South African Communist Party

14th Plenary Session of the 15th Congress Central Committee Statement

27–29 March 2026, COSATU House, Braamfontein, Johannesburg

Rebuild working-class power, defend sovereignty, advance socialism

The South African Communist Party (SACP) convened its 14th Plenary Session at a moment defined by deep systemic capitalist economic crisis, intensifying class contradictions, and the violent reconfiguration of global capitalism. This is not a cyclical downturn but a structural crisis of capitalism itself, expressed through imperialist war, ecological destruction, economic stagnation, and the ruthless super-exploitation of the working class. These global realities are felt directly here at home in our economy, in our communities and in the daily struggles of our people through the inflationary impact of the daily necessities raising the price of food, transport and energy.

The Central Committee reaffirmed that this crisis presents both grave dangers and historic revolutionary possibilities and that we must consciously seize this moment through militant organisation and mobilisation, ideological clarity, and decisive and clear working-class leadership.

Imperialism, war, assassination and global domination

Wars and instability are not accidents either; they are calculated expressions of how the current global system operates. Militarism, sanctions and economic pressure are tools deployed to control countries and their resources. The working class and the poor are the ones who pay the price of war through destruction of their livelihoods, poverty and unemployment. Peace requires sovereignty, and sovereignty requires development and vice versa. Countries of the Global South must work together to build their economies, strengthen productive capacity, strengthen their security and defence capacities and reduce dependence on other countries, especially the erstwhile colonisers.

At the same time, the world is changing; we are part of the changes. We are witnessing the emergence of a more multipolar global order from the current unilateral disorder. Countries such as the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, India, Brazil and South Africa in BRICS and BRICS Plus, with many others, are playing a growing role in shaping the new international order and possibilities.

The Central Committee condemns in the strongest terms the intensification and escalation of imperialist wars, including the intensifying US-Israeli war of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran. We denounce the assassination of senior Iranian leadership, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, alongside his family members and senior political, military and government officials, including the Minister of Intelligence, and school infrastructure in a targeted strike. Critical infrastructure, including energy infrastructure, homes, hospitals and entire communities has been destroyed. More worrying, even attacks on nuclear plants have been carried out, posing a grave danger to organic life itself on a long-term basis. The deliberate targeting of civilians and ecological systems constitutes a grave crime under international law.

These acts constitute state terrorism, a flagrant violation of international law, and are a direct assault on national sovereignty and territorial integrity, in violation of the UN Charter, Article Two. This aggression, alongside the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the intensified new offensive war of occupation and destruction of Lebanon since the beginning of March 2026, shows apartheid Zionist Israel has crossed all the red lines of international law, decency and neighbourliness. The working masses and religious fraternity must understand that this is not a biblical Israel but a state that was established on a foundation of dispossession and blood. Some want to portray this as a religious war, which is a fallacy. It is high time that all peace-loving countries and progressive forces isolate the US administration under Donald Trump, who enjoys blowing his own trumpet.

On the other hand, the new measures on the economic blockade of Cuba, especially the oil blockade, reflect not only a desperate US imperialist system attempting to reassert control through violence but also an arrogant display of unilateralism of a system refusing the collapse of its hegemony in its desperate efforts to recolonise the world, as they implied at the recent Munich Security Conference in Germany. The Central Committee calls for people all over the world, especially on the African continent and the Global South, to pledge their unwavering solidarity with socialist Cuba and send any form of aid possible, such as non-perishable goods and solar energy equipment, to mitigate this unprecedented US action. We will be part of the May Day brigade to Cuba this year and call on the youth to join this solidarity brigade.

The Central Committee further reaffirms unwavering solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the current period of deep imperialist destabilisation, aggression and interference in its domestic affairs. We express our deep solidarity with the abducted constitutionally and democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro Moros and First Combatant Cilia Flores. We wish them more strength as they face trial in the US and call for their immediate unconditional release.

The Central Committee calls for the immediate end to imperialist wars and assassinations, global mobilisation against US-led militarism, and defence of all nations asserting sovereignty, including South Africa, and appreciates the recent ANC-led march for the defence of national sovereignty and independence. We also call for intensified Global South coordination and acceleration of the de-dollarisation of their economies to avoid undue influences and intimidation of government and political leaders by Western financial institutions used politically by the US mob of the political class.

