Wednesday, 11 November 2026: The South African Communist Party (SACP) Political Bureau extends deepest and most heartfelt gratitude to every South African who warmly welcomed the SACP’s exercise of the hard-won democratic right to stand for elections. We sincerely thank every voter who placed their trust in the SACP, every volunteer who selflessly dedicated their time and energy to carry our message, and every community that hosted our campaign.

Through the results we achieved as the SACP in the November 2026 local government elections, contesting countrywide for the first time since the advent of our hard-won democratic dispensation in 1994, based on the principle of one person, one vote regardless of race or gender, we made foundational headway in the mission to rescue and further advance our national liberation dream, democratic breakthrough and social emancipation struggle. This defines a New Era in our programme and South Africa.  

“We are deeply grateful for the support, encouragement and solidarity we received throughout this journey, in which we were up against parties backed by dominant capitalist interests with millions of rands amassed through the exploitation of workers across various industries of our economy, while the SACP fought its campaign despite severe resource deprivation. The SACP salutes all those who walked this path with us and helped carry forward the struggle for a just South Africa characterised by shared prosperity, a democratised economy and every sphere of societal activity, and an emancipated working class,” said SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila in a political input to and endorsed by the Augmented Special Political Bureau meeting held on Monday night, stressing the importance of upholding the people’s democratic mandate.

The Augmented Special Political Bureau meeting reaffirmed the working-class struggle against the privatisation of municipalities, including all unnecessary outsourcing and the corrupt tender regime. Equally, and also with absolute consensus, the meeting emphasised the imperative of building democratic developmental local government with its own internal capacity, including through in-sourcing.

The Augmented Special Political Bureau meeting also reaffirmed the importance of local economic development, infrastructure expansion and maintenance, and other priorities that the SACP took to the people through its election campaign and manifesto. These include access for all the people to clean drinking water, affordable electricity, the expansion and maintenance of paved roads free of potholes in both urban and rural areas, equitable access to land for housing and food production to combat hunger and poverty, and safety for all, particularly girls and women, from violence and crime.

There is no automaticity. Our approach is based on non-negotiable priorities. Therefore, SACP representatives have been mandated to uphold the above and other priorities in all coalition engagements, including within the Alliance. All SACP councillors will also stand united and resolute in every council around all the non-negotiable priorities.

Maintaining strategic consistency, the Augmented Special Political Bureau meeting reaffirmed, with absolute consensus, the working-class position against the GNU coalition composition, which includes right-wing, anti-Freedom Charter, neo-liberal parties such as the DA. Honouring the mandate it has received, the SACP will not associate itself with such parties, their coalition arrangements and their agendas.

Marking the opening of a democratic consultative process following the elections, the Augmented Special Political Bureau meeting was convened to focus on ensuring full representation through final councillor lists and the immediate, complex task of coalition formation arising from election results that left many municipalities without an outright winner. The SACP secured 271 council seats across the country, including in municipalities where its representation places it in a position to influence and, in some cases, even determine the composition of local government.

Beyond being augmented by Central Committee members and representatives from every province and the Young Communist League of South Africa, the meeting was extended by the Central Committee and Political Bureau Secretariat to Cosatu as a working-class Alliance partner committed to strengthening our socialist axis. In addition, it was in recognition of Cosatu’s “super resolution” to encourage members of its affiliates to keep their votes within the Alliance, including by considering voting SACP as one of the two alternatives that the federation endorsed.  

The meeting was also extended to the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union, Nehawu, in recognition of its decisive resolution openly supporting the SACP’s right to stand for elections, and to the South African Municipal Workers’ Union, Samwu, in recognition of its structural location and strategic role in the local government sphere and the institutional knowledge and memory that has come with that.

The South African National Civic Organisation, Sanco, which recognised the right of its members who wished to do so to vote for the SACP as an alternative, besides their traditional voting preference, and the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa, Contralesa, which was among the first formations to express an appreciation of the SACP’s right to stand for elections independently and to provide guidance and wisdom consistently, were both represented after the meeting was extended to them.

Like Cosatu, Sanco and Contralesa were offered an exclusive opportunity to address the Augmented Political Bureau, making clear views and preferences regarding coalition governments and the programme that SACP councillors must advance in councils.

Having been entrusted with the responsibility to convene the Council of the Left following the Conference of the Left held earlier this year, the SACP will fulfil its democratic responsibility to convene and engage with the council’s members on the post-election results, landscape and its implications.

During the 14-day window period provided by law for municipal councils to be established, in engagements with various parties the SACP will focus on resolving the 138 hung council stalemates. The SACP’s focus will be on ensuring that agreements reached are solid and guarantee governance stability and accountability in the interest of the people of the municipalities, as opposed to elite pacts and the interests of individual political leaders, criminal syndicates and extortion cartels.

The SACP has established a negotiating team led by its First Deputy General Secretary, Madala Masuku.