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The battle for the soul of the left. The tripartite alliances's ha famba kumbe ha tshama moment.

 Since the SACP announced that it has decided to contest the local government elections independently of the ANC, there has never been a public discourse on what this means for the tripartite alliance. The ANC is on record as the force of the left. Its core political rhetoric is still left. It won't be easy to imagine the ANC as an ideological construct outside the prism of a leftist posture. Its ideological centrepieces borrow a lot from leftist vocabulary.

Leftist rituals, such as May Day Workers Day, most of which were integrated into the ANC program, will henceforth be overtly celebrated in their leftist character and mainly thought-led by the SACP. The time for the ANC to come out in the open about its true ideological north and thus its identity arrived with the SACP's decision to go it alone. The ANC has been bleeding its liberal right, nationalists, libertarians, ultra-leftists, Christian nationalists, and several other ideological orientations to its multiple adversaries and opponents. 


Never has the ANC faced the threat of a mass exodus of its left-leaning, and mostly quality, members like the one posed by the SACP's go-it-alone decision. To the extent that SACP members did not need more political power than they already had through the ANC, they were in politics for their distinct mission of establishing a socialist order. With the changed political landscape, notably one where the ANC does not command sufficient power to be an ally to fulfil its mission, it has become increasingly unavoidable to procure direct state power independent of the ANC. 

 

Communists and socialists have indeed had the ANC as a home where their ideological preferences could be expressed in public policy through the tripartite alliance arrangements. The brute reality is that the liberal order took root within the ANC, and its politicians got beholden to several bases within the 'broad church' it has perfected itself into. The set of donors, cadres, activists, and primary voters who fund, believe in, and follow it most closely has become more important than its traditional alliance partners. 

 

It is no secret that a significant portion of its 'broad church' base consists of political lobbyists who command the resources it needs to stay in power. Because these lobbyists and funders demand public policy concessions that they know their node persons, politicians, will cater to, the space for principled alliance politics has expired. The new normal is to bargain with what is essential for state power retention, which is why the go-it-alone trajectory became necessary to respond to the 2024 Moment for the SACP. 

 

As the comfort and base of post-liberation political power have suddenly turned into quicksand with unknown sinkholes, the place for the tripartite alliance is in a reconfigured future. The GNU coalition arrangements represent the most significant departure from the traditional tripartite alliance. The transfer of power, which is political, economic, and social, to the people is about dislodging it from some of the GNU partners' core constituencies and funding base. The complexities and contradictions associated with relying on political power derived from an arguably junior coalition, the tripartite alliance, began to take a real toll on the left's soul. 


In its quest to extricate itself from a potentially class-compromised alliance, the tripartite alliance, the go-it-alone SACP decision became an ensemble of activities whose total became the battle for the soul of the left. With state power comes the ability to direct the government to make policies and choose courses of action that can have momentous and even disastrous consequences for citizens. Notwithstanding that the voice of the left did not have a stronger RSVP status in the configuration of the GNU coalition, its continued support of its form and nature meant the full endorsement of its implications for what has traditionally defined the alliance.


The cracks in the alliance partnership, its affiliates, and the core components of worker and working-class constituencies are redefining the ANC's voter base. One of the largest public sector unions has already announced that it will encourage its members to vote for the SACP, not the ANC. This is notwithstanding its members being the majority of the proverbial state's mind, the bureaucracy. Indeed, the soul of the RSA left is being contested. CUT!!!

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