The more than 80-year political and ideological bond between the ANC and SACP is under strain, highlighting the historical depth that makes current tensions within the Tripartite Alliance more consequential.
The two organisations were in lockstep throughout the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle. The relationship endured the Cold War, the rooi gevaar, swart gevaar and total onslaught attacks, which were sponsored by state and global imperialism.
Dubbed a principled and revolutionary relationship, tested in battle and built on commitments that included dying for each other as organisations, the relationship was never expected to disintegrate.
In conceptualising the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), the two parties agreed that they did not share the same ideological destiny. To the SACP, socialism has always been the future, while the ANC focused on transferring political, economic and social power to the people. This ideological divergence threatens the alliance’s cohesion and raises questions about its future stability.
The execution of the NDR as a cause required the command of state power and a legal framework that outlaws any conduct inimical to the principles underpinning the establishment of a National Democratic Society (NDS). It became important for the post-colonial and post-apartheid state to be anchored in arrangements for governing each other that advance what the democratic order should be about.
Social and economic justice, human dignity, the fulfilment of a constitutionally entrenched Bill of Human Rights, the supremacy of the Constitution, and universal adult suffrage became the foundational provisions of a new society.
How such a society progresses towards the stated ideals was left to competitive democracy, which allows those with a convincing value proposition for voters and society to act. This posture, which defined the ANC as having arguably reached its end state, save for the quality issues required to declare that it has indeed created an NDS, was a position the SACP rejected.
To the SACP, the 1994-96 settlement marked a democratic breakthrough, from which the journey to its socialist future could begin. The ANC, as the immediate custodian of state power and having won the governing party role through an election, became a contested terrain for the ideological direction of the republic.
Potentially unexpected within the Tripartite Alliance was the reality of influential ANC leaders who did not believe in socialism. There is increasingly strong evidence that the ANC has become more liberal since 1994 than it has ever been. In ideological terms, this should pose existential risks for the SACP if it does not actively pursue state power, either directly or by exerting ideological influence over the ANC.
The May 2024 moment, which challenged the ANC’s access to state power, foregrounded the ideological affinity of the ANC, as it is currently led, with the liberal cause. The worst liberal instincts of those in the ANC establishment won the battle over whom to coalesce with to meet the 50-plus-1 threshold to govern. This also meant the decisive entry of liberal political parties into the centre of government.
Suicidal as it may seem, the SACP’s approach to this matter is informed by its genuine existential realities, beyond an ANC that would, in all likelihood, be on the periphery of state power.
The emboldened dominance of liberalism created political space for neoliberal economic policies that are fundamentally inimical to what the SACP would ordinarily stand for. The relationship between the ANC and SACP could therefore not continue in its current form.
The paradigmatic shift in public representation, in which citizens are represented through the interests of political parties that enter coalitions, meant that the dominant liberal substrate of the government of national unity (GNU) would prevail.
For the ANC, the need to adjust the terms of the relationship with the SACP is a long-overdue strategic, political and ideological imperative. The SACP’s decision to go it alone in the forthcoming local government elections has further accelerated the need for such honest engagement.
Suicidal as it may seem, the SACP’s approach to this matter is informed by its genuine existential realities, beyond an ANC that would, in all likelihood, be on the periphery of state power. The lessons from local government have been instructive for the SACP’s posture.
On the other hand, the ANC’s posture, informed by its experience of losing members to organisations that split from it, approaches the changing relationship from a different existential basis. To the ANC, the go-it-alone decision represents a further decline in electoral support before ideological rupture.
There are new exceptional circumstances, and neither party has considered the unique solutions required. The following 24 months, which include the local government elections and their candidate list processes, the Cosatu conference, and the ANC elective conference, will be the most consequential for the Tripartite Alliance, the ANC and the SACP, respectively.
The separation of the conjoined triplets is inevitable, and one will not make it beyond the surgery. The anatomy of the Tripartite Alliance is a surgical challenge that requires no election in sight.
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