ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula. Photo: Luba Lesolle/Gallo Images
ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula says the party leadership in KwaZulu-Natal cannot match the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party in the province and requires intervention.
“We are fighting a Ferrari there with a Conquest, we need to match a Ferrari with a flying machine that moves faster in seconds to surpass what is happening there. We have dropped to 17% and anyone else can not tell us we can not do anything about that,” Mbalula said on Monday, referring to the ANC’s sharp loss of support in the province in 29 May general elections.
“Those who thought they got the ANC to be weaker, we will rebuild it and we will come back. We are not going to surrender the ANC to anyone, Jacob Zuma or anyone. We will defend with ANC members on the ground the recovery of the ANC,” he told journalists in Boksburg, after a meeting of the party’s national working committee (NWC) and the KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee (PEC).
The party says it cannot be business as usual given the dismal election outcome in the province, where its support plunged from 54% in 2019 to 17% this year.
The national working committee held fact-finding missions in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng regarding how the ANC lost votes in both provinces. It has considered disbanding the provincial executive committees and replacing them with task teams in a bid to strengthen the ANC’s structures ahead of 2026 local government elections.
It has also considered the option of “augmenting” them by sending senior leaders to effectively take the reins in the province.
Mbalula said from an organisational point of view, “nothing is good” in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng and decisive leadership was needed for the party to recover.
“We have done a thorough job in terms of analysing these provinces and we are now in a better position to give them feedback, which we have done with KwaZulu-Natal. We are now going to do it with Gauteng.”
Some in the ANC believe that disbanding the provincial structures would only divide the party even further and that the national executive committee (NEC) should not be spared from the fallout of the dismal election, which saw the party lose its outright parliament majority for the first time.
Mbalula said the party had disbanded structures in the past when necessary.
“We are not going to fold arms and wait for the total extermination of the ANC. We are doing our jobs, our duty which we have been mandated by the national conference to exercise, rebuild and reorganise the ANC to respond to this bloodbath we are actually seeing here,” he said.
“We have passed the stage of feelings. What is important here is the defence of the revolution and the defence of the ANC. In doing that work, we have no friends. Our friendship is with the ANC. Whatever decision we take, we will live by it.”
Mbalula has gagged the provincial leaders from speaking to the media about the discussions of the national working committee or the possible disbandment.
But last week KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo pushed back against Luthuli House in a memorial lecture.
“The NEC led by [Cyril] Ramaphosa and Mbalula lost the country with 40%. They must take that responsibility. We are taking our own responsibility … of losing the province with 17%,” Mtolo said, adding that the poor performance in KwaZulu-Natal was symptomatic of a wider problem facing the ANC nationally.
He said internal divisions and a lack of accountability had left the party in disarray and warned that until leaders at all levels accepted their role in this decline, the ANC would struggle to regain the public’s confidence.
On Monday, Mbalula said Mtolo’s words meant nothing, saying that he as secretary general would speak on behalf of the ANC on this matter and that this had been explained to provincial leaders by deputy president Paul Mashatile at the start of the meeting.
“Anyone who crosses that line, will see to finish because the centre must hold,” Mbalula said. These are not unmandated reflections. This is a mandated position that SG goes and explains and I have done that.
“Anyone who speaks after me … we will take them to the cleaners in terms of the disciplinary structures of the ANC. Nobody has got a mandate to speak other than the secretary general on this matter.”