Statement on the 31st annual commemoration of Joe Slovo
SACP Communications
South African Communist Party
Statement on the 31st annual commemoration of Joe Slovo
Delivered by SACP General Secretary, Solly Mapaila
Soweto, Avalon Cemetery, 6 January 2026
Building People’s Power, Self-Reliance and a People’s Economy
Comrades and compatriots,
We gather today to honour the revolutionary life and enduring contribution of Comrade Joe Slovo. We do so not merely to remember history, but to draw lessons and courage for the struggles that confront us in the present. Joe Slovo was a communist, a commander of our people’s army, a strategist of struggle, a leader of the SACP and a disciplined servant of the working class.
Slovo warned us that political democracy, on its own, would not be sufficient if it left the power of the capitalist class intact. He argued that unless economic power is transformed and the wealth of our country is placed at the service of the people, the legacy of inequality will persist under new political forms. Today, when unemployment, poverty and inequality remain so deep, those warnings ring with urgency.
Our people face mass unemployment, poverty and hunger. Energy insecurity undermines development and social life. Many municipalities are failing. Gender-based violence remains a devastating reality. Corruption continues in both public and private sectors. Landlessness and apartheid spatial patterns remain unresolved. These conditions do not arise from bad luck. They arise from a system that prioritises profit over human dignity: capitalism.
The theme of our commemoration, “Building People’s Power, Self-Reliance and a People’s Economy”, speaks to the road forward. Building people’s power means deepening democracy beyond the formal act of voting. It means organised communities, strong trade unions, active SACP branches and socially conscious youth and women’s movements. It means that ordinary people become active makers of history rather than spectators.
Self-reliance, in our perspective, does not imply abandonment by the state. We reject the neo-liberal idea that poor communities must survive on their own, while corporations benefit from public resources. For us, self-reliance means building collective capacity through co-operatives, community production, local manufacturing, community-owned retail, cooperative banking and socially owned renewable energy initiatives – supported and enabled by a democratic state.
A people’s economy is our strategic alternative to the dominance of monopoly capital. It means democratic public ownership, worker and community control, expansion of socially useful public employment, township and rural industrialisation, co-operatives in agriculture and retail, and socialised systems of transport, water and energy. It means rejecting austerity, rejecting privatisation and rejecting corruption in all its forms.
Rebuilding our municipalities
Municipalities are the closest sphere of governance to our people. They determine land allocation, local economic development, water, sanitation, waste removal, public transport and informal trading spaces. Where municipalities collapse, it is the poor who suffer first and most. Corruption, outsourcing, austerity and tender-based patronage systems have severely undermined local government credibility.
We therefore insist that municipalities must be rebuilt from the ground. That means from organised communities, civic structures, trade unions, youth and women’s organisations, and active SACP branches rooted among the working class. Municipal transformation cannot be imposed from above; it must be driven by the people themselves.
The 2026 local government elections will be a crucial terrain of class struggle. They will not simply be bureaucratic exercises but will be battles over who governs at local level, whose class interests are served, and what social path municipalities will follow.
It is within this context that the SACP has resolved that independent participation in elections is a necessary option for defending working-class interests. This decision is not an attack on the Alliance. It is not hostility to the ANC or to COSATU. It is, rather, the exercise of working-class political independence within a principled Alliance. Real unity cannot be unity of silence in the face of corruption or betrayal. Real unity must be principled, ethical and working-class led.
To guide this process, the SACP will convene a Manifesto Conference in March 2026. This conference will bring together communities, trade unions, informal traders, youth, women, faith-based activists, progressive professionals and all formations of the working class. It will gather mandates from the ground and adopt a people’s manifesto for municipalities. It will shape our approach to 2026 and to independent participation where communities demand it.
Where we contest and where we govern, our approach will be clear: insourcing of workers rather than labour broking; participatory budgeting; land release for housing, agriculture and co-operatives; public employment programmes linked to social needs; support for co-operatives and township enterprises; firm action against corruption; and socially just responses to energy insecurity.
Our commitment to the Alliance remains firm. We recognise the historic unity forged in struggle between the SACP, ANC and COSATU. But unity must be principled. We defend the Alliance best when we defend the working class and advance socialist-oriented transformation.
For Joe Slovo, socialism was not a distant dream. It was the logical and necessary next stage of the national democratic revolution. Socialism means democratic control of wealth, equality between men and women, decent work, universal access to health and education, social solidarity and human dignity.
