SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila said the working class must strengthen its organisational and political capacity to build leadership in holding the government accountable.
Mapaila, delivering the SACP’s 2024 election campaign launch statement in Rustenburg on Sunday, said elections are important in the battle for democracy, but they are not an end in themselves.
“They are a means to an end. Therefore, we need to continue building working-class and popular power and exercising it to achieve all the goals of the Freedom Charter.”
Mapaila condemned the leaking of the ANC candidates list, which the governing party said would give opposition parties more time to scrutinise which candidates had been included.
He said this would affect Alliance partners in a move that “appears to be part of the wider reactionary agenda to dislodge the ANC”.
“It also seems to have been synchronised with supportive media reportage and constitutes a violation of both our electoral and protection of personal information laws.
“The leaked list includes ID numbers of every person on it. We can have this or that issue with the list, but we will never condone or accept its leaking.
“We need decisive action by the IEC and law enforcement authorities against those who leaked the list.
“In so far as it is concerned, the leak renders list management at the IEC in our election process unfair. It is tantamount to an act of treason and must be punished, in terms of the law.
“We need effective remedial action to address the damaging effect of the leak on our elections and every person on the list,” Mapaila said.
The 2024 elections will be highly contested “as part of the fiercely contested direction of our democratic dispensation and its international co-operation and relations policy”.
“There is no problem if the contestation is only among the people of South Africa. However, there is a serious problem with any form of, or invitation to, external interference in our elections and other internal affairs. This is because we are a sovereign democratic republic,” Mapaila said.
The Mercury