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1. ​Introduction

The South African Communist Party has invited SAFTU and other formations to participate in a “Conference of the Left,” now postponed to 29–31 May 2026.

The postponement, communicated by the Steering Committee, is to allow:

• Organisational readiness

• Completion of internal mandates

• Broader participation

Political implication

The postponement removes any urgency that could justify an unmandated or politically unclear position.

It places a responsibility on all formations, including SAFTU, to:

• Engage the matter thoroughly

• Apply principled political criteria

• Take a clear and accountable position

The issue before the NEC is therefore not whether unity is desirable. The issue is:

Whether this process, as currently constituted, meets the political criteria of the left as defined by SAFTU itself and by the broader working-class mandates developed over years of struggle.

2. The political standard: “What is left – what is not left”

SAFTU’s broader political orientation is clear:

The left is not defined by declarations, slogans, historical identity, or symbolism alone.

It must be assessed through concrete political practice in relation to:

• Class power

• Capitalism

• The state

• The struggle of the working class

• A broader socialist agenda that unites all people oppressed by capitalism

While the document “What is Left – What is Not Left” has not yet been formally adopted by the NEC, it was drafted by the SAFTU Secretariat to stimulate debate within and outside the federation on the political character of the left, working-class independence, and the crisis confronting socialist and progressive formations.

The document therefore forms part of an ongoing political discussion within the federation and must be assessed alongside the federation’s adopted congress resolutions, declarations and mandates.

2.1 What constitute the left

A formation must:

• Economic system: Battles to establish centrally and/or socially planned economy

Left organisation wants to abolish capitalism in all its facets.

• Capitalist class:

The left fight against capitalism.

• Corruption:

The Left is opposed to corruption in all its facets. We cannot choose between private and public sector corruption, regardless of their magnitude.

• Immigration:

The left does not scapegoat the localised crises of capitalism - unemployment, poverty, crime, housing crises, township retail market chaos and regional political instability that creates waves of refugees - on immigrants.

• Feminism:

The Left embraces socialist feminism, not the ‘feminism of the 1%’ in which the objective is to break a ‘glass ceiling’ that capitalists and states traditionally put atop women to keep them from leading administrative positions.

• Political allegiance:

The Left does not support capitalist political parties, especially those featuring tribal and regional nationalists, conservative patriarchs, unreliable populists and other distractions from our struggles for justice.

• Democracy:

The Left believes in deep-rooted democracy, based on a system that enables the working class to participate in economic, social, environmental and political decision-making. themselves.

• Internationalism:

The Left is truly internationalist, aiming to build links with the working class everywhere across the world, pledging solidarity with their struggles globally, so that a socialism without borders is one day achieved.

• Imperialist wars:

The Left opposes imperialist wars wherever they rear their ugly heads.

• Racism:

Leftists oppose racism and white supremacy.

• Tribalism and regionalism:

Left organisations reject regionalism and tribalism in their entirety, recognising that in many cases the divide-and-conquer approach to social control reverts to creating an ‘Other’ political subject along the crudest of lines.

• LGBTQI:

Leftists reject homophobia and repression of sexual identify in all their manifestations. Left organisations embrace everyone’s right to choice and we challenge socially imposed sexual orientations when those conflict with natural desires.

• Nationalism:

Nationalism has been the source of vital progressive inspiration when battling racism, colonialism and imperialism – including apartheid – and the Left has consistently provided solidaristic support to nationalist struggles. However, the Left’s internationalism means transcending narrow framings of politics based on artificial border lines (e.g. those in Africa carved out in Berlin in 1884-85) and on sometimes-invented ‘nations.’

• Environment/ecology:

The Left understands that industrial and post-industrial capitalism have had devastating impacts on planetary health, as well as on local sites of pollution.

What is not left?

A formation is not left if it:

• Implements or defends austerity, privatisation, and neoliberal policy

• Is subordinated to a governing party implementing capitalist policies

• Undermines working-class unity

• Promotes ethnicism, xenophobia, patriarchy, or authoritarianism

• Masks assimilation into elite politics by using radical rhetoric

• Defends or legitimises corruption and state capture

This framework must now be applied consistently to the current SACP initiative.

2.3 SAFTU’S founding principles, congress mandates and Working Class Summit

The positions reflected in “What is Left – What is Not Left” do not emerge in a political vacuum.

The discussion paper must therefore be read alongside:

• The resolutions of the SAFTU Inaugural National Congress (2017)

• The Declaration of the Working-Class Summit (2018)

• The resolutions and declaration of the SAFTU Second National Congress (2022)

• Subsequent congress, Central Committee and NEC mandates of the federation

The SAFTU Inaugural National Congress adopted foundational principles including:

• Independence from employers and political parties

• Worker control and democracy

• Non-racialism and non-sexism

• Opposition to xenophobia and tribalism

• Internationalism and anti-imperialism

• Socialist orientation

• Militancy in defence of workers and the poor

The founding congress explicitly resolved that unions must remain independent from political parties and the capitalist state while maintaining a socialist orientation rooted in mass struggle.

