It is hard not to be cynical about the ANC national general council’s (NGC’s) focus on reform and renewal.
The renewal narrative has been a feature at ANC gatherings for well over a decade. The “decade of the cadre”, according to a resolution in 2012, was meant to revitalise the party from the bottom up. It never happened and the calibre of membership declined even further.
The same conference adopted the setting up of the party’s “integrity commission”. But giving that structure teeth, in the form of genuine decision-making powers, has been a standing agenda item at party conferences ever since. Typically, the commission recommends action against leaders, only for its findings to be reversed or ignored by the party’s top brass in the national executive committee.
Renewal talk has never been in short supply but as long as the voters faithfully returned the ANC to power, actually doing something about it was not a priority.
Things have changed. In 2024 the party lost its outright majority nationally and its electoral support has effectively entered freefall, at municipal level and in the large, crucial provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. It has long been a mere bystander in the Western Cape.
The renewal agenda has never been discussed under such circumstances. There was an urgency at the NGC that has not been seen before. Secretary-general Fikile Mbalula’s midterm report was sober, candid and damning. For the first time, the ANC itself took responsibility for its electoral slide, instead of concocting a conspiratorial narrative blaming some unseen force or the legacies of apartheid for its woes.
The FM sat down with party leaders central to the renewal project in the ANC — thinkers who have influence on the strategy.
Among them is David Makhura, the party’s head of political education, whose job it is to ensure that each of the ANC’s 600,000-odd members receives an obligatory training course that spells out the values and characteristics required of them.
“We want people who come into the ANC because they want to contribute to its mission,” says Makhura, including “transforming South Africa into a national democratic society”.
“So, there’s been significant investment in just creating order in the organisation and putting in place proper processes.”
Makhura, a former premier of Gauteng, was active in the province in 2010 when the ANC first contemplated an integrity commission and resolved to introduce it there. Ironically, Gauteng has been the scene of some of the worst scandals, from the Life Esidimeni debacle to the PPE corruption scandal during Covid.
“In the true traditions of the ANC, we are facing squarely up to the underlying causes, not the symptoms,” Makhura says. “That’s why we are paying so much attention to improving performance, getting the people with the capabilities and the skills to send into government.”
Reform is no longer a nice-to-have for the party — it is an existential imperative.
The ANC’s Northern Cape chair Zamani Saul penned several pieces on renewal ahead of the NGC, emphasising the need for the party to up its game when selecting delegates to attend its leadership conferences, emulating the approach of the Chinese Communist Party.
In the true traditions of the ANC, we are facing squarely up to the underlying causes, not the symptoms
— David Makhura
The ANC’s succession race has a direct impact on its ability to reform, and crucially also on its appetite to do so. A leadership core focused on extraction à la Jacob Zuma & Co derails any chance of renewal.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was meant to be a force for change and renewal in the ANC after his election in 2017. He has succeeded in some ways, but overall the rotten culture poisoning the organisation, from its membership base through to the NEC, persists.
“Renewal is not an event, it’s a process, and you can see how protracted this process is,” says Makhura.
Makhura and Saul agree that the right leadership is crucial to ensure that the renewal project bears fruit.
The race to succeed Ramaphosa is well under way, with Deputy President Paul Mashatile as the frontrunner, despite questions about his sybaritic lifestyle. Mbalula and national assembly speaker Thoko Didiza are also among the contenders.
However, a key factor in the party succession race is likely to be the 2026 local elections. If the ANC does not do well, some leaders will inevitably be made scapegoats.
Nationally, the party plunged from 57% of the national vote to 40% in 2024. “We called that a strategic setback,” says Saul. “If we perform at less than 40% in 2026, that will be a defeat. And as soon as we suffer that defeat, we are going to lose space to lead the GNU. Instability in the government will then trickle down into every aspect of society.”
For ordinary South Africans, two main things will show if the ANC is succeeding in reforming itself. One is the person it chooses to succeed Ramaphosa, but the other is more immediate.
The criminal justice system was severely crippled under Zuma, as the Zondo commission illustrated in vivid, devastating detail. Now the Madlanga commission is revealing even more damage. A genuine indication of renewal and reform from the ANC would be a concerted, hardline approach to fixing the criminal justice system. Doing so would touch the lives of every single South African citizen.
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