SACP weighs option to push for Ramaphosa’s recall

SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila says the party is “extremely disappointed” with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership and is still debating whether it should formally call for him to leave office.

In an interview with JJ Tabane on the Sunday World Podcast, Mapaila said the question had already reached the SACP’s central committee, but no final decision had been taken.

“We are disappointed with his leadership as president of the Republic. Extremely disappointed,” Mapaila said.

He stated that the central committee had engaged in multiple discussions about Ramaphosa, but the most recent meeting focused primarily on election preparations. The party’s politburo was then mandated to finalise the matter before it returned to the central committee for a more thorough discussion.

Mapaila also stood by an earlier public call for Ramaphosa’s impeachment, linking his position to Operation Vulindlela and what he described as the transfer of state functions and assets to private capital.

The remarks sharpen the political tension between the SACP and the ANC as the communists contest the November local government elections independently.

The SACP has officially confirmed that it is pressing ahead with an independent electoral contest while insisting that it has not abandoned the Alliance. The party says the move follows more than two decades of unsuccessful attempts to reconfigure the Alliance.

Mapaila rejected Tabane’s suggestion that the SACP’s election message could simply be reduced to saying the ANC had failed South Africans.

He said the democratic government’s first decade had delivered important gains, including roads, houses, clinics and wider access to education for communities excluded under apartheid.

But he argued that the ANC subsequently turned towards neoliberal economic policy and increasingly failed to respond to the crisis confronting the working class.

“The working class must stand for itself and for its interests,” Mapaila said, arguing that workers could no longer rely on others to represent them while pursuing policies hostile to those interests.

The interview also investigates whether personality clashes between Mapaila and ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula are driving the rupture.

Mapaila dismissed that suggestion and revealed that he had recently met Mbalula at Luthuli House over the expulsion of SACP members in some provinces.

He said there was still communication between them but acknowledged “huge disagreements” about how the Alliance functioned.

Mapaila also challenged the conventional description of the ANC as the “leader of the Alliance”, saying the ANC, SACP, Cosatu and Sanco were independent formations that entered the Alliance as equals.

He said attempts to reconfigure the Alliance had dragged on for years despite a common framework being produced and adopted by Alliance structures in 2019. That unresolved history now hangs over the SACP’s decision to contest elections independently.

He insists that the independent campaign should not be read as the SACP walking away from the Alliance.

The full conversation, including Mapaila’s explanation of how the SACP intends to persuade traditional ANC voters to back the communists, is published today on the Sunday World Podcast YouTube channel.

Setumo Stone