It goes to the heart of the widening rift between
Malema demanded the right to address the mid-term national congress of the party in Polokwane, apparently because he deems himself to be more than a mere delegate.
He was turned down by the party's chairman, Gwede Mantashe, who doubles as the ANC secretary-general.
It was too much for Malema and his fellow delegates, Tony Yengeni and Billy Masetlha. They walked out of the conference, setting the scene for a worsening of relations between the communists and the ANC.
Malema said he was going to tell President Jacob Zuma what the SACP had done to him.
But will the ANC go along with Malema, or will it value its relationship with the SACP enough to avoid a full-blown stand-off?
The question is intriguing because it goes to the heart of the growing rift between "nationalists" and "socialists" in the ANC.
The fissure has expressed itself in the government's indecision about how to proceed on economic policy. The result has been stagnation, which has allowed the status quo - a statist liberalism - to survive, though without any of its supporters willing to stick their neck out on its behalf.
This uneasy inertia is likely to give way to movement in one direction or the other.
The irony is that Malema wants nationalisation whereas the SACP's Jeremy Cronin has argued that that is not always the way to transform an economy.
Mantashe and Malema have pushed the SACP and ANC into their biggest open confrontation.
Which way will Jacob Zuma bend? Or will he continue to abdicate his leadership role to those with the loudest voices?
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