
SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila.
A tug of war between the African National Congress (ANC) and the SA Communist Party (SACP) over the Government of National Unity (NGU) with the Democratic Alliance (DA) and several other parties has turned ugly as both parties youth formations are lambasting each other without trepidation.
The war talks between the Young Communist League of SA (YCLSA) and the ANC Youth League over the attack on the SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila by ANCYL president Collen Malatji who labelled him populist and a counterrevolutionary who met with MK Party leader Jacob Zuma and Floyd Shivhambu MK Party Secretary General to oust the ANC from power.
Malatji confidently confirmed this when addressing volunteers of the ANC during the Peter Mokaba Memorial Lecture on January 10, 2025 at Western Cape ahead of the ANC Jan 8 celebration on January 11, 2025.
Mapaila has been criticizing the ANC following its decision to form GNU with the DA including other parties arguing that the ANC did not thoroughly consult SACP as an alliance. He announced that the SACP will contest the 2026 local government elections independently.
As the tug of war erupts the YCLSA reaffirmed SACP commitment to contesting the 2026 local government elections independently, a position that has been maintained since 2005.
The ANC last year won 40 percent of the vote, falling from 57% in 2019. Malatji said Mapaila must go and contest the 2026 2026 local government elections independently with his “children and Floyd”and leave SACP alone.
Thakhudi said Malatji's behaviour is "tantrums of a political man-child" and highlighted that the revolution will not be led by "political mercenaries".
“The YCLSA also reaffirmed its commitment to contesting the 2026 local government elections independently, a position that has been maintained since 2005.The league vows not to be distracted by Malatji's antics and to remain focused on mobilising young people to confront the structural crises of high youth unemployment, inequality, and poverty,” Thakhudi said.
Sources said SACP boss Mapaila is bitter because President Ramaphosa didn’t give him bluelights like his predecessor Minister Blade Nzimande who ruled the party for more than 10-years. “Comrade Nzimande is still more powerful than comrade Mapaila. It is possible that comrade Mapaila was told not to be appointed by President Ramaphosa. Comrade Solly is bitter therefore he will not achieve his ambition of the SACP to go to the elections independently,” they said.
Mapaila earlier said the DA presents itself as a “democratic organization”, sprinkled as it is with black members and even leaders, but in essence it is a product of a racist past and part and parcel of the persisting legacy of that past as reflected in its white leadership dominance and its defence of white privilege and above all else associated bourgeois interests.
“It seeks to use its inclusion in the GNU to reverse progressive legislation in a nation that remains deeply divided in racially skewed, gendered and spatialised class inequalities. These inequalities date back to the roots of the colonial and apartheid capitalist super-exploitation and marginalisation of the historically oppressed – who were dispossessed and so disadvantaged that to this day still own no means of production in the economy,” Mapaila said.
“The DA’s agenda both inside and outside the GNU is neo-liberalism and its economic attack on the working class and the poor at large. This renders the post-May 2024 GNU something else in essence, as there can be no unity between us and millions of other revolutionary and progressive South Africans, on the one hand, and the DA with its counter-revolutionary agenda, on the other.”

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