Nzimande R500 million

Former South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande. Image via Twitter: SACP
@SACP1921

Communists want to cut ties with the ANC, putting Blade under pressure

Blade Nzimande: ANC stalwart, Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology and general secretary of the South African Communist Party.

Nzimande R500 million

Former South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande. Image via Twitter: SACP
@SACP1921

The South African Communist Party (SACP) will face a call to break its alliance with the ANC and go it alone when the party holds its congress in December.

It has become a bit of a joke in political circles that the SACP is forever threatening to leave the alliance but never actually walks through the door, fearing it might be cold outside the alliance’s embrace.

At every congress of the SACP the issue arises, mainly because many in the SACP believe the ANC to be terminally corrupt, which has a severely detrimental impact on the working class and the unemployed poor.

At its last congress in 2017, the decision was actually taken to contest elections separately, but that only happened once – in December 2017 in the Metsimaholo municipality based in the Free State industrial hub of Sasolburg when the SACP made much about opposing the ANC, did quite well in obtaining the balance of power and then immediately gave its support – and control of the municipality – to the ANC despite its initial oppositional stance during the by-election campaign.

SACP and ANC: Alliance comes under the blade

An important issue driving the SACP decision to contest the Metsimaholo elections separately was that the then ANC leader and South African president, Jacob Zuma, had left SACP general secretary Dr Blade Nzimande out of the cabinet. Within two weeks of the Metsimaholo by-election, Cyril Ramaphosa was elected ANC leader. Before long, he reinstated Nzimande in the cabinet and talks of separate SACP contestation of elections ceased for a while.

Currently, the call to break with the ANC and go it alone in elections is headed by the Western Cape provincial structures of the SACP. From the same structures, there is a call to replace Nzimande, who has been at the helm of the SACP for the past two decades. The argument is that Nzimande always finds a reason not to break with the ANC, especially when he has a cabinet position. The problem his opponents have is who to put up as a candidate, because the affable and intelligent Nzimande commands great personal loyalty among the current high profile SACP leadership.

In the past, the SACP leadership has cautioned that the party would lose its influence in government should it go it alone. It has cautioned that parties like the Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party (SRWP), started by National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) trade unionists Irvin Jim and Zwelinzima Vavi, has failed miserably at the polls because union members chose to put their voting cross next to established parties, which outweighed their union loyalties.

In the past the decision to leave the alliance was an open-ended one left to the SACP leadership, but the expectation is that the push for autonomous SACP election participation in December will have a specific time frame, so that the party leadership cannot wriggle its way out of opposition to the ANC again.