On the National Health Insurance: another decisive front of working-class struggle

The struggle for transformation must be fought in concrete, practical forms, and health care is among the most important ones. Healthcare is a right, not a commodity. The National Health Insurance (NHI) Act is law. Yet its implementation has been delayed, with no provisions currently being brought into operation pending a court ruling.

Meanwhile, tens of billions of rands in public funds continue to subsidise private health care. This reflects a political choice, not an administrative inevitability. The risk is that the NHI is quietly allowed to stall through the threats to courts. The SACP calls for:  

• clear political leadership and transparency and that government must openly communicate progress and direction to the public.

• A concrete implementation plan outlining a clear roadmap must be provided even before the court ruling. The NHI is an Act not a wish list, so it is important for the president to stand firm and refuse to be bullied.

• Proper allocation of funding and other resources must be committed to make NHI real and functional.

• Redirection of medical aid subsidies towards public healthcare. The public funds must serve the majority, not a minority who can even afford it.

• Mass mobilisation in defence of the NHI in our communities and workers must be actively organised to defend this historic working-class achievement.

Finance capital and the war against the poor: towards housing and financial justice

The Central Committee reiterates its full support for the class action led by the Lungelo Lethu Human Rights Foundation against the banking sector. The mass repossession of homes, sale of properties at negligible prices, and dispossession of working-class families represent financialised violence against the people and a continuation of apartheid-style displacement under capitalist conditions. We call for mass mobilisation behind the class action, full restitution and justice for affected communities, and accelerated transformation of the financial sector, including the speedy establishment of a state-owned bank under democratic control.

The R60 billion case against major banks highlights the depth of injustice embedded in our financial system. Working-class families have lost their homes and life savings through predatory and abusive practices by the banks, all with a government watching helplessly despite concerted efforts to show them the crisis. For us in the SACP, housing is a right, not a commodity. All efforts to protect people from vulnerabilities to the working class are important. The SACP calls for:

• Stronger protection against foreclosure abuse. Families must not be unfairly or unlawfully dispossessed of their homes.

• Regulation of repossession practices and clear standards of fairness and accountability must be enforced.

• Development of socially controlled financial systems and for finance to serve people and communities, not profit-seeking and anti-human in turn.

• Expansion of public, social and cooperative housing and support for community-owned housing solutions must be prioritised.

The SACP stands in full solidarity with all affected homeowners and communities.

Neo-liberalism and “Operation Vulindlela”, the new front of state capture

The Central Committee asserts that South Africa’s deepening crisis is the direct product of neo-liberal restructuring. Operation Vulindlela, located in the Presidency, represents a new phase of state capture by capital, repackaged as “policy reforms”. Under the guise of efficiency and growth, Operation Vulindlela advances the privatisation of strategic state-owned enterprises like Eskom unbundling; liberalisation of network industries (energy, transport, and water), deregulation to favour private capital; and centralisation of decision-making power with proximity to the Presidency, ensuring greater and increasing influence of big business in policy and procurement processes. We condemn the collaboration of the National Treasury, Eskom and water boards who are on steroids to liquidate the capacity of municipalities through handing power to private capital. The policy direction shows a political choice to sell our sovereignty, as we saw with the adoption of the GAIN policy.

This constitutes a technocratic capture of the state, where capital uses policy instruments, advisory structures, and proximity to executive authority to shape outcomes in its favour. This is not reform. It is a class project consolidation and must be rolled back if our economy is to make a turnaround and benefit the majority. The people of South Africa never voted for capital or business bodies to run the state, like we see with BUSA commanding a state that is on autopilot.

The Central Committee warns that South Africa is witnessing a transition from overt corruption-based state capture to a more sophisticated, policy-driven capture led by monopoly capital. We reject this trajectory and call for the following:

• Democratic control over economic policy.

• Transparent and accountable procurement systems.

• Rebuilding of state capacity free from corporate influence.

• A decisive break with neo-liberal reform framework.

Reject retrenchments and defend jobs and livelihoods

The Central Committee strongly condemns the wave of retrenchments across multiple sectors of the economy. These job cuts are not inevitable. They are a direct consequence of profit maximisation strategies by capital, deindustrialisation and financialisation, weak state intervention and neo-liberal policy frameworks. We condemn and caution against intentions to retrench even within state entities like PRASA and the Long Distance Division that has already filed for section 189.

