ANC’s loss of dominance now looks irreversible, says Bonang Mohale

By Thando Maeko

South Africa is moving slowly but decisively towards a political era no longer dominated by the ANC, and the party’s loss of authority now looks irreversible, according to business leader and author Bonang Mohale.

In an interview with Business Day, Mohale said the ANC’s fall below an outright majority marked more than an electoral setback — it signals a broader realignment of South Africa’s political space following years of corruption, policy uncertainty and institutional decay.

“We play with this country like it’s Monopoly money,” he said, adding that stolen public funds translated directly into shortages of electricity, health care and housing.

Mohale pointed to the cumulative damage of state capture and failed governance, from unfinished power plants to collapsing hospitals, as evidence that decline was a choice, not an accident.

In 2024, the ANC suffered its worst electoral performance at the polls in 30 years as its share of the vote plunged from 57% in 2019 to 40%. This left the ANC trying to balance an array of demands from political parties, financial markets and its alliance partners.

At the recent national general council, its mid-term review, the ANC reaffirmed its support for the government of national unity, with President Cyril Ramaphosa, however, warning that some parties within the 10-member coalition government oppose transformation.

Mohale, who is the chairperson of the Bidvest Group, suggested that the formation of the GNU may be buying the party time, but it risks hastening the ANC’s marginalisation. He compared the arrangement to the transitional coalition of the 1990s that ultimately eased the National Party out of power.

“The victim then was the National Party,” he said. “The victim now is the ANC.”

Mohale is deeply sceptical of the DA’s role in the unity government. He said the party entered negotiations with a clear political strategy, not simply a governing mandate but also to demonstrate competence nationally while positioning itself as the alternative to ANC rule. Early public complaints by DA ministers about inherited dysfunction were, in his view, part of that strategy rather than evidence of immediate failure.

“The DA has no demonstrable track record of ever collaborating with anybody or anything. In fact, they have the opposite. They’ve used black people for their own gains, to get the black vote. Once they were done with them, they chewed them and spat them out. Yeah, like chewing gum from all the blacks, including Herman Mashaba,” Mohale said.

South Africa’s next political settlement is more likely to emerge from a consolidation of black political forces than from centrist coalitions. He argued that the ANC, the MK Party and the EFF, despite deep rivalries, draw from the same social base and could form what he called a “Patriotic Front”.

The two opposition parties initially refused to join the GNU, with the EFF saying it would not enter a coalition with the DA and the FF Plus.

“If those three come together, all the black parties will follow,” he said, adding that such a coalition would need to be built around a small set of shared principles, including ethical leadership, delivery, safety and economic transformation.