SACP in LGE 2026: ‘Small party’ amid potent political history

Prof. Susan Booysen

The South African Communist Party (SACP) is among hundreds of small parties contesting the 2026 local government elections. It is, however, a small party of a ‘special type’. Its participation, separate from and against the African National Congress (ANC), tells the story of an extraordinary political road travelled.

At the end of the election day, the SACP would probably have been contributing to the further tangible decline of the ANC. This damage comes largely through the impact that the decision had on the Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, SACP and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). The Alliance has always been pivotal to ANC electoral organisation. Cosatu in particular, and especially in the heydays of ANC electoral achievement, had been indispensable to ANC campaigning and mobilisation to get out the vote. Cosatu, just recently, contributed to the ANC’s electoral decline when it resolved that it would not prescribe to its members whether to vote ANC or SACP.

This signified the long road travelled since the Tripartite Alliance was in its prime, when it had entered elections as a potent, unified force. This unified electoral force is no more.

The SACP decision was not sudden, and not unexpected. Even in the late 1990s the SACP in some Eastern Cape structures was debating the ‘go it alone’ option. Since 2024, the SACP has been registering its serious dissatisfaction with the inclusion and influence of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Government of National Unity (GNU). It felt it had been sacrificed on an altar of neo-liberalism, and that the days of its quiet – although largely unproven – policy influence over the ANC had been discarded.

Of course, 2026 was not the first of the SACP’s excursions into local electoral contest. The previous occasion was in 2017 in general by-elections (fresh elections in all wards) in the Metsimaholo local municipality in the Free State. The elections were at the height of mobilisation to rid the ANC of former president, Jacob Zuma. The Metsimaholo council had been dissolved when it failed to pass a budget.

The SACP, on 9 percent support, won three of the 42 council seats. It made the SACP the kingmaker when neither the ANC nor DA secured an outright majority. It came to cooperate closely with the ANC and did not convert into an independent electoral force. It contested neither the national elections of 2019 nor the 2021 local elections.

This history made 2026 voters wonder if an SACP vote today is too close to simply voting ANC again.

In recent times the SACP came under intense ANC pressure to reconsider standing, but it has stuck to its guns. The ANC’s main concerns included that ANC majorities at municipal level could be cut down and that other opposition parties would benefit from this reduction. The ANC was already in decline; this was an additional blow.

The ANC also insisted that its SACP members had to declare which of the ANC or SACP they would be campaigning for. A few double-dipping candidates were subsequently removed from ANC lists. Senior SACP members, like Gwede Mantashe, Blade Nzimande and Buti Manamela serving in cabinet, also remained in the ANC.

Contradictions like these hampered effective SACP campaigning. But the party is favourably situated to scoop up votes from a part of the electorate that feels alienated from the ANC, yet close to the liberation ethos. It will be one of the small parties whose results will tell much about political history, even if the tally of votes fails to impress. Failure, however, might also mean the final demise of the SACP.