LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: Elections will tear the ANC apart

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> The ANC now appears to be in a doom loop – as it loses votes, so the fights for the positions and power left over become more intense, and thus it loses more votes. And each public division will speed up the party’s decline.

The current internal contestation of the ANC suggests it is going to end these elections much more divided than it went into them. This is a huge indictment on all of the regions, structures and leaders involved in this.

For many years divisions in the ANC would appear to go to sleep during election season. Gwede Mantashe, when he was secretary-general of the ANC, once suggested during a debate about whether local elections should be combined with national and provincial elections, that anyone in his position would oppose it.

His point was that we are now in a cycle where there are local or national elections every two or three years and that was helping to keep the ANC together. He was pointing to how internal divisions could be temporarily forgotten as the party’s members and leaders all worked together.

Of course, during elections people outside the party would also criticise the ANC and this would also remind its members about the tent they lived in, forcing them to work together. No longer.

Last week, the ANC’s Eastern Cape secretary, Lulama Ngcukayitobi, threatened to sue the ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula for defamation over his allegations about why some of the province’s candidates were not registered for the local elections.

The Sunday Times had reported that the ANC’s list only arrived at Luthuli House just 30 minutes before they had to be logged with the electoral commission. This meant Mbalula’s office did not have enough time to enter all the names.

While it seems insane for one provincial secretary to sue the secretary-general, from Ngcukayitobi’s point of view he probably has no other option. He must be facing incredibly angry members who are about to lose their jobs. He now needs to prove to his constituency, the people who elected him to his position, that he was not the one at fault.

But, any legal action will reveal more about the internal disarray in the party.

So desperate is Luthuli House to prevent Joburg ANC region chair Loyiso Masuku from becoming mayor, they have kept Dada Morero in office . With all of the electoral disaster that will ensue.

Somehow, the one person who could have perhaps helped to rescue the ANC in the city, Frank Chikane, has been left off its candidate list entirely.

This robs the ANC of the chance to claim that it will be able to reform itself in the city.

It also shows that this is a party prepared to treat someone who has made the immense contribution that Chikane has made incredibly badly.

The ANC has shown that it is not capable of giving him the respect his track record deserves.