SACP Press Alert: Activation of the People’s Red Caravan at Mqhekezweni Village, Eastern Cape Province
SACP Communications
South African Communist Party
Press Alert
Activation of the People’s Red Caravan at Mqhekezweni Village, Eastern Cape Province
Wednesday, 15 October 2025: - The South African Communist Party (SACP) invites the media to cover the activation of The People’s Red Caravan initiative under the theme, “The people’s movement for self-reliance and sustainability”.
The SACP General Secretary, Solly Mapaila, will lead the activation programme.
Details of the activation launch of The People's Red Caravan are as follows:
Date: 20 – 26 October 2025
Venue: Mqhekezweni Village, OR Tambo District, Eastern Cape Province
The People’s Red Caravan is an initiative that is being rolled out nationwide as part of village development. It was launched on 6 June 2025 at Motlhabe Village in the North West Province. The following month (21-27 July 2025), the SACP held the programme in Matibidi Village in Mpumalanga Province.
This SACP all-inclusive programme is aimed at deepening inviolable ties with the people at the community level, where households and individual community members confront the daily challenges imposed by the capitalist system – which organises society based on exploitation of the working class.
The People's Red Caravan is not an act of charity or external provision. It is a process through which members and leaders of the SACP work in and with communities to collectively address and resolve the problems that the communities experience. It is a practice of building alongside the people, not on their behalf.
Rooted in the pursuit of self-empowerment and self-reliance, the Red Caravan initiative rejects disorganising notions of absolute dependency on a "wheelbarrow-like 'delivery' state".
The SACP's work during The People's Red Caravan focuses on several critical areas, including food security, food sovereignty and food production, community safety and security, health, education, arts and culture, recreational activities, initiatives to move towards the realisation of the right to work for all in practice by revitalising community-based productive activities, and infrastructure work – water, sanitation, access roads and other infrastructure.
While the Red Caravan initiative will be stationed in each identified community for seven days during its activation phase, the initiatives undertaken will be designed to ensure long-term social mobilisation of our communities into collective developmental efforts and sustainability. Already, there are positive fruits borne out of this work in both Motlhabe and Matibidi villages.
In essence, this is a programme that demonstrates, through practical work, what building socialism from the ground at a local level can look like.
The seven-day programme will be released by request to members of the press.