You know President Jacob Zuma's world has really shrunk when he is no longer welcome even at the SACP's congresses - once his stomping ground.
Although Zuma had quietly quit the party after its December 1989 congress in Cuba - the last one to be held in exile - the SACP was the first formal political structure he turned to for help when his troubles with the law threatened to torpedo his political career and send him back to prison, this time as a common-law criminal.
It was at a Young Communist League congress in the Vaal, in 2003, when he first publicly wooed the Reds - offering himself as a leader who listens, unlike the "aloof" Thabo Mbeki.
In the months and years that followed, the SACP would expend almost all its energies on helping him win the presidency. It used its influence in Cosatu to win him the backing of the trade unions and - along with the Fikile Mbalula-led ANC Youth League - was most vocal in calling for the disbandment of the Scorpions, the corruption-busting unit it accused of acting as Mbeki's private army.
At the centre of all this was Blade Nzimande, the SACP general secretary who, since succeeding Charles Nqakula in the post, had gained a reputation as a fierce critic of the Mbeki government's economic policy direction.
The story of Zuma's unlikely rise to power would not be complete without mentioning Nzimande and the SACP.
Yet now, five months before Zuma's last term as ANC president expires, Nzimande is in a similar battle to the one he fought in 2007 - against the head of state.
Days before this interview, he had told delegates at the congress that he felt "personally betrayed" by Zuma. I wanted to know if he regretted ever supporting the man as well as why it had taken him and the SACP so long to be outraged by Zuma's many scandals and his links with the Gupta family.
As recent as April 2014, Nzimande was derisively dismissing media reports on the R246-million wastage at Zuma's Nkandla homestead as "amanga abelungu - white people's lies" but today he is one of the few ANC alliance leaders who accepts the authenticity of the Gupta e-mails.
His party is also going through a period of uncertainty, with a growing number of its members, especially the youth, demanding that it contests elections on its own and enters into a reconfigured alliance with the ANC where it has more say in decision-making.
In 2007 and 2012, Nzimande and other senior party leaders were able to quell this push by selling, to their rank and file, a pro-poor Zuma who would implement radical economic policies. Zuma proved to be none of those things.
Now the SACP, although not officially saying it, is pinning its hopes on a Cyril Ramaphosa victory in December. But if Ramaphosa loses, and a Zuma-backed candidate emerges as the new president, Nzimande and the SACP will mostly look for new alliance partners - taking about 250000 members as well as Cosatu with them and fundamentally reconfiguring the country's political landscape...