"To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer..." William Shakespeare
The question follows me into
conversations, WhatsApp groups, family gatherings and the quiet courtroom of my
own conscience: after everything, would I still vote for the ANC? My answer is
yes—not because I am blind, satisfied or willing to grant the movement an easy
pass. I would vote ANC because none of the available alternatives has yet
persuaded me that it can govern more justly, more coherently or with a deeper
commitment to the social transformation South Africa still requires. The pain I
know is real; but I also know its causes, and I still believe it can be
disciplined into renewal.
It is difficult—almost
unthinkable—to decide South Africa’s future while drifting into a trance about
its past. Yet we cannot ignore that we now inhabit a fundamentally altered
political landscape: one in which new parties, including some animated by toxic
ideas, can more readily reshape the country we have known. The past must
therefore inform our judgement without imprisoning it, just as the novelty of
the present must not seduce us into treating every alternative as progress.
The strongest case against my own vote
Let me begin with the strongest
case against my own conclusion. There are compelling, though always evolving,
reasons not to vote ANC either way. In Tshwane, I have already lived under a
government led by another party. What once seemed politically unimaginable
became ordinary at the municipal level. I watched the ANC lose power, sit in
opposition, and discover, through able politicians such as Dr Kgoši Maepa, that
the opposition benches could exercise real talent. That experience confirmed a
democratic truth: history may explain a party’s claim to public trust, but it
can never exempt that party from accountability. No organisation is entitled to
govern indefinitely on yesterday’s credentials.
An insider’s scrutiny
Nor do I approach the ballot as
a sentimental tourist. I have put uncomfortable questions to former comrades,
to those who recruited me at a tender age into the unmentionable work of being
ANC, to mentors who shaped my political journey, and to senior leaders, several
of whom signed the 101 veterans’ pledge expressing deeper discontent. I tested
my discontent-frustration-anger continuum against memory, memory against
reason, and reason against the choices actually available on the ballot. With
the ANC, a nostalgic self is always in the room; but nostalgia cannot be
allowed to vote alone. The cognitive self—the self that weighs evidence,
consequences and alternatives—must also enter the booth. Mine sees the voting
booths with the ANC as a permanent background that's hard to discount.
As an ANC complex person, I know
the movement from inside: its rituals and contradictions. I know the branch
meeting that starts late yet still carries the memory of sacrifice. I know the
comrade who quotes Strategy and Tactics with conviction
but cannot explain why a streetlight remains broken. I know the temptation to
confuse organisational loyalty with silence—and the greater danger of
surrendering the organisation to those who profit from that silence. I know
criminals who call every member “leadership” to elicit a reciprocal response,
to claim an undeserved title. I also know people who do not deserve to be
called comrade yet introduce themselves by insisting, “I am Comrade So-and-so.”
My criticism therefore comes not from outside the fence, but from inside the
yard and, in several instances, from the kitchen itself.
The “personality-based ANC” claim
At times, even the loyal insider
in me is tempted by the MKP claim that what stands before us is no longer the
ANC of Oliver Tambo, but a “personality-based ANC”: a narrowed, managerial, and
internally anaesthetised formation that has traded movement debate for
administrative messaging. The claim resonates because it names what many
comrades whisper—that the ANC can feel less like a deliberative movement and
more like a guarded institution, anxious to manage dissent rather than think
through it.
Yet the narrative becomes less
convincing when it treats one leader as the source of failures that are older,
wider and more deeply embedded in the organisation. If the ANC claims the
heroism of the Reverend Langalibalele Dube generation that sought inclusion,
not revolutionary change, it should embrace that of all its leaders whose
programs have always been responsive to the context each leader finds themself
in. It contains sprouts of truth, but not enough truth to carry the weight of
its conclusion.
Why the anger is justified
The main reason many opposed
voting for the ANC is its recent poor service delivery. Issues like township
dirt, Hammanskraal’s water shortage, potholes that act like small rivers, the
cancellation of beneficial projects like free WiFi in Tshwane, and an
underconnected public transport system highlight ongoing problems. These are
not just minor annoyances but daily signs of a government that promises
progress while citizens face constant hardship. Despite these issues, Tshwane
remains a pleasant place to live, thanks to the enduring humanism rooted in
post-apartheid principles that celebrate our freedom from colonialism and
apartheid. For that, the ANC is omnipresent, and my logic finds it hard to
ignore.
