Can the ANC mount an electoral comeback? 1st instalment.

In 24 months, South Africa will face the Local Government elections to constitute the 7th Municipal Administration in its municipal jurisdictions. Local government elections give us municipal ward-based reaction feedback on the impact of statewide plans on households. Society engages with and experiences government through municipal government. This makes 2026 a make-or-break political year for all parties, particularly the ANC. 

In the 2026 municipal elections, the ANC will face a graver threat to its ability to remain a significant player in South Africa's political power architecture. Never has it faced multiple threats to its power at the same time in such a short space of time. The end of five-year terms by its sub-national structures- from ward-based branches to almost all its regional executive committees. Not since the 2021 overall municipal elections outcome of less than 50% performance with a national absolute majority, the ANC had to contend with the reality of a proven national voter support of 40%. No member or supporter of the ANC alive can remember when the opposition complex had such anti-ANC political capital as the one in RSA today. 

 

The challenge is that the 2026 local government elections will require a strong and coherent response from the ANC. Evidence is that the liberation movement is outside the task. Its divided, self-aggrandist, ideologically impoverished, and fractured beyond reconstructable leadership needs to convince that it is hard at work to reverse the tide towards oblivion. The integrated, interconnected, and sophisticated threat posed by voter signals of discontent, and not outright rejection of the liberation movement, has become the most significant limitation to its capability to ensure that the ANC and its historically fought-for democratic values prevail. 

The ANC NEC, its President as a person, the alliance partners, and the RSA establishment face an existential conundrum. On the one hand, there is the obligation to sustain RSA as a competitive economy that punches at its appropriate weight level, and on the other is the challenge to truncate the almost irreversible march towards a failed democratic order and, thus, a fragile failed state.  The growing polarisation of politics and ideological disarray within the ANC as a liberation movement and society leader is a cause of concern and an indicator of a march toward self-extinction. 

The ANC "finds itself in a uniquely treacherous position: facing aggressive (political) adversaries with a propensity to miscalculate yet incapable of mustering the unity and strength necessary to mount" a political comeback in the upcoming political elections. The commitment and consistency of political response, including unencumbered leadership, will define the future of the ANC as a leader of society. 

Given that public discourse and political philosophy largely neglect the pervasiveness of dysfunctional governance, the leadership function has since been about truncating the evaporating political power. This is despite executing the governing party's obligations imposed by voter mandate. Invoking the leader of society's obligations of ANC membership and combat responsibility duty makes being an ANC renewalist a condition. 

The ANC is a divided reality. It is a case study of political disintegration on note. It represents how democracy has become the justifying political and representation ideology of the historically disenfranchised in our era. It has reached a level where loyalty to it is a function of heritage and identity, less and less of ideology. Emotional attachment and not a rational relationship with what it stands for has become its new currency. A growing addiction to romantic-type theories marks its dominant rhetoric and somewhat political nomenclature. Its dominant identity is about what it is opposed to, what it wants to change or deconstruct, and what it is moving away from. This is despite it being in command of a monopoly to define and control its and society's destiny. 

How the ANC recovers from the loss of absolute majority power in all of RSA's metropolitan areas and overall nation will be a function of how it is about the well-being of society. How it embraces the truth that people are jaw-droppingly disinterested in the history of its politics will define its future electoral fortunes. The brute truth is that citizens vote based on their (economic) well-being. There is always a correlation between personal (income) growth, standard of living and voter behaviour. When indecisive, voters look for politicians or parties who match their identities. Incumbents generally get punished even for things that are not in their control, such as weather and, lately, fake news and manufactured realities. 

The ignorance of society, a form of political power, is a resource "the people" are resistant to share with the knowledgeable except themselves and mavericks in society. As the oldest political platform of blacks, and Africans in particular, consent on who has the legitimacy to the authority of government, the revival of the ANC lies in finding where that position it had disappeared to. It is now about how democratic it is prepared to be as society matures in a democracy created by the country's constitution. It might not be enough to believe that the people shall govern when humanity's perpetual question is, ‘Who shall govern me?'. The further freedom people want after fundamental freedoms are guaranteed is what immediate post-liberation struggle parties must invest in to stay in power. CUT!!