Thursday, 11 June 2026: The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Free State Province (FS) convened its ordinary PEC meeting on 7 June 2026 at Gladstone, Thaba Nchu. The choice to host the PEC at this far-flung village of Gladstone was intentional to signify the fact that our Party activation of the People’s Red Caravan in this village was not an opportunistic single event that ended on the last day of the activation but is about building lasting relations with the community.
The PEC received an input from the Central Committee, a political report delivered by the Provincial Secretary, as well as organisational and financial reports. The PEC analysed the state of the national democratic revolution and the tasks of the Party of Socialism in the new era, with a detailed focus on the province.
The PEC also reflected on the significance of June as the youth month and the need to live up to the legacy of courage and determination in confronting societal challenges head-on as demonstrated by the generation of 1976. Working class youth and communities are confronted by contemporary worsening realities of unemployment, poverty, inequality, hunger, austerity, privatisation and neoliberal throttling that demand the independent presence and action of a Communist Party and its Young Communist League. Furthermore, the PEC agreed that the selfless spirit demonstrated by the grassroots organising ethos of revolutionaries that culminated in the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 must be exemplified by Party activists of today.
To give practical meaning to these, the PEC agreed to convene a special Party Building Commission to focus solely on detailed repositioning of the Party organisation in this new era. This will include revitalising Party structures and renewing mandates to position the SACP to respond actively to challenges faced by communities using renewed methods of mass work and implementation of Party programmes.
Gladstone People’s Red Caravan is on track to support local food production and livelihoods sustainably.
The PEC received and evaluated a detailed report on the provincial activation of the People’s Red Caravan in Gladstone. The PEC evaluated the PRC as yet another resounding successful provincial activation that requires continued efforts to fully mature and become sustainably self-sustaining. The Party extends its appreciation to all social partners, various hosting households and all volunteers for their selfless contribution. This activation reaffirmed the importance of the People's Red Caravan as a practical grassroots expression of socialist mobilisation, community solidarity, cooperative development and co-production.
Through the weeklong implementation of local food production initiatives, the People's Red Caravan in Gladstone has demonstrated that sustainable, self-reliant development must be based on collective action and societal needs rather than capitalist market forces that put profits before people’s livelihood. These initiatives included crop production, household food production, egg production, honey production, fruit production, piggery production, organic compost and manure production, agro-processing and aggregation of local produce and the launch of an operating communally owned local cooperative store. This PRC further enabled a groundwater pumping initiative to support broader community agricultural food production and livestock farming; graded the main and artery gravel roads and sports grounds in the community; undertook painting, plumbing and grass-cutting initiatives in public infrastructure; initiated waste recycling; and rekindled sports, arts and culture, including horse racing in the community.
The PEC used its presence in Gladstone to undertake inspection in loco of the PRC project and is satisfied that these grassroots-led projects are all showing high prospects of success, with the local community members themselves nurturing the 'seed of progress' planted by the SACP together with the community. The Party PEC resolved that provincial and district activation of PRCs must be planned for rollout across the province, in line with Party decisions nationally.
Readying SACP elections machinery for the registration weekend and implementation of Party decision to contest local government elections on 4 November 2026
The PEC received a report from the Revolutionary Provincial Elections Committee (RPEC) on preparations for the voter registration weekend of 20 to 21 June 2026 and the overall state of the election machinery in the province. The PEC endorsed various structures and appointments made to enable the seamless and fair implementation of the Party elections programme and roadmap. Training of the Chris Hani Red Brigades on various areas of elections work is ongoing, and soon the SACP will start with the process of identification of councillor candidates across the province.
The PEC noted the progress made with regard to setting up election structures at the provincial and district levels. The PEC agreed to intensify expanding ward and voting district-based structures and setting up in outstanding areas to ensure wall-to-wall working-class representation and address the growing marginalisation and throttling of working-class interests and voices and increasing accommodation of a neoliberal embrace of neoliberal selling out, including at the local state.
The PEC emphasised that local government remains a critical terrain of class struggle and that the state of governance and service delivery across municipalities in the province remains unsatisfactory. Municipalities must serve the interests of working-class and poor communities rather than existing parasitic patronage networks that are rife across our municipalities.
The PEC noted with disgust the misdiagnosis by the ANC which resulted in the targeted factional removal of certain mayors in different municipalities across the province due to the sheer inconsistencies applied. A mere scrapping of the surface immediately reveals that the crisis in these ANC-led municipalities cannot solely be blamed on an individual deployee. Even more disgusting is what appears to be a clear anti-communist purge of ANC members who hold SACP membership and are particularly women. The SACP in the province condemns the ANC’s contemptuous, apparently sexist and anti-communist purge and continued harassment and victimisation of especially female members of the Party who are deployed in their own right as members of the ANC. Perhaps these are additional steps to disassociate with progressive left forces in a practical sense.
The PEC agreed not to be distracted and to focus on the tasks at hand, including the tasks of consolidating progressive forces organising in various sectors of society. In this regard, the PEC welcomed the growing momentum generated by the Conference of the Left and the commitment to practically coordinate and enhance the unity of the left forces against neoliberal and imperialist onslaught insisting on subordinating all of society and the democratic state to the interests and dictates of neoliberal and capitalist forces. The PEC reiterated the importance of practically elaborating the output of the conference of the left in terms of immediate tasks at the sub-national level to leave no vacuum in consolidating working-class unity and heightening socialist consciousness and organisation.
The global capitalist crisis is responsible for multiple societal crises, including immigration, and must be confronted; the state must enforce immigration laws because xenophobic mobilisation is not the solution
The PEC emphasised that society needs to appreciate that the systemic crisis of capitalism internationally continues to inflict untold suffering and difficulties throughout the world. The fact that working-class communities may not be living side-by-side with capitalists of all kinds does not imply that this capitalist crisis, imposed on the working class of the world through exploitation in pursuit of profits at all costs and also as social relations between things, does not take place. The South African society is not spared from this capitalist-driven misery.
The capitalist-driven geopolitical wars and instability in different parts of the world, for instance, impose the current crisis of high cost of living affecting our communities with the high cost of food, fuel, medicines, transportation and all material and subsistence requirements.
The PEC accepted the SACP Central Committee statements expressing, in the first instance, that any xenophobic violence and mobilisation for abuse of migrants is undesirable and must be rejected. Furthermore, amongst many other key points, the PEC agreed that the country cannot condone illegal immigration, corruption in the immigration system or abuse of refugee or asylum-seeking regimes. A collaborative effort, including leaders of other African countries, which responds to causal factors fuelling the problem of migration and exploitation of the working class is urgently required and must be anchored on an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist foundation to systematically resolve the challenge.
Issued by the SACP Free State Province
Contact:
Charles Stofile – SACP Free State Provincial Secretary
Mobile: 071 600 4899
Phillip Kganyago – SACP Free State Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: 071 896 0157
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