SA groups risk alienating masses

It will also have to play a bigger role in agitating for housing, public transport and dealing with crime, and consumer rights, for example.

This will be new territory, which may demand different kind of organising skills.At the same time the SACP will have to turn itself into a mass party, with mass community, youth and rural branches. A mass-based SACP, and a social movement COSATU, will not only have to provide answers on economic and political issues, but also progressive answers to the difficult questions of individual alienation, family breakdown, establishing a more caring male identity, how to achieve genuine gender equality, and how to find a balance between tradition and democratic values.

Unless COSATU and the SACP make the crucial adjustments now, they will cede influence to the populists and narrow nationalists in the future.