The ANC, which suffered a significant loss of support in the May 29 general election, has traced its dismal performance back to the Jacob Zuma presidency, where it said “counterrevolution” thrived.
Support for the party significantly declined in this election, losing it its parliamentary majority that it had held since the attainment of majority rule in 1994. This forced the ANC into the government of national unity (GNU) that is running the country.
The party met in Johannesburg on Thursday to do a post-mortem of its performance in the election.
Though not naming Zuma directly, who is now the leader of rival party MK, an ANC’s post-election document said the party’s national elective conference in 2007 ushered in a dramatic deterioration of governance where cabinet members used their positions in the government to enrich themselves at the expense of the country and the ANC.
The ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007 is where Zuma was elected as the ANC president. Soon after his election, the party recalled former president Thabo Mbeki as head of state in 2008.
“So determined was the counterrevolution to realise its goal, that it actually brought to Polokwane an armed group of hired assassins. If for some reason it failed to achieve the leadership changes it wanted, it would have used these assassins to murder many of the delegates and leaders at the conference,” read the document.
This document was presented to the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) at its ordinary meeting on Thursday, where party aimed to formulate a plan to claw back its electoral loses.
The 2024 general election results demonstrate that the counterrevolution has made significant progress in ensuring that people were left “leaderless and open to manipulation against their own interests”.
“This means that while it has not been destroyed, the ANC has been disorganised and weakened.”
At the peak of the “counterrevolution” during the nearly decade-long Zuma presidency, “ANC ministers saw their personal interest in private wealth acquisition as taking precedence over the national interest,” it said.
Zuma has since been expelled from the ANC for supporting and forming the MK party in the recent elections. However, the ANC bemoaned that the consequences of his presidency still lingered with voters expressing their disillusionment at the polls.
The document cited the high turnover of ministers and directors-general in government departments during the Zuma years as an example of the instability caused by the counterrevolution. Relationships between ministers and directors-general were fraught with instability and “around 60% lasted for only 12 months or less”.
“These figures of an extraordinarily high turnover of ministers and directors-general mean only one thing. The government was increasingly becoming dysfunctional resulting in mounting failure to address the needs of the population,” said the document.
It noted that the ANC had previously adequately implemented its previous conference resolutions to renew and improve the quality of ANC membership.
“Unfortunately, the ANC NEC has failed to implement the decision of the ANC national conference calling for the critically important renewal of the ANC or, at worst, it failed to understand and appreciate the gravity of this task,” the document reads.
The ANC NEC continues on Friday for the next two days. It will be followed by an ANC lekgotla, which will be attended by senior ANC deployees in government departments.
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