SOUTH AFRICA’S communists resolved in principle at the weekend during their 14th national congress in Boksburg to contest elections separately from their African National Congress revolutionary alliance partner.

The alliance brings together the ANC, SACP, trade union federation Cosatu and the Sanco civics organisation, but anger over corruption at the highest levels of the ANC has stoked existing fires within the SACP that the party should stand in its own right.

Second deputy general secretary Chris “Che” Matlhako, who was elected for the first time at the congress, stressed that “the exact modality in which we do so needs to be determined by way of concrete analysis and through the process of active engagement with worker and progressive formations.”