The South African Communist Party (SACP) has historically been a formidable political force in South Africa. Its role in the anti-apartheid struggle is generally well respected, and many of the Party's past leaders are considered iconic heroes of the struggle. Based on its historical alliance with the African National Congress (ANC), the SACP found itself working closely with the ANC Government after the fall of apartheid. The two political formations are also partners with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in what is known as the Tripartite Alliance. The SACP and Cosatu have supported the ANC through three election campaigns (1994, 1999, and 2004), all of which have resulted in overwhelming electoral victories for the ANC.
It is important to place the Party's post-apartheid political struggle within the context of its historical relationship to the ANC, and the struggle against white minority rule. Beginning with the Executive Committee of the Communist International's (ECCI's) 1928 ‘Independent Native Republic’ mandate to the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), the Party has followed a path marked by cooperation and collaboration with the ANC. The two-stage theory of revolution (first national liberation, then socialism) has guided this strategy from its 1928 form to the Colonialism of a Special Type (CST) thesis of the 1950s, and ultimately to the Party's support for an overwhelming electoral victory of the ANC in 1994. In this sense, the class character of the struggle has always been subordinated to that of the national. In order to remain unified against the racist white minority regime, it was mutually advantageous for the two political formations to work closely together in exile, and within South Africa, throughout this period of oppression and resistance. This long history of interconnectedness between the ANC and the SACP means that today almost every member of the SACP is also a member of the ANC. SACP members normally feel equal, or greater, affinity with the ANC, and are frequently active within both party structures.
The ANC's introduction of GEAR (Growth, Employment, and Redistribution) in 1996 presented an enormous challenge to the SACP (and Cosatu).1 GEAR is a neoliberal macroeconomic policy framework designed to bring economic stability and growth to the country. Eight years after the implementation of GEAR, the results for the majority of South Africans were bleak. In 2004 the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) released a scathing report on the ANC's approach to economic development. Some highlights of the report include: a sustained downward trend in the Human Development Index since 1995; the gap between the rich and the poor increasing; and a rise in the number of households deprived of quality services. The report forcefully summarizes the ANC approach by stating: ‘The current strategy and policies for achieving growth are objectively anti-poor’ (Sowetan, 2004:1). South African scholars and activists have written extensively on both the manner in which GEAR was implemented, and the impact of neoliberalism on the majority of South Africans.2
Thus, the central question for the Party is: how does one reconcile the aims and objectives of the SACP, which include achieving socialism in South Africa, with its support of the ANC's neoliberal trajectory? In other words, the Party has had to find a way to criticize and/or attack the neoliberal agenda, while at the same time defending and supporting the ANC-led government. This article will explore four central aspects of the SACP's approach to challenging the current trajectory of the ANC's macroeconomic agenda: 1) the written, public attacks on the logic of neoliberalism; 2) the support for Cosatu's campaigns against privatisation; 3) the formation of the Young Communist League (YCL); and 4) the current campaigns surrounding cooperatives and financial sector reform. I will outline how the Party is currently failing to establish a viable counter-hegemonic force in South Africa by discussing the limitations of the four strategies mentioned above.3 Overall, I will argue that the SACP's challenge to neoliberalism is rhetorical and ineffective. The SACP's unwavering allegiance to the ANC forces it to confront capitalism in a way that is ‘safe’, or perhaps ‘acceptable’ to the ANC. Essentially, the SACP's approach is based on the fundamental premise that the Party needs to work within the ANC in order to pull it to the ‘left’. Hoping to influence the character and content of the ANC, the Party has neglected the task of building a mass base of support opposed to neoliberalism. As a political formation ostensibly dedicated to building socialism in South Africa, its alliance with the capitalist ANC creates a number of difficult contradictions for the Party to manage.
Written, Public Attacks on the Logic of Neoliberalism
The SACP is well aware of the importance of ideas in shaping the political landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. Guiding Principle 4.5 of the SACP Constitution proclaims that the SACP will work ‘To spread the widest possible understanding of our basic ideology and its application to South African conditions, particularly among the working class’ (SACP, 2002a). In order to disseminate and propagate socialist ideas, the SACP has a quarterly journal called the African Communist; a monthly newspaper entitled Umsebenzi; and an information bulletin produced by the Party's Central Committee called Bua Komanisi. It also issues regular press releases and articles for the public media.
