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The Renewal runway might be shortening: In conversation with the liberation movement.

Since the 2017 ANC National Elective Conference, the beyond ANC consent about President Ramaphosa's leadership of the country has been the bedrock of its renewal program. But today, the ANC's relationship with its quest to continue controlling state power after the 2029 elections depends on its ambitious yet fragile and contested renewal program. With Ramaphosa on an irreversible exit lane and facing a Phala Phala-linked court judgement relating to his possible impeachment, there is a real risk of derailing the renewal program by a potential and fierce succession contest.


Suppose the succession contest wins the day. In that case, the consequences of the ANC's renewal will be profound, both for its ability to face the 2026 local government elections, its own 2027 internal elective conference, and, ultimately, the 2029 national elections. A revanchist, Jacob Zuma and his MK Party are, at the same time, increasing its influence over RSA politics. How the ANC handles its renewal program will always be a factor in determining foreign direct investment return demands by the investment community; this will, by default, make RSA borrowing costs higher than average.


Although Cyril Ramaphosa's inevitable exit from the positions of ANC and RSA president makes the succession battle open to the brave, the reality is that the ANC is facing a voter-induced existential threat unless it changes its current way of doing politics, and not just who leads it. The possibility that it might have squandered its opportunity to claw back into its traditional constituency, Blacks and Africans in particular, by entering into a coalition arrangement with its declared political adversaries led by the DA does not bode well for it to recover from the 40% it mustered in 2024.


The tripartite alliance's discontent about the GNU coalition arrangements should have been a wake-up call. It allowed the ANC to regain credibility, as the party workers could still trust it. Instead, the ANC allowed its cognitive elite to construe and drive coalition negotiation criteria, compromising its multi-decade-long revolutionary alliance. With a shrinking fallback political capital, the renewal program might tag along with the established decline in support trend, which started in the 2016 local government elections. This also complies with the winds of change driven by a history-defying youth demographic in the broader continental scheme.


Beyond Cyril Ramaphosa, the leadership of the ANC must be decisive in conceiving a strategy to deal with the risk of completely losing influence over the constituting of state power at the altar of a new opposition complex without the known actors. Integrated service delivery and job creation linked renewal programs must be developed to demonstrate the ANC's seriousness in holding on to power and continuing to create a national democratic society. The mitigation of the ANC's existential risks must be driven from within its established policies and conference resolutions, most of which resonate with the aspirations of most of its voter support. 


Since the 1994 democratic breakthrough, prosperity or a better life for all South Africans has been a critical pillar of South Africa's national interests. The institutional framework that came through with the 1996 Constitution created a legal basis for social and economic transformation to be a lawful program of any government of the day across the three spheres of government. The founding values of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which should be the cornerstone of the renewal process, must permeate how the ANC imagines itself as a recovered leader of society. In all its dealings with society, as it renews itself, the ANC must respect, protect, promote, and fulfil the entirety of the Bill of Rights. 


The renewal runway can only be extended by a conscious obligation to the policy frameworks the ANC has bequeathed to society. The freedoms it has ensured are guaranteed in society based on equality. It will require a renewed ANC that understands the asymmetries of access created by the now-recognised injustices of the past. Renewal is or should be more than just being knowledgeable about how great it used to be and how antagonistic it was to the system it is now part of. Renewal must be about something other than how theoretically sound a member is about being ANC. Still, it should instead be about what you do with the political power to advance the liberation promise in the Constitution you masterminded its acceptance by society through struggle. 


The airbrushing of ANC members and leadership integrity as a sub-context upon which the renewal program is anchored limits its runway. The thrust of renewal must be a shared commitment to ethical leadership and an unwavering pursuit of the rule of law as the basis of a rules-based RSA society. For the ANC, there is no time to waste. The liquidation of its support base is inextricably linked with its ability to fulfil its executive obligations, where it is given a mandate to govern. There are no historically justifiable reasons why it could not deliver on the minimum and fundamental socioeconomic liberation promises the Constitution guarantees will truncate the growing discontent about its track record thus far. This is notwithstanding the successes that are now normalised into a category of 'it was duty'; you don't reward a fish for being in the water.

The capability challenges of Africa's oldest liberation movement, and inarguably the lead political movement which influences post-colonial perceptions about the continent, have now morphed to be a significant component of matrices used to determine the prejudice premium the continent continues to pay in global financial markets. A renewal program with little to no respect for ICT and artificial intelligence innovation because it disrupts the benefits of chaotic membership data. The encryption of members of member systems as a substrate of ascending to influential party positions has become an innovation whose success might only allow the benefits of AI and data integrity management systems to be integrated into some of the political party value chain management systems. CUT!!!

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