APA-Johannesburg (South Africa) The South African Community Party (SACP) has threatened to contest in next year’s elections within “a reconfigured alliance or contest in the elections independently” if a reconfigured alliance failed to materialise.
Speaking during a TV interview on Thursday, SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila accused the governing African National Congress of treating his party “as junior partners who are only useful at election time.”
“We have taken a decision that the next set of elections should be contested within a preferred framework of a reconfigured alliance,” the secretary general said.
He added: “But we have equally said, if this modality does not take shape, then we will go to the second modality.”
This second modality would see a broad or a popular left front in which the SACP would work with other social forces – without necessarily waiting for a party-political banner under the ANC, he said.
“Hopefully, the SACP could play a much more visible and dominant role and have credible candidates who could lead that particular left front,” Mapaila said.
The SACP is in a governing alliance with the ANC and Congress of South African Trade Unions, which has seen some of its members included in the cabinet.
The SACP, which lost its charismatic leader in Chris Hani in 1993, is officially registered as a political party in the country.
NM/jn/APA