When GEAR was first unveiled in 1996, the SACP leadership endorsed it. On 14 June 1996, SACP Headquarters issued a public statement on GEAR that began with the following remarks:
The South African Communist Party welcomes the government's Growth, Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy. We fully back the objectives of this macro-economic strategy … (SACP, 1996).
On GEAR: the SACP's last central committee, after a year of reflection, discussion and debate, as well as interaction with Alliance partners, came out in opposition to GEAR. The Central Committee made the point that this kind of macro-economic framework is not conducive to the implementation of the RDP [Reconstruction and Development Programme] (Nzimande, 1997).
GEAR embodies, in its core fiscal and monetary policies, a neo-liberal approach that is at variance with our reconstruction and development objectives. Much of GEAR, and indeed much of government's evolving economic policy has shifted progressively away from ANC economic policy in the first half of the 1990s … More and more, there has been a shift towards the assumptions of an export-led growth, based on the myth that deregulation and liberalisation, more or less on their own, will make the South African economy ‘globally competitive’ (SACP Central Committee, 1998).
Why do you keep on saying that it was a neoliberal policy? And say, OK, define neoliberalism, and say: what part of it was neoliberal? Because fiscal prudence isn't neoliberal, it's just common sense, it's common sense when you run your own house that you want to have fiscal prudence, because if you spend more money than you have, at some point you're going bankrupt (2004).
The first problem with the Party's approach to publicly challenging neoliberalism is that any criticism of GEAR from the Party is almost always immediately followed by a disclaimer that this is in no way to be misconstrued as a criticism of the ANC or Tripartite Alliance. Tom Lodge describes the ‘somewhat ritualistic quality’ of this type of criticism and debate within the Alliance: ‘Any criticism, however strongly worded, is always qualified by protestations of loyalty to the Alliance itself and recognition of the ANC's senior status within it’ (Lodge, 2002:163). This phenomenon can be witnessed in nearly every critique of GEAR emanating from the Party. For example, The Declaration of the 10th SACP Congress ‘Reaffirms its belief that the overall thrust of GEAR is not the appropriate macroeconomic framework for our society, and this overall thrust must be rejected’ (SACP, 1998). Yet this statement is almost hidden between proclamations regarding ‘Building the Alliance’, working ‘tirelessly as Communists to ensure an overwhelming ANC electoral victory’, and defending the ANC-led, and ANC-defined, National Democratic Revolution (SACP, 1998). The Party's many written critiques of GEAR somehow become less piercing when they are persistently draped in apology and commitment to the ANC. It appears contradictory for the Party to unequivocally denounce key ANC policies on the one hand, yet proclaim absolute loyalty to the Alliance.
The major problem involves the Party's publications. This issue relates to more general difficulties faced by the Party in terms of disseminating information and ideas: lack of resources, and a reliance on English as the language of publication. The SACP consistently struggles with the issue of financial resources. They have a relatively small number of paid up members (roughly 20,000), and very few alternative sources of income or revenue. This severely hampers the Party's ability to propagate and disseminate ideas. Furthermore, the fact that the major publications of the Party are written in English restricts the potential readership to an elite group of cadres.
The African Communist (AC) and Umsebenzi are key components of the Party's strategy of disseminating ideas to the public. The AC is the Journal of the SACP, and according to the Party is ‘Published quarterly as a forum for Marxist-Leninist thought.’5 In recent years however, the Party has struggled to publish the required number of issues per year. The following is a list indicating the number of journals published per year from 2001 to 2004:
2001: 3 Journals (First Quarter, Second Quarter, and Third/Fourth Quarter)
2002: 3 Journals (First Quarter, Second/Third Quarter, and Fourth Quarter)
2003: 2 Journals (First Quarter, Second/Third Quarter)
2004: 1 Journal (First Quarter)
The effectiveness of the AC as a forum for Marxist-Leninist debate is a controversial topic within the Party. Many SACP leaders insist that the journal is a productive and vibrant aspect of the Party's political endeavours. For example, former SACP
Provincial Executive Council (PEC) member from Gauteng Zwelinzima Sizani had this to say about the Journal:
I think it [the AC] remains not only a symbol but a beacon to which most communists, not only in SA, but throughout the continent, look up to in terms of understanding politics, understanding theory, in terms of understanding discourses within SA … and it [the AC] has done a lot in terms of addressing and assisting in managing discussion and debate within the country … it gives about a vibrant discussion atmosphere throughout the country. I think it keeps us focused on issues (2004).
