The ANC has finally begun the uncomfortable but unavoidable task of dissecting its own decline. At the ANC’s 5th National General Council (NGC) in Boksburg on Monday, 8 December, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula moved from his usual defensive posture while delivering the party’s mid-term report, saying the party’s decline is long-standing rather than a sudden rupture. According to Mbalula’s analysis, a mid-term review between the party’s 2022 and 2027 national elective conferences, the ANC’s decline dates back to 2016.
“The electoral setback suffered by the ANC and the democratic movement began in 2016 with the loss of major metros, accelerating with the emergence of over 80 hung councils after the 2021 local elections, and culminated in the 2024 strategic setback when the ANC lost its outright majority in Parliament, Gauteng and KZN,” reads his 294-page report. Reflecting on the bruising 2024 election results, Mbalula said an “intense, coordinated and well-funded campaign” had been mounted to push the party below 50% and replace it with “a right-wing, anti-transformation coalition government (the so-called Moonshot Pact).” The Moonshoot Pact, later known as the Multi-Party Charter, was an agreement between opposition parties, including the DA, ActionSA, IFP, Freedom Front Plus and others, to form a coalition to unseat the ANC if they had the numbers after the 2024 elections. “Objectively, this campaign produced a counter-revolutionary convergence between right-wing parties and breakaway parties formed by former leaders of the liberation movement,” said Mbalula.
Those ANC “breakaway parties”, such as the EFF and MK party, accelerated the party’s decline in recent years as many of its traditional supporters either didn’t vote or voted for alternatives. Referring to the rise of the uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party, Mbalula’s report says on Gauteng: “The ANC’s core base has fractured. The shift of protest votes from the ANC, first to the EFF and now to the MK Party in Gauteng, shows that this discontent is becoming entrenched. Large sections of the working class and poor no longer believe ANC promises on jobs, housing and services.” “The ANC can no longer command support; it must now compete for it, and negotiate with other parties claiming to represent the same constituencies.” “Voters have demonstrated that they are not captive to the ANC and will ‘shop around’ for alternatives that better address their conditions: the DA for stability and middle-class interests; the EFF and MK party for alienated and protesting poor communities.” In its analysis of KZN, Mbalula’s report, however, found the ANC was weakened but still had a chance to regain lost ground.
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