Premier Zamani Saul warns of an ANC crisis, calls for introspection and rebuilding ahead of 2026 and 2029 elections.
It may seem like a long time to the ANC’s 56th national elective conference in 2027 marking the end of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership in the embattled party, but early jostling for positions among its cadres has begun and is causing concern.
For Northern Cape premier Dr Zamani Saul, that the ANC was hammered in the 2024 polls, getting just 40%, calls for introspection and a break from its self-serving ways.
Saul said he was concerned about the danger for the government of national unity (GNU) should the ANC perform dismally in the 2026 local government elections, and over dwindling ANC electoral support.
He was also worried that the ANC national executive committee had become a stumbling block in efforts to rebuild and renew the party.
Some ANC leaders even looking at 2029
Saul, who cited the “reckless and adventurous behaviour” of some ANC leaders, confirmed that there were “people already projecting themselves for the 2029 national elective conference of the ANC”.
“Already there are some proposed leadership position lists which are making the rounds towards the 2029 ANC national elective conference.
“For me, that is the most adventurous and reckless behaviour and it is set to plunge the ANC into a crisis,” said Saul.
“What we should be doing now is to project ourselves to South Africans as a party that has learnt something from the past.
“We cannot have an ugly bloodletting national conference.
“We cannot have a national conference where the president will be disrupted whenever he presents the political report – a situation where the chair must plead with delegates to allow the president to speak.”
He said they needed to be able to present a completely different ANC – an ANC that inspires hope and which people can have confidence in. Saul said the starting point was “to prove to the people of the country that we can govern ourselves well”.
“You cannot expect people to have confidence in us if we cannot govern ourselves well.
“If we cannot do that, how could we govern the country well? It is not a time to talk about issues of leadership,” said Saul.
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ANC needs to rather look at restoring itself
The moment, he said, called for the party to “put measures in place to create resurgence within the ANC”.
Should the ANC fall below 40% in the upcoming local government elections, the party would “lose face and leadership” – putting the GNU “in serious jeopardy”.
Serving his second and final term as premier and ANC provincial chair, Saul said he had no plans to stand for any position at the ANC national elective conference.
“I am only concerned about how the ANC can be propelled to make a dramatic comeback,” he added. He said the ANC “has half the strength it had in 2004, when we got 70%”.
“Now we are 40%, which means in a period of about 20 years we have lost 20% of our electoral support.
“This represents a dramatic decline in electoral support. We have lost half of our voters,” Saul said. “We got six million now and in 2004 we got 11.6 million voters.”
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