Staff Reporter
The South African Communist Party (SACP) on Sunday launched its 2026 Local Government Election manifesto at the Tshwane University of Technology’s Soshanguve Campus, as it prepares to contest municipalities across the country under its own banner.
The 4 November election will mark the first time in the democratic era that the SACP contests local government elections on a nationwide basis independently of its alliance partner, the ANC.
In his keynote address, General Secretary Comrade Solly Mapaila said the SACP would draw its candidates from the best “left forces” of society.
“It’s a left project. All the forces that we have been working with, we have said, if there’s not necessarily [an appropriate] candidate, or if there’s a better candidate from one of our left forces, we will choose them to be the candidate we support,” he said.
The party was also celebrating over 100 years of “unbroken struggle for people’s power, for socialism, and for national liberation”, Mapaila said.
He said the party was recommitting itself to the “working-class struggle”.
“Our core struggle is the struggle to end all forms of human exploitation, as well as oppression, inequality, and the struggle to transfer wealth — both economic and social power — to the people, so that they can create a prosperous, democratic, non-racial as well as socialist South Africa,” he said.
Nguyen Trung Kien, Ambassador-designate of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. (Photo: Eddie Mtsweni)
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