News24 | ‘ANC will come back’: A confident Fikile Mbalula says the party will win back power

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula addresses the media at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg on the third day of the ANC national general council.

• ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the national general council’s activities would influence future ANC work and organisational structures.
• He emphasised improving the conduct and groundwork of the ANC.
• Mbalula also confidently said the ANC would win back power.

The ANC will win back majority power, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said as the party concluded the third day of its national general council (NGC) in Boksburg on Wednesday.

The gathering has been uncharacteristically sober with none of the boisterous singing and factional campaigning that have come to characterise ANC meetings since 2007.

Delegates are keenly aware that they must find solutions to long-standing problems of organisational corruption and weakness if they are to redeem the ANC’s electoral fortunes.

Speaking to journalists, Mbalula said: “I’m sure you are shocked that you are in the ANC NGC and everyone is disciplined. You are not used to such a quiet NGC with such a high level of discipline and focus among delegates. These are the green shoots of the renewal project. It is not perfect; we are not yet where we want to be, but these are the offshoots of this important development.”

He said that people were not used to that level of focus within the ANC.

“This is about the stories you were told in WhatsApp groups that we were going to debate the departure of the president. That we are organising a ‘departure lounge’ for Matamela. There has been nothing at all about that,“ he added. 

Mbabula also said the standards of integrity within the ANC were improving. While in the past, it had only been required for someone to step aside from their duties if found guilty of a criminal offence, now the “step-aside rule” meant that once charged with an offence, members must step aside from their organisational role.

Several members of the national executive committee (NEC) were not at the NGC as they had stepped aside from organisational duties.

READ | Fragile provinces test ANC’s dominance ahead of critical 2026 elections

He did not mention them by name, but the missing figures were Malusi Gigaba and Senzo Mchunu, who are facing corruption charges.

The ANC’s reckoning was prompted by the 40% election result in May 2024.

In the upcoming local government elections, the ANC fears that several metro councils and dozens of municipalities currently under the party’s control will be lost to it.

However, to get back over 50%, the ANC “will need to win big in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng” – two of the biggest provinces.

Mbalula said:

In Gauteng, the ANC won only 34% of the vote, and in KwaZulu-Natal, only 17% of the vote.

But both provinces remain in crisis, his organisational report found, with an initiative to resurrect KwaZulu-Natal pronounced a failure.