Is South Africa teetering into a post-ANC government? Thinking and weekend read.

There are questions that South Africans find difficult to answer about their politics. The most crucial question is whether the country has arrived at a post-ANC governing party state.  South Africa’s constitutional order is paraded, legitimately so, as one of the best in the world. As an order, it has been able to provide political stability for the past three decades. What has not been tested is its resilience in the event that there is no one party with the absolute political power to form a government. 

Like any good system, the order sent signals of the uncertainty that might come with a less than 50% of the votes threshold at the national government through the experience in local government. When political power started changing hands in most of the economic nodal points of RSA in 2016 and 2021, respectively, the constitutional order entered a continuous phase of uncertainty that culminated in the May 2024 moment. 

 

With the loss of absolute political control over more than 250 billion in assets directly managed by municipal councils, along with other billions held in trust for medical and retirement insurance, the total impact of political power shifts is still underestimated or even misjudged. Since the entire territory of the republic falls under municipal governance, the Gross Geographic Product of RSA has experienced political changes that have created structural uncertainties, which few expected to emerge so early in RSA's democratic development. 

 

It started to dawn that in those jurisdictions where no party met the more than 50% threshold, the fundamental challenge was who takes control. Coalition government became the order of the day, and post-ANC in power jurisdictions multiplied beyond the Western Cape Province. The intergovernmental relations context became qualitatively different, and intergovernmental grant budget rollovers, a symptom of IGR dysfunction, became the first indicator that public infrastructure decay was on the increase. 

 

When municipalities could not agree on budget allocations, coalition government deals of convenience were made, and sworn political enemies had unwritten pacts against the ANC; the playbook of coalition government in South Africa was being written. That this condition would arrive in the national sphere of government is an occurrence that does not seem to have been anticipated and adequately prepared for. Safe for the MK Party black swan shock, the scenario that the ANC would still be a more than 50% governing party was accurate. 

 

When the May 2024 moment landed, the truth about the ANC not being able to form government, and by default, with limited to no state power, dawned. South Africa looked to leaders who could see through the fog. The DA-led opposition complex, which had already pronounced on its readiness to work under a Ramaphosa Presidency, became a catalyst to concentrate state power for stability’s sake. It offered 20% of the vote as a confidence in supply to an otherwise weakened ANC with 40% and the burden of leading society through stable state power. 

 

The political landscape demanded leadership capable of anticipating the driving forces that are fundamentally transforming material conditions, then positioning itself to take the initiative first. With the MKP variable still echoing within the ANC, the complexity of potentially losing state power, coupled with ongoing succession disputes, left the ANC unable to fully utilise its inherent strengths—many of which could have fostered dissenting viewpoints—to effectively confront a predominantly DA-led opposition. Confronted with the reality of suffering a 17% decline in voter support and the loss of state power, the ANC faced a strategic setback. This situation, along with doubts about its ability to recover, encouraged its main GNU partners to leverage territorial advantages. 

 

Apart from societal perceptions of the ANC, ongoing revelations of dysfunction caused by its members, and the visible decline in public infrastructure, internal challenges within the organisation have become deeply ingrained subconscious barriers to recovery. A renewal that does not let go of the old can only recycle what should be left behind. 

 

What has not dawned on those who have political power slipping through their hands is that this is not about the core issues of service delivery, corruption and state capture, internal power struggles, succession battles, and factionalism. It is about the overall disagreements over the form, character, and trajectory of the democratic and constitutional order. This process of deterioration started a while ago, and those in the driving seat woke up when it was in an advanced state.

 

Some of the signs of decay started when the inclusivity of the democratic order was undermined by an uncontrollable appetite to exclude critical stakeholders from determining RSA’s destiny. Although the constitutional settlement recognises the injustices of the past, some of the political agreements buttressing the continuity of the spirit that underpinned the 1990-1996 settlement were undergoing systemic disregard and, as a result, are fraying.

 

The normative state, one of the preconditions for the stability of the democratic order, has been exhibiting signs of deterioration. Prerogative or arbitrary decision-making that undermined the principles of public administration and ethicalness in general has been on the rise, not just in the obvious operational spaces such as the public service, but has been entrenching itself on a large scale in local government.

 

Perhaps the first step is to recognise that 40% is a loss of state power, and it might be the beginning of an irreversible decline. The time to declare an organisational state of emergency might be now. Suspend all leadership contests and, by default, disputes. Govern the party with task teams. Incorporate renewal objectives into the performance framework. The National General Council should be about charting a way forward. Watch closely how society is evolving and what new member behaviours are emerging.

 

The truth is that resurrecting the ANC to its former self will be impossible. The political landscape is disrupted; unless the ANC leverages this disruption to its advantage, it will be destabilised. In dealing with this leadership, not only those who find themselves in the NEC but also in its broadest sense, must show restraint and recapture a degree of respect to regain their fractured reputation. This will require acute departures from how those sitting in positions to start acknowledging that politics is an elite activity and would require intense consultation with the ANC’s own elites.