International geostrategic developments: from unipolarity to systemic crisis
The post-1991 unipolar moment under US imperial leadership was not a stable world order but a transitional phase of monopoly capitalism. It combined financialisation, military dominance, and ideological hegemony (“liberal internationalism”) to reproduce global accumulation under US leadership. Nato expansion, regime-change wars, sanctions, and dollar supremacy were the principal instruments.
Today, this order is in a structural crisis, driven by the relative decline of US productive power and over-reliance on financial and military coercion, on the one hand, and the rise of new centres of accumulation (China, parts of Asia, renewed Eurasian integration), on the other.
There is also an overextension of imperial militarism, producing resistance rather than consent, as well as contradictions of neo-liberal globalisation, deepening inequality, social instability, and legitimacy crises.
As Lenin anticipated, imperialism sharpens inter-imperialist contradictions while intensifying oppression of dependent nations creating conditions for rupture rather than equilibrium.
The multipolar world system: necessity and evolution
A multipolar world system is not merely a rearrangement of power blocs. It is a historically necessary response to the exhaustion of unipolar imperial management of global capitalism. Its emergence is driven by, amongst others:
· The material shift in productive forces toward Asia and the Global South.
· South–South cooperation, alternative development banks, and de-dollarisation efforts.
· The assertion of national sovereignty by states resisting regime-change, sanctions, and militarisation.
Multipolarity weakens the ability of any single imperial power to impose unilateral sanctions, conduct “humanitarian” wars with impunity, and weaponize trade, finance, and international law.
However, multipolarity has its own contradictions. It opens space for sovereignty and development but does not automatically end capitalism or exploitation. Its progressive content depends on class forces, popular struggles, and anti-imperialist coordination within and across states.
Neo-colonialism and contemporary aggression
The threats and actions against Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, even Greenland illustrate modern neo-colonialism. Venezuela & Cuba especially have suffered economic siege warfare, hybrid destabilisation, and attempts at regime change to reassert US imperial control over resources and political alignment.
Iran: Iran is still under sanctions, bombarded, continues to face military encirclement and proxy conflicts aimed at preventing independent regional power and control over energy corridors, especially the Strait of Humuz which controls the biggest corridor for oil trade.
Colombia: Militarisation as a forward base for US regional strategy, subordinating national sovereignty to imperial security interests. We really fear for President Gustavo Petro.
Mexico: Economic dependence, security interventionism, and coercive migration politics as tools of indirect domination.
This reflects a shift from classic colonial occupation to hybrid imperialism: sanctions, lawfare, media warfare, financial strangulation, and selective military force.
Our immediate tasks against neo-colonialism include waging political and ideological struggles to expose imperial narratives that mask aggression as “democracy,” “security,” or “human rights”, to reassert the principle of self-determination of nations as non-negotiable. We must build internationalist consciousness linking struggles in the Global South with working-class struggles in the imperial centres.
We must support de-dollarisation, alternative payment systems, and sovereign development strategies, strengthen regional integration free from imperial tutelage, and defend public control over strategic resources, including energy, land, minerals, among others.
Further, we must deepen coordination among anti-imperialist states, parties, and mass movements, revive non-aligned and South-South platforms with real economic and political content, resist militarisation and foreign bases that entrench dependency.
Implications for the United Nations system
The UN reflects the balance of forces of 1945, not the realities of today. Under unipolar dominance, it has been marginalised through unilateralism, instrumentalised to legitimise aggression and further undermined by instruments of sanctions regimes outside international law, unilateral sanctions or bloc sanctions.
Multipolarity creates the possibility – though not the guarantee – of reasserting international law against unilateral coercion, democratising global governance as proposed by President Xi Jingpin of China.
Transforming the UN from a tool of imperial management into a contested arena of struggle for development of nation and building peace and ending wars is crucial. Yet without organised pressure from states and peoples, the UN risks irrelevance or capture by new elite alignments.
Thus, the transition toward a multipolar world is not peaceful, automatic, or neutral. It is unfolding through crisis, resistance, and confrontation. The central question is whether this transition will reproduce new forms of domination, or open space for anti-imperialist, popular, and socialist alternatives.
The immediate task is therefore unity of struggle against neo-colonialism, defence of sovereignty, and the rebuilding of internationalism linking national liberation with social emancipation in a world moving beyond imperial unipolarity.
