Panyaza Lesufi, Gauteng premier and co-convenor of the ANC in the province. Photo: X
Panyaza Lesufi, Gauteng premier and co-convenor of the ANC in the province, said he will not stand for any of the party’s top seven national leadership positions at its 2027 elective conference and is considering a departure from frontline politics.
In an exclusive interview with the Mail & Guardian this week, Lesufi said he was exploring alternatives to a political career after nearly four decades in public life.
“My entire life has been politics. I’m looking at alternatives outside politics, but I don’t know which alternatives. I always tell people that I’m probably the only person on Mother Earth that has studied business administration at the master’s level, but I’ve never had practice in that space,” he said.
“I know nothing outside politics and I feel I can contribute better in other levels of society, it is something that is preoccupying me.”
Lesufi’s comments come amid some in Gauteng ANC circles calling for him to stand for a senior national post, including deputy president or secretary general, at the next national conference.
ANC Gauteng is backing deputy president Paul Mashatile for the ANC presidency at the 2027 national elective conference, and some provincial leaders are pushing for Lesufi to run for deputy president or secretary general.
Other factions in the ANC are rallying behind secretary general Fikile Mbalula as a potential candidate for either of the top two positions.
Lesufi’s withdrawal from contesting for the provincial chair could open the door for rivals, including Lebohang Maile, whom he narrowly defeated at the 2022 Gauteng provincial conference.
The ANC’s support in Gauteng has sharply declined, falling from 50.19% in 2019 to 36.49% in the 2024 general election.
Lesufi attributed the losses not to opposition parties, but to internal divisions that have led to the formation of breakaway parties, including the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, the Congress of the People (Cope), and the United Democratic Movement (UDM).
“We are not losing votes to ActionSA, Build One South Africa, Rise Mzansi or the Democratic Alliance, the numbers are minimal there.
“The large chunk of our support is people that are choosing some faction of the ANC — radical economic transformation through MK; economic emancipation through EFF; but the base remains intact. It makes it easy for the ANC if we can fine-tune our problems.”
Mbalula has warned ANC members not to be preoccupied with who becomes the leader of the party in 2027. Instead, he said, they should focus on rebuilding the ANC after last year’s dramatic electoral decline.
He has stated publicly that anyone expressing a desire to contest the conference would be suppressed by his office.
Mbalula has also been accused of trying to stifle Lesufi’s popularity. Members have referenced the recent reconfiguration of the ANC’s Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal executive, who were not supportive of his presidential ambitions, as proof of this.
Lesufi said that despite the 2024 electoral setback, he still believed the ANC in the province would dust itself off and get its majority back.
The provincial decline has been attributed to the formation of the MK party, led by former ANC and state president, Jacob Zuma. It received just over 14% of the vote in 2024.
Said Lesufi: “Just check on the number of registered voters, which was 27 million; it is only 16 million people that voted in the last elections, an indication that almost half of South Africans do not see an alternative to the ANC.
“They would rather stay at home than vote for another political party. If we can fix our problems, become relevant, I am quite convinced that we can come back and go beyond 50%.
“We are very strong on non-racialism, we are very strong on gender parity, we are very strong on transformation and extremely strong on economic solutions, and all the other political parties can’t match us.
“All the other parties have been winning elections based on ethnic rhetoric. You check the other political parties that have gained support from the Patriotic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters, it’s a certain language or certain grouping that maintains the non-racial character.”
With ANC regional conferences already having begun in some provinces, Lesufi warned members not to use them as a tool to further divide the organisation.
Some members have suggested that the party should rather have regional conferences after the 2026 local government elections so that they went to the elections united rather than divided by the elective conference.
A recurring pattern in the ANC is that whichever slate wins a conference often deepens internal divisions by sidelining or purging members aligned with the losing slate.
“If conferences deepen in factionalism, they [hamper the growth of the organisation]. We don’t need that, but we must also agree that other political parties that came out of the ANC, they came out because the waiting list is too long and they would rather join another political party and be a member overnight of parliament,” he said.
“South Africans have also demonstrated that they can even vote for someone who is not democratically elected. Check ActionSA, have you ever gone to a conference of ActionSA, MK party, have you gone to the conference?
“The internal democratic processes of the ANC are so dynamic that we have to renew the organisation and get new ideas because if we don’t go to conferences, it means that we are going to be stuck with a certain grouping of leadership that may run out of ideas.”