If you ever suffered under the delusion that the ANC is coming to save you, I’ve got news. The Jacob Zuma forces of the 2010s who stayed in the ANC after he was ousted in 2018 are back. They are organising for a takeover of the party by the end of 2027 — if not much sooner.
There is danger and opportunity in this. The opportunity is that South Africa can move closer to the next stage of its journey: freeing itself from the corruption and poor governance that has gripped it since 2008. The danger is that it makes for messy and unstable politics in the period ahead.
When the Zuma administration’s corruption became too much to bear, most South Africans turned to the “good people” in the ANC to get rid of its leader. There were enough of them to ensure that he lost at the 2017 elective conference and President Cyril Ramaphosa was installed as leader.
Ramaphosa has failed to turn things around. He is losing control of his party and the country. Unemployment, business closures, corruption and government incompetence hog the headlines.
Right now, the “good guys” in the ANC are a procession of scandal-racked individuals. Ramaphosa’s most likely successor, Deputy President Paul Mashatile, lives in multimillion-rand houses bought with questionable monies. Other potential successors are similarly compromised. The rest of the cabinet is made up of populist party hacks who have no hope of winning an election.
Enter the Zuma-ites. This weekend in the Sunday Times, the former minister most closely associated with the Gupta family, Malusi Gigaba, said the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) has lost its way, and that the GNU should have excluded the DA. Just days before, staunch Zuma supporter and NEC member Andile Lungisa had called for the immediate disbandment of the party’s top leadership structure, accusing it of being “politically bankrupt”.
He reportedly told his NEC colleagues: “This NEC cannot unite the movement, it cannot reform the ANC, and it cannot be trusted to lead renewal.” Another prominent member of the Zuma faction, NEC member Mzwandile Masina, is leading the ANC’s discussions with the MK Party and others about joining the GNU — and getting rid of the DA.
This group is emboldened. Many did not campaign for the ANC in the run-up to the May 2024 elections. They want to take the weakened ANC into alliance with the MK Party and advance Zuma’s agenda.
This grouping does not seem to have a clear leadership candidate, but they were all coalesced around Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma in 2017
They do not seem to have a clear leadership candidate, but they were all coalesced around Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma in 2017. She lost to Ramaphosa after being “betrayed” by former deputy president David Mabuza, who at the last minute persuaded his supporters to change sides and vote for Ramaphosa. In 2022 this group tried to interest Dlamini Zuma in running against Ramaphosa again, but she declined nomination from the conference floor after she voted in parliament in favour of impeachment proceedings against him.
Of late, Dlamini Zuma has been giving podcast interviews, making speeches and attending conferences. She told a podcaster last week that she doesn’t think she will enter the ANC leadership race at the next elective conference in December 2027, but we’ve heard that one before.
And anyway, a fight is looming far sooner than that — at the ANC’s national general council meeting this December. The Zuma-ites and various other cliques will be arrayed against Ramaphosa, intent on ousting him before the ANC faces further humiliation in 2029, when, as a report by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection suggested last week, the ANC will retain majorities only in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape. The looting window closes in 2029.
Ramaphosa’s continued incumbency, weak as it is, is a small obstacle to that looting. His presence at the top prevents an alliance with MK, but as soon as he goes, the ANC will fall straight into an alliance with Zuma’s party, with the attendant corruption, populism and kleptocracy.
The ANC is not coming to save anyone. South Africa, and the opposition parties, better wake up.
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