Africa-Press – South-Africa. The ANC is at a crossroads, with the party’s integrity in serious doubt.
This is according to ANC deputy president David Mabuza, who delivered the party’s oganisational report on Saturday.
“We must acknowledge that the ANC is experiencing a crisis threatening its existence. We cannot expect to achieve any of our goals and regain the people’s trust if we fail to take the necessary actions,” he said.
Mabuza suggested that the party needed, “through concrete action”, to prove that it deserved the people’s confidence.
He cautioned the party about its declining electoral performance, saying the leadership should focus on strengthening coalition strategies, “as these have become our new reality”.
The conference should be preoccupied with the ANC’s decline in electoral fortunes, he said.
The ANC declined from 62% in 2014 to 57% in 2018 and also took a battering in the 2021 local government elections.
Mabuza told delegates that the ANC only had a majority in 174 of the 257 municipalities across the country.
“Where the ANC is in outright control, these are mainly the poorest municipalities. Many are not financially viable, which has a massive impact on our ability to deliver services and local development.”
He said that, apart from the declining electoral support for the ANC, low voter turnout was equally worrying.
During the last five years, the ANC had not managed to build a permanent professional electoral capacity at national, regional and provincial level offices, he said.
Coalition strategies had “become our new reality”, he said.
Mabuza stressed that, as a result of declining electoral support, the ANC had a smaller share of public funding for political parties.
He said the introduction of the Political Party Funding Act and the difficult economic environment had damaged the party’s funds.
The outgoing deputy president had to deliver the report because secretary-general Ace Magashule is suspended and his deputy Jessie Duarte died earlier this year.
Membership
Delivering a scathing organisational report to the conference on Saturday, Mabuza said the party’s membership had declined by 33% over the past 10 years.
In 2012, the ANC had recorded more than 1.2 million members, but as of 2022, it was at a low of 661 498, he said.
“Organising in urban areas is a major challenge for the ANC in all provinces. The bigger the concentration of people, the bigger the challenge, as the election results and membership figures indicate.”
The ANC bled most members in Mpumalanga, followed by the North West and the Free State. It had lost the least supporters in Limpopo, the report noted.
Even though the ANC had not grown in any of the provinces over the last 10 years, Mabuza applauded the new membership system as a mechanism to renew the party.
“The system brought positive developments in the ANC, but also exposed several negatives, and some disturbing ills in the organisation. The most disturbing features are the resistance of some members [who] disregard old practices that the system was built to eradicate. Even post the implementation of the new system, there are still remnants of the culture of gatekeeping and attempts at manipulation of the ANC processes,” he cautioned.
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