"We believe that the shortage of medicine, textbooks, education and health infrastructure and many other state shortfalls are as a result of the tender system," it said in a statement.

"[Tenders]...corrupted our public service and our politics to the detriment of our society and the confidence it has in our government."

The league said it was prepared for the SA Communist Party's (SACP) 13th national congress next week.

Some of the resolutions adopted at the league's national working committee (NWC) meeting on Friday was to push for a special resolution for the complete banning of tenders at the congress.

Spokesman Mangaliso Stalin Khonza said the call for "economic freedom in our lifetime" was misguided as all freedoms could not be separated.

"The [NWC] seemed to be responding to yet another wrong, ideologically incoherent... call for economic freedom in our lifetime.[It] believes that we must assert the basis of our struggle as that of attaining absolute freedom in social, economic and political terms," he said.

"Our struggle must be to liberate blacks and Africans from economic and political bondage through the building of a non-racist, non sexist and democratic society."

He said the issue over land distribution was more central to liberation.

"Blaming government as the sole party responsible for the slow pace of land redistribution must no longer be tolerated," the statement said.

Khonza said the league would push for strengthening the SACP's leadership capacity by proposing that three deputy general secretaries be appointed.