A different picture emerges when speaking to lower ranking members of the Party on the impact of the AC and Umsebenzi on the broader Party membership, and also on the general public. In particular, those members of the Party who are slightly distanced from the major centres of information production – Johannesburg and Cape Town – have a drastically different understanding of the two publications. One YCL member from the Vaal District had this to say about the Party's publications:
I normally read the on-line one. That means you only have people with computers, not just computers but access to the internet to be able to read it, either at the workplace or at home. So the majority of people don't have access to those things. AC, it's a good thing, but it costs money. You must buy it, and to understand sometimes, English is not our first language. The language written in those documents, you must have reached a certain high level of political understanding to understand what's written there. Those are weaknesses within the publications of the Party (Kunene, 2004).
I'm not a mathematician, but if I'm to rate them … out of 10, I would give them two and a half. Precisely because even though the publications are there, it is rare that we as district members buy them in large numbers and distribute to branches. And even branch members, you'd find that circulation is amongst the top five, or at least amongst the office bearers. And it is rare for such publications to reach our members (Radebe, 2004).
For the leadership of the Party, who are relatively privileged in terms of wealth and education, the Party's publications seem both accessible and effective as a means of engaging in debate and spreading ideas. On the other hand, for those members of the Party who do not have a university education and/or the financial means with which to acquire these publications, the picture looks dramatically different. It appears unlikely that the vast number of South Africans living below the poverty line would be able to access AC and Umsebenzi. This speaks directly to the issue of fostering a mass base of support to oppose neoliberalism within South Africa, and the failings of the Party on this front. The publications are accessible to only an elite segment of the population, effectively excluding the majority of South Africans. The Party's diminishing efforts to disseminate socialist ideas and information through its publications is indicative of an approach to political struggle that undervalues the importance of mass participation in resisting neoliberalism.
The SACP's Support for Cosatu's Campaigns Against Privatisation
In addition to the formal statements opposing GEAR, the SACP has also participated in a variety of mass actions directly or indirectly attacking the logic of neoliberalism. The general strike against privatisation, led by Cosatu, in 2001 provides a good example. The SACP put its full support behind the strike, and a public statement by the SACP in August of 2001 proclaimed, ‘The SACP calls on all its members, leaders, supporters, workers, working class communities, the unemployed and all South Africans to support, and ensure that the general strike becomes an overwhelming success’ (SACP, 2001). The Party's rationale for supporting the strike was to publicly demonstrate against the ANC's policies regarding the privatisation of state owned enterprises.
Barely a year later, the SACP participated once again in a Cosatu-led mass action. Cosatu called a second strike in October 2002, and the Party promptly asked '… all its members and structures to support the Cosatu-led protest actions on 1 and 2 October (SACP, 2002b). Again, in defiance of the ANC Government's neoliberal economic reforms, the Party publicly protested and called on workers to strike. While the impact of these actions may be questionable, the intent was to confront the hegemonic ideas contained in the ANC's approach to restructuring the economy.
However, the Party's support for the Cosatu-led campaigns against privatisation and deregulation has been laden with contradictions. First, in line with its written, public attacks on the logic of GEAR, the Party is quick to immediately point out that support for the campaigns does imply questioning the ANC, or the fundamentals behind the Alliance. For example, referring to the 2001 strike against privatisation, the Party maintained:
While the general strike is obviously political in character (it is about seeking to influence and change aspects of current policy), the Politburo understands that the strike is not about challenging or undermining the legitimacy of our ANC-led government … (SACP, 2001).
