COSATU House, Braamfontein, Johannesburg

30 August 2026

The South African Communist Party (SACP) Central Committee held its 13th Plenary of the 15th Congress from 28 to 30 August 2026 in Johannesburg, at a decisive moment in the development of the National Democratic Revolution and the struggle of the working class for socialism.

The Plenary took place shortly after the SACP celebrated its 105th founding anniversary and launched its 2026 local government election manifesto, marking an important new phase in the Party’s revolutionary strategy and electoral tactics. The Political Report, presented by the SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila, placed this moment within a broader assessment of the crisis of capitalism in South Africa, the unfinished National Democratic Revolution, the need for working-class political power and the necessity of advancing towards socialism.

The Central Committee reaffirmed the SACP’s historic mission to organise the working class as a class for itself, advance national liberation and social emancipation, oppose exploitation, oppression, inequality and patriarchy, and build a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous socialist South Africa.

The political and historical context

The Central Committee reflected on the 105-year history of the Communist Party and reaffirmed its commitment to the struggles that gave birth to the Party, including the struggle against national oppression, capitalist exploitation, imperialism and patriarchal domination.

On the 70^th anniversary of the historic 1956 women’s march against the pass laws and, more broadly, the apartheid regime in August, the Plenary paid tribute to the women who led and participated in that struggle, including communist women such as Lilian Ngoyi and Sophie De Bruyn. The SACP reaffirms the revolutionary significance of women’s organisation and leadership in the struggle for complete liberation and social emancipation.

We achieved what was mainly a political democracy in 1994. Economic power remains highly concentrated along racial, gender and spatial lines based on class divisions. The structural foundation of colonial and apartheid oppression, capitalism, as well as its colonial and imperialist expansion, has generated new contradictions. These included a realignment of political forces in favour of right-wing, conservative and neo-liberal forces to the disadvantage of our historical Alliance, especially working-class partners. The Political Report described South Africa as politically democratic but economically undemocratic, with ownership of major economic assets remaining concentrated in a relatively small capitalist bloc.

The central strategic question is therefore not how to administer the existing economic order more efficiently. It is how to change the balance of forces, transfer economic and social power to the people and advance the National Democratic Revolution towards socialism.

The forthcoming local government elections

The SACP has submitted its local government election candidate lists to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Not only did we submit our candidate lists ahead of, and in compliance with, the IEC deadline, but we are also decisively confirming for all in our country and the world that we are pressing ahead with exercising our long-reserved hard-won democratic right to contest elections both directly and independently in our own name. We adopted this resolution after over two decades of seeking the Alliance reconfiguration through engagements – with no positive outcomes. We made it clear through our resolutions that, in the absence of a successful reconfiguration, the SACP should contest elections both directly and independently, as we are now actively doing.

The SACP is fielding 4,418 ward candidates across the country. In the same vein, we are contesting proportional councillor seats countrywide. Our lists are the product of a long engagement process with communities that also informed our manifesto priorities. The lists include community candidates who are not SACP members. This confirms that we are not “going it alone” – we have community members outside our membership, and other organisations, who embrace and support our electoral contest as their own, too. Among others, the candidates include community-development activists and members of faith-based and traditional communities. Our sincere gratitude goes to all communities across the country, and to organisations that have welcomed and expressed support for our direct and independent electoral contest.

Our electoral contest must be understood correctly. The SACP has not “walked away” from the Alliance but firmly remains part of it while pursuing its reconfiguration. Like all Alliance partners, we are exercising our political, ideological and organisational independence. Anyone suggesting otherwise, the so-called “walked away”, is treacherous, a traitor who has sold out the working-class struggle. Such individuals often wallow in opportunism and conservatism and habitually misinterpret facts to spread false information and mislead unsuspecting members of their audience. To demonstrate this, on the one hand, they are involved in decisions to remove SACP members from Alliance public representation – positions we secured through collective campaigning and voting together – while, on the other hand, they have built a coalition and are consolidating their work with anti‑Freedom Charter public representatives from right‑wing parties.   

The Communist Party remains committed to the Alliance as a strategic force of the National Democratic Revolution, our strategy for transformation, development and shared prosperity. Our independent electoral contest is not a withdrawal from the Alliance, the National Democratic Revolution or the struggle for socialism. It is an exercise of our democratic and organisational independence and forms part of the struggle to rebuild working-class political representation and secure the reconfiguration of the Alliance.

