3 May 2026
The most resolute section of the working class, the communist militants of the vanguard party, representing South African Communist Party (SACP) structures from across the length and breadth of the Western Cape, held a Provincial Council at Vuzamanzi Primary School in Site C, Khayelitsha, in Cape Town, on 2 May 2026. The Provincial Council brought together delegates from our branches, districts, the provincial executive and representatives from the Young Communist League. The Provincial Council was held under the theme, ‘Defending the independence of the South African Communist Party: Upholding revolutionary discipline and advancing working-class representation’.
The Council met a day after workers around the world celebrated the historic International Workers’ Day, which was held in Paarl on 1 May 2026. Delegates re-affirmed the Central Committee’s resounding call to workers that the “working class must rise with clarity, discipline and unity”.
The Council received and considered the political report (inclusive of global and domestic analysis), organisational status, assessment of by-elections and the roadmap towards our 10th Provincial Congress in August 2026, as well as readiness for the 2026 local government elections.
Message of solidarity from our principal working-class ally, Cosatu
The Council welcomed a resounding message of support from the Provincial Secretary of Cosatu in the Western Cape, Comrade Malvern De Bruyn. The essence of Cosatu’s message reflected the necessity of maintaining strategic unity of the Alliance in the context of the simmering tensions between the ANC and SACP as well as divisions in the civic movement. Emphasis was made that no component of the Alliance must dictate decisions of another because this Alliance is constituted by independent formations, but this Alliance is indispensable in pursuance of the National Democratic Revolution.
The Provincial Secretary further lamented the mooted devolution of the metrorail in Cape Town into the hands of the neoliberal Democratic Alliance. This move will embolden the DA but will be catastrophic for the working class and commuters in general who rely on trains for public transport.
On the global geo-strategic developments
The international and local socio-economic and political contexts reveal the terminal combustion of the neoliberal capitalist order, which is now rapidly evolving into a barbaric
predatory stage of capitalist accumulation.
A spectre of fascistic barbarism is haunting humanity as the power of the unipolar overlords is waning while a new world struggles to be born. It is the time of monsters! These monsters on a global scale are represented by the jingoist behaviour of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
These jingoists embarked on an illegal foreign war of aggression and regime change agenda through the assassination of leaders and scientists under the pretext of destroying the nuclear capability of the Republic of Iran. Their machinations deserve full and total condemnation. In addition, the Israeli aggression against its neighbours and illegal occupation or seizure of land in Palestine, Lebanon, and other countries must be stopped.
The illegal economic blockade against Cuba, the abduction of President Maduro and threats against Greenland, Canada and other sovereign countries are gross violations of international law. However, the imminent implosion of NATO is welcome and must be accelerated to dismantle the military domination by the military alliance.
On the domestic political conjuncture
We are confronted with a deepening neoliberal offensive against the working class manifested in budget cuts; the so-called structural reforms – Operation Vulindlela involving privatisation of our ports, rail, energy, and telecommunication; inequality; and the erosion of social gains.
The working class in South Africa and in the Western Cape in particular is facing an intensified and coordinated offensive. The neoliberal agenda, driven by global capitalist interests and reproduced through domestic policy choices, continues to deepen inequality, entrench unemployment, and widen poverty. This offensive is not abstract; it is lived daily in the struggles of workers, the unemployed, and the youth.
Key sectors of the provincial economy – agriculture, construction, retail, manufacturing, and finance – are increasingly structured in ways that reproduce exploitation and misery. This is most evident in the growing precarity of work: casualisation, labour broking, insecure contracts, and the erosion of hard-won labour protections.
Disastrous effects of this catastrophe manifest in a chronic crisis of underdevelopment where working-class townships are characterised by rising unemployment, poverty, inequality, violent crime, and gangsterism alongside expanding informal squatter camps, pothole-riddled roads, and inadequate access to land, housing, affordable sanitation, electricity, and water coupled with escalating property rates.
The Competition Commission, in its 2025 cost of living report, confirmed the severity of this crisis, highlighting the escalating cost of living crisis and its devastating impact on working-class households. Rising prices of essential goods and services such as food, fuel, and electricity have eroded purchasing power, increased food insecurity, and forced households into impossible trade-offs between basic needs.
The ongoing energy crisis continues to drive electricity tariffs upward, disproportionately affecting low-income households. At the same time, transport and energy costs consume an unsustainable share of household income, while rising interest rates further burden indebted families. Wages, meanwhile, have failed to keep pace.
The situation is compounded by regressive local policies in Cape Town. For instance, the introduction of fixed tariffs for water, sanitation, and cleaning services based on property value rather than consumption constituted a direct attack on working-class households. The subsequent court ruling of Thursday 29 April 2026 declaring these tariffs unlawful underscores the need for ongoing vigilance by communities. The Party welcomes and is vindicated by this judgment, as it confirms our long-held view that the City of Cape Town is deliberately suffocating the working class through these irregular fixed charges.
