Dear Comrades of the South African Communist Party,
We write to you as ZASO following lengthy deliberations with like-minded allies whosubscribe to independent socialist politics and support the primary thrust of what follows below. Firstly, we share your conviction that the fragmentation of the left and movements of the working class and poor must be overcome, and that South Africa’s deepening social crisis — mass unemployment, poverty, inequality, ecological destruction, and the collapse of public services — demands a serious and coordinated response from progressive and socialist forces.
It is in this spirit — as comrades who want the left to succeed, not as adversaries — that we write to explain why, at this stage, we are not in a position to participate in the Conference of the Left (CoL) as currently constituted. We do so with respect for the genuine intentions of many who have invested hope in this process, and with a sincere commitment to continued engagement and joint struggle wherever common ground exists.
We want to be clear from the outset: our decision not to participate in the conference at this stage does not mean we are stepping back from the urgent struggles of our people. We remain fully committed to organising alongside working-class communities in the fights that cannot wait — against unemployment, for housing, water, electricity, healthcare, and education, and against the violence visited daily upon working-class women and children. We look forward to meeting comrades from the SACP and the CoL process in these grassroots struggles.
1. The Call Is Right; the Conditions Are Not Yet There
The call for left unity and regroupment is the right call. South Africa’s working class and poor communities face an interlocking set of crises — structural unemployment touching more than 13 million people, accelerating deindustrialisation, the collapse of municipal services, a housing crisis of historic proportions, and an ecological emergency that falls most heavily on the poorest. These crises demand organised, coherent, and programmatically clear left responses. The fragmentation of the left serves only our enemies.
We therefore approach the CoL with goodwill and without any desire to dismiss the genuine concern for unity that has animated it. Our questions are not sectarian. They are strategic: what kind of left, organised around what politics, and through what kind of democratic process?
2. The Need for Honest Political Reflection
Genuine left renewal, we believe, requires an honest reckoning with the recent past. For more than three decades, the SACP has been a central component of the governing alliance. During this period, policies deepened unemployment and inequality, the public sector was hollowed out, working-class formations were weakened, and the state increasingly became a site of elite accumulation. We do not raise this to attack the SACP or deny the genuine contributions of its members to the liberation struggle. We raise it because sustainable left unity must be built on shared honesty, not on setting aside difficult questions.
We recognise that many comrades within the SACP are themselves asking these questions, are frustrated with the present trajectory, and are genuinely seeking a new path. A frank acknowledgment of the contradictions of the Alliance and its role in weakening working class independence would, in our view, strengthen rather than weaken the CoL’s credibility with the working-class formations whose participation is essential to any united front process.
3. Concerns About the Conference’s Political Composition
We are concerned that the conference includes formations whose politics are fundamentally incompatible with an emancipatory left project. Formations that have mobilised through ethnic nationalism, authoritarian populism, and xenophobic rhetoric represent not a broadening of the left but a dilution of it. The left, at its best, has stood for working-class unity across all dividing lines, for internationalism, and for principled opposition to chauvinism in all its forms.
We are also concerned about your inclusion of the ANC as a partner in what is described as a “Conference of the Left.” We do not raise this in a spirit of hostility towards individual ANC members who may still hold left commitments. But as an organisation, the ANC has for three decades implemented policies that have deepened working-class suffering. A popular united front credible to the working class must be independent of — and willing to confront — the forces responsible for the current crisis.
4. Democratic Process and Transparency
We have noted that significant elements of the conference — its framework document, its commissions, and even its anticipated outcomes — appear to have been substantially pre-determined by the convening structure. We understand that a degree of preparation is necessary to run any large gathering. But genuine left renewal cannot be built through a managed process. It requires open ideological debate, the democratic contestation of assumptions, and the real possibility that the assembled formations may arrive at conclusions that differ from those anticipated by the convenors.
We also call, in the spirit of the transparency the left has always demanded of others, for full disclosure of the sources and amounts of funding for the conference and the structures it intends to establish. This is not a hostile demand. It is one the left must make of any initiative that asks for its investment of time, energy, and political credibility. Funding shapes structure, and structure shapes politics.
5. What We Are For
We are not writing to close doors. We are writing to be honest about what we believe genuine left renewal requires, and to signal clearly where we stand.
We stand for an independent, class-struggle left — one that takes its direction from organised working-class communities and formations, not from the requirements of electoral alliance. We are for the building of a united front of common struggle around the immediate and urgent needs of working people: jobs and income for the unemployed, housing and land, water and electricity, healthcare and education, and safety from the violence that tears apart working-class families and communities. Apart from the critical solidarity independent class struggle engenders, it creates the conditions for ideological and political left regroupment. We are committed to centring the specific oppressions facing working-class women and to building left politics that take socialist feminism as foundational, not supplementary.
We welcome engagement with comrades from the SACP and from all the formations attending the CoL on these concrete grounds. The urgent task of fighting mass unemployment and precarious work, for free basic services, against evictions and for building movements against austerity and privatisation is where we hope to engage you. In rebuilding working class self-organisation: in community civics, social movements, the rank-and-file movements in our trade unions — these are the sites where a genuine left can be rebuilt, i.e. through the patient, difficult work of shared struggle.
6. Towards a united front of struggle
South Africa’s working class and poor cannot afford for the left to remain fragmented, demoralised, and talking past each other. The stakes are too high. We offer this letter not as a final word, but as an honest contribution to a conversation we hope will continue — in the conference hall, in the streets, and in the communities where our people live and struggle.
In solidarity and comradeship,
ZASO National Executive
May 25th 2026
