Left-wing conference calls for nationalisation and constitutional overhaul

South African Communist Party’s (SACP) General Secretary Solly Mapaila addresses the Conference of the Left delegates at Birchwood Hotel’s OR Tambo Conference Centre on May 29, 2026 in Boksburg, South Africa. Picture: Gallo Images/OJ Koloti South Africa’s first Conference of the Left has declared its intention to push beyond the compromises of the 1994 democratic settlement, adopting a bold socialist line that places nationalisation, land expropriation without compensation and constitutional review firmly back on the national agenda. Meeting in Boksburg, Ekurhuleni, the gathering of 13 organisations – including theSouth African Communist Party (SACP), Azapo, the EFF, the uMkhonto weSizwe party, trade unions and civil society groups – resolved that the commanding heights of the economy must rest in the hands of the working class.

In a three‑day gathering, delegates demanded the nationalisation of the Reserve Bank, a fundamental reorientation of monetary policy toward employment and industrialisation and a sweeping review of the 1996 constitution to address unfinished democratic and socialist tasks. Land reform, once central to the ANC’s transformation agenda but later abandoned, was placed back at the heart of the struggle, with delegates insisting that restitution and redistribution are inseparable from dignity, equality and democratic access. “Monetary policy must serve employment, industrialisation, developmental finance, public investment, transformation and the needs of the working class and poor,” delegates said.

The conference also demanded a review of the constitution “from the standpoint of unfinished national democratic and socialist tasks”, including land, property relations, public ownership, social rights, participatory democracy and the role of the state in the economy. Delegates resolved that land reform must restore dignity, advance equality, expand democratic access and place land in the hands of those who work and live on it. The conference endorsed expropriation without compensation, alongside security of tenure, restitution and redistribution. It argued that without changing ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, there could be no real transformation.