Johannesburg - The National Development Plan must not be turned into a monument, SA Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande said on Sunday.
"The NDP is an uneven document and the CC [central committee] welcomed the recent admission from planning commissioners that it is not written in stone, and that it is not perfect," he told reporters in Johannesburg.
One of the problems was that the NDP veered from general and unobjectionable vision, to long-range, unrealistic, or unambiguous targets, to an actual plan.
Although the African National Congress adopted the NDP at its elective conference in December, it has been criticised by its alliance partner the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and some of its affiliates.
Nzimande said the NDP should not become a "political football" which divided the alliance between the ANC, the SACP and Cosatu.
However, it was misguided to try build alliance unity on the plan in its current form.
"We should rather seek to build unity in action around the ANC's key resolution on the need for a more radical second phase of transition," he said.
"Greater content needs to be provided to what is actually meant by such a phase, and any useful proposals within the NDP can, certainly, form part of such a strategic platform."
The SACP held its central committee meeting in Johannesburg at the weekend.