The second reason
is political decay. Internal factions have distorted councillor selection,
including undermining its own choices of who should lead without providing
credible alternatives. Youth unemployment has made political office look like a
career path rather than a public duty. Too many comrades answer structural
questions with conference postponements, slogans, and the promise that “policy”
will one day arrive like rain after drought.
More worrying still is the
dearth of discourse. The ANC we grew up in once took ideas seriously enough to
argue fiercely about them: the national democratic revolution, the state,
colonialism of a special type, class forces, non-racialism, constitutionalism,
internationalism, cadre policy, industrial strategy, and local government as a
site of transformation. Today, too many gatherings confuse attendance with
thought and slogans with analysis. The branch is often present, but the branch
as a school of politics is absent. Without discourse, renewal becomes choreography;
without theory, discipline becomes obedience; without honest argument, unity
becomes a lid placed over decay.
The third reason
is the silence on the big questions that will decide the November 2026 local
government election and the future of municipalities:
- Will the ANC in Tshwane, or in any
municipal jurisdiction, be prepared, after the November 2026 local
government elections, to enter into a coalition if voters again deny it an
outright mandate, as they did in 2021?
- What will the ANC’s November 2026 offer
say about the local state fiscus outside the electricity-based revenue
model that shaped modern-day Tshwane and is about to be ringfenced away?
- Why is the emerging November 2026
campaign still not speaking with sufficient seriousness about the water
and energy security threats facing Tshwane and local government in
general?
- How is it that the campaign is silent on
the development of one national plan anchored on the Municipal Government
integrated development planning process undergirded by a functioning
intergovernmental relations process, also called the DDM?
- How will local government function if its
Bulk Electricity and Water Authority status is threatened by the
concretising national policy shift on the so-called network industries
restructuring program?
- Will the unbundling of these sectors into
generation, transmission and distribution safeguard the sustainability of
the municipal fiscus, and by extension its mandate to provide democratic
and accountable government to local communities?
These questions did not receive
the seriousness they deserved. At best, I was offered the familiar sanctuary of
the “next policy conference”. That is why a reasonable person may conclude that
the ANC deserves punishment, perhaps even a season out of power.
The Madlanga shadow
The Madlanga Commission
revelations have only deepened this discouragement. Testimony and reporting
around the inquiry have placed before the country allegations of organised
crime, political interference and institutional failures across the criminal justice
system. The details are not merely embarrassing; they are spiritually corrosive
for anyone who still believes the ANC cause should mean ethical power, public
accountability, and the protection of democratic institutions. Even where
allegations remain untested, and fairness must be preserved, the public record
is enough to make any honest comrade pause.
Inside the ANC, one learns that
the movement is never only what appears on a poster. It is the liberation
archive, the organisational machine, the patronage battlefield, the moral
community, the succession arena, and the wounded promise of a better life, all
at once. To be an insider is to live with that unbearable simultaneity. It is
to know that the same organisation that can produce courageous public servants
can also shelter mediocrity; that slates, gatekeeping, and procedural theatre
can also capture the same branch that can mobilise low-income people.
Why a ballot is not therapy
But voting is not therapy, and
the ballot is not merely an instrument for punishing disappointment. It is a
choice among available vehicles for public power, judged not only by the anger
they attract but by the society they can build. This is where my answer becomes
deliberately provocative: I would still vote ANC because abandoning the
movement that helped create democratic local government is not automatically
the same as rescuing local government. Change of party is not, by itself,
change of state capacity, purpose or developmental direction.
Even here, however, I refuse the
comfort of desertion. The MKP narrative is powerful because it trades on a
genuine wound, but it is too neat. It asks me to believe that the ANC’s crisis
can be reduced to one man, one faction, one presidency and one convenient
label. I cannot accept that. The crisis is deeper than Ramaphosa, older than
Ramaphosa and more structural than any president’s personality. Attributing the
movement’s collapse of discourse, ethical drift, and organisational hollowing
to a “Ramaphosa ANC” absolves too many of us. It permits yesterday’s failures
to return disguised as today’s purity, when renewal requires collective
responsibility rather than a change of slogan.
