Zuko Godlimpi says his generation can revive dying ANC

At the age of just 32 and with a possibly illustrious political career ahead of him, acting ANC national spokesperson Zuko Godlimpi admits that the prospect of inheriting a dying party keeps him up at night. 

The ANC’s electoral fortunes have been declining steadily since 2009, but the May 2024 elections dealt the party the biggest blow yet, cutting its share of the vote from 57% to 40%. 

Many have predicted that this was the beginning of the end for the more than 100 year old liberation movement.  

“Definitely, it keeps me and all of us up at night,” Godlimpi told the Sunday Times in an interview this week. 

But he contends that this is not the first time the ANC has found itself in a similar position. In the 1930s the party was on the brink of collapse and was saved by the then president AB Xuma, who introduced several reforms, including a framework for the constitution and the youth league. 

Godlimpi says perhaps his generation can emulate Xuma and resuscitate the wounded party. 

“It’s a challenge to us. It’s not so much that we are inheriting a dying party, we are actually in a position where we can emerge in history as that generation of leaders that recalibrated the ANC. But it depends on what we do.”  

Godlimpi, born in the Eastern Cape, is one of the youngest and arguably most powerful ANC leaders of his generation. 

Being a member of the national executive committee and national working committee of the ANC, a deputy minister, an MP and the party’s spokesperson, makes him an important figure at Luthuli House.

But he doesn’t seem to have allowed this to go to his head. 

He arrives at the party’s headquarters in central Johannesburg on Friday afternoon for our interview clad in full formal suit and immediately finds a corner to replace the formal white shirt and blazer with an ANC T-shirt. 

He had been attending a meeting wearing his hat as the deputy minister of trade, industry & competition. 

He briefly speaks about how much work is on his plate given the dozen roles he is playing in the party and government, but says he’s enjoying himself despite the daunting tasks.  

I’m very much a fan of organisational reform, that there must be a redesign of how the organisation functions.

—  ANC national spokesperson Zuko Godlimpi

Godlimpi is regarded as one of the few remaining intellectuals in the ANC, in whose hands the ANC is safe, being able to instantly and clearly articulate party and government policy positions. It would be easy to mistake him for a veteran who had served the party for decades. 

But there’s a big question to be faced: is all of this in vain? Are people like Godlimpi being handed a party on its deathbed, where their skills will go to waste? 

He doesn’t believe so. 

“One of my favourite presidents of the ANC is president AB Xuma. The ANC constitution we have now is an elaboration of the template that he designed. So the ANC that has a national working committee, a full time secretary-general, provinces structured the way they are, is a Xuma invention,” he says. 

“Xuma was elected president of the ANC when the ANC had been proclaimed dead after the disastrous period of the 1930s during the reign of president Pixley ka Isaka Seme.

“The ANC was quite decimated. President AB Xuma then came with major organisational reforms. That is why I’m very much a fan of organisational reform, that there must be a redesign of how the organisation functions. Not rhetorically but by changing the text of enforcement because that’s what Xuma then did. Redesigned a new constitution, engaged in nationwide travelling to engage prominent former leaders of the ANC to encourage them to come back to the ANC.”

He says his long elaboration on what Xuma was able to do was to make the point that the fortunes of the ANC lie in the hands of those who are currently elected to positions of power. 

“I’m raising all of this to say that whether the ANC dies now or does not depends on how we re-engage with the Xuma ethic of organisational redesign and redevelopment in a manner that is responsive to the problems of the time.”

Programmes such as the national dialogue that President Cyril Ramaphosa is planning are part and parcel of what the party ought to be doing to re-energise and regain the trust of South Africans. 

“If we get back into that tradition of how to recalibrate the ANC when it is almost dying we will get it right,” he said. 

But if ANC members and leaders behave as though all is well simply because the party is still in power through the government of national unity, then those who are writing its obituary will be proved to be correct. 

The party, he says, is greatly disconnected from society. He refers to his popular speech about what should constitute a branch in good standing — that it ought to play a role in the community’s everyday life, resolving people’s problems and not simply waiting for elections. 

He says the party’s handling of state affairs has also been found wanting and has to be corrected through action. 

If all of this doesn’t change, then the ANC might die. 

“The short of it is that the ANC might die or live depending on what it chooses to do,” he says. 

The changes have to be made now as “we don’t have the luxury of time”. 

“We have to move with speed because the first test case of a renewed ANC will have to be the 2026 local government elections,” he says.