Workers must not pay for a crisis they did not create. The SACP calls for:

• Immediate moratorium on retrenchments across sectors.

• Worker-led alternatives to job cuts.

• State intervention to protect strategic industries.

• Strengthening of labour rights and collective bargaining.

• Filling of vacancies in the public service.

Neo-liberalism: the architect of South Africa’s crisis

At the centre of this crisis is the direction of the economy. For many years, economic policy has been shaped by austerity as well as the ideology and strategy of limiting the role of the state; neo-liberalism. This has constrained investment in jobs, industry and public services. At the same time, key sectors are increasingly being opened to private interests. Programmes such as Operation Vulindlela are deepening this trend. Within the so-called Government of National Unity, this direction is being reinforced.

The Central Committee asserts that South Africa’s crisis is not accidental. It is the direct outcome of decades of neo-liberal policy choices imposed in the democratic era.

These include, but are not limited to:

• Fiscal austerity: systematic cuts in public spending, weakening healthcare, education, and social services.

• Privatisation and outsourcing: hollowing out state capacity and transferring public wealth into private hands.

• Trade liberalisation and deindustrialisation: destruction of domestic industry and productive capacity.

• Financialisation: privileging speculative capital over productive investment.

• Labour market deregulation and casualisation: intensifying exploitation and precarity.

• Inflation targeting and conservative monetary policy: prioritising financial markets over employment and development.

These policies have entrenched unemployment, deepened inequality, weakened the state, and subordinated the economy to monopoly capital. Neo-liberalism in South Africa has succeeded in advancing the interests of capital at the expense of the working class, and with the Presidency and Treasury being the catalyst for capital accumulation.

Rebuilding the mass movement and working-class power and localising the People’s Red Caravan

Rebuilding the mass movement is essential if transformation is to succeed. This effort must encompass the full range of working-class forces, organised workers in trade unions, workers in the informal economy, cooperatives, youth, women and community formations.

The mass movement must be rebuilt in both workplaces and communities, linking economic and social struggles into a single, coordinated programme. This requires strengthening trade unions, organising the unorganised, advancing cooperative development, and building local people's economies under democratic and collective control.

Within this broader effort, the People's Red Caravan (PRC) is emerging as an important pillar of organising, mobilisation and political education in both rural and urban areas. It is helping to rebuild grassroots presence and to connect the struggle for transformation with livelihoods and local development.

Rebuilding the mass movement requires unity, coordination and a clear programme rooted in the lived realities and conditions of the working class and poor.

The Central Committee calls on all communities to actively support and participate in the People’s Red Caravan. The Caravan must be localised as a mass-based programme of food sovereignty and local production, cooperative economic development, community organisation and solidarity, political education and mobilisation. This is a practical instrument of socialist transformation building people’s power from below.

Our next activation is on 20-26 April 2026 at Gladstone Village, Thaba Nchu in the Free State province. We call upon professionals, artisans, experts and volunteers to join us in the quest to transform our communities for self-reliance and sustainability. Your lending hand will go a long way in ending poverty and unemployment in our communities.

The national democratic revolution at an interregnum and regressing

The national democratic revolution stands at a decisive moment. The systemic crisis of the state shaped by both corruption and neo-liberal restructuring has weakened its transformative capacity. Without decisive working-class leadership, the national democratic revolution risks capture by elites and stagnation. The Central Committee calls for a decisive rupture with neo-liberal macroeconomic policy: expansion of public and social ownership of the economy, rebuilding a capable, developmental state, and embedding working-class power across all sites of decision-making.

The Government of Neo-liberal Unity is the biggest threat to the advancement and deepening of the national democratic revolution. These global pressures are directly reflected in our own country. The national democratic revolution remains the most effective and principled path towards transformation and building a country that works for the majority, not a privileged minority.

But today, the national democratic revolution faces a regression and possible defeat if the left forces do not unite and consolidate the working class in defence of the South African revolution. South Africa faces a deep and compounding crisis of unemployment, inequality and growing hardship across communities.

The result is a fundamental contradiction, wherein transformation is promised but the prevailing economic framework makes meaningful transformation difficult to achieve.