The congress further warned against:

• Corruption

• Business unionism

• Fragmentation of worker unity

• Political interventions that undermine worker independence

This orientation was deepened through the Working-Class Summit held in Soweto in July 2018, where more than 147 working-class organisations and over 1 000 delegates resolved that:

• Capitalism is the root cause of the misery confronting the working class

• The working-class movement must be independent

• Working-class power must be built democratically from the bottom up

• Workplace and community struggles must be united

• Xenophobia, patriarchy, racism and all forms of oppression must be opposed

Critically, the Summit resolved that:

“the working class movement must be independent and democratically built from the bottom up.”

The resolutions and declaration of the Working-Class Summit were subsequently endorsed by the SAFTU Central Committee, thereby incorporating them into the broader strategic orientation of the federation.

The Summit further clarified that this bottom-up process was not to be abstract, rhetorical, or reduced to electoral manoeuvres from above.

It identified the concrete struggles, demands, and political questions around which working-class unity and organisation must be built.

The Summit resolved that working-class assemblies and struggles must be organised around:

• The economy, jobs, poverty, inequality and corruption

• Opposition to austerity, VAT increases, fuel levies and neoliberal policies

• Resistance to privatisation, outsourcing, casualisation and deindustrialisation

• The struggle against labour law amendments undermining the right to strike

• The demand for a Basic Income Grant

• The demand for reduction of working hours to share work

• The creation of millions of jobs

• Free, decolonised and quality public education

• Free quality healthcare and strengthening of the public health system

• Opposition to privatisation of electricity, water and natural resources

• Climate justice and a socially owned just transition

• Organisation and recognition of informal workers

• Land redistribution and expropriation without compensation in the interests of the working class

• Affordable housing and service delivery

• Anti-corruption struggle

• Resistance to patriarchy and gender-based violence

• Opposition to xenophobia and all forms of chauvinism

• International solidarity and anti-imperialism

The Summit further resolved that:

• Working-class struggles in communities and workplaces must be united

• Community struggles must not remain fragmented and isolated

• Trade unionists must actively participate in community struggles

• Working-class organisation must be democratic, militant, and independent

• The movement must be built through assemblies, campaigns, and mass participation from below

The declaration therefore clarified that:

A bottom-up working-class process is not simply an electoral project or a conference process.

It is:

• A mass democratic process of building working-class power in workplaces, communities, campuses, informal settlements, farms, rural areas and broader society

• Rooted in concrete struggles against capitalism, austerity, inequality, patriarchy, racism and xenophobia

• Directed towards socialist transformation and working-class control of society and the economy

The resolutions and declaration of the SAFTU Second National Congress further reinforced this orientation by clarifying the strategic tasks of SAFTU in the current conjuncture, including:

• Building working-class unity

• Uniting workplace and community struggles

• Resisting austerity and neoliberalism

• Defending and extending workers’ rights

• Organising the unorganised and precarious workers

• Building campaigns against unemployment, poverty and inequality

• Advancing socialist consciousness and working-class political independence

• Deepening international solidarity

• Building a militant, democratic and campaigning federation rooted amongst workers and communities

The Second National Congress further reaffirmed that SAFTU’s strategic task is not to become subordinated to elite political projects, but to contribute toward building independent working-class power rooted in mass struggle.

This is fundamentally different from:

• Electoral manoeuvres from above

• Elite political realignments

• Temporary coalitions lacking class clarity

• Top-down political projects

• Artificial “unity” that suppresses political clarity

• Processes that collapse distinctions between socialist, neoliberal and reactionary politics

The question before SAFTU is therefore not merely whether to attend a conference.

The deeper strategic question is whether the process contributes toward:

• Building an independent, democratic, bottom-up working-class movement rooted in these struggles, resolutions and mandates

or whether it risks:

• Reproducing the same forms of political subordination, ideological confusion and elite-driven politics previously criticised within the federation and broader working-class movement.

3. ​Historical sequence of the rapture

3.1 NUMSA Special National Congress — December 2013

The turning point begins with the Special National Congress of NUMSA in December 2013.

NUMSA concluded that:

• The South African Communist Party leadership had become embedded in the state

• It was failing to act as a vanguard of the working class

• The possibility of reclaiming it was “very remote”

• The Alliance had become a vehicle for neoliberal policy

NUMSA further resolved:

• To call on COSATU to break from the Alliance

• To lead in establishing a new United Front

• To explore a Movement for Socialism

• To cease support for ANC election campaigning

• To prohibit NUMSA office bearers from holding office bearer positions in political parties

Political significance

This was the first organised working-class rupture with the SACP’s political role inside the Alliance.

