IMRAAN BUCCUS: Mamdani’s victory in New York offers vital lessons for the SA left

Zohran Mamdani’s scintillating win in New York has thrilled the left-wing worldwide. The young man now stands alongside much older figures such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK as an example of what principled, grounded and effective leadership from the left can look like. While the global right is resurgent, his election as mayor of one of the world’s most complex cities offers valuable lessons for those of us who have long argued that SA needs a credible, democratic left.

We have no left-wing party in parliament. Despite the many people and organisations that call themselves left, the country has been unable to build a coherent political project that can contest elections and carry a vision of justice and equality into the state. The EFF claims the mantle, but a party mired in corruption and built around authoritarian leadership cannot seriously claim to be left. The EFF’s eventual opposition to xenophobia is welcome and deserves acknowledgement. But while any left party must oppose xenophobia, that is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a party to be considered left.

The Workers’ and Socialist Party, which contested the 2014 national elections, takes excellent positions on some issues. But like all Trotskyist formations, it is too dogmatic to win any meaningful popular support. The Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party, which entered the 2019 elections with much excitement and real enthusiasm, began with real promise. Many joined in hope of a democratic socialist alternative. But insiders say the project faltered because Irvin Jim insisted on controlling every decision, leaving the party structures and other elected leaders paralysed. The result was inevitable collapse.

Anchor in community

Mamdani’s campaign represents the opposite impulse: a reminder of what happens when politics is participatory rather than performative, collective rather than commandist.

He built a coalition from the ground up: tenants facing rent hikes, commuters frustrated by decaying public transport, parents burdened by childcare costs and immigrant workers fighting for dignity. Mamdani’s campaign addressed the cost-of-living crisis in language everyone understood: rent freezes, municipal grocery stores, fare-free buses, childcare and a wealth tax. But beyond policy, he offered something rarer: integrity anchored in community.

A man reads a copy of Daily Monitor newspaper with a headline about the new mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, in Kampala, Uganda.. (Abubaker Lubowa)

His campaign was not the product of consultants or marketing experts. It was a movement of citizens. A huge team of volunteers canvassed door to door across the city. The campaign became a training ground for young organisers, many drawn from the same working-class and immigrant backgrounds as the voters they spoke to. They held daily debriefs, tracked every block and used data not for manipulation but for co-ordination. Small donations from citizens kept the movement independent of corporate influence. His supporters were part of the campaign’s governance, not just its logistics.

Mamdani understood what many SA politicians do not: that politics is not a spectacle but a conversation. Instead of performing anger on stage, he and his huge team of volunteers built relationships across class and race divides, turning frustration into hope. His victory was the culmination of years of work with local tenant unions, youth organisations and transport collectives. He showed that patient organising, not sloganeering, is how you build popular forces for real change.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory is a reminder that another politics is possible, one that does not seek power for its own sake but for the sake of the people.

His success also highlights the importance of connecting electoral work to grassroots community groups and social movements. Mamdani’s base included renters’ unions, immigrant-rights networks and neighbourhood associations — the very structures that turn outrage into organised action. This is what has been missing in SA, where progressive civic and union movements remain outside formal politics.

This is, paradoxically, a country where many people have left-wing views, but we have no actual left-wing political party. Of course, we do have grassroots groups and trade unions, some of which are capable of real organising. But they have not transitioned into electoral projects. And the bridges between them and the intelligentsia of the left are mostly broken. Mamdani was a university graduate who went to the streets not to impart dogma but to listen. This is a crucial lesson for SA’s often dogmatic left.

Mamdani’s campaign shows how politics grounded in dignity is fundamentally different from the politics of authoritarianism and chauvinism. Here, many projects that claim to be radical have substituted moral clarity with empty and often authoritarian posturing. The SA left has been trapped between two dead ends: the factionalism of small, genuinely left sects and the macho populism of pseudo-left projects driven by big personalities. Neither can build the patient, democratic institutions that make lasting change possible.

Mamdani’s campaign offered a different kind of politics: one that combined idealism with method and ethics with structure. He and his huge team of volunteers worked street by street, block by block, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. They built trust, and with it, power. He showed that you can be radical without being reckless, principled without being purist, and visionary without being grandiose.

SA badly needs that kind of political energy. We need leaders who can speak honestly about inequality and corruption, who can organise across divides without falling into demagoguery, and who can turn the anger of the poor into a democratic project for change. We need a process of coalition and renewal rooted in the organisations and struggles of the working class and the poor, committed to dignity and democracy. NGOs cannot substitute for popular organisations, and when they have tried, they have often played a very damaging role.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory is a reminder that another politics is possible, one that does not seek power for its own sake but for the sake of the people. He showed that with discipline, coalition and moral clarity, the left can win again. The question for us is whether our own Mamdani, Corbyn or Lula will emerge.