Neither worship nor burial
That is why I reject the lazy
purity of both extremes: the insider who commands, “Defend the ANC at all
costs,” and the outsider who declares, “Bury it and be done.” Both positions
are emotionally satisfying and intellectually easy. The harder, more responsible
choice is to remain inside with open eyes: to defend the historic mission while
indicting present failures; to demand that renewal cease to be a conference
slogan and become a daily struggle over ethical candidates, policy seriousness,
municipal competence, organisational democracy and the movement’s relationship
with the state.
An elder whom I regularly visit
for wisdom once answered my frustration with a question sharper than my
complaint: “Do you cease to be who you are because those who lead you make
mistakes? If a political institution has parented your political consciousness
beyond what formal education could teach, do you discard it whenever you
disagree with its conduct?” His point was not that the ANC should be
worshipped, excused or protected from consequences. Political identity is not a
disposable garment; it carries a duty of maintenance, correction, and renewal.
If the ANC helped bring democratic South Africa into being, then my vote is not
a love letter to its failures. It demands that an organisation central to the
birth of democracy recover the discipline, ethics and competence required to
serve it.
A watchful vote
My vote, therefore, is neither
innocent nor unconditional. It is watchful, demanding and impatient. I vote ANC
because its historic project still addresses South Africa’s social question
more deeply than the electoral anger of the moment. I vote ANC because a
municipality cannot be reduced to billing systems and clean pavements,
indispensable as those are; it must also be an instrument of redistribution,
spatial repair, democratic participation and social provision. I vote ANC
because water and energy are basic conditions of dignity, not merely network
commodities to be repackaged for those who can afford them. The vote is
justified only if it strengthens the struggle to make those commitments govern
everyday municipal practice.
What the ANC-led state built
And I vote ANC because its
monumental achievements since the democratic constitutional settlement took
institutional form from 1996 onwards are not matters of nostalgia or partisan
mythology; they are embedded in South Africa's institutional and social reconstruction.
Under ANC-led government, constitutional democracy was consolidated, the
apartheid subject was transformed into a rights-bearing citizen, and millions
previously treated as strangers in their own country were incorporated into a
democratic state committed—however imperfectly—to dignity, equality and social
justice. The ANC did not merely inherit a country; it led the remaking of its
constitutional order, public institutions and social compact on foundations
radically different from those of apartheid.
The democratic expansion of
electrification, piped water, sanitation, formal housing, social grants, no-fee
schooling, public health infrastructure and developmental local government
stands among the most consequential programmes of social transformation in
modern South African history. These advances were neither accidental nor
administratively inevitable: they flowed from a deliberate political project to
use democratic power to reverse inherited exclusion and extend the material
substance of citizenship to millions. The gains remain incomplete, uneven and
too often weakened by poor administration, but they transformed life chances on
a vast scale. The numbers deserve to be stated plainly.
Services that outran population growth
Our
population grew from about 40 million in the mid-1990s to roughly 63 million
today. Services had to outrun that growth, and they did. Households using
electricity for lighting rose from 58% in 1996 to 95% in 2022. Those with piped
water inside the home rose from 32% in 2001 to 60% in 2022. Access to improved
sanitation climbed from 62% in 2002 to 83% in 2022. Each of these gains was
made against a rising head-count, which means the state was not merely
maintaining a standard; it was extending one to millions of new households
every year.
Education and human capability
The
same is true of human capability. Adults with no schooling fell from 19% to 7%.
Degree holders rose from 649,000 to nearly 3 million, and Black graduates from
188,000 to 1.7 million. That is not a statistic about buildings; it is a
statistic about whole families whose children now read, qualify and compete in
rooms their parents were barred from entering.
Housing, grants and health
Add to
this about 5 million housing opportunities delivered, and 26.5 million grant
beneficiaries, nearly 13 million of them children. Life expectancy recovered
from about 52 at the height of the AIDS pandemic to nearly 67, through the
world’s largest antiretroviral programme. A state that keeps millions of
children fed and millions of patients alive is doing more than administering;
it is giving practical meaning to the Constitution’s promise of dignity.
