More than a third of ANC branches have failed to nominate candidates for next year’s elections, ringing alarm bells in the party’s upper ranks and sparking a standoff between senior leaders over the ANC’s prospects for the poll.
The inactive branches, and at least three recent opinion polls pegging projected ANC support at less than 50%, are among the warning signs that senior party officials say the ANC will ignore at its peril.
The elections are shaping up as the country’s tightest since 1994, with opposition parties growing in confidence that they can topple the ANC and replace it with a broad-based coalition.
The dire state of the ANC was highlighted at a special national executive committee (NEC) meeting held this week. It heard that disillusionment with the party has spread to its lower structures, as hundreds of branches could not meet to nominate candidates to send to parliament.
The frank assessment was contained in a report by the party’s electoral committee, chaired by former president Kgalema Motlanthe.
Party insiders who attended Wednesday night’s meeting say the electoral committee revealed that only 2,533 branches submitted lists while more than 1,000 could not do so. The ANC had a total of 3,942 branches before last year’s national conference.
The meeting also heard that in some areas party volunteers had failed to show up to help to galvanise potential voters during the voter-registration drive last weekend.
An NEC member who attended the meeting said human settlements minister Mmamoloko Kubayi and former Limpopo education MEC Polly Boshielo were critical of the party’s state of preparedness for the elections.
“Mmamoloko said some of the issues [in the report] are consistent with what we see on the ground as we do election work. She said we must put mechanisms in place for us to have a fighting chance in the election.”
Boshielo warned that unhappiness with the party had now spread to its structures.
“She said we’re not doing well. She said our volunteers are running away from us. Everybody is running away from us,” the NEC source said.
“We had voter registration last week and we did not do well. She said we did not do well because some of the processes are causing problems. People are not called to interviews and they disengage.
“She said the NEC should not shoot the messenger by criticising the report. She said people are rejecting us, and that’s a fact.”
Kubayi and Boshielo declined to comment.
The party relies on its branches in election campaigns as local leaders form part of its election machinery that helps it to reach all parts of the country.
She [Boshielo] said we’re not doing well. She said our volunteers are running away from us. Everybody is running away from us
— NEC source
While the party’s woes will encourage ANC opponents, it is normal for activity levels to drop in ANC branches after an elective conference. In past elections, party structures have kicked into gear only in the months immediately preceding the vote. But it is the scale of the implosion this time around that is worrying senior leaders.
Party leaders quoted Chief Livhuwani Matsila, the secretary of the electoral committee, as having told the meeting “broader analysis” of the participation of ANC branches and members was needed as the party prepared for its most difficult electoral challenge yet.
“In terms of planning, this information is vital in terms of where do we strengthen and improve our effort going forward. If we want to build the organisation, it gives us an indication of what should be done,” Matsila told the meeting.
The NEC sources said ANC KwaZulu-Natal secretary Bheki Mtolo had sought to explain why ANC branches sprang into life ahead of an elective conference; it was because party leaders funded them to ensure they would be elected.
“He said leaders have no interest in the [list] nomination process because they know the party will intervene if their names don’t make it,” one source said.
Mtolo told the meeting branches did not sit because they could not raise the necessary funding themselves, but in the case of elective conferences, party leaders stepped in. “He said if an elective conference was to be called next year, all the branches will be in good standing.”
Mtolo declined to comment and accused the Sunday Times of trying “to make me your source”.
The ANC's internal challenges are surfacing amid recent opinion polls that have highlighted a continuing fall in support for the ruling party, and growing support for the DA-headed multiparty charter (MPC).
A poll in October by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) found 45% of respondents would vote ANC, down from 52% in March. The MPC would attract 31%, up from 24% in March.
Another poll, conducted by the Brenthurst Foundation in conjunction with the SABI Strategy Group, put ANC support at 48% and the MPC at 36%. And an Ipsos poll gave the ANC 43% support, the DA 20% and the EFF 18%.
