The SACP has doubled down on its anti-GNU stance, and insists that the government should implement the national health insurance (NHI) and basic education amendment (Bela) acts in their entirety.
The call by the communist party, a key member of the ANC’s tripartite alliance, could add more political pressure on President Cyril Ramaphosa after weekend papers reported he was facing intense calls from within his organisation to dismiss basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube.
Gwarube, a DA minister in the government of national unity, boycotted the signing of the Bela Act in September that her party vehemently opposes.
The DA is also a critic of NHI and has constantly questioned its funding model.
SACP national chair and cabinet minister Blade Nzimande hit out at the DA in a media briefing before the start of the party’s special national congress in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
“They want to preserve white schools using language. This act [Bela] must be implemented in its totality. That act must be implemented with NHI,” Nzimande said.
The party, which has campaigned for the ANC since SA’s first democratic elections in 1994, has become increasingly critical of the ANC’s track record in government and has spoken out against state capture, malfeasance, maladministration, looting and poor service delivery.
This has resulted in the SACP electing to go it alone during the 2026 municipal elections.
Should this happen, it could be a further blow to the ANC that has long depended on the SACP, Sanco and Cosatu’s grassroots structures to garner support in every election since majority rule.
It will also further erode the ANC’s support base a few months after it shed 17 percentage points getting 40% of the voters’ share during the May 29 polls as disillusioned voters took their votes to the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe led by former ANC leader Jacob Zuma.
After many years of threatening to go it alone, the SACP has taken a decision to contest the upcoming local government elections in 2026 independently.
The special national congress ends on Saturday and will be addressed by the alliance partners including ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile and Cosatu leader Zingiswa Losi.
However, despite the threat to go it alone, Nzimande said the ANC had made “massive advances” over the past 30 years in changing SA’s development trajectory in the provision of electricity, social grants and education, among other things.
The ANC has gone a long way to restore black people’s dignity, he said.
The core issue however, “is the economy that we are not changing. As long as we are not changing the economy, we are going to have setbacks.”
“The transformation of the economy is going to be a big debate in this congress. We don’t know why fighting unemployment is not in the agenda of the Reserve Bank,” Nzimande said.
He also criticised the central bank’s modesty in keeping inflation in the 3%-6% target range, saying there was nothing “magical” about inflation targeting.
Nzimande also took issue with pension funds for not investing enough in developing climate resilient infrastructure. He said the country was sitting with about R3-trillion in pension funds but “who is chowing it? It’s the middlemen, the fund managers.”
SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila said it had informed the ANC two weeks ago of its central committee decision about going it alone in the 2026 local government elections.
He rubbished media reports suggesting that the SACP had wanted the ANC to go to bed with Jacob Zuma’s MK party, saying: “The SACP never said we will work with the MK party. We said the ANC must go for a minority government, we said you could work with EFF, PAC, UDM, Al Jama-ah, GOOD party … We are not in alliance with the MK party.”
In its integrated discussion document for the congress, the SACP said it recognised the critical role of local government in promoting social and economic development and ensuring the equitable distribution of basic services.
“The SACP resolved to pursue the reconfiguration of the alliance, forge a popular left front, build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor, and to contest the 2026 local government elections either through a popular left front as a possible electoral modality or directly in the event the alliance continues with no successful reconfiguration,” the document states.
In 2017, the SACP elected to contest by-elections in the ANC-led Metsimaholo local municipality in the Free State after the dismissal of 300 SA Municipal Workers’ Union members who had been protesting against unfair labour practices.
The party received almost 8,000 votes and took control of the local council, including the mayorship after forming a coalition with smaller parties.
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