Last week I was invited to take part in a television show to debate with the SACP’s Alex Mashilo. It started at 6.15am. Mashilo is not a fool like me; he joined the debate from the comfort of his home office via Zoom. We were supposed to talk about the SACP sniping at the ANC over its coalition with the DA and its formation of the government of national unity (GNU).
Halfway through the debate, I felt exhausted. What exactly was I doing debating with the SACP, when it had never contested an election and had stood by for years, aiding and abetting the ANC while South Africa hit the skids? This is an organisation that had campaigned for Jacob Zuma when he was accused of corruption, and had stood silent in the state capture years until the very last moment when, out of expediency, it reluctantly joined the anti-Zuma brigade. Today it classifies Zuma’s MK Party, which rejects our constitution and wants to send young girls who fall pregnant to Robben Island, as “progressive”.
I also felt terrible because many columnists and analysts such as myself give the SACP too much attention, despite its hypocrisy and lack of demonstrable support. Will the constant yapping at the ANC’s heels by SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila really upend the GNU? The reality is that the SACP’s own leaders find the party’s sniping at the ANC tedious, unhelpful and irrelevant to the realities the ANC faces today.
They are making their views clear by continuing with their work in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet. SACP chair Blade Nzimande, who serves as minister of science, technology & innovation, has not said a word while Mapaila has branded the cabinet as a “sell-out” arrangement. Minister of mineral & petroleum resources Gwede Mantashe served as national chair of the SACP from 2007 to 2012. He is now No 18 on the SACP’s central committee list. He is not rushing out of the cabinet door.
Our deputy minister of finance is David Masondo, a deputy general secretary of the SACP and a central committee member. Two months ago, he warned the SACP that even if it were to win state power, capitalists would remain indispensable for economic growth. Almost every SACP central committee member enjoys the benefits of the huge new GNU cabinet or the state. Andries Nel is deputy minister of justice & constitutional development, Polly Boshielo is deputy minister of police and Buti Manamela continues to be the deputy minister of higher education.
The rest of the party’s national leadership are all supping at the GNU table in national and provincial positions. Limpopo premier Phophi Ramathuba is an SACP deputy chair in the province, for example.
As the ANC Youth League’s Collen Malatji said recently: “Let’s remind you that the ANC wasn’t given a full mandate by South Africans to govern on its own. That’s why we find ourselves under the GNU, which includes the SACP.
The SACP’s own leaders find the party’s sniping at the ANC tedious, unhelpful and irrelevant to the realities the ANC faces today
“Anyone who has a problem with the structure of the GNU must immediately withdraw their deployees. [They can] prepare to win the next elections on their own.”
Will the SACP do it? In our debate last week, Mashilo implied that the party may contest the 2026 local elections on its own. I have news for him: the SACP has been saying this for 30 years and has not once lifted a finger to do it. The benefits of cabinet positions are too tempting. The SACP has been on the gravy train for 30 years and it won’t get off. Ask Mantashe and Nzimande. They are on board, and they won’t get off.
It is the same with the Gauteng ANC’s on-off flirtation with an anti-GNU stance. It is meaningless because the ANC in Gauteng has been on the decline since 2009, when it won 64% of the vote. In 2014 it crashed to 53%. Ten years later, on May 29, it collapsed to 34.7%. The ANC is a nonentity in Gauteng and in the greater scheme of things.
So, what now?
There are real threats to the GNU. Primary among them is the lack of a signed, agreed-upon economic turnaround plan. That’s what we should all be focusing on when we are asked to be up at the crack of dawn.
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