This year will mark yet another test of the ANC’s resolve to renew itself — but this time, on the back of a devastating electoral performance in the last general election.
While analysts have long argued that it is too late for deep reform to take hold in the former liberation movement, the latest electoral developments and subsequent governing arrangement in the form of the government of national unity (GNU) does introduce the possibility for meaningful change, even inside the ANC.
The party that electrified households, provided access to potable water and sent more children to school on a full stomach is long gone — the successes of the early years of the party in power was based on a simple formula.
The ANC back then had a keen eye on the interests of the people — it was a community based organisation with its roots in the challenges faced by its constituency.
This ANC no longer exists. During the pre-Polokwane period culminating in former president Jacob Zuma’s presidency, something abominable took hold in the party.
Its character and very essence shifted. Prof Tom Lodge at the University of Limerick described it best in a 2014 paper, which remains painfully relevant: the party shifted from a mass based organisation to a neopatrimonialism one, shaped in the main by individual and personal interests.
“Increasingly within the ANC, leadership behaviour appears to be characterised by neo-patrimonial predispositions and, while formal distinctions between private and public concerns are widely recognised, officials nevertheless use their public powers for private purposes,” Lodge wrote.
He described other symptoms of such neopatrimonial behaviour including factionalism based on personal loyalty instead of shared values or ideology; a shift away from nonracialism and nonsexism; unchecked corruption; a decline in government performance and the acquisition of business interests by leading politicians and their families.
In a presentation to the party’s October special national executive committee meeting, ANC veterans described the state of the organisation in 2024 as facing an “existential threat”.
The document, titled “Renewal or Death: the ANC running out of time!”, describes the ANC as being at its “weakest point” as the leader of society, calling it a “distant” and “inward-looking” party.
This ANC’s deterioration has not been without consequence — a powerful retribution was delivered by voters in the 2024 national and provincial election in which the ANC’s share of the vote declined by a breathtaking 17 percentage points.
The decline in electoral support for the ANC began in 2009 — as the new tendency took hold. It was slow at first, but has now quickened to a dizzying pace.
At this rate, the ANC could potentially be relegated to opposition benches by 2034 at best, should it fail to arrest the decline through what it describes as a far-reaching renewal effort.
The special NEC held in October agreed on a number of crucial reforms, from re-educating the parties entire membership base on the party’s erstwhile core priorities: mass-based activism, nonracialism, nonsexism and putting communities first.
The programme is being run from Luthuli House, the party headquarters, supported by party veterans, where a performance-monitoring unit spearheaded by party manager Fébé Potgieter is being rolled out.
The unit will monitor the performance of the ANC in government from local to national government level with the sole aim of improving service delivery.
The party’s political education head, David Makhura, told the Financial Mail in October that all these initiatives were new and had never been attempted before.
But there are potholes ahead for the ANC’s renewal effort — disagreements within the alliance with the SACP and Cosatu and even among senior leaders internally over the GNU in its current form pose a stark risk for the party, as does the race to succeed President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2027.
An immediate challenge for the ANC set to unfold in the coming months is how to deal with its Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committees.
The leadership in the two provinces presided over the largest decline in support for the ANC, culminating in its national electoral decline.
While Zuma’s MK party was a key factor in KwaZulu-Natal, the ANC’s support in Gauteng has long been in a state of terminal decline — its provincial leadership led by chair Panyaza Lesufi has also been a key internal agitator against working with the DA nationally.
At the same time, service delivery across Gauteng metros and municipalities has all but collapsed — hardly a good look for the ANC in the province that was intentional about ensuring it continued to hold the levers of control in these councils after the 2021 local election.
Now, the party is set to enter another local election season on the ropes with cities such as Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni in a state of serious decline.
The ANC will navigate these tumultuous waters in the coming months, but what is clear is that the electorate has shown it no longer buys the party’s renewal rhetoric — only real action will shift the needle now.
The question is does the ANC have the appetite and importantly the capacity for real reform? Time, which is no longer a luxury for the party, will tell.
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