US war provocations, Taiwan and Ukraine: imperialism masquerading as “mediation” yet belligerent
We must pay due attention to Imperialism’s dual tactic: provocation and pretended mediation. US imperialism follows a consistent pattern: escalate contradictions, militarise tensions, then posture as a neutral mediator. This is not diplomacy but managed chaos to preserve US hegemony. Lenin warned, “Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom.” (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916)
Taiwan: manufactured crisis against China
As the SACP, we believe in the One-China Policy in word and in deed, but for the US only in word but not in deed. While formally recognising the One-China policy, the US arms Taiwan to the teeth, sends high-level political delegations, encourages separatist forces, integrates Taiwan into US Indo-Pacific military strategy. This is strategic ambiguity weaponised and designed to provoke China while avoiding direct accountability.
Their objective is to contain China’s rise. Taiwan is
not about “democracy”. Rather, it is about breaking China’s territorial
integrity, militarising China’s periphery, disrupting Belt and Road and
Eurasian integration, and maintaining US control of Asian sea lanes. As Mao
Zedong observed, “Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers.”
(Interview with Anna Louise Strong, 1946). Yet, paper tigers are dangerous when
armed with nuclear weapons and led by morons. We reaffirm the right of China to
defend itself and we know they are capable of doing so. We call on the US to
respect the territorial integrity of China and the One-China policy and two
systems.
On the Ukraine Nato expansion and proxy war
From coup to catastrophe, orchestrated by European and US interests seeking to neutralise Russia and expanding eastward borders against agreed conventions. The Ukraine war did not begin in 2022. It was prepared through Nato’s eastward expansion and the 2014 Maidan coup and militarisation of Ukraine, suppression of Russian-speaking regions, sabotage of negotiated settlements (Minsk Accords). The US is now an arms dealer and supplier of Ukraine through Europe while disguising as a mediator.
Now these weapons have been used even to attack the home of President Putin. The SACP again condemns this extreme form of provocation in the strongest terms possible and is not in any way in support for peace. We remain grateful for his restraint given the military power he possesses.
While supplying billions in weapons, the US blocks genuine peace talks, pressures allies to escalate, publicly speaks of “mediation” and “rules-based order”. This is war profiteering to the US as affirmed on multiple occasions by Trump, plain and simple. Fidel Castro warned, “Wars are provoked to dominate markets, resources and peoples.”
Both Taiwan and Ukraine reveal declining US economic dominance. Fear of multipolarity (China, Russia, BRICS, Global South), reliance on militarism instead of development, conversion of allies into cannon fodder, President Nelson Mandela correctly cautioned in 1997 that, “The United States is not the centre of the world.”. Yet US imperialism behaves as if history ended in 1991.
For countries like South Africa, these wars divert resources from development, increase food, fuel and energy prices, militarise international relations, undermine the UN and international law. The working class pays the price, not Wall Street or the military-industrial complex. Chris Hani warned “Imperialism is not a theory. It is a lived reality for the poor.”
Immediate tasks for progressive forces:
· Reject US militarism and NATO expansionism.
· Defend sovereignty and peaceful resolution of disputes.
· Support a multipolar world system.
· Strengthen BRICS and South–South cooperation.
· Build an anti-imperialist mass movement rooted in working-class struggles.
The US is not an honest broker in Taiwan or Ukraine. It is an active belligerent, provoking wars to delay the inevitable decline of imperialist dominance. Humanity faces a clear choice: imperialist war or peaceful multipolar development. History will not forgive neutrality in the face of aggression.
In defence of Venezuelan sovereignty and the right of peoples to self-determination
Imperialism has once again exposed its criminal essence. The sustained aggression of US imperialism against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela constitutes a war against a sovereign people, waged not only with weapons but abductions, concocted charges, coupled with sanctions, economic strangulation, sabotage, mercenaries, propaganda and military assaults. This is not diplomacy. This is neo-colonial warfare by criminal leaders in the US who have completely turned it beyond rogue state, it is an organised mafia occupying the most powerful political office.
Let it be stated clearly and without apology: Venezuela has been violated, its territorial integrity has been undermined, its constitutional dignity undermined, its democratically and constitutionally elected president together with his spouse Cilia Flores abducted, assaulted and humiliated and imprisoned on trumped up charges by Trump’s administration.
