Did Blade's risqué talk indicate a parasite's detachment from its host?

When the Comrades arrived for this year's general conference of the South African Communist Party, none of them could imagine the drama that was about to explode in their faces like the still-talked-about expired chocolate eclairs of the 2013 edition.

Not that they were naive, of course. As they erected the venue, draping three blankets off the top bunk and holding them up with a broomstick, they agreed that the next few months would be challenging. They would have to be alert to undue influence from outside: the Comrade with the neatest handwriting was tasked to make a sign reading: "MOM LEEV US ALON WE ARE HAVING OUR MEETING altho pleez leev a plate of Romany Kreems outside, also some Coke thnx XX."

Soon, however, they relaxed into the familiar processes of the conference, such as the traditional Reading Of The Most Recent Telegram From The Soviet Union, a yellowing and somewhat greasy strip of paper that had arrived in 1991.

The agenda, too, was comfortingly unchanged.

A Comrade started off by reporting back on what progress had been made overthrowing global capitalism, a very short speech made somewhat longer by the sudden malfunction of his PowerPoint presentation and a snap resolution to crush monopolistic Microsoft once the workers were in charge.

Next came the traditional re-election of Cde Blade as general secretary, a happy celebration of continuity and personality cults. As he was wrapped in the Hessian Sack of Solidarity, handed the ceremonial Bronze Potato of the Proletariat, and given two extra Romany Creams, party veterans pointed out that Cde Blade has been general secretary since 1998 and is therefore almost old enough to remember when Russia and China were Communist.

This received a round of applause. They also refuted the notion that he has been general secretary for 19 years because nobody else wants the job because being the face of a national joke is a bit kak. This, too, received applause, although it was somewhat muted.

It was when they reached Item Three on the agenda that the bombshell dropped.

Item Three first appeared in 2005 and was, at least in principle, a resolution to discuss the possibility of a discussion of the potentiality of perhaps considering contesting a national election as an independent party.

The idea had cropped up from time to time since then - usually over a third bottle of Johnny Blue - for example, "Okay, I'll lower university tuition fees the day we contest an election! Hahaha - oh Jesus I'm going to vom." But it was, of course, ludicrous.

Why contest a national election, with all that upsetting democracy, when you could remain in government forever without ever having won a single vote? What sane person would offer to get a job when they had free board and lodging as long as they rubber-stamped the whims of President Gupta?

But when the delegates reached Item Three last week, something bizarre happened.

The SACP decided to move out of home and get a job.

At least, I think it did. Speaking to Eyewitness News, Blade said: "We've taken these resolutions and then congress is said go and work on the modality consult and engage and one milestone would be a report to the augmented central committee."

I'm not exactly sure what any of that means. It's possible it was Communist dirty talk, the kind of tumescent rhetoric you might have heard if you'd phoned a Moscow phone sex service in 1985. Not that I judge: when you've had a long day trying to seize the means of production ("Jeremy, what's the password on my computer? No, I've tried RedTerror17.") and you've got into your German-built means of propulsion and gone home, you sometimes need to embrace unique means of compulsion.

It's also possible, however, the SACP is actually getting ready to go it alone. Which makes things very explicit indeed. After all, why does a parasite leave its host?

If it contests the 2019 elections, the SACP will win a single-figure percentage of the vote. But if the remora has left the shark because it knows the shark is about to die - or about to drop below 50% in the polls - then all of us might be winners after all.

Onwards, brave Communists!