The ANC’s alliance partner, the SACP, is caught between a rock and a hard place as it goes into its 15th national congress on Wednesday.
This is the gathering at which the party will weigh its options amid the realisation that its partner in government, the ANC, may drop below 50% at the 2024 national and provincial polls.
The SACP and Cosatu have been married to the ruling party since it assumed state power after the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
Throughout this period the SACP has scored some gains by pushing the ANC in a socialist policy direction. However, it suffers when the governing party goes against its wishes.
The SACP now finds itself at the crossroads of whether to potentially go down with the ANC or save itself by going it alone and contesting elections outside their marriage.
This is among discussions expected to take place at the national congress, which is due to end on Saturday, as contained in the draft programme circulated to party structures.
After pushing for “reconfiguration of the alliance” since Nasrec 2017, the SACP appears to have given up on this fight.
“Without effective, organised working-class and popular power behind the SACP, without an SACP that boldly asserts its independence, and without the renewal of Cosatu and the wider trade union movement, effective reconfiguration will not happen,” reads the SACP’s draft programme document.
Either way, effective left popular mobilisation should not be developed as an anti-ANC position, but it should certainly be aggressive against some of the dominant trends within the ANC and the ANC-led government
— SACP
Among other way-forward options is the party's push to build and lead what it calls the “left popular front/movement”, which some have termed its “Plan B” to the tripartite alliance.
But in this strategy too, the SACP is treading carefully.
“Either way, effective left popular mobilisation should not be developed as an anti-ANC position, but it should certainly be aggressive against some of the dominant trends within the ANC and the ANC-led government.
“Effective left mobilisation should be able to influence and perhaps even mobilise some, if not all, ANC structures, and certainly a large part of the ANC’s broad support base.”
According to the SACP, if this route is to work, it must also target “genuine militants” who might have joined organisations such as the EFF.
But this has the potential to be tainted by rogue elements posing as leftists or socialists, thus making it paramount for the left popular front to emerge “out of popular campaigning and mobilisation”.
The long-standing debate within SACP circles on whether to go it alone in contesting elections for state power will again be on the table.
The debate this time will be much more serious, with a radical push to move away from the ANC's shadow, given the plummeting electoral fortunes of the Luthuli House outfit.
“This will require that we neither tail behind the general mood and aspirations of the great majority of the workers and the poor, nor that we place ourselves so far ahead with left-sounding rhetoric that we reduce ourselves to a small clique.
“Whether it is in the struggle to renew the ANC and reconfigure the alliance and more dramatically change the course of neoliberal consolidation in government, or whether it is to eventually contest elections independently of the ANC, nothing can be won in the ANC or alliance forums, or in electoral contests, without the effective, mass-based consolidation in active struggle of popular and working-class forces.”
The SACP will also elect new leadership at the congress, with long-time general secretary Blade Nzimande bowing out after being at the helm since 1998.
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