We aim to address the crisis of working-class representation that emerged without a reconfigured Alliance, while the right-wing, conservative and neo-liberal anti-Freedom Charter forces gained priority. The SACP has consistently argued that the Alliance must be based on a commonly agreed revolutionary programme, democratic consensus-seeking consultation, collective leadership of the National Democratic Revolution and collective accountability, including collective recall.

The absence of Alliance reconfiguration cannot be allowed to silence the working class

The Central Committee expressed concern that the democratic, consensus-seeking process required to determine the policy content and direction that the Alliance must unite behind both outside and inside the government has not produced a positive outcome.

The SACP seeks an Alliance in which all partners participate meaningfully in determining policy and strategic direction, in which accountability extends to the Alliance as a whole and the people, and in which unity of purpose is grounded in a revolutionary programme aimed at realising the economic objectives of the Freedom Charter, as opposed to moving in the opposite direction, such as that of the neo-liberal structural reforms.

This is particularly important when the government can accept major policy and political decisions associated with forces outside the historical Alliance while democratic consensus-seeking consultation and accountability among Alliance partners as the core of a reconfigured Alliance are rejected. The recent Cabinet reshuffle illustrates this contradiction. The reshuffle was first announced by the DA as its decision but subsequently implemented by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The SACP does not accept that democratic consultation and accountability should be treated as an obstacle within the Alliance, while the government accepts decisions and policy preferences emanating from a right-wing, anti-Freedom Charter neo-liberal political party. The issue is therefore not personalities. It is the chosen class and political direction of those at the helm of the state.

Our electoral contest

Our electoral contest aims to address the crisis of working-class representation, build the productive capacity of the state, and strengthen its provision of public goods and services to the people through their involvement. We have added the electoral contest to our strategies to build the voice of the working class and advance its programme, including challenging neo-liberal policies, building people’s power in communities and pursuing the reconfiguration of the Alliance on the ground.  

Our campaign is therefore not an electoral exercise for its own sake. It is a new front of class struggle. The SACP will use the electoral campaign to organise workers and poor communities, fight corruption and crime, strengthen democratic participation and build the organisational foundations of a broader Left and socialist movement.

Electoral programme

Under the central theme: “BUILD PEOPLE’S POWER WHERE WE LIVE: FOR THE RIGHT TO WORK, WATER, ELECTRICITY, ROADS, LAND AND SAFETY FOR ALL”, our Manifesto establishes six interconnected priorities:

1. The right of all to work, Municipal Decent Work Plans and sustainable livelihoods where people live.
2. Reliable public services, preventative maintenance and prompt repairs.
3. Land, homes and food for social need, not private profit.
4. Safe, caring and healthy communities.
5. Municipalities free from tender corruption and capture.
6. Councillors who answer to the people and people who have a real say.

We will use our election contest to strengthen our campaign against the corrupt tender system, privatisation and unnecessary outsourcing of government functions, including, in this case, at the municipal level. The SACP is calling for in-sourcing and capable, democratic and properly funded People’s Municipalities, with adequate resourcing and equipping of municipal workers, participatory planning, local production and public representatives accountable to communities.

Our manifesto links immediate improvements in public goods and services to structurally deeper economic transformation. Public employment, co-operatives, land and participatory budgeting are important measures through which communities can gain greater control over the conditions of their lives.

The Central Committee reiterated the SACP’s support for land expropriation to redress the results of racial discrimination and achieve equitable access to land, reaffirmed the defence of these principles against litigation by the unrepentant beneficiaries of the colonial and apartheid oppression, and called for the deepening of the struggle against conservativism, neo-liberalism, corruption and crime.

Our Manifesto specifically identifies organised criminal networks, extortion by mafias, infrastructure crime and stock theft as threats to working-class and rural communities. We call for community safety structures, accountable policing, properly resourced police stations, survivor-centred services for victims of violence and decisive action against infrastructure crime and extortion.

The economic and social crises

Persistently high unemployment, poverty and inequality are the defining economic crisis confronting millions of South Africans.

The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey confirms the depth of the crisis. In the second quarter of 2026, the official unemployment rate increased to 33.6 per cent, with 8.5 million people unemployed. Employment fell by 16,000 to 16.7 million. Youth unemployment rose to 47.4 per cent, with five million young people unemployed. Labour underutilisation remained exceptionally high at 46.3 per cent.

