SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila has characterised the ANC’s electoral loss at the May 29 polls as a “major blow” to the national democratic revolution (NDR).
Mapaila believes the NDR has been derailed due to economic policies benefiting capitalists to the detriment of the poor and working class.
The NDR is a political programme of the ANC-led tripartite alliance with the SACP and Cosatu aimed at addressing the country’s socioeconomic crises and bringing about a revolution for all oppressed people.
In his political report at the Communist Party’s fifth special national congress in Boksburg, east of Joburg, on Thursday, Mapaila said the ANC-led alliance was defeated by “counter revolutionaries”.
“We call it a revolutionary setback,” Mapaila said.
The ANC declined by 17 percentage points during the national and provincial elections, garnering 40% of voter share, which prompted it to form a government of national unity (GNU) with the DA, UDM, GOOD, Al Jama-ah, PA, PAC and Freedom Front Plus, among other parties.
However, the SACP is against the GNU, which it describes as a “monumental setback” for the working class.
Mapaila said the GNU was a deal between the ANC and the DA, stressing it was a form of “self-colonisation”.
Mapaila said the immediate task of the special national congress, which is effectively a midterm conference dealing with policy matters, must be to define the new role of the SACP in addressing challenges confronting the NDR, including the “acute crisis of the cost of living”.
Weak leadership
“The NDR has reached a very critical moment. This NDR has been derailed... the causes of this derailment are economic policies favouring big capital,” said Mapaila. He also blamed the “weakness of leadership” for the ANC’s electoral loss.
TimesLIVE reported recently that ANC KwaZulu-Natal secretary, Bheki Mtolo is in hot water with President Cyril Ramaphosa after he presented a report saying the ANC leader’s weakness contributed to the party’s dismal showing in the province in the May elections.
Despite the SACP having elected to contest elections independently in 2026, Mapaila said: “We have no intention to weaken the ANC. If anything, our task is to strengthen it.” As a result of the ANC’s electoral loss, the conditions of the masses of the people have worsened, he said.
The Communist 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.
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.
Meanwhile, ANC Gauteng chair and premier Panyaza Lesufi, addressing the conference earlier, thanked the SACP for standing with the movement in defending attempts to render the ANC-led government of provincial unity (GPU) “useless”.
The DA is not part of the GPU.
“It was not out of our own choice that other parties did not want to be part of the GPU. The GPU is intact and ready to protect the interests of the poor and unemployed,” said Lesufi, who has spoken out against the GNU and has called for the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act to be implemented in its entirety.
“Our agenda is simple, we want to build a society based on democracy, the principles of regress, equality and collective prosperity,” he said.
Lesufi called on the SACP to agitate for the full implementation of the Bela Act, saying if that fails, “there is no ways the NHI [National Health Insurance] would succeed”.
Mapaila said the “battle lines” have been drawn in Gauteng and called on Lesufi’s leadership to “defend this government, refute this collaboration with the DA, and defend the leader of the ANC”.
“You have proved we can set up a government without the DA. Well done,” Mapaila said.
Former president Thabo Mbeki and his brother Moeletsi, erstwhile AU Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, billionaire businessperson Patrice Motsepe, Chris Hani’s widow, Limpho, and representatives from Nicaragua, Cuba, Eritrea, UK and China, among others, attended the conference, which ends on Saturday.
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