The second contradiction surrounding the SACP's support for these campaigns involves the complicity of several high-ranking leaders of the Party in the decisions that were being contested by Cosatu and the SACP. At the time of the major strikes and protests, there were several SACP members sitting in positions responsible for implementing the neoliberal policies. The following is a list of SACP members in the ANC Cabinet during the period 1999-2004:
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi: Minister of Public Service and Administration
Jeff Radebe: Minister for Public Enterprises
Alec Erwin: Minister of Trade and Industry
Essop Pahad: Minister in the Presidency
Ronnie Kasrils: Minister for Water and Forestry
Sydney Mufamadi: Minister for Provincial and Local Government
Charles Nqakula: Minister for Safety and Security
The contradiction surrounding SACP leaders personally implementing policies opposed to the programme of the Party is glaring. Furthermore, it put the Party in an ambiguous position vis-à-vis the ANC policies, and certainly lessens the impact of their participation in these campaigns against the ANC's neoliberal agenda. This highlights one of the inherent problems with the SACP's approach to political struggle: in order to maintain influence within the ANC (and try to steer it to the left), SACP leaders are forced to implement policies that are contradictory to the aims of the Party.
The Formation of the Young Communist League (YCL)
In December 2003 the Party re-launched the Young Communist League (YCL). The YCL is the youth wing of the SACP, and was re-launched through a resolution at the SACP's 11th Congress in July of 2002. The YCL was dissolved in 1950 along with the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and has now emerged with considerable momentum and hype. According to the Party, ‘In the first year of its existence, the Young Communist League has signed on 10,000 young communists’ (SACP, 2004b). While many of these ‘new’ YCL members were already members of the SACP (any member of the SACP under 35 is considered part of the YCL), this remains a significant accomplishment for the organisation. The purpose of re-launching the YCL was to develop and enhance socialist consciousness amongst the youthof South Africa, and as the YCL constitution states, ‘… turn our members into Communists’ (YCL, 2003b). The formation of the YCL is cited as a major accomplishment by Party members throughout the organisation, and is a central element to the Party's strategy of building socialism in South Africa.
The formation of the YCL has created a certain amount of controversy within Alliance structures. This tension has a long history within the broader liberation movement, and can be traced back to interactions between the ANC Youth League and the Progressive Youth Council in the 1940s.6 In the current context, however, this tension manifests itself by many within the ANC believing that the YCL is not necessary, as young people within the movement can simply join the ANC Youth League (ANCYL). As ANC MP Ben Turok explains,
if the Party begins to compete on the same terrain as an existing mass movement, whatever it might be, you create rivalry and tensions which are going to disrupt because you are seen as an entryist … The Communist Youth League are acting as entryists, fighting on a caucus platform for the advancement of their members in the elections. Very dangerous stuff, it's guaranteed to lead to a backlash, and it will lead to anti-communism within the ANCYL (2004).
One, we do have our own newspaper, we use it to circulate our own ideas. We now have a website … we are also organizing in institutions of higher learning …We also go to public platforms. If there's a public meeting we're sure to go there to spread socialist ideas. When there are strikes we are sure that we go there, we will always be there disseminating pamphlets, solidarity, supporting them, showing how their problems are linked to the capitalist system … And even in public newspapers … We've been very, very consistent around newspapers (2004).
Despite its radical proclamations, the YCL has tended to mimic the SACP's consistent and unwavering support for the ANC. In 2004, the YCL described the situation for young people in South Africa as follows: ‘Like all South Africans, young people have an objective interest with an ANC government which continues to transform and change our country for the better’ (YCL, 2004). Therefore, instead of working toward building socialism in South Africa by encouraging young people to learn about socialism, the YCL spent most of its efforts in the first half of 2004 campaigning on behalf of the ANC in order to ensure its overwhelming electoral victory.7
The YCL, however, openly recognizes the bourgeois character of the ANC. Thus, in 2004, David Masondo, the YCL National Chairperson, asserts:
The dominant orientation within the ANC, and given the class formation that is taking place within South Africa itself, is petty bourgeois. That's the dominant discourse, which is congealing around a re-interpretation of the National Democratic Revolution strategy. The issue is no longer about changing the capitalist structure, but is to reform it, to include some petty bourgeois and build it into some black bourgeoisie (2004).
The second issue regarding the YCL surrounds its independence vis-à-vis the SACP.
The relationship between the YCL and the SACP is a complex one. On the one hand, the Party created the YCL as the youth wing of its organisation. Yet the YCL is also intended to have a certain degree of independence and autonomy to pursue its own agenda. As one YCL member articulated:
We have our own constitution, we have our own campaigns, basically all aspects of the YCL are independent from the SACP. We only sit in the SACP at the CC level, where we have our chairperson from the YCL sitting there as an ex-officio member. So we have our own programs, everything (Thamaro, 2004).