The expanded unemployment rate, which accounts for discouraged work seekers, increased to approximately 44 per cent in the second quarter. This represents an unemployment crisis affecting roughly 13 million people.

Women continue to experience a particularly severe disadvantage. In the second quarter of 2026, the women’s official unemployment rate was 37.5 per cent, compared with 30.3 per cent for men. In terms of national groups, Black African women and men are the worst affected. We welcome the South African Reserve Bank’s women’s commemorative coins, yet a decisive change in monetary‑policy direction to help drive industrialisation and create employment will go much further in transforming the country and improving women’s conditions.

The latest poverty assessment reinforces the picture of entrenched deprivation in South Africa. Data estimates also highlight the 2025 poverty rate of 33.6 per cent at the R53.68 extreme poverty line, 46.8 per cent at the R75.15 lower-middle-income poverty line and 68.1 per cent at the R148.52 upper-middle-income poverty line (based on the 2025 average dollar–rand exchange rate).

Used to measure inequality, a Gini coefficient of approximately 0.63 has also been highlighted about South Africa, which is among the highest levels of inequality in the world. The bottom 40 per cent of South Africans account for only 11.5 per cent of total income, while the top 20 per cent account for 59.9 per cent.

These figures demonstrate why the SACP rejects arguments that South Africa’s crisis can be solved simply by waiting for capitalist economic growth to trickle down.

The crisis is structural. It is rooted in an economic system that continues to reproduce concentrated ownership, weak productive capacity, unemployment, poverty and extreme inequality. Instead of industrialising, South Africa has been experiencing and continues to experience factory closures and mass retrenchments. The continuing de-industrialisation is the reason why unemployment has increased and retrenched workers have been pushed into deeper levels of poverty.  

The Vulindlela capitalist class project

The SACP calls on the working class and all progressive sections of our society to reject the Vulindlela capitalist class project. While the government presents Vulindlela as a programme of structural reform designed to “modernise” electricity, water, rail, communications and other targeted network infrastructure industries, the key question for the working class is: Whose ownership and wealth-accumulation interests are Vulindlela’s reforms driving?

Vulindlela cannot be understood as a class-neutral programme of economic modernisation. In practice, it reflects a shift in the balance of forces in favour of capital, particularly, but not only, in network industries that, until neo-liberal policy capture and dominance, have been under public ownership, control and operations by state-owned enterprises.

Under Vulindlela, the network industries are being liberalised, with targeted state-owned enterprises unbundled, to pave the way for exploitation and profit-maximisation competition by private wealth-accumulation interests, while public entities are constrained or weakened by a combination of austerity and corruption.

Therefore, the Central Committee reiterated the SACP’s solidarity with the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa in their struggle against the privatisation of Eskom’s assets, its unbundling and their impact on workers. The SACP will deepen its participation in the two unions’ campaigns on this and other labour-centred struggles. The closure of the Komati Power Station in October 2022, without prior public investment to build and expand modern power‑generation capacity, create employment to safeguard productive work and ensure income security, inflicted unmitigated devastation on affected workers, communities and the informal economy.  

The network infrastructure industries and the entire public economy require major reconstruction, investment, recapitalisation, technical capability upgrading, maintenance and democratic accountability to thrive. We will continue to support the Freedom Charter, which states that monopoly industry should belong to the ownership of the people as a whole and that other industry and trade should be controlled to serve the wellbeing of the people.

Our fundamental disagreement with the Vulindlela capitalist class project concerns ownership, control and class purpose. The neo-liberal structural reforms contradict the Freedom Charter and represent another form of outsourcing and privatisation. The way forward is the implementation of the Freedom Charter to build a capable developmental state with its own capacity to serve the people diligently.

A high-impact industrial policy and a new macro-economic direction

South Africa requires an ambitious, high-impact and comprehensive industrial policy, sufficiently supported by and leading a coherent macro-economic framework. Macroeconomic policy cannot be treated as an end in itself. It must be aimed at and co-ordinated around the overriding objective of resolving the structural unemployment crisis, rebuilding national productive capacity, eradicating poverty and radically reducing inequality towards shared prosperity.

