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The SACP is contesting elections to ensure decent lives for our people

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Ashley Nyiko Mabasa
Ashley Nyiko Mabasa

The Metsimaholo Municipality might serve as the rise of the Paris Commune for the South African Communist Party (SACP).

The Paris Commune was a socialist government that ruled the Paris from March 28 to May 28 1871.

The Paris Commune must happen again in the Metsimaholo Municipality

As Karl Marx expressed during his long vacation among the working class in the British Museum library: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

The SACP has taken the first revolutionary step since our democratic breakthrough in 1994 toward deploying 42 candidates as councillors.

In a nutshell, the SACP has been demanding the reconfiguration of the tripartite alliance since 1994. The political alliance is in crisis as the president of the ANC takes decisions without consulting the alliance partners let alone his national executive.

The expulsion of General Secretary Blade Nzimande from Cabinet portrayed our tripartite alliance as a somersault alliance.

The SACP continues to be the ideological and political trainer of the ANC. Its adoption of the social formation as a system of “colonialism of a special type” – which means that there is no spatial separation between the colonising power (the white minority state) and the colonised black people – was affirmed by the ANC in its 1985 discussion document The Nature of Ruling Class.

This reaffirms that the SACP has been playing a significant role in the ANC by detesting liberal views inside and outside of the ANC.

When he was the deputy president of the ANC, Jacob Zuma was in court for his rape case. The communist party mobilised the working class across South Africa in defence of Zuma against the liberal faction of Thabo Mbeki who attempted to use state apparatuses to purge Zuma.

At the heart of it, the ANC never lived up to its promises of the Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter formed part of the political programme that tied the alliance together even after 1994. It is the task of the SACP to fulfil the freedom charter. Contesting the Metsimaholo Local Municipality is also a revolutionary task of the SACP to fulfil what Chris Hani was standing for – serving the working class and the poor with diligence, service delivery, and a decent and dignified life for the people of Metsimaholo Local Municipality.

Indeed, the SACP has been vocal against corruption and state capture. The national executive committee of the ANC has been ignoring their task to guide the president. Instead, they are complicit.

The SACP must contest elections to ensure the people of Metsimaholo live corruption-free.

The first task they must undertake in office is to end the tender system and replace it with community cooperatives – meaning they must seriously prepare a strong legal team to fight against legal processes in abolition of the tender system.

They must establish the community funding scheme for small businesses and students. In terms of the administration work, they must identify key skilled people and systematically block the patronage and nepotism. The Metsimaholo Local Municipality must be our own Paris Commune.

Ashley Nyiko Mabasa is an SACP member and the Young Communist League of South Africa’s Wits branch secretary

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