The ANC is facing a significant crisis as it approaches the 2026 local government elections, with its biggest challenge being its failure to fix itself. According to former ANC MPL Zinzi Rabe, the party's leadership and organisational discipline are crucial in maintaining a common sense of purpose. However, the ANC's 2024 national election result, where it failed to secure a majority vote for the first time since 1994, has raised concerns about its ability to renew itself.
Rabe, who has written about the ANC's shortcomings and damage caused by individuals who compromised its reputation, expressed disappointment in the party's current state. She argued that her continued support for the ANC was not rooted in blind loyalty but in its historical significance and capacity to differentiate between individual failures and the broader purpose of the movement. However, the current crisis has led her to question the party's leadership and its ability to bring discipline and coherence to its ranks.
The ANC's current candidate list crisis has raised significant political and organisational questions. How did the ANC, with decades of electoral experience and an extensive organisational apparatus, arrive at a point where it could not complete a fundamental electoral process? This question is more important than the immediate dispute over whether the cause was technical, administrative, or procedural. A serious political organisation like the ANC should have systems that anticipate failure, with senior leadership receiving timely reports on processes that are fundamental to its ability to contest elections.
The office of the secretary-general, responsible for the ANC's administrative machinery, is under scrutiny. The fact that the ANC is now dealing with the consequences of incomplete candidate submissions demonstrates that something in that chain didn’t work as it should have. Leadership responsibility and organisational outcomes cannot be completely separated. When the machinery succeeds, leadership takes responsibility for that success, and likewise when it fails. The secretary-general should represent the organisational centre, imposing clarity where there is confusion and enforcing rules where there is disorder.
The ANC has spent considerable political energy speaking about renewal, but some of its current difficulties are precisely organisational problems that renewal was supposed to address. Rabe deliberately tried to distinguish between the ANC as an organisation and the conduct of individuals within it. However, the party's current public fighting over processes that should have been settled internally, systematically, and well before an election deadline is a cause for concern.
The ANC was given a clear indication that South Africans were prepared to change the political balance in 2024. An organisation that can’t tolerate criticism eventually loses the ability to correct itself. An organisation that treats every internal disagreement as factional warfare eventually loses the ability to distinguish legitimate criticism from political manoeuvering. The difficulty confronting the ANC today is not that it does not know what is wrong, as its documents have acknowledged factionalism, organisational decline, weak branches, internal divisions, patronage, and the erosion of organisational discipline.
The most damaging perception developing within the organisation is that there are two standards, with one for ordinary members and another for those who possess power. Leadership knows exactly how to identify wrongdoing when it is committed by others. What appears to be lacking is the consistent political courage and backbone from those leading it to apply its principles to everyone, including those who occupy the highest positions.
Key points
- The ANC's leadership and organisational discipline are under scrutiny as the party heads towards the 2026 local government elections.
- The party's failure to secure a majority vote in the 2024 national election has raised concerns about its ability to renew itself.
- The ANC's current candidate list crisis has raised significant political and organisational questions about its leadership and organisational discipline.
