SA left's Achilles heel

Divisions have weakened it, causing it to leave poor in the lurch’.

- Eric Naki

The fragmentation within the left in South Africa is not new, but the division among its components had weakened it, causing it to leave the poor in the lurch, say experts.

Political analysts Prof Ntsikelelo Breakfast and Dale McKinley said various segments of the left in South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, did not see eye to eye on the way forward to achieve their goals of a socialist society and as a result they worked separately.

Breakfast said the state of the left had caused it to abandon the poor that it claimed to represent, while society remained divided between the poor and the rich.

"The left's market, the poor, is there because if you look at our society, there is a binary between the haves and the have-nots. So, we are not talking about the lack of markets to which the left can pitch its message. The issue is the failure of the left to put itself on the map as a force to be reckoned with and that is because of the fragmentation within the itself," Breakfast said.