As this continues, the state itself has weakened. Evidence from the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, known as the “Zondo Commission”, and the Madlanga Commission shows that criminal networks have penetrated parts of the state apparatus. What began as corruption has grown into a more serious structural problem: networks that combine financial power, political influence and criminal activity that reduce us into a mafia country which is now beyond kleptocracy.

Recent developments within the South African Police Service further highlight this. Ongoing investigations, court proceedings and tensions in leadership point to deeper institutional challenges that must be addressed through the rule of law and due process. These matters also highlight the ongoing vulnerability of state institutions to capture through outside interference.

The SACP calls for the rebuilding of a capable, ethical and people-centred state. Unless the working class leads – organised, active and with a clear programme – the national democratic revolution risks losing its direction entirely.

On the Alliance and recent by-elections

The Central Committee reaffirms the strategic importance of the Alliance and defends dual membership as essential to unity. The Alliance was never an electoral pact but a unity of independent and equal member organisations through the national democratic revolution.

The Central Committee mandated the Extended Secretariat to ensure urgent finalisation of bilateral discussions with the ANC. There is a need to have collective clarity on the modalities of management of elections in a peculiar situation where both parties will be on the ballot, speaking for their specific interests, while still in alliance on broader aspects affecting the working class and poor.

There also must be collective clarity on how the rights of members who opted to be members of both organisations to protect and promote the interest of the working class and poor, as allowed by the constitutions of both organisations, are going to be protected during the local government election  campaigns. This is an urgent matter that needs to be finalised, without prejudice, as preparations for elections are hotting up.

The SACP is worried that some ANC leaders seem to opt for a pompous and arrogant kind of approach, including spitting unfortunate misleading, venomous information from its senior leaders, especially the officials. The SACP is looking at this matter seriously and will be engaging the affected members in a respectful manner, without throwing threats and insults against them, as we understand that it is them, in their own right, who made this decision voluntarily allowed by the constitutions of our respective organisations.

The Central Committee expresses its appreciation to SACP structures in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape for their tireless work and commitment during the recent by-elections. Their efforts reflect the resilience and dedication of our cadres on the ground and lifted the support of the SACP from the people on the ground. Whilst we have characterised the by-elections as important, it was merely an affirmation of our resolution to contest elections and prepare our members for an independent campaign and contest. We have convened successful elections workshops across the country, and our members must remain focused and be on the ground with our communities, not for our interest but for working-class representation and to transform local government to serve the people.

Our members, including those in the other fraternal alliance and broader movement structures, must never be defocused on their tasks of asserting the independence of the SACP. They must understand that they are not there by mistake but are fulfilling their obligations as members of the vanguard party of the working class and poor.

Forging ahead with the Conference of the Left

As part of building fronts in the interest of the working class, the meeting received a detailed report on the preparations of the historic convening of the Conference of the Left, which is scheduled for May 2026.

We call upon all progressive left forces and community-based organisations representing various sectors of society to be part of this moment to save the South African revolution. This Conference must serve as a decisive platform to unite working-class forces and advance a common radical transformation agenda and rescue the South African revolution from the abyss of neo-liberal crisis and possible defeat.

Organise, agitate and forge ahead for working-class struggles

The Central Committee calls on all workers, communities, and progressive forces to intensify the struggle and to:

• Organise in workplaces and communities.

• Reject retrenchments and defend jobs.

• Resist neo-liberal reforms and privatisation, including voluntary retrenchments through the public service early retirement calls by government.

• Defend national sovereignty and independence against imperialism.

• Support the class action against the banking sector for their continued illegal evictions of people from their houses.

• Build, strengthen and localise the People’s Red Caravan.

• Unite towards the Conference of the Left and its programme.

• Prepare for local government elections as sites of working struggle as we prepare for the Manifesto Consultative Conference.

As we approach the Easter and Passover period, the SACP wishes all South Africans a safe and peaceful Easter weekend and wishes them to travel safely and protect one another on our roads. To our structures, the struggle continues, and no one said it will be smooth sailing! The crisis of capitalism is deepening. The ruling class has no solutions for the working class. The future will not be given; it must be fought for until victory is attained.

The struggle continues! Aluta Continua!

Let us intensify the struggle! Let us rebuild working-class power!

Let us advance socialism without compromise!

Forward to a powerful socialist movement of the workers and poor!

Amandla!

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ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY,
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.