By Fumene George Tsibani:
There is a time for rhetoric, and a time for responsibility! Let us speak plainly about the pain faced by workers in South Africa today.
Since 1994, the South African Communist Party ( SACP) has been deployed, with resources and in positions of influence, across the key clusters of our state: the economy, education, science and technology. These are precisely the levers required to build a 21st-century developmental state.
The question of wisdom, therefore, is not who to blame, but what we have built. To externalise failure and place the full burden upon the African National Congress ( ANC) is neither strategic nor truthful. It is an accusation that seeks to mask SACP leadership incompetencies behind Alliance politics. It fractures the very ANC Alliance partners that carried our liberation and serves no interest but that of disruption.
On Leadership, Not Colour
The current SACP leadership under Comrade Solly Mapaila has, in recent months, chosen a tone of emotion, anger and public confrontation rather than a sober revolutionary road-map. More concerning is the retreat into a politics of skin rather than ideology, claiming “capitalist left thinkers” on the basis of colour, not class.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the 21st-century struggle. As the Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping put it: “It does not matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mice.”
The meaning is simple and materialist: in a period of globalisation and new global dynamics, what matters is not the colour of the cadre, but the capacity of the cadre to organise, to industrialise, to build skills, and to deliver. The task is not racial performance, but revolutionary performance. To judge policy by pigmentation rather than outcomes is to abandon Marxist-Leninist analysis for identity politics. That is not vanguardism. That is regression.
The Missing Vanguard: One Federation
A vanguard party without an organised working class is a vanguard without an army.
Since the days of trade unionists like Elijah Barayi, Phumzile John Gomomo, and others, the strategic task has been clear: build One Federation that unites all workers under a single banner. Today, that task remains unfinished. There is no single, united workers’ federation to speak with one voice for labour.
The consequence is plain. Youth unemployment stands at 46.1%. In townships and villages, a generation is waiting for work, for skills, for dignity at the very moment when SACP-deployed leaders are chairing boards, ministries, and policy clusters in the economy, education, science, and technology.
How can a party claim to lead the working class when it has not completed the basic prerequisite of uniting the working class under one federation? How can it speak of the People’s Contract of 1955 and the stages of the national question, when it has allowed fragmentation in the labour movement to persist to date?
On the “Conference of the Left” and Regime Change
At the same time, we witness a plethora of Black political formations, including sections of the SACP, aligning with what is termed “Swartgevaar” politics. We have even seen the organisation of the so-called “Conference of the Left,” attended by leaders implicated in the Zondo, Nkabinde, and Madlanga Commissions’ investigations.
This “Conference of the Left” does not advance the national question. It defers it. It substitutes the hard questions of land, industry, science, and jobs with faction, personality, and stomach politics. In effect, it undermines the ANC-led Alliance at precisely the moment unity is required. Objectively, this lends itself to an accelerated regime-change project, one long resourced and supported by Global North elite networks that understand that a divided liberation movement is a weakened one.
In this light, the proposal that the SACP should contest elections separately on 04 November 2026 must be rejected. It is opportunistic. To split the vote now is not to expand democracy, but to assist in the fragmentation of the majority project.
Conclusion: Deliver, Then Be Judged
A true cadre takes responsibility. He does not shift blame, nor does he hide behind slogans. His duty is to defend the National Democratic Revolution, to deepen it through concrete delivery, and to remain steadfast in the ANC-led Alliance in firm unity with the working class.
If the deployment has been ours, then the mandate has been ours.
If the resources have been ours, then the stewardship has been ours.
If the time of governance has been ours, then the outcomes must also be ours.
And if the contradictions have matured on our watch, then the self-criticism must also be ours.
The working class cannot eat rhetoric. The youth cannot build a future on division. A vanguard that turns its guns inward at the moment of crisis is not advancing the working class. It is abandoning it.
Therefore: Hands off the ANC. Defend the Alliance. Deepen the Revolution. Deliver for the people. And let the people of South Africa and history be the judge.
Fumene George Tsibani- Water Governance and Programme Evaluation Expert, University of Johannesburg. Writing in his personal capacity – @NewsSA_Online
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