THE South African Communist Party (SACP) laid into the ruling ANC yesterday, accusing it of “factionalism,” “corruption” and “corporate capture” by the Indian Gupta business family.

A statement issued after a meeting of the party’s central committee said the alliance between the ANC, SACP and unions was under threat from “reckless, conservative populism.” The party said it “seeks to establish democratic working-class power over the state” — confirming spokesman Alex Mashilo’s comments on Thursday that the SACP might contest elections independently of the ANC for the first time.

It said the 14th SACP congress next year would answer a number of questions in that regard, including: “If the SACP is not part of the ANC-led alliance, who would it ally with?”

The statement said it was “unacceptable that the ANC does not have a clear policy on leadership succession” ahead of its December 2017 conference to decide the presidential candidate for the 2019 election.

There is already intense public debate in the wider movement over the whether Vice-President Cyril Ramaphosa or former minister and African Union Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Mr Zuma’s former wife, should succeed him. The SACP said prospective candidates should be vetted according to “criteria for effective leadership,” including their ability to “avoid being factionalist.”

But it made no mention of its call, taken up by 100 ANC “veterans,” for a special consultative conference on the ANC’s direction involving high-profile non-members.

Instead, it announced plans to call a national gathering of “a range of the mass democratic forces to discuss the challenges facing our country and consider ways to address them.”