The African National Congress (ANC) has dismissed the South African Communist Party’s (SACP) Conference of the Left as “a political project dressed in theoretical clothing”, using the characterisation to justify its refusal to attend the gathering scheduled to begin in Boksburg on Friday, 29 May 2026.
ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula, who made the announcement on Tuesday following a resolution by the party’s national executive committee, was unsparing in his assessment of the conference, arguing that it bears no meaningful resemblance to a genuine left formation.
“A gathering that proposes to sit a chairperson of commerce alongside the Bolshevik party, MKP, alongside business formations, trade unions, it’s not a left formation in any received meaning of the term,” he said.
Mbalula went further, describing the event as “a coalition of negation united by what it stands against, namely the ANC in government”, and charged that it was “unable to articulate the positive programme by which the working class and the people will advance.”
The rejection comes amid escalating friction between the ANC and its Tripartite Alliance partner, rooted in the SACP’s move to honour its 2017 congress resolution to contest national elections independently, separate from the ANC.
The SACP had announced the conference the previous month, extending invitations to a range of political parties — including the ANC — as well as civil and community organisations.
Political parties that have confirmed they will be present include the EFF, uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Mayibuye Afrika, the Socialist Party of Azania, and United African Transformation (UAT). On the labour front, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) have also confirmed attendance. Among the civil society formations, the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) and the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (Nafcoc) have similarly indicated they will participate. Cosatu, although represented on the conference’s steering committee, has yet to confirm whether it will take part.
The ANC’s objection stretches well beyond logistics or scheduling concerns. Mbalula also took the opportunity to raise, on the public record, serious concerns about the political company being kept at the conference. He alleged that the forces behind the gathering had chosen to align themselves with formations whose leading figures were identified by the Zondo Commission — the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture — as having played central roles in dismantling key South African institutions.
Mbalula named those institutions as the South African Revenue Service, the National Prosecuting Authority, the Hawks, the State Security Agency, Eskom, Transnet, and the public procurement system.
Notwithstanding the ANC’s decision to stay away, Mbalula signalled that the door to engagement with the SACP remains open. “We have invited the leadership of the SACP to a principal-level engagement on the underlying questions in the standing discipline of the alliance,” he said.
Mbalula further reaffirmed the ANC’s enduring commitment to the Tripartite Alliance, which brings together the ANC, the SACP, Cosatu, and SANCO.
He traced the alliance’s roots to the Morogoro Conference of 1969 — a watershed moment at which the exiled liberation movement reorganised itself to confront political and military pressures following its banning inside the country — and its reaffirmation at Kabwe in 1985, both occasions underscoring the principle of unity in struggle against the enemies of the people.
“The relationship between the components of the alliance is dialectical and complementary,” he said. “The ANC is the leading force of the broad National Liberation Front. The South African Communist Party carries the vanguard role of the working class within the front. That is the position of the ANC that it has carried since 1969, and that is the position the ANC carries today.”
Mbalula expressed confidence that the alliance had weathered both the passage of time and the pressures of individual personalities, framing the current rift as something that must be worked out through direct dialogue rather than through attendance at a conference the ANC does not recognise as a legitimate left platform.
The secretary general did not provide details on when or how the proposed principal-level talks with the SACP would take place, nor did he confirm whether the SACP had responded to the ANC’s overture. He also stopped short of clarifying whether alliance partners Cosatu and SANCO had been consulted ahead of the ANC’s decision, or whether they planned to attend the conference.
