The ANC succession era begins.

 The journey towards the 16th of December 2027 ANC National Elective Conference begins in December 2024 at the four influential regions of Limpopo Province. With a 74% outcome at the 2024 National and Provincial elections, which might have arguably saved the ANC from garnering the 40% saving grace outcome, Limpopo is poised to dictate the cadence of who ultimately succeeds Cyril Ramaphosa, the outgoing ANC President. 

The ANC faces one of its existential resilience-defining sub-national conferences since announcing its inarguably illusive and ambitious renewal programme. Never has it faced a conference with weakened national voter support, an emboldened opposition complex that now has a potential alternative to itself in the MK Party-led progressive caucus and an ascending substrate of the liberal order defending influential leaders within its ranks. The ideological contest between the left and right within the ANC threatens the disintegration of its electoral juggernaut anchored by the tripartite alliance. The Communist Party and COSATU are unsettled in the alliance, and calls for its review might be a proxy arrangement for a divorce discussion. 

The limping national numbers of the ANC, the unpredictable and identity politics influenced Kwa-Zulu Natal, the burden of corruption and state capture over the ANC's reputation, and funding of opposition to the ANC are its new realities. Capital (as a propeller of its historical adversaries from within parties to the right of what defines the ANC) will make all contests for regional leadership before 2027 a purchasable affair. Unlike in Zimbabwe, where the ZANU-PF was targeted with the most sophisticated regime change onslaught, in South Africa, the strategy is to change the elements of influence within the politically dominant ANC. 

To the extent that the ANC remains less and less of a threat to the established templates of economic dominance and the continued hold over the liberal order by the West and its cohorts within China and Russia, the ANC will be allowed to lead governing coalitions at all critical jurisdictions of South Africa. The Limpopo regional elections will be the first signs of where the succession scales are tilting towards. With established convention favouring a Limpopo-endorsable candidate,  Deputy President Paul Mashatile, the contest is poised to be about the other six of the top seven positions except that of President of the ANC. 

The availability of the position of the ANC President, occasioned by the two-term only rule, comes with the challenge of making the contest a one-horse race. The managed rise to the centre of Paul Mashatile, within a less hostile right of the centre opposition complex to the GNU and an indifferent left of the centre GNU opposition complex, makes the path to 16 December 2027 less treacherous for a Paul Mashatile ANC leadership.  Based on the inarguable commitment of Paul Mashatile to rebuild the ANC to its former glory and the apparent absence of a formidable candidate to contest him, the liberation promises in the preamble of the RSA Constitution are safer with a Mashatile ANC Presidency. Having been at the centre of the coalition negotiations and summit in the Western Cape before May 2024, the GNU can arguably be attributed to the statecraft Mashatile displayed during the threading of the current coalition arrangements. It is only the murmurings about corruption related allegations on his name that might jeopardise his march to the ANC's high office. 

With the calculus of the MK Party being an unknown and yet a definite factor to neutralise, the strategic boldness that Paul Mashatile has displayed in dealing with the new opposition complex's leadership in the past is an asset to how the ANC navigates its succession battles towards 2027. The ANC finds itself entering what might be a treacherous succession battle. It is facing external adversaries with a propensity to harvest its succession battle wounded. Internally, the ANC's structural dysfunctions, with disarray branches as the apex indicator, have made its power erratic and unreliable, practically inviting the risky criminal element within it and its shrewd funders to place dangerous leadership bets with potentially catastrophic effects on its liberation mission.

The succession battles might compromise the tasks of governing where the ANC is still in charge. With the economy not growing fast enough to relieve the state as the economy, the contest to control the public purse will make leading the ANC the biggest prize of politics. The now-in-mute mode integrity committee, which has been silent on those named in several reports, is a dysfunction whose impact will undermine progress against corruption and state capture. The prize of regional leadership contestation is the dysfunctional municipalities the AG has already pronounced on the depth of the crisis. The bottom line is that the ANC needs, within itself, additional capability to meet its existential threats towards every election, but the size of quality it has is a drop in the quantity it requires. Except for the leadership supply-side challenges in the broader national education system, the ANC's political education schools might be trained on theories irrelevant to what it needs its next cohort of leaders to know. 

As these battles continue to wreak havoc on the internal stability of the ANC, the opposition gets emboldened in its belief that the future belongs to them. The impunity of responses to the member integrity management system has had the ANC descending to a nest of bickering, incivility, and brinkmanship. With an outgoing president occupying the office, the centre is disintegrating and taking along with it the critical leader of society that the ANC should always defend. As the succession moves to other regions of the ANC, the opposites of renewal and disintegration will also be competing for the ANC. CUT!!