The forthcoming ANC elective conference will perhaps be the most crucial since the party's unbanning.
It is the conference that will decide whether the party reclaims its role as leader of society or it goes the route of other liberation movements that lost legitimacy, and eventually lost power.
During the US general election of 2000, outgoing president Bill Clinton suggested to Nelson Mandela that his Democratic Party might lose the election.
His reasoning was that US voters were divided into three groups - the Democrats, constituting 40% of the electorate, the Republican Party, also at 40%, and independents, who accounted for the rest.
Clinton suggested that it was the independents, often fed up with whichever party had been in power for two terms, who decided who would occupy the White House.
As Clinton predicted, his deputy Al Gore lost to the inarticulate governor of Texas, George W Bush.
Clinton's analysis of voter habits and the permutations of the US electorate has distinct lessons for South Africa.
First, after two terms voters get tired of an incumbent president.
Even if there was no catalogue of corruption and state capture allegations involving President Jacob Zuma, we would still be tired of him now.
We were tired of former president Thabo Mbeki this time 10 years ago. Many observers go further to suggest that Zuma was elected ANC president in 2007 because he was the antithesis of Mbeki.
The second lesson in Clinton's analysis is that an election is often decided by a single voter group.
In our context an election is decided by the roughly 60% who religiously vote for the ANC. The next group is the approximately 20% of voters who support the opposition DA.
The remaining 20% is split between the smaller parties.
Recent by-election results suggest that the ANC is not bleeding support as much as opposition parties would have us believe.
Juju's path to the top
A recent opinion poll suggests that on its current trajectory the ANC might dip below 50% in the 2019 election; the worst-case scenario being that it obtains 45% of the vote.
In this event, all it would need is a coalition partner with more than 5%, which would make the EFF the most likely potential ANC partner.
The EFF's long-term strategy remains to pummel the ANC brand until it is no longer electable. With many viewing the EFF as an ANC faction in exile, it would easily inherit ANC voters, and EFF leader Julius Malema would fulfil his prediction of becoming the country's president.
Until then, a deputy president position for Malema in a coalition government and a few cabinet posts would help the red berets acquire executive experience and access to state power.
Another possible scenario is that the ANC could split if its December elective conference produces a triumphalist leadership that purges the defeated faction.
However, opposition parties, especially the DA, have made it possible for the ANC to stay afloat despite Zuma's damage to its reputation.
The sorry spectacle that is the Nelson Mandela Bay coalition government, for example, is enough to make ANC voters think twice before leaving the party.
Western Cape premier Helen Zille has also been frustrating the DA's efforts to win over black voters. Her tweets and her defence of them have enabled ANC spin doctors to portray the party as racist and its leader Mmusi Maimane as a hapless stooge.
It does not help that he lacks street cred.
All indications are that a united ANC, or one of its factions, will lead the government after the general election in 2019. This means that the next president of the republic will most likely emerge from the current ANC presidential hopefuls.
If the December elective conference is won by a faction that voters associate with corruption, it would be the beginning of the end for the 105-year-old behemoth.
This is so because Zuma is emerging as the main issue around which the contest will take place. It does seem that the ANC has not learnt much from the lessons of Polokwane 2007.
Zuma, the great divider, has split the membership into two camps. That presents the possibility that the ANC might elect the next leadership purely as a referendum on Zuma.
That would be to overly elevate the man.
In less than three months Zuma will be irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things. If he stays on as the country's president after the conference he will be a lame duck. Only chaos or anarchy can keep Zuma relevant then.
Another downside of making Zuma the central issue is that not much emphasis is placed on what the candidates to succeed him are promising to do if elected ANC leader and later head of government.
The media have spent little time interrogating priorities other than combating corruption, namely education, health, job creation and rural development. They have largely ignored party supporters, who are the real power behind the ANC's dominance. Even SABC News has not been helpful in lending a voice to these voters, their aspirations and concerns.
Civil society has apparently decided to sit this election out, perhaps dismissing it as an internal party event.
Business must ensure that the candidates who are nominated in December are well funded, to remove the influence of special interests in the election of ANC leaders.
The media have the ability to force robust debates between the leading candidates so that a worthy winner can emerge from an open, democratic process.
More importantly, the 60% who choose a government for South Africa must be given adequate opportunities to make their wishes known to the candidates and to the entire population.
• Nkosi is a public relations strategist and a political consultant
