The MK Party got the third most votes in the 2024 general election, just months after its formation. Since then, its presence in South Africa’s political arena has been disruptive and chaotic.
The latest actions by former president Jacob Zuma’s party again illustrate the danger it poses to South Africa, should it win control of government at any level. And, if polling is to be believed, it is likely to do so in some areas after the 2026 local government election.
Based on its 2024 performance, there are indications that MK could emerge as the largest party in municipalities across KwaZulu-Natal, including the province’s only metro, eThekwini.
This does not bode well for stability in the province, the second-biggest contributor to the country’s economy. The party can barely manage itself, let alone a complex institution like a municipality.
Some observers describe Zuma as a chess master, but he has proved time and again that he is instead the master of controlled chaos.
It is only under these circumstances that he thrives. This was illustrated neatly last week after he sat less than a metre away from MK spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela as he was reading a statement on the party’s strategy, only for Zuma and the party leadership to withdraw the same statement just two days later and fire Ndhlela.
On Saturday, the party’s three most senior officials — Zuma, deputy president and disgraced former judge John Hlophe and party chair Nathi Nhleko, the former police minister known for the Nkandla “firepool” narrative — sat nearby as Ndhlela read the lengthy statement. The main thrust was the launch of the MK institute, which Ndhlela described as the “liberation movement” which would buttress the political party.
The institute is to be all-powerful, controlling all structures of the party, essentially replacing the national leadership core and becoming the only structure co-ordinating interaction with Zuma himself.
The statement is fascinating. A closer reading of it reveals some insight into MK’s potential future positioning in the political landscape. It indicates that Zuma has abandoned his long-stated desire for a reverse takeover of the ANC, and that the party is beginning to chart its own course.
It emphasises a shift away from South Africa’s constitutional dispensation.
“The liberation of our people cannot continue to be governed solely through the current constitution, which has inherited Roman-Dutch and English legal traditions that do not fully reflect the civilisational realities and aspirations of the African majority.
“The establishment of the institute aims to perpetuate a new ideology that seeks to liberate black people based on a dichotomy of policies that the former liberation movement, the ANC, has failed to implement, and will further conscientise our people.”
At least some in Zuma’s party are willing to attempt alternatives to a democratic approach to seize power
Except, the entire statement read in Zuma’s presence on Saturday sounded eerily familiar.
It was almost a cut-and-paste job from a document penned by one of its own former leaders, Floyd Shivambu, after he was booted from MK and started his own political formation, the Afrika Mayibuye Movement.
Ndhlela emphasised that the institute was inspired by political systems in several countries, including China, Brazil and Iran, as well as Africa’s Sahel region, which includes Burkina Faso.
Shivambu’s document, on which MK’s ideas are obviously based, suggests that one of the possible routes for South Africa to attain the ideal of a country stripped of colonial influence is through strategies similar to those employed in the Sahel — a coup, to be specific.
Zuma and his daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla visited Burkina Faso last November and gushed over soldier-turned-politician Ibrahim Traoré, who seized power through a military coup in September 2022. Last month Traoré reneged on his promise to hold elections (he had initially committed to doing so by 2024), arguing on state television that people should forget about democracy.
During that visit, the Africa Report quoted Zuma as expressing admiration for Traoré, praising his 2022 power grab as a “liberation, not a takeover” and hailing him for standing up “100% [to] foreign domination”.
South Africa and Burkina Faso have fundamentally different historical paths and distinct colonial systems, followed different routes to independence and have polar-opposite political dispensations. However, Shivambu’s document and MK’s pronouncement on an institute set up as a liberation movement, charting a new path to power, pose a distinct risk to South Africa. It illustrates that at least some in Zuma’s party are willing to attempt alternatives to a democratic approach to seize power.
That is not inconceivable, since Zuma displayed disdain for the key pillars of a democratic state throughout his nine years in office. He still retains influence in the country’s security apparatus.
There is also the context of declining levels of support for democracy among ordinary South Africans, as reflected in a March survey released by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and Zuma’s successful tribal mobilisation in KZN, which won MK 45% of the vote in 2024.
An Afrobarometer survey in 2025 showed that support for military rule in South Africa has increased from about 10% of the population in the 2000s to 20% in 2015 and 49% in 2025.
Ironically, the HSRC and Afrobarometer findings are on the back of a decline in living standards and economic conditions, brought about in the main under Zuma’s presidency.
The ANC under his leadership (which is largely the same ANC in place today) created the very conditions he wishes to exploit, using MK as his political vehicle.
The incompetence and internal chaos in Zuma’s party are perhaps blessings, given the dangerous populism his party has the potential — and will — to tap into.
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