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The Politburo of the South African Communist Party (SACP) convened on Friday, 3 July 2026, at Kotane House, the SACP headquarters in Marshalltown, Johannesburg.

The Politburo discussed key issues affecting the SACP, the working class, the people of South Africa and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). The Politburo reviewed the successful Conference of the Left and affirmed the Communist Party’s responsibility to take forward the conference resolutions and initiate the Council of the Left as agreed. The Conference of the Left is the first step among many to consolidate our programme for socialism and create working-class unity in that direction.

The Politburo also reviewed the SACP programme on the June elections registration weekend and evaluated the readiness of our structures as we prepare for elections on 4 November 2026. The Politburo is satisfied with the work underway in this regard but expressed the need for more work to be done to ensure the effectiveness of our election programme.

On the migration crisis

The Politburo recognised the tenuous time that South Africa is going through, personified by a thoroughgoing crisis of capitalism that manifests in various ways, with the latest manifestation being violent protests connected to migration problems. The Politburo affirmed the statement of the SACP released on 27 June 2026 as reflecting our continued attitude on the ongoing crisis of immigration. The SACP reaffirms its position that African migrant workers are not the enemy of South African people and their migration is a sign, not of their enmity to our national interest, but an outcome of capitalist crises across the world and on the African continent. The conditions that affect the working class across the African continent cannot be ascribed to those individuals who find themselves unable to survive except by leaving their countries as immigrants.

While we recognise that immigration, including illegal immigration, is undesirable for any country and that it is a problem that requires a solution, we also appreciate the fact that it is driven by objective factors and social forces that exist beyond the individual wishes of the persons affected by it. It is the mechanisms of these objective economic and political forces, within the prism of capitalism, which drive migration across the world and across the African continent. These mechanics are not unique to the African continent and South Africa as a country but are endemic to the system of capitalism. In that context, the actions of the human beings involved arise as a response to real limitations of capitalism and colonial legacies requiring them to seek economic and other forms of refuge in faraway places and countries, regardless of their own wishes. The victims of this condition are the workers and not those who wield power.

The appropriate response or intervention is solidarity rather than confrontation. Working-class internationalism is essential. The individual hate and attacks on these people do not bring solutions; on the contrary, it is the punishment of the poor for their own poverty.

The strategy to focus on law enforcement as a response to migration problems, while appearing logical and fitting, can only succeed when combined with a systematic changing of the economic organisation of society that is at the root of migration. The migration crisis has winners and losers. The winners are big capital that gets to exploit the desperate economic situation of migrant workers in various ways for their own benefit, and the losers are workers, both immigrants and citizens, who are plunged into a common yet illogical scuffle for mutual elimination as they compete for the crumbs that the system makes available. The SACP calls for a comprehensive multi-pronged intervention as opposed to hate and violence.

On the international situation

The world continues to be marred in a continuous condition of violence with several wars taking place at the same time. The wars are an indicator of an imperialist system characterised by instability, uncertainty and thoroughgoing crisis. This crisis is at the root of capitalism itself. The Politburo recognised that the Western imperialist assault on Russia through the Ukraine proxy war is the most urgent catastrophe in the global geopolitical situation at this time. The SACP continues to pledge solidarity with Russia in its anti-imperialist operation on the Ukraine front. The victory for the Russian special military operation is an achievement for anti-imperialist forces and gives the anti-imperialist agenda a fighting chance.

The resistance of Iran and its refusal to capitulate to the imperialist advance against their nation reflect their revolutionary spirit, which can only be commended by those who are engaged in the same struggle, albeit on a different front.

The Politburo affirmed the earlier position of the Party that the international correlation of political forces is irreversibly gravitating towards multi-polarity, thereby objectively evolving away from the US-dominated unipolar condition. That movement is signified, among others, by the deepening legitimacy crisis of the US as a world power and the strategic disintegration of the Western imperialist political centre. The reorganisation of the Global South and the strengthening of China make this reality more pronounced.

On national security

The SACP is deeply concerned with the state of the South African Police Service and the concomitant crisis of security facing the country. The ongoing Madlanga Commission revelations have laid bare the systematic and structural crisis in the security cluster. The proposed intervention by the Minister of Police, including the so-called reset, does not go far enough. The SACP calls for a wide-ranging overhaul of the justice system beyond just the administration of the police.

The security cluster is currently in a deep capture by criminal syndicates. The failure to rescue the justice system as a whole from this capture places national security at risk and, indeed, serves to undermine the South African revolution as we know it.

On Operation Vulindlela and neoliberalism

The Politburo discussed the national political situation pertaining to, among others, the deepening of neoliberalism in the state. Operation Vulindlela has emerged as the highest expression of the rightward shift of South African state policy. Vulindlela cuts across all aspects of government policy, systems, and operations. At the centre of Vulindlela is the sweeping proposition to liberalise state operations and lend the totality of the state and its economic mass to a partnership with private capital. In the history of South Africa’s neoliberalism, Vulindlela represents the most thoroughgoing deconstruction of the state to favour private capital.

The “unbundling” of Eskom, the privatisation of the so-called network industries and the systematic evisceration of local government structures, as we know them, and the allocation of their constitutionally delegated tasks to private capital are the key elements of the sweeping neoliberal programme of the government. The ideological and political substance of this programme is the formal incorporation of the political objectives of the bourgeois establishment into the reasoning of the liberation movement structures and assimilation of their perspectives into the political logic of the progressive movement. The Presidency as an institution and, indeed, the President of the ANC as a person are key to the implementation of this programme. The condition of the GNU only serves to deepen the crisis and provide a cover for the violation of the progressive tradition of the ANC and its traditional policy orientation. The office of the Presidency is the strategic nerve centre for this profound neoliberal assault on the national transformation project. This amounts to the most direct assault on the NDR in recent times from the highest office in the land.

As the SACP, we assert without any fear of contradiction that Vulindlela is neither the policy of the ANC nor a reflection of the political tradition or orientation of the Alliance. This programme has no traits whatsoever of transformation objectives as shared by progressive forces in South Africa. It is an imposition of Wall Street consensus founded on unravelling the public economy and exploitation of public assets in order to advance the interests of private capital and guarantee their profitability without taking any entrepreneurial risks. The ANC, including its historical political legitimacy and leadership status as a national liberation movement, is employed and exploited to drive an anti-working-class agenda. The Politburo has asserted that Vulindlela and all its operatives pose the most urgent risk to the South African people and our revolution. The SACP is committed to the success of the NDR and will work tirelessly to defend it from those that seek to dilute it and sell its instruments to the highest bidder.

Issued By The South African Communist Party Founded In 1921 As The Communist Party Of South Africa.