Nzimande accused of feeding Mapaila to communists' enemies

Deliberate attempt to destabilise party's leadership

- By Bongani Mdakane and Setumo Stone

SACP national chairperson Blade Nzimande's call for a congress to stop the party's planned independent run in next year's local elections has been slammed.

(/Gallo Images)

SACP national chairperson Blade Nzimande's call for an emergency congress to halt the party's planned independent run in the 2026 local elections against the ANC has triggered a ferocious reply from a former union leader who is also a party member in Gauteng.

Former Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) provincial secretary Phiri Matsemela argues in his rebuttal, dated November 11, that Nzimande's intervention is a hypocritical and destructive act that feeds his successor, Solly Mapaila, to "the worst enemies of the revolution".

Matsemela, whose SACP branch is based in Ekurhuleni, has branded Nzimande's proposal as everything from a late-in-the-day act of sabotage to a calculated power play, exposing deep ideological and personal fractures that threaten to shatter the party's longstanding alliance with the governing ANC.

The face-off centres on a resolution, first taken at the SACP's 11th Congress in 2024, and later activated for implementation, for the party to contest elections independently. This decision was "largely strategic and aspirational, with no immediate implementation mechanisms" for years, but recent congresses have built concrete electoral capacity towards the 2026 poll.