The SACP therefore calls for:

1. a decisive programme to stop de-industrialisation and to advance reindustrialisation
2. expansion and diversification of the public economy to thrive
3. strategic public ownership of commanding sectors
4. democratic control of natural resources: in terms of our country’s constitution, the state must take legislative and other measures to ensure equitable access to all natural resources; this has not been done because of policy dominance by capital, neo-liberal networks and their hangers-on
5. major public investment in electricity and a reduction in electricity tariffs
6. major public investment in water, roads, rail, ports, telecommunications and the digital economy infrastructure
7. developmental finance and supportive grants directed towards productive activity, including productive land use by rural communities and households
8. stronger support for manufacturing, mineral beneficiation, agro-processing and productive co-operatives, including through cheaper access to electricity
9. public procurement that builds domestic productive capacity through local content requirements and binding quotas
10. worker participation in economic decision-making and ownership
11. land redistribution and thoroughgoing agrarian transformation to empower historically disadvantaged families and communities
12. food sovereignty and food security
13. local economic transformation, including by municipalities

The SACP will fight for these transformation measures both through and outside the election campaign. We are calling on the working class to unite, defend and advance the growth and diversification of the public economy and social ownership, including worker control, as part of a broader programme to build a thriving people’s economy.

The SACP will deepen and widen the People’s Red Caravan to build self-sufficient local economic production and improve the social conditions of the people. In taking forward the People’s Red Caravan, we will in the period ahead rejuvenate the Financial Sector Campaign to eliminate the collective monopoly of exploitative finance capital, defend development finance institutions, such as the Public Investment Corporation, and drive structural transformation to march towards the goals of the Freedom Charter on banks’ ownership, to serve the people’s financial needs. The SACP is calling for transparency through full disclosure by the government of all the circumstances of the recent resignations of PIC board members.

The central theses of the Political Report

The Central Committee discussed several interconnected theses from the Political Report to guide the current phase of the National Democratic Revolution and broadly our programme, the South African Struggle for Socialism.

First, South Africa achieved the beginning of a transition from the apartheid regime in 1994 but has not achieved economic and social emancipation. The ownership and control of the commanding heights of the economy remain concentrated in the hands of a few, with capital dominating.

Second, the principal contradiction remains between monopoly capital and the people, of whom the majority is the working class and poor. The continuing dominance of monopoly-finance capital and other private wealth accumulation interests over the economy and their influence over the state, including at the highest echelons, the Presidency, reflects this undesirable reality.

Third, the working class has expanded and changed in form. It includes industrial workers, mineworkers, farmworkers, public servants, retail and service workers, platform and digital workers, informal workers, co-operative producers, community workers, gig workers, the unemployed and working-class youth. The unemployed are not outside the working class. They form part of the reserve labour force, created by capitalist accumulation.

Fourth, the National Democratic Revolution faces an organised neo-liberal offensive and corruption aimed at weakening the public economy and institutions, worker rights, developmental state capacity and democratic control while opening the state, converting it into a field of, and expanding the space for private wealth accumulation. This reflects the latest tendency of state capture. Private business-interest groups force decisions down the throats of the people through the highest echelon of government, which serves as the transmission mechanism and policy enforcer.

Fifth, the Political Report assesses the post-1994 relationship between capital and the state as having undergone a profound deterioration, with key economic objectives of the Freedom Charter either completely abandoned, thrown under the bus or distorted to fit capital’s private wealth accumulation interests.

Sixth, the Central Committee warned against the growing influence of compradorial forces and the danger of the broader movement and organised labour becoming co-opted and increasingly subordinated to capital as apologists and transmission belts.

Our strategic conclusion from these theses is that the National Democratic Revolution must serve as a bridge between national-revolutionary democratic transformation and socialist transition, rather than a cul-de-sac in which capitalism is administered through reforms aimed at monumentalising it and achieving sectoral efficiencies within its inherently exploitative logic.

Crime and social insecurity

The SACP is deeply concerned about the state of the criminal justice system. In particular, the rot exposed at the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System, also known as the Madlanga Commission, shows that South Africa has entered an elementary level of a mafia state. Instead of the President patting himself on the back for appointing the commission in an electioneering drive, he and every South African must thank the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, for exposing the rot. Mkhwanazi’s revelations, which were followed by public pressure for the government to act against the capture of some within law enforcement authorities, left the government with no option but to appoint the commission. The commission’s outcome must result in a reset. However, given that the rot exposed at the commission could be the tip of the iceberg in an environment where scandals run to the highest echelons of government, the reset must itself be insulated from capture.

