ANC Johannesburg’s new chairperson, Loyiso Masuku, after winning an election during the 16th Regional Conference at the CedarWoods Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, 5 December 2025. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/ The Citizen You have heard it countless times, but remember: “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” This quote should not be printed and sticky-taped on the Luthuli House walls, but engraved on the entrance hall walls and pinned to every ANC group chat. The ANC is a sinking ship, as is objectively clear from their decline in the last general elections where they lost complete control of government.
In response to that bruising defeat, the party’s leaders rushed to form a fancy-sounding, but materially quite useless, national coalition with other power-hungry politicians and repeat their cries of renewal. They promised introspection, rejuvenation, accountability, and even unity. One of the central ideas flowing out of discussions in recent months has been to rally around a single set of leaders at elective conferences.
This would remove factions and infighting over positions that have previously left the party bruised and battered. The idea of keeping your energy for serving South Africans rather than using it to fight your comrades may seem like a breakthrough for the ANC, but it is simple for the rest of us. But even if they wanted to implement this grand idea, they have failed spectacularly at the first hurdle.
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The ANC in Johannesburg has been so divided that it took nearly a year to finally hold an elective conference. When it finally kicked off, then-chairperson Dada Morero suggested it was not the end of the world if he lost. This week, his camp kicked up a fuss,claiming fraud and vote-rigging at the conference.Mud has been slung by both his supporters and those of the newly elected chair, Loyiso Masuku, and all intentions to maintain peace and unity for the party’s sake have been thrown out the window.
Abrewing motion of no confidence in Morero as mayor, and the Joburg ANC considering whether to forward a request to its national leaders to ask Morero to resign, are both signs that they have reset to the default setting of replacing the existing leader with their shiny new toy as soon as they can. In the new leaders’ minds, it’s unfair that they have to wait to feed properly from the trough.
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