Fikile Mbalula’s warning to the South African Communist Party (SACP) to stay in line with the African National Congress (ANC) or risk political irrelevance says less about the Communists than it does about the ANC’s own decline. The Secretary-General’s message, delivered through the ANC’s official newsletter, ANC Today, reads like an attempt to reassert authority that no longer exists.

For the past 30 years, the SACP has contested elections as part of the Tripartite Alliance with the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Now, after floating the idea of standing on its own, the SACP has drawn an unusually sharp rebuke from its senior partner. Writing in ANC Today, Mbalula said: “In principle, there is no question regarding the right of the SACP as an independent political formation to make its decisions as it sees fit… However, decisions that have fundamental implications for the Alliance must be examined and discussed by all Alliance partners because they can result in the common ruin of the progressive forces.”

The problem for Mbalula is that the: “ruin of the progressive forces” has already arrived. The ANC’s troubles, from collapsing municipalities, to record unemployment, and endless corruption scandals, have little to do with whether the SACP contests elections independently. Even if the Communists went it alone, they would struggle to win two seats in Parliament.

Mbalula’s argument is that the SACP’s only real value lies in strengthening the ANC from within, not competing against it from without. The SACP, he wrote: “should not set themselves apart from the proletariat and people’s movement. They should be at the centre of such movements and play a leading role, including in the ANC.” He warns that any independent campaign run by the SACP would: “fragment the working class,” “split the black vote,” and “weaken left-wing ideas in the ANC.”

But the black vote has already splintered, and the ANC’s working-class base has long since fractured under the weight of service delivery collapse and economic stagnation. To suggest that an SACP breakaway would now: “weaken left-wing ideas” is to ignore how little such ideas matter to voters worried about jobs, crime, and power cuts.

“For more than a century,” Mbalula wrote: “the practice of dual membership in both the ANC and the SACP has been a great source of strength for both organisations – dual membership expresses in concrete terms the unity of the working class and the liberation movement.” Yet that unity now exists largely on paper. Should the SACP insist on fielding its own candidates, Mbalula warns, it will: “force Communists to choose between the Party and the Movement.” In truth, very few South Africans would notice which side they chose.