The SACP is concerned that crime remains one of the most serious manifestations of the capitalist system-generated crises confronting working-class communities, including through criminal and mafia capture of some in key positions within law enforcement authorities.

The SAPS first-quarter crime statistics for April to June 2026 show some reductions in serious crime. However, while murder experienced some decline for another consecutive quarter and carjacking, residential robbery, business robbery and cash-in-transit robbery experienced some decline, these crimes and the scale of violent crime in particular remain intolerably high.

For example, the SAPS report records 5,170 murders, 6,104 attempted murders and 30,489 assaults with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm during the quarter. There were also 6,596 recorded rape counts. Most of these occurred in residences of victims or perpetrators, with 4,121 recorded at such locations. A further 1,462 occurred in public places.

Crime in total, including the cases that are not reported because many people have increasingly lost confidence in law enforcement authorities because of infiltration by criminal and mafia networks, is by far higher and more devastating in its impact in our communities.  

Gender-based violence and femicide remain a central component of the crisis of crime. The SACP’s manifesto recognises that gender-based violence, the killing of women, sexual violence and interpersonal violence are distinct but interconnected manifestations of social insecurity and calls for survivor-centred services and accountable policing.

The quarterly SAPS report does not provide a separate femicide total, so the Central Committee cautions against presenting general murder statistics as if they were femicide statistics. The continued need for a dedicated femicide review methodology reinforces our call for improvements in the collection and analysis of gendered violence data.

Crime is not simply a policing problem. It is also connected to the economy, including unemployment, poverty, inequality, social fragmentation, organised criminal networks, corruption and the erosion of state capacity.

Unabated proliferation of drugs and its dealings in both urban and rural areas are destroying too many families and communities and have resulted in the vandalisation and looting of public infrastructure, while the state seems incapable, and in some cases some within law enforcement authorities are captured by the drug-dealing mafia networks.  

As the Political Report argues, criminal cartels, sections of the security services, compromised political authorities and elements of the criminal justice system have become dangerously interconnected. Years of austerity have weakened recruitment, training, forensic services, detective work and intelligence capacity within law enforcement authorities.

The SACP therefore rejects the idea that a communications exercise or administrative “reset” is sufficient. We are calling for a fundamental reconstruction of the policing and criminal justice system, decisive action against organised crime and corruption, rebuilding Crime Intelligence, strengthening investigative and prosecutorial capacity, and reversing resource allocation cuts that undermine public safety. While these measures are important, without an economic turnaround, without bringing down unemployment, poverty and inequality, and without major breakthroughs towards prosperity for all, South Africa is unlikely to win the war against crime because of the connection between the state of the economy and crime.   

At the same time, the SACP reiterates its rejection of xenophobic scapegoating and xenophobia in all its manifestations. Migrant workers did not create monopoly capitalism, neo-liberal restructuring, de-industrialisation, the outsourcing of public functions, and privatisation of public resources. The working class must unite regardless of nationality while demanding effective border management, equal application of labour laws, and decisive action against organised crime and corruption.

Building the broadest possible unity of the Left

The Central Committee welcomed the outcome of the Conference of the Left held from 29 to 31 May 2026. The Conference of the Left brought together over 114 organisations and adopted a Declaration for Working-Class and Popular Power. Participants included political parties, trade unions, community and social movements, co-operatives, youth and women’s formations, student organisations, faith-based formations, traditional leadership structures, and progressive intellectuals.

The Conference of the Left was not convened to create another political party or impose ideological uniformity. Its purpose was to build working-class and popular power by initiating a democratic Left consultative and engagement process, and through co-ordinated campaigns and co-operation in practice.

The SACP has now been elected Convenor of the Council of the Left. This responsibility is a mandate to deepen unity among the widest possible range of progressive Left forces, including organisations that did not participate in the Conference.

The Political Report identified growing political space for unity among workers, progressive trade unions, community organisations, youth and women’s formations, co-operatives, progressive intellectuals and socialist organisations around struggles against austerity, privatisation, inequality and imperialism. The Conference of the Left process should serve as a long-term and deep-going process for ideological renewal, political co-ordination and practical mobilisation, rooted in workplaces, communities, campuses, townships, villages and the digital space. The Central Committee expressed support for the development of a concrete campaign-based programme of the Left to build on the declaration adopted by the Conference of the Left.

