The journey towards the
16th of December 2027 ANC National Elective Conference begins in December 2024
at the four influential regions of Limpopo Province. With a 74% outcome at the
2024 National and Provincial elections, which might have arguably saved the ANC
from garnering the 40% saving grace outcome, Limpopo is poised to dictate the
cadence of who ultimately succeeds Cyril Ramaphosa, the outgoing ANC
President. 

The
ANC faces one of its existential resilience-defining sub-national conferences
since announcing its inarguably illusive and ambitious renewal programme. Never
has it faced a conference with weakened national voter support, an emboldened
opposition complex that now has a potential alternative to itself in the MK
Party-led progressive caucus and an ascending substrate of the liberal
order defending influential leaders within its ranks. The ideological contest
between the left and right within the ANC threatens the disintegration of its
electoral juggernaut anchored by the tripartite alliance. The Communist Party
and COSATU are unsettled in the alliance, and calls for its review might be a
proxy arrangement for a divorce discussion. 


The
limping national numbers of the ANC, the unpredictable and identity politics
influenced Kwa-Zulu Natal, the burden of corruption and state capture
over the ANC’s reputation, and funding of opposition to the ANC are its new realities. Capital (as a
propeller of its historical adversaries from within parties to the right of
what defines the ANC) will make all contests for regional leadership before
2027 a purchasable affair. Unlike in Zimbabwe, where the ZANU-PF was targeted
with the most sophisticated regime change onslaught, in South Africa, the
strategy is to change the elements of influence within the politically dominant
ANC. 


To
the extent that the ANC remains less and less of a threat to the established
templates of economic dominance and the continued hold over the liberal
order by the West and its cohorts within China and Russia, the ANC will be allowed
to lead governing coalitions at all critical jurisdictions of South Africa. The
Limpopo regional elections will be the first signs of where the succession scales are
tilting towards. With established convention favouring a Limpopo-endorsable
candidate,  Deputy President Paul Mashatile, the contest is poised to be about the other six of the top seven positions except that of President of the ANC. 

The
availability of the position of the ANC President, occasioned by the two-term
only rule, comes with the challenge of making the contest a one-horse race.
The managed rise to the centre of Paul Mashatile, within a less hostile right
of the centre opposition complex to the GNU and an indifferent left of the
centre GNU opposition complex, makes the path to 16 December 2027 less
treacherous for a Paul Mashatile ANC leadership.  Based on the inarguable commitment of Paul Mashatile to rebuild the ANC to its former glory and
the apparent absence of a formidable candidate to contest him, the liberation
promises in the preamble of the RSA Constitution are safer with a Mashatile ANC
Presidency. Having been at the centre of the coalition negotiations and summit
in the Western Cape before May 2024, the GNU can arguably be attributed to the
statecraft Mashatile displayed during the threading of the current coalition
arrangements. It is only the murmurings about corruption related allegations on his name that might jeopardise his march to the ANC’s high office. 

With
the calculus of the MK Party being an unknown and yet a definite factor to neutralise, the strategic boldness that Paul Mashatile has displayed in
dealing with the new opposition complex’s leadership in the past is an asset to
how the ANC navigates its succession battles towards 2027. The ANC finds itself
entering what might be a treacherous succession battle. It is facing external adversaries with
a propensity to harvest its succession battle wounded. Internally, the ANC’s
structural dysfunctions, with disarray branches as the apex indicator, have
made its power erratic and unreliable, practically inviting the
risky criminal element within it and its shrewd funders to place dangerous
leadership bets with potentially catastrophic effects on its liberation
mission.

The
succession battles might compromise the tasks of governing where the ANC is
still in charge. With the economy not growing fast enough to relieve the state
as the economy, the contest to control the public purse will make leading the
ANC the biggest prize of politics. The now-in-mute mode integrity committee,
which has been silent on those named in several reports, is a dysfunction whose
impact will undermine progress against corruption and state capture. The prize
of regional leadership contestation is the dysfunctional municipalities the AG
has already pronounced on the depth of the crisis. The bottom line is that
the ANC needs, within itself, additional capability to meet its existential
threats towards every election, but the size of quality it has is a drop in the
quantity it requires. Except for the leadership supply-side challenges in
the broader national education system, the ANC’s political education schools
might be trained on theories irrelevant to what it needs its next cohort of
leaders to know. 


As
these battles continue to wreak havoc on the internal stability of the ANC, the
opposition gets emboldened in its belief that the future belongs to them. The
impunity of responses to the member integrity management system has had the ANC
descending to a nest of bickering, incivility, and brinkmanship. With an
outgoing president occupying the office, the centre is disintegrating and
taking along with it the critical leader of society that the ANC should always
defend. As the succession moves to other regions of the ANC, the opposites of renewal and disintegration will also be competing for the ANC. CUT!!