The SACP has warned that the ANC is highly factionalised and in a state of moral and political decay that may result in the governing party receiving less than 50% of electoral support during the national elections of 2024.
The party has rejected the suppression of the debate on whether it should contest the elections on its own against the ANC.
In July, the organisation will hold its elective conference and the debate on whether the party must still support the ANC or contest elections independently is back on the table.
“The prospects for ANC renewal are uncertain and the class character of any such renewal (were it to occur) is equally a matter of struggle. The ANC remains seriously factionalised and moral and political decay has been far-reaching. Its future electoral prospects are uncertain with a strong possibility of it achieving less than 50% in 2024,” according to the party’s publication Bua Komanisi, which is going to be distributed to party structures in the next few days.
“However, the ANC remains by far the largest electoral formation and its residual support base should not be underestimated.
“If, after 2024, the ANC is forced nationally into coalition arrangements, it will be the senior partner. On what programmatic basis it enters into coalition agreements will depend on the character of the ANC at the time and on the capacity of working-class and popular forces to influence the programmatic direction,” the publication adds.
The party held the last ordinary meeting of its central committee last weekend in preparation for the elective conference set to take place in July.
According to the publication, the SACP should neither stand aloof from the renewal of the ANC nor invest all its expectations in the governing party and risk going down with a sinking ship.
Though relations with the current leadership of the ANC are cordial, there was a strong sense emerging among SACP leaders that the party was kept in the fold but “managed”.
The party has consistently asserted over the past few years that the immediate struggle “is on two fronts – against state capture and against neo-liberal austerity”.
The organisation rejected the idea that state power could simply be reduced to elections and also rejected opposition to the debate on the SACP contesting elections in its own right.
“Should the SACP contest elections independently and in its own name, in the relatively near or medium-term future, we should be clear that we are not talking about ‘taking state power’.
“Such a campaign realistically should aim to place more firmly on the public agenda the prospects and necessity to roll back neoliberal austerity, for the possibilities and imperatives of a socialist advance to bring hope to an alienated youth or to a disaffected ANC support base, and to use our independent presence in legislatures to act as people’s tribunes.”
This paper reported in January that an assessment of the party’s performance in government since the 2019 national and provincial elections, by Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele, showed that failures in government have led to what Gungubele said are the “hard truths of a desperate moment”.
Gungubele was addressing the ANC national executive committee lekgotla, which brought together the party’s top brass, senior public servants and
delegations from its allies, the SACP and Cosatu.
In his presentation, Gungubele painted a grim picture of the situation in the country, conceding that the ANC government is “left with two years of the term” and “seem nowhere closer to meeting many of the 2024 targets”.
Among issues that Gungubele said were evidence that pointed to “hard truths of a desperate situation” are:
- The extreme levels of hunger, child malnutrition and poverty in the country, with too few people at work;
- The quality of education not being responsive to economic needs, especially of the youth;
- An economy that remains unsustainably resource-intensive with de-industrialisation as well as huge regulatory costs; and
- Serious fiscal constraints with a high growing debt ratio and a trade balance that remains stubbornly negative.
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