Connectivity, growth and green investment
Nor is
this only a story of the poor being reached. Eight in ten South Africans are
now online, with nearly two mobile connections per person. The real economy is
about 85% bigger than in 1994. And the REIPPPP, a state-designed programme, has
procured more than 8GW of renewable capacity across its first six bid windows;
with the preferred bidders of the seventh window, the pipeline passes 12GW. It
has brought private capital into the country’s power system. That is what a
developmental state looks like when it works: it sets the terms, and investment
follows.
A record built, not luck
None
of this was luck. It was built by an ANC-led state, with business at the table,
out of a sanctions-era wreckage. A movement that drove electricity access from
apartheid-era exclusion to 95% of households, widened access to water and
sanitation, expanded housing and education, and constructed one of the
developing world’s most extensive social protection systems cannot honestly be
reduced to a story of decay. This record does not absolve the ANC of present
failure; it makes that failure more intolerable, because the movement has
already demonstrated that a capable democratic state can alter the lives of
people with low incomes at scale.
Fatigue is real, but so is progress
The
fatigue is real. Unemployment is real. Failing municipalities are real, and we
should say so. But tiredness must not blind us. Thirty years ago, millions had
no lights, no water in the yard, no access to basic healthcare. Today they do.
Whoever tells you nothing changed wants you to hate your own progress.
A
pothole trends for three days. 5 million housing opportunities never trend at
all. Both are facts. Only one gets counted.
To
business: this market was built here. Talking it down is not analysis. It is a
short position on your own balance sheet.
The alternatives I examined
I have looked elsewhere. The EFF
offered rhetoric that touched some of my questions, but too much of its promise
remained theoretical. Other parties seemed comfortable with doctrinal shifts
that could weaken the municipal fiscus by removing water and electricity from
local government's revenue base, without offering a credible replacement. In
Tshwane, as elsewhere, coalition politics has demonstrated that removing the
ANC does not automatically produce coherence, stability or a developmental
state. Too often, it merely replaces familiar failures with fragmented
authority and a new confusion spoken in cleaner language.
When a vote for the ANC is justified
So yes, I should not vote ANC if
anger is my only standard, if the ballot is merely a whip, or if disappointment
is the full measure of politics. But I should vote ANC if the real question is
which political home still carries the ideological memory, organisational reach
and constitutional obligation to rebuild developmental local government. I
should vote ANC if renewal is something to be fought for inside the movement
rather than merely wished for outside it. And I should vote ANC if the task is
not to escape political pain, but to choose the terrain on which that pain can
still be converted into accountability, correction and public purpose.
This, then, is the insider’s
burden: to refuse the comforting fiction that the ANC is either a museum of
saints or a cartel of villains. We carry its victories and its sins in the same
political body, and therefore inherit a duty more exacting than loyalty and
more demanding than denunciation. The vote becomes not merely a preference, but
an instruction to conscience and organisation alike: do not outsource renewal
to cynics; do not reward decay with silence; do not confuse criticism with
betrayal; and do not mistake flight from the struggle for victory over its
causes. If the ANC is to ask again for the people’s trust, it must earn it—in
clean streets, safe water, functioning institutions, ethical candidates and a
state visibly restored to public purpose. My final choice must be understood
against that demanding standard, not nostalgia or sentiment.
A conditional mandate
That is why I will still vote
ANC in 2026, with my eyes fixed firmly on the 2029 horizon—not because I am
blind, satisfied or willing to grant the movement an easy pass, but because
none of the available alternatives has yet persuaded me that it can govern more
justly, more coherently or with a deeper commitment to the social
transformation South Africa still requires. Mine will therefore be a
conditional mandate, not a blank cheque: a vote for the movement’s recoverable
mission, tied to an uncompromising demand for ethical leadership, capable
government, intellectual renewal and measurable change in the daily lives of
the people. The pain I know is real, and the failures I have named cannot be
excused; but I still believe they can be disciplined into accountability,
correction and renewal. I will persuade others to make the same demanding
choice—not to rescue the ANC from accountability, but to rescue its
emancipatory purpose from those who have diminished it. My vote will not
proclaim that the ANC has arrived; it will issue a final, uncompromising
command that it return—to the people, to principle, to competence and to the
emancipatory promise from which it has neither the moral right nor the
political licence to retreat.
Lies
have short legs. I am ready for the debate.
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