We call for the immediate and unconditional release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. In furtherance of this demand, we will march to the US embassy on Thursday, 8 January, to express ourselves.
Venezuela is under imperialist attack because it dared to reclaim its wealth, assert its sovereignty, and chart an independent path outside the control of monopoly capital. The real motive is imperial plunder. The central motive of US aggression is economic domination.
Venezuela possesses the largest proven oil reserves in the world, alongside strategic gas, gold and mineral resources. The Bolivarian Revolution broke the colonial pattern by removing foreign monopolies from direct control of oil revenues, rejecting IMF and World Bank tutelage or control, using national wealth for social development, building South–South and anti-imperialist alliances. This was declared intolerable by imperial power.
History is unequivocal, whenever a nation asserts control over its resources and places them at the service of its people, imperialism responds with violence. Venezuela’s “crime” is economic sovereignty.
Hybrid war is war. The siege imposed on Venezuela is a form of collective punishment deliberately designed to collapse the economy, starve the population, provoke social breakdown and justify regime change. Sanctions are not “peaceful measures.” They are weapons of mass suffering. Coup attempts, mercenary incursions, assassination plots, abduction of elected leaders, the recognition of puppet authorities, and threats of military intervention are acts of international banditry, carried out in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and the most basic norms of international law.
Any attempt, direct or indirect, to overthrow,
capture, or assassinate the democratically elected leadership of Venezuela is
state terrorism, pure and simple.
An attack on Venezuela is an attack on all oppressed peoples. The assault on
Venezuela is not an isolated case. It is part of a global imperial strategy
aimed at crushing resistance in Latin America, re-colonising strategic regions,
reasserting U.S. hegemony in a world moving toward multipolarity.
Venezuela is targeted because it represents defiance. It proves that imperialism can be resisted and inspires others to stand up against imperialist aggression. For this reason, the struggle of Venezuela is inseparable from the struggles of Cuba against the criminal blockade, Palestine against occupation by Zionist apartheid Israel, Iran against siege of the Zionist and the imperialist US and all peoples resisting neo-colonial domination.
Our position is clear and unambiguous: We declare full solidarity with the people and government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and President Nicolas Maduro Moros and Cilia Flores. We totally reject sanctions, coups, mercenaries and imperial threats.
We call for unconditional defence of Venezuela’s sovereignty and self-determination as a basis of interstate relations and interface of civilised humanity. We express our absolute condemnation of U.S. imperialism and its accomplices.
We reject the fraudulent language of the so-called “rules-based order,” which in reality is rule by force, money and coercion. International law cannot be applied selectively. Democracy cannot be invoked to justify starvation. Human rights cannot be weaponised to destroy nations.
The tasks of the anti-imperialist movement
The moment demands action, not neutrality, exposing imperial lies and propaganda, mobilising mass solidarity with Venezuela, demanding the lifting of all sanctions, strengthening internationalist coordination, and defending multipolarity against imperial sabotage.
An injury to one oppressed nation is an injury to all. Venezuela will not stand alone. Imperialism is in decline, but it is becoming more dangerous. Its violence is the violence of a system that can no longer rule by consent. Venezuela stands on the right side of history. No amount of sanctions, threats or conspiracies will erase the fundamental truth. The future belongs not to imperial plunder, but to the peoples who resist it.
Hands off Venezuela! Down with imperialism! Long live international solidarity!
The material reality of the working class: a crisis of capitalism
The lived reality of the South African working class is one of deepening exploitation and organised suffering. Millions are unemployed not by chance, but by design. Those in work face casualisation, outsourcing, labour broking, poverty wages, unsafe conditions, and relentless attacks on collective bargaining. Communities endure collapsing public services, unaffordable food and transport, energy insecurity, housing backlogs, crime, and social decay.
This crisis is not the result of a lack of resources, but of capitalist relations of production that prioritise profit over people. Monopoly capital, rooted in apartheid-era accumulation and now globalised, continues to dominate the economy, while neo-liberal policies force the working class to carry the burden of the crisis. As Karl Marx correctly observed in Wage Labour and Capital, “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent.” What we see today is precisely this contradiction, rising corporate profits alongside mass poverty.
The Alliance: from instrument of struggle to a site of contestation
The Tripartite Alliance was forged in struggle as a revolutionary instrument of the working class and oppressed people. Its historic strength lay in unity of purpose, mass mobilisation, and clarity that national liberation was inseparable from social and economic transformation.
