Our Viewpoint | ANC’s Impendle meltdown

Developments at the troubled ANC-run Impendle Municipality show what happens when party authority weakens and discipline breaks down. Last Friday, the ANC provincial task team (PTT) instructed its Impendle councillors to vote for a specific mayoral candidate at a council meeting. The councillors ignored the directive and voted for their own candidate instead.

What is happening in this small KwaZulu-Natal municipality is more than a local leadership dispute. It reflects a governing party struggling to enforce its decisions within its own ranks. For months, the ANC has failed to stabilise Impendle after former mayor Buyisani Mlaba was removed.

He was ousted when ANC councillors defied provincial instructions and supported an IFPbacked motion of no confidence against him. That rebellion should have signalled to the PTT that its authority at local level was already weak. Instead, the PTT allowed the situation to drift It delayed appointing a replacement mayor while the municipality slipped further into dysfunction, with reports of employee salaries going unpaid When provincial leaders finally named a mayoral candidate last week and directed the caucus to support that person at a special council meeting, it was presented as a move to restore order The attempt failed.

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The Impendle dispute points to a deeper problem for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal: weakening internal discipline and command structures. When local caucuses repeatedly ignore provincial instructions without swift and firm consequences, the issue is no longer about individuals. It becomes an institutional problem.

The PTT’s standing has also been affected by ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula’s recent description of the KwaZulu-Natal interim leadership structure as ineffective. In that context, expecting Impendle councillors to respect the PTT’s authority was always going to be difficult Although the PTT has since suspended the councillors for defying instructions, it remains unclear whether the latest directive will be enforced in practice.

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