We are a communist party with our own identity and so on, but our independence should always be under the guidance and the leadership of the SACP. We can't be absolutely far away from the communist party because we are founded by the SACP. The SACP built YCL, and they have obviously to look as to whether it is the structure that they wanted to build (Kolisile, 2004).
This issue of autonomy and independence from the Party is a sensitive topic for many members of the YCL. The YCL's first Congress in December 2003 offers a glimpse of how the SACP may be capable of undermining the autonomy of the YCL. It appeared to some, for example, that the leadership of the SACP (Blade Nzimande in particular) imposed a leader on the YCL against the will of many delegates in attendance. One YCL comrade, Jacob Dikgale, was planning to run for the position of Secretary until Nzimande kindly pulled him aside and told him otherwise. Apparently there are individuals that the SACP leadership will tolerate as Secretary of the YCL and others who they will not. One member of the YCL in attendance reacted as follows when I asked if she was comfortable talking about the events that transpired that day:
… it's not a matter of not being comfortable, it's a matter of telling the truth sometimes. What happened there, it was very uncalled for and it was very embarrassing for us as the Young Communist League of South Africa. We understand that they never wanted us to have a certain Secretary. Also if they could have told the strategies that they were going to use, at least we were going to understand. But they just came and introduced this new stuff to us, and it was like, are we really here? It was that of being imposed with leadership, you know (Lebona, 2004).
Current SACP Campaigns: Financial Sector Reform & Cooperatives
Since 2000, the Party has concentrated a great deal of its effort on the Financial Sector Campaign and building cooperatives. While these are not the only two campaigns the Party has advanced since 2000, they appear to be both the most widely discussed by Party members, and also the most successful in terms of achieving tangible results. In addition, both of these initiatives have been long-term components of the SACP's strategy and tactics since 2000, and are inextricably linked to one another. The Financial Sector Campaign had its genesis in 1999. The campaign is multifaceted, but is directed mainly at making the banking sector more accessible to the working class and poor. This involves working with banks to ensure that poor people are not entirely excluded from financial service provision, and also a more ambitious strategy of creating and supporting cooperative banking structures. The Party declares that some of the fundamental objectives of the campaign are:
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To struggle for community re-investment legislation and the transformation of the financial sector in favour of the poor and working people;
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To fight for the creation of a co-operative banking sector and other publicly owned financial institutions;
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To contribute to the evolution of a strategic approach around the restructuring of public development finance institutions like the Development Bankof Southern Africa in order to re-orient these towards infra-structural development initiatives aimed at realising overall development goals (SACP, 2005).
The SACP-led financial sector campaign, involving over 50 other formations, has now built real momentum and is impacting on government policy and legislation, and even on the conduct of the private banks with the launch of the Mzansi account (SACP, 2004b).
The second major campaign that the Party is currently pursuing involves the cooperative movement. Reiterating one of the major goals of the Financial Sector Campaign, Nzimande asserts ‘The SACP, at its 1999 Strategy Conference, also took a resolution to build a co-operative movement as part of the transformation of our economy to serve the needs of the working class and the poor’ (1999). This is an area that the Party has focused on intensely during the past five years, and the Gauteng Provincial SACP has been particularly active.9 The Party believes that cooperatives can be a useful venue for South Africans to learn the value of alternative methods of economic production. This would ostensibly lead to a greater awareness of noncapitalist economic organisation, and is an essential element of the Party's strategy of building socialism in South Africa.
One unique example of the Party's active participation in the cooperative movement was the launch of the Dora Tamana Credit and Savings Co-operative (DTSACCO) on 21 November 2004. In the words of the Party,
The Dora Tamana Credit Communist Stokvel is a Savings and Credit Cooperative of SACP members. SACP members, by signing up a membership form, agree to save their money together in DTSACCO and to make loans to each other at reasonable rates. The members are the owners and the members decide how their money will be used to best benefit each other (SACP, 2004a).
