The friction of dual membership will be tested at the polls
The dual membership between the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) poses a slow -motion constitutional crisis inside the Alliance and it is self -inflicted. The SACP’s move to contest elections independently does not just strain the Tripartite Alliance – it forces a reckoning that has been deferred since 1994.
The dual membership worked when the SACP’s role was to be the ANC’s ‘ideological vanguard’ without seeking state power directly. The ANC got Marxist cadres and discipline; the SACP got influence without accountability. That deal held while the ANC delivered jobs, grants and growth. Now that delivery’s collapsed, the SACP wants to test its own brand at the ballot box.
Ministers, MECs and mayors who wear both red and black face an impossible choice. Cabinet posts are ANC deployments not the other way around. If the SACP runs against the ANC, does a communist campaign for the ANC or recuse himself? The Public Service Code and Executive Ethics Code do not contemplate serving two masters. Expect resignations or ‘redeployments’ once candidate lists are finalised.
The Tripartite Alliance is not a legal entity – it is a political convention. Cosatu already withdrew its unconditional electoral support in 2017. If the SACP goes independently to the polls, the Alliance becomes the ANC + SANCO + small affiliates. That strips the ANC of its last claim of being a ‘broad church of the left’ and leaves it electorally naked against the MKP and EFF on one flank and the DA / IFP / ActionSA on the other.
In framing the war, the ANC will call it ‘adventurism’ that split the progressive vote. The SACP will call it ‘renewal’ and accuse the ANC of betraying the NDR. Whoever wins the narrative keeps the activists. The careerists will follow the patronage. In short, it is not just delicate, it is existential. The ANC without the SACP is a liberation movement without ideology. The SACP without the ANC is a party without a base. And the ministers caught in between? Their loyalty will be to whoever signs their paycheck.
Dual membership was sustainable only while the ANC and SACP shared a single electoral vehicle. Once the SACP declared intent to contest elections independently, dual membership mutated from alliance glue into a conflict of interest. Cabinet ministers and senior officials now owe executive authority to the ANC president while owing party discipline to an SACP that may campaign against that very administration. In Westminster systems, that is a resigning matter. In South Africa’s cadre deployment reality, it creates a class of officials whose continued employment depends on suppressing one party’s manifesto to implement another’s. The crisis is therefore structural, not personal – the state itself becomes the terrain of party competition.
The Tripartite Alliance survived policy failures because it still distributed access to the state. For careers, dual membership was less ideological than instrumental – the SACP provided credentials, the ANC provided positions. An independent SACP severs that pipeline. ANC deployment will face a loyalty test before 2026: retain the ministry and renounce the SACP or keep the SACP card and forfeit deployment. Most will choose the paycheck, which means the SACP’s breakaway risks hollowing out its leadership tier. The ANC, in turn, loses a layer of administrators who actually read Marx, accelerating its drift into a pure electoral machine without ballast. So the split does not just divide votes – it re-sorts the entire patronage economy that kept both parties functional.
The outcome hinges less on IEC ballot papers than who controls the narrative of betrayal. If the ANC successfully frames the SACP as ‘splitters’ weakening the national democratic revolution, it retains the moral high ground and forces SACP members to choose movement loyalty over party label. If the SACP frames the ANC as a ‘bourgeois, corrupt’ formation that abandoned socialism, it can pull unionised and urban working-class voters and justify its ministers staying in cabinet to ‘defend working-class gains from inside’. Both stories cannot be true simultaneously. Whichever sticks determines whether dual members resign quietly or trigger a cabinet crisis. The delicate part is that both parties need each other’s myth – the ANC needs the SACP’s red flag to claim legitimacy; the SACP needs the ANC state power to remain relevant. A clean divorce leaves both ideologically exposed.
The ANC’s 2024 result of 40.18% already exposed its reliance on Alliance turnout machinery. The SACP activists are disproportionately concentrated in Cosatu unions, metros and ANC branches – the exact nodes that get out the vote. If the SACP runs independently, even a modest 3–4% national share would likely come straight from the ANC’s base, not from DA or EFF voters. In Gauteng and eThekwini, where margins are thin, that bleed could flip councils and collapse coalitions. The SACP does not need to win to wound, it only needs to prove the ANC cannot command the left on its own. For the ANC, the danger is not a revived government – it is minority status without a natural coalition partner.
Breakaways from the ANC only succeed when they carry a compelling grievance narrative and a visible leader. Cope had Terror Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa but not grassroots theory; it collapsed. MKP had Zuma and provincial machinery – it took 14.58%. The SACP has neither a charismatic national face nor an organic mass base outside the Alliance. Its strength is ideological coherence and union networks. That makes it a threat in a PR system – it can convert cadres into councillors and MPs without needing to win wards outright. The ANC’s response to MKP – expulsions and legal challenges – won’t work here, because dual members are still legally ANC until they resign. The ANC must either tolerate open opposition within its caucus or purge itself and shrink.
Cosatu’s 2017 resolution to no longer blindly support the ANC was never tested because the SACP stayed inside. An independent SACP and Cosatu federations would have to choose: back the ANC for jobs and bargaining councils or back SACP ideology and risk losing access. Most union leaders are also dual members and sit in parliament via ANC lists. If Cosatu tilts towards the SACP, the SACP becomes a party of intellectuals with no foot soldiers. Watch Num, Nehawu and Sadtu conferences – their resolutions will signal where the bodies go before the ballots do.
The government already suffers from ‘deployment churn’ every election cycle. A hostile split institutionalises this churn. DGs, CEOs of SOEs and board members who are SACP members would face pressure to implement ANC manifestos that contradict SACP congress resolutions. That breeds either sabotage or paralysis. We have seen mini-versions during ANC faction fights; this would be factionalism with two letterheads. The short-term result is slower delivery right when the ANC needs to prove competence to win back voters. Ironically, the SACP leaving to protest ANC failures could deepen that failure by destabilising the bureaucracy.
The Alliance model was built for a hegemonic ANC in a one-party-dominant system. That system ended in 2024. In a coalition era, dual membership is a constitutional anomaly – no other party lets MPs serve in rival executives. So the crisis will resolve in one of two ways: the ANC formalises a ban on dual membership and accepts it is now a centre-left party competing with the SACP or the SACP retreats and remains a faction, not a party. There is no stable middle. Either path accelerates the post-liberation realignment of SA politics: from movement vs opposition to competing blocs on the left and right. For careerists, the memo is clear – the era of holding two cards is closing.
The ANC’s claim on black voters still rests on a story of deliverance. The SACP’s claim rests on a story of unfinished deliverance. Both stories derive legitimacy from the same past but they license different futures. When the stories diverge at the ballot box, voters are asked to adjudicate history. But history is not adjudicated – it is inherited or rejected. The philosophical problem is this: can a people reject the party of liberation without rejecting liberation itself? Can they choose reform over change without conceding that change failed? The ANC–SACP fracture makes that question explicit. And explicit questions, once asked, cannot be unasked by party discipline. The answer will make South African political identity whether either party wants it to.
Mpumezo Ralo serves on the National Dialogue Academic Think Tank and Research Sector Steering Committee and is the founder and director of Lwazi Research Consulting (Pty) Ltd, based in Gqeberha. His views do not represent positions of the mentioned organisations.