LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: What is the SACP’s real game plan?

The SACP’s formal entry as a standalone party was one of the most significant moments of this election. It won 2.38% of the vote. What now?

A great weakness of our current politics is the lack of a disciplined movement of the left, a party that believes in a large role for the government in our economy and society. It is part of a change in global democracies away from a politics based on an economic left-right axis, which has led to the most unequal country in the world not possessing a strong leftist movement.

This is why the SACP is important – it is the one party that explicitly believes in this ideology.

Much has been said in the past few days about its performance in these elections. On the face of it, to win 271 seats in councils and 2.38% of the vote is impressive.

It shows the party is able to organise and campaign. And that it is able to have candidates who are popular in their wards and councils. It is no joke to campaign – it requires time, effort and resources.

However, when assessing the SACP’s performance it is important to ask: compared with what? It was the party’s first election across the country (in 2016 it contested local elections in Metsimaholo in the Free State).

While it won 2.38% of the vote, in its first election in 2024 Rise Mzansi won 0.42%, while Build One South Africa won 0.41%.

In the 2021 elections, ActionSA, also making its debut in a local election, won 2.34%. This probably puts it roughly on a par.

Does that mean the SACP, with more than 100 years of history and name recognition, did as well as Herman Mashaba’s party in its first outing?

Another way to compare the result is to consider the SACP as an offshoot of the ANC. While it is still, sort of, a part of the alliance (including having ministers in Cabinet who have not resigned despite their obvious disgust with the DA) it could be judged in this way.

In which case it would be fair to compare it with previous ANC offshoots.

In 2009, Cope won 7.42% of the vote. In 2014 the EFF, powered really by the personality of Julius Malema, won 6%. And, of course, in 2024, the MK party, publicly founded only six months before, won 14% of the national vote.

By any of these comparisons the SACP looks incredibly weak. It suggests that it has not competed strongly at all.

There are some defences for the party here.

It has not campaigned on the power of personality as both MK and the EFF did, perhaps trying to chart a more noble course. Neither has it used identity politics, an incredibly potent force in our society.

It might also be that it was not able to convince people who had previously supported the ANC to change a habit of many years.

But that would suggest Jacob Zuma was able to do something they were not able to do.

There is another reason this performance might be very weak.

In 2021, the SACP leader at the time, Blade Nzimande, said in a public SACP statement (still available on the party’s website) that, in its centenary year, the party had 300,000 members.

If it is true that just five years ago it had that many members, then it must have gone into these elections with more members, more resources and more machinery than any party making its electoral debut since 1994.

In that case, this outcome must be disappointing.

The key to this mystery might, of course, be that many of those members are also members of the ANC and they voted for the ANC.

But then again, what has the SACP achieved by campaigning on its own if it hasn’t been able to motivate these members to vote for them?

The next question that must be asked is: what is the real aim of the SACP now?

Did it campaign on its own to put pressure on the ANC? Or to found a proper leftist movement in our politics?

Such is the cynicism in our politics that we must also ask: is the SACP motivated by ideology or, like so many others, just by self-interest?

This has to be asked because last week the SACP held a meeting of the “Council of the Left”, which included the EFF, MK, Ace Magashule’s African Congress for Transformation and Floyd Shivambu’s Afrika Mayibuye Movement.

The council is opposed to the current national coalition and helps to coordinate their efforts to move the ANC away from working with the DA.

All of this is perfectly honourable. Given our history and racialised inequality it is perfectly logical for the SACP to do almost anything it can to change the course of the ANC.

However, this means the SACP is also prepared to work with people of whom it has been incredibly critical in the past. And for good reason.

As early as 2011, while Malema was still leader of the ANC Youth League, the SACP refused to accept that he was really working towards helping the poor.

Nzimande told a Cosatu gathering in that year “that the global financial crisis had particularly exposed the highly indebted BEE capitalist stratum as share prices in mining and other stocks tumbled. Hence the call for nationalisation by elements within the ANCYL (to nationalise the mines – Malema’s rallying call at the time) whose intention is to save these BEE elements in crisis, and not to address the interests of the workers and the poor of our country”.

If that was the view of the SACP then, what has Malema done in the past 15 years to convince them that he has changed?

In the same 2021 statement in which the SACP said it had 300,000 members, it also said that the so-called “JZ” or self-styled “RET” grouping is really and largely networks of corrupt and opportunistic elements, themselves facing the prospect of jail time, and relying on war chests accumulated through the looting of public resources. “There is no serious political programme uniting them, beyond the threadbare, ritualised incantation of unprocessed, empty and demagogic slogans.”

Now that many of the same people who supported Zuma within the ANC have moved with him to form MK, does that mean they have changed?

Does that analysis no longer hold? And if so, what convinced the SACP of this?

Those who believe the SACP is the best-suited organisation to create a proper leftist movement are owed an explanation as to why the party would now be working with people it has previously scorned in this way.

Does its antipathy towards the DA mean it has thrown away its judgement on all other matters?

And considering it is the SACP that first promoted and entrenched the concept of nonracialism in the ANC and the congress movement, this cannot be motivated by race.

The longer-term strategy of the SACP is important.

Is it trying to put pressure on the ANC to change course?

In which case, in 2029, winning 2.38% of the vote is unlikely to be enough. Even if this is just the base of a larger campaign in 2029, it seems unlikely the party would be able to get to, say, the 10% needed to really convince the ANC to change course (through being a more viable political partner than the DA).

If it is trying to found a much bigger leftward movement, working with MK (which believes there should be no Constitution and wants traditional leaders to govern) is a strange way to do it.

Our politics needs a strong voice of the left. Just as it needs a strong union movement. Without them our politics is much poorer.

The decisions the SACP makes, its real longer-term strategy, could be important for everyone.

If it does not chart a clear course it will not attract more voters.