactful
presence in this space.
• Working-class formations, including the SACP and Cosatu,
as well as other unions, have, in practice, if not in theory,
seemingly prioritised a lot of their activities in the party-
political terrain and issues of governance. Campaigns
outside of this space have been a lot less impactful,
although the SACP has developed a large campaign
portfolio compared to other political organisations.
Nevertheless, we may want to re-assess what needs to be
done to strengthen our capacity to actually operate on
other terrains.
• The SACP’s own influence within and impact upon the ANC
and ANC-led government has steadily declined since at
least the last relative high point in the years following the
2007 ANC Conference and Zuma’s first term as national
president 2009-2014. This decline is evident, for instance,
in declining SACP members elected to the ANC NEC, as
well as on the ANC 2024 national election list.
• The relative decline in terms of public impact and of left
influence within the Alliance of both the progressive trade
union movement and the SACP has left a gap that has
seemingly been colonised by external organisations with a
blend of crude but potentially popular anti-neoliberalism
coupled with demagogic personality cults. With the ANC
apparently moving into an effective right-wing coalition
with the DA, if that happens, this gap will open even
further and the challenges (and class responsibilities) of
the SACP will become greater and more challenging.
The emerging conjuncture looks set to be one in which the
kind of practice we have de facto prioritised in the recent past —
seeking, through Alliance processes, to enhance working-class
influence on ANC policy and decisions — is likely to be even less
impactful as if its coalition partners will wield power. Without
suggesting abandoning that site of struggle and recognising that
the ANC is just above 40 per cent but remains the largest party in
South Africa by electoral support, this would point to an imperative
to re-prioritise our activities and campaigns. We need to focus less
on seeking to insert progressive wording into the ambiguities of
a succession of Alliance documents and more on building actual
working-class power through struggles on the ground.
Put differently; the new terrain will be one where we need
to recognise that we are even less likely than before to be able to
win in the boardroom what we have not won on the ground. The
idea of a popular left front points to recognising that the SACP
needs to reach out to other formations. Even if we were a powerful
campaigning force on the ground, acting alone would not be
desirable. In fact, right now, we confront a reality of pockets of
left activity fragmented in different ways operating in a context
of a people facing a deepening crisis of reproduction and deeply
disillusioned with the prevailing order. Given these realities,
building a popular left front and a powerful, socialist movement of
the workers and poor must be our apex priority, organisationally,
politically and ideologically.
While we can learn a lot from the history of similar endeavours
by Communist Parties in other places and other times, we must root
our own process in our own reality. That reality is one of fragmented
organisation and no established organisation around which all will
quickly rally. In a sense, we need to engage in coalition building
of our own, left and socialist. That means reaching out beyond
our existing comfort zone of alliance partners and movement-
linked individuals. This might need to begin with conversations on
assessments of the conjuncture and key tasks and challenges for
the future to identify the common ground. The focus, however,
needs to be on campaigns which could range from specific issues
to campaigns for alternative macroeconomic policy perspectives.
CONCLUSION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF THE LEFT
Finally, let us reposition ourselves and rapidly adapt to the new
situation of restrained exercise of political power, but not much of
a changed terrain of struggle. We should start with the acceptance
of poor electoral performance and the revolutionary setback we
suffered. We need to also acknowledge the critical role elections
play in shaping the lives of the working class and the revolutionary
movement and that the material living conditions of the people
determine their choices. In this regard, we need a thorough class
analysis of this conjecture, including a deep-going thirty years
of democracy. This analysis should be historical and must deal
with the post-1994 errors to address the momentary interests of
the working class and lay the foundation for informed strategic
interventions.
In the context of these new realities, it is inevitable for the
ANC to make even more compromises, but what should be our
posture toward the GNU given its limitations, especially the
various ministries under the leadership of parties opposed to
the NDR and even those that vulgarises the NDR? What are the
implications and the real meaning of this setback to the working-
class struggle for the NDR, let alone its socialist orientation as a
direct route to socialism?
More importantly, as part of the liberation forces, we should
debate what this moment and this setback specifically mean that
in the era of a weakening and even collapsing neoliberal system,
the moral decline and crisis of the liberal order and capitalist
hegemony, given the relentless countenance by popular forces and
the possible rise of a multi-polar world order system?
Immediate to medium-term tasks of the Party
• We need to seriously rebuild the responsive and campaigning
organisational structures of the SACP along new trends
and societal development. We need to involve science
and technology in the new form of campaigning but still
primarily rooting the Party amongst the people, especially
the working class, and work and struggle with them to
resolve the economic and social challenges they face.
• This aspect is entirely tied to the ability of the Party to renew
itself and certainly embrace the Communist Party of
China’s notion of ‘self-revolution’, or what Amilcar Cabral
called the struggle against our own weakness, to anchor
the necessary change and perhaps lead to the point of
rediscovering the primary mission of the liberation
movement that may enable us to rid the chains of capital.
• We need to unite the liberation forces, especially the Alliance,
and deepen the reconfiguration of the Alliance and their
mutually beneficial renewal agenda
• Build and consolidate a popular left front based on the
campaign for radical transformation of the material living
conditions of the working class and changing unequal
power relations in society, including class, race and gender
relations and contradictions.
• We should direct our structures not to disband the Red
Brigades established for the election campaign to take
forward the programmatic campaigns of the SACP and
consolidate the socialist movement of the workers and
poor on the ground.
• We should convene district, followed by provincial councils,
to evaluate the election campaign and grasp what happened
and equally give feedback on the setback the revolution
is going through and devise the way forward towards the
Special National Congress scheduled for December 2024
and ultimately the 16th National Congress scheduled
for July 2027. These engagements should also be used to
assess the state of the organisation and give new tasks.
• This should be followed by a broad engagement with our
cadres and the left and progressive social forces to
demonstrate our seriousness in contesting the developing
conjecture and give progressive orientation to the GNU as
a contested terrain.