Disbanding provincial leadership not the solution – Mbalula

Rushing to disband their poor performing provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng would not be the solution to ANC problems, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has said.

The problems the party faces, which led to its electoral decline, were deeper than just provincial leadership, he said.

There are bogus branches, Mbalula said, which were constituted ahead of the 2022 national conference which remained in place even during the party’s elections campaign. The ANC would have to probe all its branches to check whether or not they are in good standing as this could help the party better understand the state of its organisation instead of rushing to disband provincial executive committees (PECs).

Mbalula’s comments come ahead of the ANC’s fourth national executive committee (NEC) scheduled for end of August, which is expected to take a closer look into why the party performed poorly in the May general election, and who has to take the rap for the decline.

The party’s top brass is expected to zoom into KZN, Gauteng, Northern Cape and Mpumalanga, the provinces that saw a significant decline in the elections.

Some ANC leaders have been advocating for the disbandment of the PECs, especially in KZN and Gauteng. They want task teams to be installed which would take the party to the local government elections in 2026.

But Mbalula has made it clear he would not support such a move, as he says the party went into the elections aware of its troubles. “The ANC going into this election, it was very clear that we have weak structures, and there are various reasons why the organisation is weak on the ground. We started to see that with the selection process, with most of the branches, when we started to do things differently, they were responding differently.”

He said the party was inundated with complaints from its members who were questioning the legitimacy of the branch general meetings (BGMs) that sat to select public representatives. Because of factionalism and gatekeeping ahead of the national conference, BGMs were held without the knowledge of the full membership.

The ripple effect of this bogus process is now reflected in how the party performed in the elections, argued Mbalula.

If the branches were in good standing, with enough active members, the ANC would have performed better in the polls as these members would have hit the ground running during the campaign season. “Now, where is the reflection of that? Because if a branch is meeting every day and does its job, it knows what it is doing. It will not lead to political obliteration of the ANC on the ground.”

The ANC will now go on a countrywide tour to comb through each branch to ascertain its standing. A branch in good standing is described as one which has no less than 100 members.

There are proposals within the NEC that its description of a branch in good standing should be reviewed. NEC members have argued that the R10 membership fee and a minimum of 100 members cannot constitute a branch. 

Acting spokesperson Zuko Godlimpi has previously suggested that a branch in good standing should be assessed based on the work done in the community. He had said as part of its organisational renewal, the ANC ought to impose an inventory that says for a branch to be in good standing it has to give a consistent account on all these issues.

Mbalula suggested that the NEC’s visit to structures would encompass organisational renewal programmes.  “ We’d rather live with 10 people than be told that we are 100 when we are actually 10 — and then we tell ourselves that we’re a mass-based party, [when] that party does not exist on the ground. There is no relationship between a ward councillor and the branch executive committee (BEC) of the ANC,” he said.

He said they realised during the elections campaign that some of their ward councillors and branch members were not known by their communities. “So you then need to also put measures in place to monitor the work of councillors. How do they work? With the BEC of the ANC and the general membership in that local area,” he said.

Mbalula argued that disbanding provincial leadership for the poor showing at the polls, the ANC would not be addressing the problem. “So we’ve got to address the challenges we’ve got and sort things out.”

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