In October 2017, the alliance between the ANC, SACP and Cosatu was in disarray. Months after the communists and union federation called on Jacob Zuma to resign, the president reshuffled his Cabinet and sacked SACP leader Blade Nzimande without consulting his allies. Alliance meetings had effectively broken down and the president was barred from addressing SACP and Cosatu events.

Tripartite Alliance relations have improved since Cyril Ramaphosa won the ANC presidency, backed by the SACP and Cosatu, at Nasrec in December 2017, but more than two years later, the SACP still finds itself in a difficult position within the alliance.

The economy has stagnated and Ramaphosa – despite implementing national minimum wage changes and continuing to move forward on land reform and the National Health Insurance – has primarily focused on courting the business sector rather than pursuing the socialist agendas of his allies.

Within the ANC, the president has struggled to maintain control of his divided party and fend off attacks from comrades implicated in corruption allegations or hoping to continue the rampant looting of the Zuma years.

“The choice between looters and neoliberals is no choice at all,” said Nzimande at the 25th commemoration of former SACP leader Joe Slovo’s death at Avalon Cemetery in Soweto on Monday, 6 January.

“The advocates of the neoliberal agenda use public power and the policy-making space to facilitate and legitimise the transfer of productive state resources to exploitation by private wealth accumulation interests, while the state capture parasites use public power, but follow crude, smash-and-grab or outright high-jacking tactics to achieve the same results,” he continued.

“Those who have abandoned the course of liberation – for which countless revolutionaries, ordinary South Africans and people in the surrounding countries sacrificed – have embarked on a path of narrow nationalism. Others have branded themselves as champions of ‘radical economic transformation’, when all they have become are radical looters or advocates of neoliberalism.”

Nzimande called for a socialist-orientated radical transformation of the economy, which would see the majority of citizens add economic freedom to the political freedom they won in 1994. But the SACP is fully aware of how difficult it is to have its voice heard within the alliance and the challenges the ANC faces ahead of the 2021 local government elections.

“One of our key objectives this year is precisely to rebuild our movement, inclusive of the ANC, and to move the national democratic revolution, our national transformation and development programme, into a second, more radical phase. Our aim is to advance and defend the democratic transition and deepen the advance to socialism,” said Nzimande.

The SACP held a special national congress in December 2019 and committed to supporting the ANC in 2021, but decided it might field its own candidates in areas where the ANC imposes candidates unpopular with communities or who are tainted by corruption scandals.

The SACP ran independently from the ANC for the first time in 2017 in Metsimaholo, Free State, and formed a coalition to lead the municipality.

A repeat in 2021 is unlikely, or unlikely to be broad, as the SACP is looking to support and bolster its coalition partners, and return to the days when it saw itself as the “vanguard party for socialism”.

Work has begun on reconfiguring the alliance, which the SACP and Cosatu long called for, and the Alliance Political Council has agreed to hold regular, consensus-seeking meetings while supporting the ANC at elections and including other alliance representatives on candidate lists.

During his political report at the special national congress, Nzimande outlined the SACP’s plan to help rebuild the alliance and improve solidarity on the left. The party wants to help the ANC fight against its “divisions, factionalism, gate-keeping, isolation from communities on the ground, and marginalisation of its allies”.

It has also called for solidarity among trade unions and proposed an all-inclusive trade union conference in 2021 as unions proliferate, and compete for members while failing to grow the total number of unionised workers. The SACP also has ambitions to unite civil society.

“What we need is to move our economy on to a new and qualitatively different growth path that places the needs of the people at the centre of everything,” said Nzimande on Monday.

“We must improve the conditions of the workers. In this regard, the pursuit of the decent work agenda is important in the present period. We must push policies that will create productive work for the unemployed to make a living and lead a decent life.”

The SACP, however, has long complained about the ANC government’s economic policies and as the governing party remains divided, and Ramaphosa bounces from crisis to crisis, it’s unclear how the communists will move from having a seat at the table to having a greater influence on policy decisions. DM