Municipal Structures Amendment Bill of 2026, also referred to as the Municipal Coalitions Bill

The SACP rejects what may emerge as attempts through the Bill at stifling democratic election outcomes and the hard-won freedom of association. Choosing or monumentalising certain political-party partnerships through the Bill, via threshold provisions in the formation of coalitions, by marginalising parties through such provisions, is an example. The SACP will make its submissions in defence of freedom of association, including for political parties, during the Bill’s process. Beyond this, the SACP will embark on mobilisation. The Constitution of the Republic does not provide for a legislative predetermination of coalition partners through quotas.  

Tribute to South African women and the struggle for gender equality

The Central Committee paid tribute to South African women on the 70^th anniversary of the 1956 women’s march.

Women’s oppression cannot be separated from the organisation of production and social reproduction under capitalism. Women continue to carry a disproportionate share of unpaid care work. Women frequently spend extra time collecting water when systems fail, due to patriarchy and its enduring effects. When food prices rise, women frequently absorb the consequences through unpaid household labour. When public transport and public spaces are unsafe, women experience restrictions on movement and participation in economic and social life.

Our manifesto, therefore, treats reliable public services, decent work, safety, reproductive health, community care and women’s political leadership as interconnected questions. We will continue to fight for recognition of unpaid care work, safer public spaces, decisive action against gender-based violence and femicide and women’s full leadership in every structure of people’s power.

The struggle for gender equality must increasingly extend throughout society and the economy, including workplaces, trade unions, political organisations, municipalities, co-operatives, public institutions and communities. Women’s emancipation cannot be reduced to representation alone, important as it is, more especially when it gives play to democratic working-class women’s representation. Women’s emancipation requires eliminating the system and transforming the material conditions that reproduce women’s economic dependence and unequal burden of social reproduction.

As part of our campaign towards and beyond the forthcoming elections, the SACP will push for municipalities to assess the impact of their plans regularly on women and LGBTQIA+ communities.

The SACP strongly denounces Glenlivet’s alcohol advertisement for exploiting the legacy of the 1956 Women’s March. This is not merely a matter of an inappropriate advertisement requiring an apology, but part of a wider and deeply concerning pattern in which alcohol and substance abuse are aggressively marketed in ways that target and objectify women. The exploitation of women’s bodies and the sexism embedded in such or other advertising and sales practices must end. This requires sustained action and regulation to protect women and girls and confront the broader social and commercial drivers of alcohol and substance abuse.

Solidarity with COSATU and congratulations to the YCLSA

The Central Committee conveyed its best wishes to COSATU ahead of its 15th National Congress, to be held from 14 to 17 September 2026 in Midrand.

The SACP recognises the central role of organised labour in the struggle for working-class power and socialism. In particular, forging class-conscious trade unionism is essential for the working class to move beyond a class in itself to become and act as a class for itself. We are calling on COSATU to unite behind prioritising better conditions for workers across the economy, in all industries and sectors, rather than being divided along electoral issues. It is crucial to build class consciousness and expand internal democratic space to uphold the workers’ right to vote for their class interests.      

The SACP will continue to work for unity within the working class and for a trade union movement capable of confronting economic and political exploitation, including on the electoral front, unemployment, casualisation, austerity, privatisation, de-industrialisation and attacks on public services.

The Central Committee congratulated the Young Communist League of South Africa’s National Interim Leadership Core and extended its best wishes to the collective in building a strong, resilient organisation.

International situation and proletarian internationalism

The international situation is undergoing major changes, with the old unipolar order weakening and new centres of economic and political power emerging across the Global South. At the same time, imperialist powers continue to use militarisation, illegal unilateral sanctions, economic coercion, proxy wars and political destabilisation to defend their hegemony.

The SACP reaffirmed its commitment to an independent South African international relations and co-operation policy based on peaceful dialogue, multilateralism, solidarity with oppressed peoples, national sovereignty and a just international order.

The Central Committee reaffirmed solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, Western Sahara, the Kurdish people and Iran in their struggles against imperialism, unilateral sanctions, militarism and other forms of oppression. The Central Committee reiterated the SACP’s call for the unconditional release of Abdullah Öcalan.