Today, the Alliance faces paralysis. It is weakened by class compromise, bureaucratisation, corruption, and the dominance of neo-liberal orthodoxy in state policy. Instead of being a centre of struggle, it is too often reduced to an electoral arrangement detached from workplace and community struggles. Lenin, writing in “What Is to Be Done (1902) warned, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” An Alliance that tolerates neo-liberalism, austerity, and privatisation cannot claim revolutionary purpose. Unity without a class line is not unity, it is surrender.
The national democratic revolution, unfinished and under threat
The national democratic revolution (NDR) remains incomplete and contested. Political power was won in 1994, but economic power remains firmly in the hands of monopoly capital. Land ownership patterns remain colonial. The mineral-energy complex dominates accumulation. Finance capital dictates policy, while the state is reshaped to serve markets rather than the masses.
Joe Slovo, in “Has Socialism Failed?” (1990), warning against illusions of elite-driven change, said, “If socialism is reduced to state control without democracy and mass participation, it will be deformed and discredited.” The NDR can only advance if it is driven by the organised working class, rooted in mass struggle, and consciously anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.
We call on our trade unions to rebuild working-class power because they remain a decisive pillar of working-class organisation, but they too face erosion through repression, fragmentation, co-option, and declining shop-floor organisation. The task is not retreat, but renewal through action.
This moment facing the working class was alluded to by our General Secretary Comrade Chris Hani. Addressing workers in the early 1990s, he warned with prophetic clarity, “The danger we face is that the enemy will manoeuvre himself into a position of power by stealth, under the guise of democracy.”
Unions must return to militant shop-floor struggle, political education, worker control, and community alliance-building. A depoliticised union movement is easily defeated; a revolutionary union movement is unstoppable.
Communities and the masses make struggle as the school of the people, the school of liberation and self-reliance.
Communities are the front line of neo-liberal assault. Service delivery protests, housing struggles, food insecurity, and resistance to privatisation are expressions of class struggle even when they are not yet politically unified.
Nelson Mandela, speaking at the ANC National Conference in Mafikeng (1997), reminded the movement, “A leadership that does not listen to the voice of the people will fail.” Let us not be that leadership. We must correct our ways. True democracy is not confined to the ballot box. It lives in organised communities exercising popular power and holding leadership accountable.
Against neo-liberalism and for revolutionary unity in action
Neo-liberalism is the modern weapon of imperialism. It weakens the state, fragments the working class, commodifies basic needs, and suppresses collective resistance. It must be confronted openly and defeated. Fidel Castro, in a speech at the University of Havana (2005), declared, “Neoliberal globalisation is not a formula for development; it is a formula for domination.”
Unity must therefore be forged in action, not only in declarations: unity of workers, the unemployed, women, youth, rural poor and progressive strata. Unity must be around a clear anti-capitalist programme, built through struggle, discipline, and ideological clarity. As Mao Tse Tung wrote in “On Practice”, “If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality.”
Forward to a fighting working-class movement
The moment demands courage, clarity, and organisation. The working class must reassert itself as the leading force of the revolution. The Alliance must be rebuilt on a militant, principled basis or superseded by forms that genuinely serve working-class power.
There can be no social justice without economic transformation. There can be no true liberation without breaking the power of monopoly capital. There can be no future for South Africa without socialism.
The way forward: socialism as the future
The choice before us is clear: socialism or barbarism. There is no neutral path. The working class must reclaim its historic role as the leading social force of the revolution. The Alliance must be rebuilt on a principled, militant basis or it will be overtaken by history. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the Communist Manifesto (1848), issued a call that remains urgent, “The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.”
In closing, we do not mourn Joe Slovo. We continue his struggle. We recommit ourselves to rebuilding the SACP as a mass vanguard of the working class; deepening the national democratic revolution; resisting neo-liberal austerity; building people’s power; advancing self-reliant communities; constructing a people’s economy; using the 2026 local elections as a terrain for strengthening working-class power and principled Alliance unity.
Forward to revolutionary unity in action!
Forward to a fighting, militant Alliance!
Forward to worker-led unions and organised communities!
Down with neo-liberalism and monopoly capital!
Forward with the national democratic revolution towards socialism!
Power to the Working Class!
Long live the revolutionary legacy of Comrade Joe Slovo!
Long live the South African Communist Party!
Socialist the future – build it now!