As the ANC moves towards the 2026 local government elections, there is a saying that comes to mind: “When the general is not strong, the ranks become divided and the entire army begins to fall apart.”
It is a harsh metaphor that speaks to leadership, organisational discipline, as well as the ability of the organisation to maintain a common sense of purpose when internal interests begin to compete with the interests of the organisation itself.
I write this with some difficulty because I have written about the ANC before from a position of disappointment but also from one of enduring belief in its capacity to renew itself.
In my article “Looming elections a key moment for reflection” (DD May 4 2026), I acknowledged the organisation’s shortcomings and the damage caused by individuals who had compromised the ANC’s reputation.
Yet I also argued that my continued support was not rooted in blind loyalty but in an understanding of what the organisation represented historically and in the belief that it could still differentiate between the failures of individuals and the broader purpose of the movement.
Today, however, the source of my disappointment is different as it is about the condition of the organisation itself and whether its leadership is sufficiently capable of bringing discipline and coherence to its ranks.
The ANC’s 2024 national election result should have been a defining moment in that conversation.
For the first time since 1994, it failed to secure a majority vote during its general elections.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a government of national unity and the ANC itself presented the arrangement as a response to the electorate’s instruction that political parties should work together.
But politically, the development represented a huge change in the country’s democratic landscape and that should have been a moment for deep organisational reflection.
It is against this background that the current candidate list crisis becomes most significant.
There remains a political and organisational question: How did the ANC, with its decades of electoral experience and an extensive organisational apparatus, arrive at a point where it could not complete such a fundamental electoral process?
This question is more important than the immediate dispute over whether the cause was technical, administrative or even procedural.
A serious political organisation like the ANC should have systems that anticipate failure, with senior leadership receiving timely reports on processes that are fundamental to its ability to contest elections.
The fact that the ANC is now dealing with the consequences of incomplete candidate submissions demonstrates that something in that chain didn’t work as it should have.
This is more uncomfortable because the office responsible for its administrative machinery is that of the secretary-general.
That does not mean every organisational failure can simply be attributed personally only to the SG though as the ANC is a collective organisation and responsibility for its functioning extends across its leadership.
But leadership responsibility and organisational outcomes can’t be completely separated either.
When the machinery succeeds, leadership takes responsibility for that success, and likewise when it fails.
An SG in such circumstances should represent the organisational centre.
The office should be capable of imposing clarity where there is confusion, it should enforce rules where there is disorder, and also ensure organisational processes are protected from individual political interests not vice versa.
This is why the scrutiny of the SG is unavoidable.
The irony is the ANC has spent considerable political energy speaking about renewal, while some of its current difficulties are precisely organisational problems that renewal was supposed to address.
In my earlier article, I deliberately tried to distinguish between the ANC as an organisation and the conduct of individuals within it.
I didn’t believe the mistakes of particular leaders should erase the organisation’s history or the contribution it had made to the country.
I believed criticism could coexist with commitment and that an organisation could recover if it had the courage to confront itself.
My disappointment therefore is not simply that the ANC may lose municipalities as elections are contested and political fortunes change.
My disappointment is that an organisation with such a history can find itself publicly fighting over processes that should have been settled internally, systematically and well before an election deadline.
The ANC was given a very clear indication that South Africans were prepared to change the political balance in 2024.
An organisation that can’t tolerate criticism eventually loses the ability to correct itself.
An organisation that treats every internal disagreement as factional warfare eventually loses the ability to distinguish legitimate criticism from political manoeuvering.
The difficulty confronting the ANC today is not that it does not know what is wrong.
ANC documents have acknowledged factionalism, organisational decline, weak branches, internal divisions, patronage and the erosion of organisational discipline.
The contradiction therefore lies elsewhere, with an organisation that is able to diagnose its problems with remarkable clarity but appears increasingly unable to demonstrate through its conduct that it is capable of correcting them.
The most damaging perception developing within the organisation is that there are two standards, with one for ordinary members and another for those who possess power.
This is troubling because leadership knows exactly how to identify wrongdoing when it is committed by others.
The ANC does not lack resolutions, it does not lack conferences, it does not lack speeches about renewal, it does not lack people who can identify its problems.
What appears to be lacking is the consistent political courage and backbone from those leading it to apply its principles to everyone including those who occupy the highest positions.
Zinziswa Rabe, former Eastern Cape ANC provincial executive member and former MPL