At a briefing following the party's central committee meeting at the weekend, deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin singled out the Limpopo Economic Development Enterprise.
"It is a state-owned entity that is supposed to benefit the people of Limpopo and it is obliged to private BEE shareholders," he said.
"It is a perverse, narrow action of narrow BEE deals. BEE shareholders are parasitic. Do they create jobs?"
Limdev, the economic development agency for Limpopo which has stakes in many mining companies, provides finance for small business to stimulate the province's economy.
Cronin said mining companies placed "very little emphasis on the responsibility for job creation and looking after the environment".
SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said: "There is a crisis in the BEE sector. We need to be very critical about BEE. We need to be able to ask those taboo questions. Has BEE contributed to economic growth?"
The central committee, which had placed planning a new economic growth path at the top of its agenda, said it would shortly release a document that would move the focus of the country's economy to "more egalitarian outcomes".
Part of the discussion included nationalisation.
Said Nzimande: "We have to have progressive laws when it comes to minerals. And we cannot exclude the question of land ownership.
"The minerals beneath our soil belong to all South Africans."
Nzimande urged the government to be more transparent in tender transactions.
"We need to have lists of people who are short-listed for tenders, and the reasons why they were short-listed."
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