MAPAILA: NO MORE ANC-DA MARRIAGE

SACP chief says the GNU romance has betrayed workers — and the Left will not bless it in the councils

By Mpho Dube, Editor-in-Chief

The Azanian | Truth. Fearless. Unfiltered.  

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BOKSBURG —If anyone thought Solly Mapaila came to Birchwood Hotel to negotiate, they misunderstood the man.

He came to bury a marriage. For the SACP General Secretary, the ANC's political matrimony with the DA — first sealed nationally in the Government of National Unity, now threatening to repeat itself in hung municipalities — is not a coalition. It is a betrayal.

And on Thursday, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the EFF, MK Party, AZAPO, Africa Mayibuye and others under the Council of the Left, Mapaila said it out loud:No more ANC-led councils that include the DA. No more left votes used to legitimise a right-wing agenda. No more silence while the people's assets are handed to private hands.

"We want to convince all organisations, particularly those that were voted by the African majority, to work together as a bloc in councils and prevent the DA and the Freedom Front to lead our people," Mapaila said.

It was the clearest articulation yet of what has been building inside the SACP for years — a fury at watching the ANC, the party of liberation, govern in bed with the party the Left sees as the defender of white monopoly capital, privatisation and austerity.

For Mapaila, the GNU was never a unity government. It was a surrender.

Petrol up. Electricity up. Food up. Municipal services up. Wages flat. Unemployment rising.That, he argues, is the price of the ANC-DA marriage. Workers pay. The poor pay. The rich get stability. "We have not gathered to plead with any organisation to return to old formations," Dali Mpofu said in the joint statement Mapaila endorsed. "We have gathered to build a principled front of the left."

But Mapaila's message went deeper than policy. It was about identity.

How, he asks, can a movement born from the struggle, born from the sacrifices of workers and the poor, now share power with forces that "do not stand for their interest"?

How can the ANC claim to serve the people while, in the Council's words, being "shaped by those who are aggressively championing the transfer of people's assets into private hands"?

That is why the Council of the Left is not just a coalition tactic for Mapaila. It is a divorce proceeding.

The Left will not be the best man at another ANC-DA wedding. It will not vote for it. It will not bless it. It will veto it where it can.

Instead, Mapaila is offering the ANC a different home — a return to its own people. A bloc of the African majority. A common programme: land for public use, decent housing, water, electricity, jobs, an end to hunger, corruption crushed, people before profit. "We are inviting the ANC to join this effort to unite our people. They will make up their own minds," Mpofu said.

The invitation is open. The patience is not infinite. The ANC did not attend Thursday's meeting. Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said it would not. Its NEC was meeting in another room in the same hotel, weighing its own future — including the option of opposition benches and minority governments.

But Mapaila has made his calculation: if the ANC chooses the DA again in the councils, it will have chosen its side in history. And the Left, this time, will not follow it there. The deadline is next week. The councils must be formed.

For Solly Mapaila, the question is no longer whether the ANC-DA marriage can work. The question is whether the ANC still remembers who it married first — the people.