Cuba has played a historic and decisive role in the liberation of Southern Africa from colonialism and apartheid, driven by the internationalist solidarity of the Cuban people and government. The SACP calls on the South African government and other governments in Southern Africa to reciprocate this solidarity by pursuing a leading role in opposing the illegal, unjust and inhuman United States imperialist blockade of Cuba, and by providing Cuba with the humanitarian and other material solidarity support it needs. In the same vein, the SACP will itself strengthen people-based solidarity with Cuba and the Cuban government, working with other supportive organisations in South Africa and across the world.

The SACP reiterates its solidarity with the people of Venezuela against the imperialist military capture of their sovereignty and natural resources, including, but not limited to, oil. The Central Committee reaffirmed our strong condemnation of the imperialist regime of the United States for such actions, including the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. We call for their unconditional release and deepening of mobilisation both in Venezuela and across the world against the imperialist regime of the United States and its violations of human and national rights of the Venezuelan people and others.

What its attack on Venezuela and other countries exposes is that the United States abuses the name of democracy to impose its imperialist regime change agenda, whose real goal is not democracy but the installation of governments that will obey its foreign dictatorship and hand over natural and other resources to its capitalist class.  

The Central Committee expressed solidarity with the democratic struggle in Swaziland and support for the March for Democracy scheduled for 4 September 2026. The struggle by the people of Swaziland for democracy is part of the broader struggle of the peoples of Southern Africa against oppression, authoritarianism, exploitation and neo-colonial domination.

The SACP reaffirms its commitment to African solidarity and the strengthening of the Africa Left Network Forum.

The Central Committee called for the release of Bishop Trevor Mwamba, leader of Zambia’s United National Independence Party, UNIP. After family members could not reach him since Friday, 14 August 2026, following the disputed election held the day before, it was discovered that he was being held by the police.  

The Central Committee reaffirms its unwavering solidarity with the people of Sudan, who are enduring the gravest humanitarian catastrophe of our time. The imperialist-driven war, fuelled by external powers and their proxies, has devastated Sudanese society. More than 150,000 lives have been lost, millions have been displaced, and famine stalks Darfur and Kordofan. The collapse of health systems, the spread of cholera, and the deliberate targeting of civilians and humanitarian workers expose the brutality of imperialist aggression and its disregard for human life.

We condemn the imperialist regimes that have perpetuated and profited from Sudan’s destruction, and we salute the resilience of the Sudanese people in their struggle for survival and self-determination. Their suffering is not an isolated tragedy but part of the broader assault on the Global South, where imperialist powers deploy war, sanctions and destabilisation to deny nations their sovereignty.

The Central Committee reaffirmed the SACP’s solidarity with the people of the Sahel region in their struggle to achieve liberation from neo-colonialism and imperialist domination.

We reject unilateral sanctions, militarism and other forms of imperialist aggression by the United States and the apartheid Israeli settler regime against Iran. The SACP calls on progressive governments to ignore the unilateral sanctions regime imposed by the United States against Iran. The imperialist regime of the United States and the apartheid Israeli settler regime have been destabilising the Middle East region consistently by causing, sponsoring and engaging in wars of aggression and expansionism.

We commend the people of Iran for building the national self-defence capacity that they have demonstrated in retaliatory responses to the attacks by the United States and Israel. This capacity should serve as an example to the countries of the Global South in the struggle to defend the fundamental right to national self-determination.

Russia has also demonstrated strategic national defence capability through its Special Military Operation against the war that NATO provoked against it via Ukraine. The imperialist regimes of the United States and Europe misrepresent the war as “Russia’s war on Ukraine” while it is in fact their own war against Russia via Ukraine. These regimes have not only provoked the war but are both sponsoring and actively participating in it on the side of Ukraine through their military expenditure, weapons supply, military training, intelligence support and illegal unilateral sanctions against Russia.

The Central Committee expressed solidarity with the people of Nepal and China. The disaster that has struck the Nepal–China border has resulted in a death toll of over 670 so far and nearly 3,000 people missing, with massive destruction of human settlements.

We express our unwavering solidarity with the people of Yemen and Lebanon against imperialist aggression. Yemen has endured one of the most devastating humanitarian crises of our time, caused by relentless imperialist-backed war, indiscriminate bombing campaigns, and the strangling blockade that has denied millions of people access to food, medicine and basic survival needs. The apartheid Israeli settler regime and its allies have extended their aggression into Lebanon, attacking sovereign communities and violating international law. We condemn these crimes and stand firmly with the peoples of Yemen and Lebanon in their just struggle for liberation, dignity and peace.

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