The SACP’s decision to contest next year’s local elections marks the third attempt by the left in SA to offer voters a meaningful alternative at the ballot box during the 30 years since the advent of democracy.
In the early years after apartheid there was a credible argument for the communists and trade unions to form a tactical alliance with the African nationalists of the ANC. This made particular sense in the early 1990s, when national liberation and the struggle for democracy still seemed closely linked and the ANC retained broad working class support. The SACP played a key role in the ideological framing of some key issues at that time, but as the years passed its influence within the tripartite alliance steadily waned.
The ANC shifted decisively to the right in 1996 with the adoption of the Growth, Employment & Redistribution (Gear) macroeconomic strategy. By the time Jacob Zuma became president in 2009 the party had taken on the character of the kleptocratic and authoritarian nationalist project Frantz Fanon warned against. Support for Zuma by the SACP and union federation Cosatu under Blade Nzimande and Zwelinzima Vavi respectively, was deeply damaging — a low point for the left in the post-apartheid era.
In university and NGO spaces the left has been reduced to tiny sectarian groups and isolated academics who have a presence in the middle class world. These actors cannot build a viable left project, partly due to their lack of mass support, though dogmatism and sectarianism are just as damaging. The Workers & Socialist Party (Wasp), a small Trotskyist outfit, contested the 2014 elections and won a grand total of 8,331 votes.
Unless a new force emerges, the burden of developing a viable electoral path for the left will remain with existing mass-based organisations such as Cosatu, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA, Abahlali baseMjondolo and the SACP. Yet while a mass base is a necessary condition for success it is not sufficient on its own — and none of these organisations has yet developed a coherent or compelling electoral strategy.
Even in the face of deep economic crisis and catastrophic unemployment Cosatu remains shackled to the ANC. The party is now split between a neoliberal faction under President Cyril Ramaphosa and the remnants of the kleptocratic faction, now aligned with his deputy, Paul Mashatile. Neither of these blocs offers a plausible vehicle for Left renewal. Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi appears firmly loyal to the ANC and unless this changes the federation cannot play any meaningful role in building an electoral alternative.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has been independent of the ANC since the SACP engineered its expulsion from Cosatu in 2013. On the shop floor it remains a militant force and regularly wins real gains for its members — so much so that a Business Day editorial once warned that the union was pushing up inflation through its wage demands. Yet its political vehicle, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP), failed in the 2019 elections despite an impressive founding conference in 2018. Like Wasp, it relied on dogma rather than forging a political language and vision grounded in the lived realities of the people it hoped to represent.
Abahlali baseMjondolo is, alongside Brazil’s MTST (Workers Homeless Movement), one of the largest movements of the urban poor in the world. It has more than 180,000 paid-up members in more than 100 branches. Its leaders are widely respected for their personal and political integrity, and the movement has developed a political language that speaks to the lived experience of the poor in a way that dogmatic leftism does not. Yet unlike MTST it has consistently refused to enter the terrain of electoral politics.
This is regrettable. The movement has acknowledged that its members are increasingly asking for a credible political option at the polls. But so far there is no public sign that an electoral strategy is being developed. Since its leaders started to be assassinated in 2013 the movement has made protest votes for various parties, and while this has worked to an extent to pressure the ANC to reduce repression, a protest vote is not the same thing as a positive political programme.
The SACP suffered a long period of decline under the damaging leadership of Nzimande. His support for Zuma was a particular low point, but his authoritarian style, lack of imagination and total subservience to the ANC did long-term harm. Many of the party’s best thinkers left during his tenure, and persistent demands from the youth to contest elections were systematically shut down.
Since Solly Mapaila took over as SACP general secretary the party has shown signs of renewal. Senior figures who had left have returned, internal debate has opened up, and long-standing youth demands to contest next year’s local government elections have finally been accepted.
This renewal is an important development. But the failures of Wasp and the SRWP show that like other electorates around the world SA does not respond to left dogma. If the SACP is serious about contesting elections it will need to do what Abahlali baseMjondolo and successful left projects in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere have done — speak in a language that makes sense to poor and working-class people. It will have to offer a vision that meets people where they are, and build grassroots structures that earn trust and loyalty by being present in everyday struggles.
Cosatu’s refusal to break with the ANC rules it out of a broader left project.
Despite the scale of our political and economic crisis unity of the SA left is not likely to be realised any time soon. Cosatu’s refusal to break with the ANC rules it out of a broader left project. Abahlali baseMjondolo’s uncompromising stance against the ANC means any alliance with the SACP will remain off the table as long as the party maintains it long-standing ties to the ANC.
The situation with Numsa is less clear. A shift towards an SACP-aligned figure in the internal power dynamics of its most powerful donor — previously respectful of the union’s autonomy — is now actively pushing for closer ties with the SACP. But even if this influences the union’s top leadership, that leadership is divided and insiders confirm that the union’s regional structures have no appetite for accommodation with the ANC.
That’s hardly surprising in the face of continued job losses and the deepening crisis of deindustrialisation. Even if a faction of Numsa’s national leadership were to support an alliance with the SACP, it’s clear that this would be opposed by many of its members and at least some of its regional structures.
So, with Cosatu still tied to the ANC, Abahlali baseMjondolo implacably opposed to it and Numsa divided, it seems likely that the SACP will stand alone when the 2026 local elections come around. While the party does have a mass base, it remains absent from most local struggles. And unlike Lula in Brazil or Petro in Colombia, it has not developed a political language or vision that appeals to the millions of people who most desperately need an alternative to both liberalism and kleptocratic nationalism.
What is at stake is not just the future of the SACP but whether the left can recover the ability to offer real hope to millions of people who are increasingly locked out of the democratic promise.
• Dr Buccus is research fellow at the Auwal Socioeconomic Research Institute and the University of the Free State.
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