SACP will contest all 402 North West wards, Matshe says
The party's first independent local government campaign puts a full provincial slate on the ballot and turns Mamusa into its test case.
SABC News reports that the South African Communist Party in North West will contest all 402 wards in the province in the 2026 local government elections, its first independent campaign since it began contesting elections in its own name.
The provincial secretary, Smuts Matshe, said the party’s goal is to have SACP councillors in every municipality, and that it would work with everyone to restore the dignity of the people of Mamusa.
“We are contesting all 402 wards in this province, and our goal is to have the councillors of the SACP in every municipality,” Matshe said. “For a long time, the people of Mamusa have been subjected to conditions that are unbearable, so we think our coming here is to stay. We will work with everybody to restore the dignity of the people of Mamusa.”
The party is running build-up programmes in the Mamusa Local Municipality, which is centred on Schweizer-Reneke, ahead of its provincial manifesto launch there next week. SABC News reported that the SACP will use the seven days before that launch to work on the ground and engage with communities.
The party’s stated pitch is service delivery through what it calls capable and ethical councillors.
What 402 wards actually means
A full slate is the hard part of any independent campaign. Local government elections in South Africa are fought ward by ward, and a party that contests every ward must find a candidate for each one, screen them, and put a name and a record in front of voters in places where the party has never held office. The SACP has carried that workload in North West, a province of four district municipalities and the two metros of Rustenburg and Matlosana.
That is the number that matters in this announcement. A manifesto launch is a message. Four hundred and two candidates is an organisation.
Contesting independently also changes what happens after the votes are counted. A party with councillors in every municipality sits in every council where coalitions are negotiated, and North West has had more than its share of hung and reconfigured councils since the 2021 municipal elections. Where no party wins a majority, the smaller slates decide who governs, and a party that contests everywhere is present for every one of those conversations.
Schweizer-Reneke as the launch pad
The choice of Mamusa for the build-up is not incidental. Schweizer-Reneke is a small agricultural town in the North West where service delivery failures are felt directly in water, sanitation and refuse collection, and where residents have little distance between a council decision and their daily life. Matshe’s language about unbearable conditions is a claim about that record, and the party is making it in the place it intends to test.
What the SACP has not yet published is its candidate list, the wards where it believes it can win, or a costing for the delivery promises in its manifesto. Those are the details voters in Mamusa and the rest of the province will need before the ballot, and the manifesto launch next week is the first place they can reasonably expect them.
The party’s stated pitch is service delivery through what it calls capable and ethical councillors.
What it means for voters
For residents, an expanded ballot is a wider choice and a longer list to read. For the incumbent councils in North West, it is a new competitor in wards that have previously been decided between the established parties. For coalition arithmetic after the count, it is one more slate at the table.
The SACP’s provincial manifesto launch in Schweizer-Reneke next week is the next dated step, and it is where the party is expected to set out what it would do with the seats it is asking for.