In the Western Cape, poverty remains deeply racialised, gendered, and spatially entrenched. Working-class communities continue to endure underdevelopment, chronic service delivery failures, and high levels of crime. As the winter season approaches, many will again face displacement due to fires and flooding disasters that have become predictable yet remain inadequately addressed.
Public services are under severe strain. The education system continues to fail in placing learners in schools, undermining their prospects of a life of dignity. Healthcare facilities remain overstretched and under-resourced, unable to meet the needs of working-class communities. These failures exacerbate broader social crises, including crime, gender-based violence, gangsterism, substance abuse and the tyranny of extortionist syndicates.
Further, despite the deployment of the army to support the police in key areas of Cape Town, the surge in violent crime continues to stubbornly undermine these interventions. This reality highlights a critical limitation that the fight against crime cannot be reduced to a security response based solely on boots on the ground. It requires a comprehensive approach that addresses the underlying social and economic conditions such as poverty, unemployment, inequality, and social dislocation that sustain criminality.
The SACP decision to contest 2026 LGE and the reactionary response
The Party’s electoral performance in the by-election in Ward 104 in Du Noon requires a deeper and more systematic analysis. Preliminary reflections confirm the correctness of the decision to contest. The Ward presented a clear vacuum of political leadership, creating space for the SACP to intervene and assert a working-class alternative.
The historic decision of the SACP to contest the 2026 local government elections has laid bare deepening ideological faultlines within the movement. What has emerged with renewed intensity is not merely disagreement but a coordinated resurgence of anti-communism, an old weapon now sharpened and deployed to isolate, delegitimise, and weaken the revolutionary voice of the Party. We refuse to be coerced and intimidated.
The Provincial Council reaffirms the directive of the Central Committee contained in the recent circular to remain resolute on reconfiguring the Alliance and maintaining dual membership despite the ANC’s ultimatum to communists. In fact, we boldly and resolutely reject the reactionary ultimatum of the ANC NEC.
Those elements that seek to institute a communist purge in the ANC will do well to remember that in the mid-1920s there was a giant trade union known as the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) led by Clements Kadalie. It was built and anchored by committed communist cadres such as James La Guma, John Gomas and E.J. Khaile to mention a few. However, around 1926 Kadalie forced a split with the communists through passing a resolution to exclude Party members from holding office in the ICU. Party members, including founding leaders like E.J. Khaile, were expelled from the ICU for refusing to resign from the Communist Party of South Africa. The consequence of purging communists led to the ultimate demise of the ICU within a matter of a few years.
We also recall another historical antecedent of a coordinated anti-communist tendency that was experienced by the ANC in the early 1930s. A pro-communist President, Josiah Gumede, stood for re-election at an ANC conference in 1930, and the right-wing conservative element collaborated to remove Gumede and replaced him with Dr Seme, who was advanced in years. As a consequence of that conservatism, the ANC became moribund and almost collapsed.
Lastly, the history of the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 and its failure to kill the fire and fervour of communist ideology is well known. The message echoes loudly across the landscape: you cannot kill nor suppress the indomitable spirit and intellectual force of communist conviction. We will not succumb to the undisguised suppression of communism by the ANC NEC.
Nevertheless, as long as there are classes, there will be class struggle. We communists did not invent the class struggle, but we struggle to give it direction and political content. Naturally, as the SACP, we are preoccupied by the theory and practice of transformation from capitalism to socialism.
Socialism and democracy are inseparable, and a new society can only be built by the revolutionary action and engagement of the workers and popular masses, never without their engagement and much less against their will.
Forward to the 10th SACP Western Cape Provincial Congress
The road to the 10th Provincial Congress must be defined by heightened political activism across all levels of the organisation in the province. This activism must not be confined to the cadreship alone but must actively draw in the broader grassroots base of our Party. The Congress must be built from below: through the energy, participation, and mobilisation of the rank and file.
Central to this process is the strengthening of political and ideological education, alongside consistent mass work campaign tasks. These must become the defining feature of Party structures and cadreship throughout the province. A politically grounded and ideologically clear membership is essential if we are to confront the challenges facing the working class and advance a coherent programme of transformation.
Importantly, these tasks must be pursued with revolutionary discipline, coordination, and a clear political message. Every structure, every cadre, and every activist must understand their role in building momentum toward both the 10th Provincial Congress and the 4 November 2026 local government elections.
We pursue the local and international struggles inspired by Mao Zedong: “The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man’s will. However, much as the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.”
Issued by SACP Western Cape
For Enquiries:
Benson Ngqentsu - Provincial Secretary
082 796 6400
Lizwi Gegula - Provincial Spokesperson
078 827 2274
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FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
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