The Financial Sector Campaign and building cooperatives are not particularly problematic initiatives for a socialist organisation to be pursuing. Struggling for greater access to financial services and resources could potentially benefit a great number of South Africans, and most socialists would agree that struggling for reforms such as these is worthwhile. Moreover, it needs to be recognised that there is long tradition of South Africans organising collectively around financial issues. The stokvel is a perfect example of a cooperative savings project used extensively across South Africa.11 However, a critical analysis of the Party's activities needs to be elucidated, as there are potential limitations to these campaigns. In particular, there are problems with: 1) the relative importance of these issues within the broader struggle against capitalism in South Africa, and 2) the lack of connectedness between these campaigns and other socialist ideas/objectives.
In light of the many socio-economic issues currently plaguing the country, there are concerns as to the appropriateness of prioritising financial sector reform and cooperatives as central to the strategy and tactics of the Party. The most salient issues for the working class and poor in South Africa are arguably housing, electricity, water, land reform, unemployment, and HIV/AIDS. Thus, it is striking that the lead campaigns of the Party would not be directly addressing any of these crucial issues. It is also noteworthy that the ANC Government has addressed the socio-economic issues mentioned above in a woefully inadequate manner, and in some cases the ANC's neoliberal policies have exacerbated already existing problems (such as unemployment). Yet instead of attacking the Government's role in implementing neoliberal macroeconomic reform, the Party has focused instead on those issues that will not disrupt relations with the ANC. The campaigns are therefore ‘safe’ for the Party leadership, as they do not directly confront the ANC Government and its policies (or the SACP leaders sitting in Government). Dale McKinley, scholar/ activist and former SACP member, argues that the SACP's emphasis on the financial sector campaign
is actually indicative of the ideological and political bankruptcy of the SACP, what it has become. It has become reduced to an organization that is unable to take up the most basic struggles with people on the ground around basic services. They have nothing to say about water, they have nothing to say about housing, electricity (2004).
It could also be argued that the Party is not connecting these campaigns effectively to a broader anti-capitalist struggle. Pursued in relative isolation, the Financial Sector Campaign and building cooperatives do not provide a comprehensive agenda for mass mobilisation around an anti-capitalist political project. The Landless People's Movement (LPM) in Gauteng Province illustrates this point by commenting on the Party's producer cooperatives:
While these may appear to offer an alternative mechanism for food production, their role is limited to providing food for sale in the market. Market-based distribution of food excludes those without enough money to buy. True food security requires the decommodification of food, and of the inputs needed to produce food including land, water and seed (Landless People's Movement, 2004).
Conclusion
The SACP has consistently prioritised the maintenance of the ANC-dominated Tripartite Alliance above all else. This has meant that the Party's efforts to contest political space in the post-apartheid era have been tempered and moderated by its unwavering commitment to the ANC. In particular, attention is consistently drawn away from mass mobilisation, to attempting to influence the ANC from within. Jeremy Cronin, Deputy General Secretary of the Party, summarizes the issue by stating: ‘A huge problem is, apart from election period, as an Alliance we've not been mobilising our mass base, because of technocratic illusions, state-centric illusions that we can now deliver liberation’ (2004). Working within (and helping to ‘capture’) the liberal democratic state, and subsequently failing to maintain massbased resistance to capitalism, may therefore present a fundamental limitation to the Party's work since the end of apartheid.
Mobilising mass resistance to neoliberalism has hence become the terrain of the social movements in South Africa. As Nzimande points out,
These issues include basic services provision, HIV/AIDS, and land reform. Organisations such as the Landless People's Movement (LPM), and various affiliates of the Anti-Privatization Forum (APF), such as the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), have been engaged with directly confronting the neoliberal policies of the ANC since the late 1990s. While the social movements are not without problems and/or contradictions, they are actively involved in organising around issues that directly impact on the working class and the poor. The LPM for example, which styles itself after the successful MST of Brazil, has been openly critical of the ANC's approach to land reform. When the SACP and LPM attempted to join in a united front around the issue of land reform in late 2004, the LPM criticised the SACP approach by asserting that it ‘fails to look beyond the ‘national democratic revolution’, and does not attempt to transcend the capitalist foundations of the postapartheid order’ (Landless People's Movement). Yet in order to do so, the SACP would need to denounce openly the capitalist trajectory and policies of the ANC. Instead they have chosen to attack and challenge neoliberalism only rhetorically, without fundamentally questioning the ANC architects behind its implementation. This has produced contradictions for the Party leadership that are difficult to explain, and creates the impression that they are not committed to the socialist principles set forth in the program of the Party.