Let’s turn South Africa around – The people have spoken!

12 May 2019

The South African Communist Party accepts the outcomes of our country’s sixth democratic general election held in May 2019 as announced by the Independent Electoral Commission last night, Saturday 11 May 2019. The people have once again given the ANC a mandate to lead our country. The SACP expresses its sincere gratitude to all South Africans who voted the ANC.

The victory was made possible also by the tireless and unambiguous campaigning efforts of the members, supporters and volunteers of the SACP, Cosatu and its affiliates, Sanco, the leagues and desks of Alliance components, and student formations Sasco and Cosas, as well as a wide range of supportive South Africans, over and above the ANC. The SACP expresses its appreciation for the unequivocal efforts. The SACP further wishes to thank all South Africans who exercised their rights as enshrined in our hard-won Constitution, who participated in the election and made it successful.   

Over the past several years our country was driven to the brink. Corrupt elements in the state, in public enterprises and other public entities, in our movement and other political organisations, and in the private sector coalesced and pushed South Africa to the very edge. Our hard fought-for democratic gains, our national achievements, were undermined. The negatives overwhelmed the positives. These are among the key reasons why the ANC experienced another electoral decline.

The ANC-led government however began turning the corner against governance decay in 2018 under the leadership of Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa as the President of the ANC and the Republic. To this end the Alliance and progressive South Africans, over and above the ANC on its own, played an exceptionally important role. South Africa’s sixth democratic general election was therefore not an ordinary election. It was a key moment in the ongoing struggle to achieve a turnaround and reposition our country towards a successful national transformation, development and shared prosperity. To this end the importance of the democratic mandate received by the ANC cannot be overemphasised.

It is a mandate to intensify and complete the work to dismantle the networks of state capture and other forms of corruption, as well as defeat their fight back. This is a mandate to move the national democratic revolution, our national transformation programme, on to a second, more radical phase. The immediate strategic task of this phase of our revolution is to complete our liberation and achieve social emancipation. This requires radical structural transformation to build a people’s economy, create decent work and systematically eradicate economic inequalities, unemployment, poverty and social insecurity.

The working class has a crucial role to play and needs to build unity and systematically develop and deepen its class leadership of the national democratic revolution to make the programme successful. The political centrality of the Alliance to the national democratic revolution, as well as its reconfiguration to play its organisational leadership role effectively as a governing Alliance is important to ensure that the entire progressive thrust of the ANC’s sixth general election manifesto is coherently articulated into government policy and implemented successfully.

The SACP will conduct a detailed analysis of the election process as a whole as well as its outcomes to unpack all its dimensions comprehensively and elaborate other key organisational and political tasks for the Party and the working class at large.

Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, National Spokesperson & Head of Communications, SACP, 12 May 2019