South Africa – Johannesburg – 10 December 2025 – ANC secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, briefs members of the media at the African National Congress, National General Council(NGC) at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Boksburg. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has slammed the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) structure, accusing the province of collapsing under factional battles and poor performance, and likening what was meant to be a “Ferrari” to a sputtering “Tazz”. Speaking on the sidelines of theANC’s National General Council (NGC)meeting in Boksburg on Wednesday, Mbalula said the national leadership had lost confidence in the KZN provincial executive committee (PEC), which was disbanded earlier this year following the party’s bruising 2024 election results.
“KZN is a big disappointment in terms of our intervention, and I can assure you there are going to be changes,” he said, promising a smaller, “leaner” structure with new leaders. “We thought we were bringing a Ferrari, but now a Tazz is operating there. We have not been doing well.” Mbalula said the party had acted out of necessity as the province became the epicentre of what he described as an “existential crisis”, with internal contestation overpowering organisational work.
“What do people do when we give them a task? They are busy fighting over who must lead. “They are fighting over positions, not the mandate we gave them.
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What do we do with such people? We put them aside,” he said. TheANC’s intervention in KZN mirrors similar action in Gauteng, where the PEC was also disbanded in the wake of the party’s historic electoral decline.
Both provinces, once reliable strongholds, delivered some of the worst results for the ANC since 1994, forcing the national leadership to initiate sweeping corrective measures. Veteran Amos Masondo was appointed to stabiliseGauteng, while former minister Jeff Radebe was deployed to lead KZN through a politically volatile transition.
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