It was not a factional dispute. It was a class analysis emerging from the country’s largest industrial union. It followed two decades of assimilation of SACP leaders into the neoliberal project, not only implementing them when in state power, but also confusing the society by justifying the rightward shifts using ‘Communist’ terminology. This included SACP initial support given to the 1996 ‘Growth, Employment and Redistribution’ (home-grown structural adjustment) attack on the Reconstruction and Development Programme, and many policies that promoted privatised housing, water, education and commercialised state enterprises.

3.2 The Zwelinzima Vavi Open Letter — 2014

The critique deepened in 2014 through the open letter by Zwelinzima Vavi, then General Secretary of COSATU.

The letter identified:

• The SACP’s integration into the state apparatus

• Its prioritisation of Alliance unity over class struggle

• Its failure to oppose neoliberal policy decisively

• Its role in divisions within the labour movement

• Its accommodation of anti-working-class policy inside government

Political significance

This was not an external critique.

It was a warning from within the Alliance itself.

The letter raised a central political contradiction:

How can a party claim socialist identity while its leaders participate in administering a capitalist state implementing neoliberal and anti-worker policies?

3.3 Continuity to the present

These issues were never politically resolved.

They remain present today in:

• The SACP’s continued alliance with the ANC

• Its continued participation in government structures

• Its leaders’ role in implementing current state policies, especially where these promote privatisation (in managing Operation Vulindlela) or corruption (e.g. in higher education financing)

Therefore, the contradiction identified in 2013 and 2014 is not historical. It remains current.

4. The global historical crisis of the left

The broader crisis of the Left must also be located internationally.

Globally:

• Social democracy has degenerated into neoliberalism

• Labour parties have become managers of capitalism

• Reformist currents have abandoned systemic transformation

• Ultra-left tendencies have become disconnected from material realities

In the Global South:

• Liberation movements have frequently transformed into governing parties accommodating capital as well as the imperial powers

• Formerly radical forces have embraced “pragmatic” neoliberalism

At the same time, the crisis of capitalism has not automatically strengthened the Left.

Instead, it has opened space for:

• Right-wing populism

• Xenophobia and nationalism

• Patriarchal and authoritarian politics

• Reactionary anti-worker mobilisation

South Africa reflects this crisis sharply.

5. ​The SACP: Continuity of contradiction

5.1 Subordination to the ANC and the state

The SACP remains in political alliance with the African National Congress.

Recent remarks by Solly Mapaila, responding to ANC demands for loyalty declarations, confirm:

• Continued political alignment with the ANC

• Continued defence and rationalisation of the Alliance

• No decisive break from the ANC

Applying the SAFTU framework:

A formation subordinated to a governing party implementing neoliberal policies at an increasing rate, cannot be regarded as independent working-class left.

5.2 Participation in implementing neoliberal policy

SACP leaders continue to occupy positions within the state and participate in implementing:

• Austerity and fiscal consolidation

• Wage suppression

• Privatisation and outsourcing

• Anti-worker macroeconomic policy

• Failure to resolve unemployment and public service collapse

This is not historical. It is current reality.

The contradiction therefore remains:

The same organisation:

• Calls for socialism

• While its leaders participate in administering a capitalist state implementing anti-worker policies

Applying the SAFTU framework:

Participation in implementing neoliberal policies places the SACP in contradiction with the definition of the left in practice.

6. ​The composition of the “conference of the left”

6.1 Inclusion of the Umkhonto We Sizwe Party (MKP)

Applying the SAFTU framework would lead to disqualification of a conference as ‘of the left’ if it welcomes a party notorious for:

• Association with state capture processes

• Xenophobic rhetoric

• Reactionary nationalism and ethnicism

• Patriarchal and socially conservative politics

• Hostility to internationalist positions, including on Western Sahara

Several leaders associated with MKP are publicly linked to allegations arising from the Zondo Commission and other corruption-related processes.

Applying the SAFTU framework consistently: MKP does not meet the minimum criteria of the left.

6.2 Inclusion of the ANC

The ANC government is responsible for:

• Austerity budgets

• Public sector wage suppression

• Privatisation and outsourcing

• Failure to resolve mass unemployment

• Failure to reverse inequality

• Anti-worker macroeconomic policy

Applying the framework:

A governing party implementing neoliberal policy cannot be classified as left.

7. ​The result: Collapse of the political definition

The SACP initiative now brings together:

• A governing party implementing neoliberalism

• A formation associated with state capture and reactionary politics

• Organisations claiming socialist orientation

Applying the SAFTU framework:

This collapses the distinction between what is left and what is not left.

