ANC, SACP bilateral meeting over Zuma gets cancelled

A bilateral meeting between the African National Congress (ANC) and its alliance partner, the South African Communist Party (SACP), was cancelled on Monday due to a lack of preparation for the gathering by the parties’ top leaders.

The meeting, which had been stalled numerous times before due to tension between the ANC and the SACP, would have been the first time President Jacob Zuma faced the communists since his controversial midnight Cabinet reshuffle in March, which led to both the SACP and Cosatu to calling for him to step down.

The SACP was also meant to formally inform the governing party of the outcomes of its 14th National Congress held last month in Boksburg, Ekurhuleni. At the conference, the SACP resolved to contest independently of the ANC.

The congress tasked the party’s central executive committee to come up with a roadmap to contest the upcoming 2019 general elections.

SACP acting spokesperson Mhlekwa Nxumalo said the secretariats from both parties had been tasked with formulating a new agenda and the meeting would be reconvened later.

“We had our own private meeting before and the ANC had their own meeting at Luthuli House. We contacted them an hour before the bilateral meeting to see if we agree on the agenda. We realised we are both not ready. If we proceeded, we were not going to get anything out of it,” Nxumalo told HuffPost.

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