The Communist Party was reconstituted underground and re-launched as the SACP in 1953, participating in the struggle to end the apartheid system.

The Communist Party of South Africa was founded in 1921 by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of William H. Andrews.

The ban on the party was lifted in 1990 when the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations and individuals were also unbanned, and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

The Congress Alliance committed itself to a democratic, non-racial South Africa where the "people shall govern" through the Freedom Charter.

The SACP played a role in the development of the Freedom Charter through its cadres who were openly active in the Congress Alliance and in the Party's underground organisation.

In the same vein the Party played an important role in the evolution of the Alliance and the development of the liberation movement in South Africa.

A new generation of leaders, led by Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu recognised that the Nationalists were certain to ban the ANC and so make peaceful protest all but impossible.

They allied themselves with the communists to form Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") which began a campaign of terror by bombing civilian targets like shopping malls and restaurants.

Communist Joe Slovo was Chief of Staff of Umkhonto; his wife and fellow SACP cadre Ruth First was perhaps the leading theoretician of the revolutionary struggle the ANC were engaged in.

Eventually external pressures and internal ferment made even many strong supporters of apartheid recognise that change had to come and a long process of negotiations began which resulted, in 1994, in the defeat of the National Party after forty-six years of rule.

This period also brought new strains in the ANC-SACP alliance when the ANC's programme did not threaten the existence of capitalism in South Africa and was heavily reliant on foreign investment and tourism.