The result becomes:

• Ideological confusion

• Political incoherence

• Collapse of class clarity

• Inability to develop a coherent working-class programme

The danger is therefore the emergence of a political amoeba:

• Everything becomes “left”

• Contradictory class forces are grouped together

• Socialist politics loses definition

8. ​The core contradiction

The SACP is attempting simultaneously to:

1. Maintain its political relationship with the ANC and the state

2. Convene a process to unify the left

These positions are fundamentally incompatible.

One cannot build an independent working-class left while remaining politically anchored to a governing party implementing capitalist policies.

This contradiction has not been resolved politically, organisationally, or programmatically.

9. ​The strategic battleground of the left

As Antonio Gramsci observed:

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

South Africa reflects this interregnum.

We increasingly see:

• Corruption presented as transformation

• Xenophobia presented as defence of the working-class

• Patriarchy defended as culture or tradition

• Populism substituting class politics

• Radical rhetoric masking elite accumulation

9.1 Consent, control and domination inside the working class

Gramsci further warns:

“The history of all states shows that the ruling class maintains itself in power not only through force but also through consent. This consent is obtained by means of political and ideological leadership, which penetrates even into the ranks of the working class.”

This means domination is not reproduced only externally.

It is also reproduced internally through leaderships that organise acceptance of the existing order.

9.2 Internal stratification and misleadership

Gramsci also observed:

“The working class is not homogeneous; within it there exist layers which perform the function of mediation and control, and which may be absorbed into the hegemonic apparatus of the ruling class.”

This warning remains directly relevant.

Not all who speak in the name of workers advance working-class interests.

Sections can become:

• Mediators between capital and labour

• Managers of the existing order

• Instruments stabilising rather than transforming the system

9.3 Lenin on transformation through the capitalist state

Lenin similarly warned that bourgeois institutions and the capitalist state do not leave organisations untouched.

As he argued in The State and Revolution:

“The whole history of bourgeois parliamentarism shows how representatives of the workers become transformed into representatives of the bourgeoisie.”

The danger is therefore not merely betrayal by individuals.

It is the political absorption and transformation of ideologies, organisations, leaders and movements through incorporation into the capitalist state apparatus and its institutions.

This warning remains profoundly relevant to formations that enter or become subordinated to capitalist state power while continuing to speak in socialist language.

9.4 The danger of false unity

A “Conference of the Left” that includes contradictory class forces risks collapsing the meaning of the Left itself.

Such a process risks becoming:

• A platform without political clarity

• An aggregation of incompatible class positions

• A structure reproducing confusion among workers

• A vehicle to return more support to a neoliberal nationalist ruling party

What appears as “unity” may in reality become:

• The organisation of consent to the status quo under radical language

• The absorption of working-class formations into broader political projects lacking class independence

• The further ideological weakening of socialist politics

The strategic challenge for SAFTU is therefore not simply whether to unite.

It is whether unity advances:

• Independent working-class power

• Socialist clarity

• Democratic mass struggle from below

or whether it reproduces:

• Political subordination

• Confusion of class boundaries

• Incorporation into the very system the working class seeks to transform.

10. ​Options before SAFTU

Option 1: Decline participation in the Conference of the Left

SAFTU may resolve not to participate in the Conference of the Left on the basis that:

• The current composition of the conference includes formations that do not meet the minimum criteria of the left

• The inclusion of the ANC and MKP collapses distinctions between socialist, neoliberal and reactionary politics

• The SACP has not resolved the contradiction between socialist rhetoric and participation in implementing neoliberal state policy

• Participation risks legitimising ideological confusion and political incoherence

Option 2: Conditional participation based on political redefinition

SAFTU may resolve to participate only on the basis of strict political conditions.

Participation would:

• Not constitute endorsement of the SACP or any other party present

• Not imply acceptance of the political composition of the conference

• Be aimed at testing whether a genuine, independent working-class left can be rebuilt

Conditions would include:

• Open debate on austerity, neoliberalism and the ANC-SACP relationship

• Questioning of the commitment and record of other parties claiming to be on the left

• Rejection of xenophobia, patriarchy and corruption

• Respect for trade union independence and organisational autonomy

• The right of SAFTU to table its own political perspectives and critiques

11. ​Conclusion

The question is not whether unity is needed.

The real question is:

Unity of which class forces, on what political basis, and towards what programme?

Applying SAFTU’s broader political framework and working-class mandates leads to a clear conclusion:

A “left” that includes:

• Neoliberalism

• Xenophobia

• Patriarchy

• State capture

• Corruption

• Anti-worker governance

is not a left.

The issue before SAFTU is therefore not simply attendance at a conference.

It is whether participation advances:

• Independent working-class organisation

• Socialist clarity

• Bottom-up democratic mass struggle

• Working-class political independence

or whether it risks reproducing:

• Political subordination

• Ideological confusion

• Elite-driven politics under radical language.