In all of the polls the ANC fell short of the 50% needed to form a government on its own.
The poll results have encouraged the MPC, whose financial backers in the private sector are said to be casting about for a new, nationally acceptable presidential candidate to take on the ANC. The name of former FirstRand chair Roger Jardine has been mentioned in this respect. Jardine recently quit his FirstRand post and has also resigned as CEO of Primedia.
The polls indicated that the “Ramaphosa factor”, which boosted support for the ANC in the 2021 local elections, may have lost its gloss as the president’s popularity wanes.
The SRF poll found that former president Thabo Mbeki is more popular than Ramaphosa, with 57% of respondents favouring him, up from 53% in March. Ramaphosa won the approval of 44% of respondents.
In the same NEC meeting, some ANC leaders accused Motlanthe’s committee of encroaching on secretary-general Fikile Mbalula’s mandate by delivering what they said resembled an organisational report.
Among the poorly performing provinces was KwaZulu-Natal, the province with the most party members, where only 37% of branches participated in nominating candidates for parliament. It was among the bottom three provinces in terms of branches that nominated candidates for the provincial legislature.
ANC branches are supposed to produce a national list of 200 candidates for parliament and each province should produce a provincial-to-national list of between five and 50 candidates for parliament, depending on the number of registered voters in the province.
There are also nine provincial legislature lists of a minimum of 30 and a maximum of 80 candidates, depending on the size of the population, and premier candidates must also be named.
NEC sources said Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape had performed well in the nomination process, all doing better than the electoral committee’s baseline of 70% (Limpopo achieved 82%).
North West, Gauteng and Eastern Cape (59%) were below 70% but were still better than the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.
Matsila is said to have warned that if the NEC does not intervene, the dismal showing by branches could spell disaster for the ANC’s campaign ahead of the elections, said party leaders.
“The NEC should take serious note of the low achievement of branch nomination results by the ANC in the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape and instruct the provincial executive committees in these provinces to fully account for this performance during the 2024 candidate selection process,” reads the report.
While the electoral committee argued that its recommendations were meant to assist the party improve and strengthen where there are weaknesses, they did not go down well with a number of NEC members.
One of the sticking points was the committee's use of the total number of branches per province as a baseline and benchmark for reporting to analyse the overall participation of the ANC branches and members in the process.
Only verified and qualified branches participate in the branch nomination process.
Matsila is believed to have told the meeting that the analysis of overall participation of branches and membership in the selection process was a key indicator of the functionality of the structures of the ANC within the broader political landscape.
A number of ANC leaders, including ANC Youth League president Collen Malatji, league secretary-general Mtuwoxolo Ngudle and Gauteng provincial secretary TK Nciza, were among those who said Matsila had overreached the scope of the electoral committee. Malatji and Ncinza refused to comment.
An NEC member confirmed that provincial secretaries met with the electoral committee a day before the NEC meeting to explain the nuances of branch nominations, but Matsila declined to change his report.
Mbalula is said to have agreed with those who questioned the report, saying several meetings had been held with the electoral committee. But Mbalula told the Sunday Times it had been misled.
Matsila told the Sunday Times the committee's report had been accepted by the NEC meeting.
“On the issue of overstepping or overreaching, that was clarified very well to say we don’t make fundamental decisions, our role was to present the report and make recommendations, which were wholly adopted,” he said.
Other leaders, such as electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, ex-deputy minister of public enterprises Phumulo Masualle and ANC head of elections Mdumiseni Ntuli, pleaded with the NEC to put the data from the committee to good use. Ntuli declined to comment.
A party leader quoted Ramokgopa as saying the ANC should be worried about the figures coming out of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, which are expected to be the main battlegrounds in next year’s elections.
“He said the data shows that provinces like the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo give the best opportunity to reach 50% in the elections. He said the report presents a detailed data about the health of the organisation.”
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