The conference is being held at the Birchwood Hotel under the theme “Building a Left Movement for Working-Class and Popular Power”.

According to the official conference framework, the gathering is not intended to create a new political party or impose ideological uniformity on participating organisations. Its stated purpose is to strengthen coordination among South Africa’s left and “popular” forces and to build a common platform for political education, campaigns, and organised action.

The conference is convened by the South African Communist Party (SACP) on behalf of a steering committee and is expected to produce three main outcomes. These are a conference declaration, a so-called Council of the Left, and a common programme of action.

The proposed Council of the Left is described as a coordination platform rather than a new party. Its role would be to sustain joint campaigns, political education, and cooperation among participating organisations after the conference ends.

The list of participating organisations includes the SACP, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), Pan Africanist Congress, Azanian People’s Organisation, Socialist Party of Azania, Workers’ Socialist Party, Mayibuye Afrika, United Africans Transformation, the National Coloured Congress, and several other left or nationalist political formations. There are some colourful names among the other smaller parties participating, including the Bolsheviks Party of South Africa and Spartacist South Africa.

The African National Congress (ANC) is boycotting the conference on the purported grounds that it is not actually a leftist conference (which is untrue) but instead an attempt to attack and weaken the ANC (which is true).

Trade union and labour organisations listed include the National Education, Health, and Allied Workers’ Union, the National Union of Mineworkers, the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union, the National Union of Metalworkers’ of South Africa (NUMSA), the South African Medical Association Trade Union, and other worker formations. Congress of South African Trade Unions president Zingiswa Losi and NUMSA general secretary Irvin Jim are listed in the programme as speakers during the first day’s trade union addresses.

The programme also lists EFF leader Julius Malema, MK Party chairperson Nathi Nhleko, Mayibuye Afrika president Floyd Shivambu, and SACP leaders Solly Mapaila and Madala Masuku among the political speakers. Mapaila is scheduled to deliver the opening political address on “the crisis of South African capitalism and the tasks of the left”.

Several civic and community organisations are also listed, including the South African National Civic Organisation, Equal Education, the Housing Assembly, Inyanda National Land Movement, the Treatment Action Campaign, the Assembly of the Unemployed, the Unemployed People’s Assembly, Cry of the Excluded, and several cooperative and solidarity economy groups.

The conference framework sets out a strongly anti-capitalist analysis of South Africa’s crisis. It argues that the country’s democratic settlement after 1994 secured political rights but did not fundamentally transform ownership, production, or economic power. It says South Africa remains marked by concentrated ownership, mass unemployment, precarious work, falling real wages, rising household debt, and growing pressure on access to food, energy, transport, and housing.

The central policy focus is ownership. The framework says the foundational question behind South Africa’s crises is who owns and controls the commanding heights of the economy. It calls for expanded public, social, and worker ownership of strategic sectors, radical land reform, and democratic control of finance.

The conference’s policy priorities also include a coordinated cost-of-living campaign, a macroeconomic policy shift towards employment and public investment, support for smallholder farmers and cooperative food systems, community monitoring of local government budgets and services, and a worker-led just transition in energy and climate policy.

On employment and industrial policy, the conference documents call for macroeconomic policy to be reoriented towards job creation, public investment, developmental finance, and industrial expansion. The conference also places emphasis on youth unemployment, informal work, the gig economy, and new forms of work under what it calls people’s control.

On land and food, the framework calls for support for smallholder and cooperative production, local food sovereignty, and opposition to land concentration. On climate and energy, it calls for a worker-led and publicly planned transition aimed at energy sovereignty and new employment, rather than what it describes as a market-managed transition that destroys livelihoods.

Local government is another major focus. The framework calls for community-based monitoring of municipal services, budgets, and procurement, with national platforms to share local experiences and build pressure for accountability.

The conference will move through plenary sessions and thematic commissions before adopting its final documents. On the second day, commissions will consider political economy and the global context, balance of forces and strategy, and economic transformation and the environment. On the final day, delegates are expected to adopt the declaration, the Council of the Left resolution, and the first phase of the programme of action.

The published programme says the programme of action will include thematic pillars on employment, the cost of living, land, local government accountability, political education, climate justice and just transition, and informal and gig economy work.

The conference comes as South Africa’s left is being reshaped by the aftermath of the 2024 election, the ANC’s loss of its national majority, tensions over the Government of National Unity, and the SACP’s decision to contest future elections independently of the ANC.

For the SACP and the organisations taking part, the conference is being framed as an effort to rebuild organised left power outside the limits of parliamentary politics alone. The official framework says the test of the conference will not be its declaration, but whether participating formations are stronger and more coordinated six and twelve months after the gathering.