South Africa

South Africa, Maverick News

The ANC ‘still leads’ despite existential crisis – key takeaways from Ramaphosa’s January 8th Statement

President Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC 113th anniversary at Nelson Mandela Park In Khayelitsha on January 11, 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa. 8th January marked 113 years since the African National Congress (ANC) formation in 1912. President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the January 08 Statement to supporters. (Photo by Gallo Images/Brenton Geach)

By Victoria O’Regan

11 Jan 2025

Delivering the January 8th Statement in Khayelitsha on Saturday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that despite the formation of the GNU, the ANC is still very much in charge.

Delivering the annual January 8th Statement at Mandela Park Stadium in Khayelitsha on Saturday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the ANC “faces an existential crisis” wherein it must finally renew itself in order to survive.

Ramaphosa delivered the party’s first January 8th Statement since its historic defeat in the May 2024 elections, and the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU), with a particular decisiveness and intensity.

Read more: ANC commits to reclaiming, rekindling and restoring its agency as the party marks 113th anniversary

South Africa’s political landscape was irrevocably changed in the 2024 elections, and Ramaphosa made it clear the ANC will need to finally renew itself and revamp its leadership, or face the danger of perishing.

President Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC's 113th anniversary at Mandela Park Stadium in Khayelitsha on 11 January 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Taking aim at the DA

Ramaphosa opened his speech by taking aim at the DA-run Western Cape.

“Today, we gather in Khayelitsha in the City of Cape Town in the Western Cape, on the southern tip of our country and continent. It is the point of convergence between east and west, wealth and poverty, justice and injustice, despair and hope,” he said.

“The people of the Western Cape and South Africa continue to be confronted by unemployment, poverty and inequality, and their attendant causes and effects. These include crime, violence, gender-based violence and femicide, drug abuse, unequal access to education, and service delivery challenges such as water, sanitation, roads and housing.”

Ramaphosa pleads with alliance for support

Ramaphosa stressed the importance of alliance members - the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) - to the ANC. He pleaded for “unity” within the group.

“The strategic alliance between the national liberation movement, the ANC, working together with the SACP, the trade union federation Cosatu and, later, the civic movement Sanco, is possibly one of the best examples of the success of a united front in the world. The alliance remains the proven vehicle to uplift the working class and the poor,” said Ramaphosa.

“The alliance has been put together in struggle by the sweat and the blood of our people. It is therefore important that this alliance must remain united. Let us unite the alliance and not divide this revolutionary alliance.”

The SACP had become increasingly critical of the ANC’s track record in government over the years, and both the SACP and Cosatu have criticised the GNU, particularly the inclusion of the DA. In December 2024, the SACP announced it would contest the 2026 local government elections independently, but would remain a member of the Tripartite Alliance.

Read more: Incompatible — the SACP’s anti-GNU stance and its own ‘principles’

Speaking before Ramaphosa on Saturday, SACP deputy national chairperson Thulas Nxesi said that the party remained committed to the alliance and the ANC, but made it clear that this support did not extend to the other parties in the GNU, particularly the DA.

“Our ally is the ANC, not the DA,” Nxesi told ANC supporters.

In a move to reassure its alliance partners that the ANC remained in charge despite the GNU, Ramaphosa said: “Even as we are not in complete control where we govern on our own, the ANC still leads. The President of the country is ANC, the majority of members of the Cabinet are ANC.”

On the GNU defensive

Ramaphosa acknowledged the formation of the GNU as a “tactical decision” needed to put the ANC back on track.

Following the 2024 general elections, Ramaphosa said the ANC had to answer the question of how, under conditions not of its choosing, to re-establish the party “as a credible and well-supported force for progress and change” in the country.

The National Executive Committee (NEC) came to the decision to formulate “an inclusive ANC-led government of national unity”, said Ramaphosa.

“The formation of the GNU is a tactical decision to pursue the NDR [National Democratic Revolution] under new conditions that were occasioned by the electoral setback. The ANC’s strategic objective has not changed, but we pursue this objective under conditions where we no longer have a majority to form a government on our own but in cooperation with other parties,” he said.

Ramaphosa said the ANC was “determined” to return as a majority party in the next elections, but would work with other political parties, including those with whom it has “fundamental differences”, in the meantime.

“The false notion that the character of the ANC and strategic objective of the NDR has now been redefined by a single tactic of forming a broadly inclusive GNU is a distortion of the realities our movement faced and should be dismissed out of hand. Similarly, the idea that a progressive party cannot engage its opponents in short term, tactical agreements without selling out, is ahistorical,” said Ramaphosa.

State power firmly in the hands of the ANC

Though he mentioned no political party by name, at several points in his speech Ramaphosa appeared to be directing a veiled critique at former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party and its anti-democratic, “counter-revolutionary” tactics.

Zuma was expelled from the ANC in June 2024 for breaching its constitution by campaigning for the MK party in the general elections, in which the ANC experienced a historic electoral defeat with 40.2% of the vote. On 8 January 2024, the 113th anniversary of the ANC, Zuma demanded the immediate reversal of his expulsion from the party.

Read more: Zuma demands ANC expulsion reversal on party’s birthday — Mbalula calls it ‘mischievous’

“In last year’s January 8th Statement, we drew attention to the fact that there is common cause between the anti-transformation forces and the State Capture forces to destroy the ANC from within and also to dislodge the ANC from power. Part of the counter-revolutionary tactic is to promote breakaway parties to erode the support base of the ANC,” said Ramaphosa.

Deviating from his speech, Ramaphosa added: “They broke away, they formed their own splinter parties, hoping that they would weaken and destroy the ANC.

“They remain small and weak. They tried to weaken the ANC by having all these splinter organisations.

“They will never defeat the African National Congress,” he continued.

“Some of these parties masquerade as more radical than the ANC, but their revolutionary-sounding rhetoric cannot hide the reality that they have common cause with the forces opposing transformation,” said Ramaphosa.

Read more: What is the MK party’s game in Parliament?

He added that the “shared goal” of these forces is to “deprive the ANC of the ability to use state power to effect change”.

However, only one organisation can have state power, said Ramaphosa, and that is the ANC.

“State power will always be in the hands of the African National Congress,” said Ramaphosa in perhaps the most significant line in his speech.

Renew or perish

In delivering the ANC’s first January 8th Statement since being humbled by the electorate, Ramaphosa could not avoid the topic of the party’s defeat in the May 2024 polls. The 40.2% support garnered by the ANC represented a 17 percentage point drop in support compared with the 2019 elections, or three times the polling decline from election to election since 2009.

The NEC described the electoral defeat as “a strategic setback for the ANC-led National Democratic Revolution” and the ANC as whole, said Ramaphosa.

“For any liberation movement or progressive party, losing a majority in government is a strategic setback. We have to be honest that the outcome of the May elections was a really sad moment for the ANC; it was a huge setback for the ANC,” he said.

The reasons for the ANC’s electoral decline, Ramaphosa said, included the state of the economy, the unemployment crisis, poor basic services and “deficiencies of capable, ethical and responsive governance, as well as the ANC’s organisational weaknesses”.

“A combination of some of these reasons led to many of our traditional supporters and voters staying away from voting or voting for other parties. We accept this.

“The extent and depth of the electoral loss points to an organisation that has lost significant support and public confidence. This may be a painful reality for us to accept, but our healing lies in accepting the depth of dysfunction in our structures, and among our members and leadership,” he continued.

“The 2024 elections results confirm that we face an existential crisis, and this is a moment wherein the ANC should either renew itself or perish.”

Ramaphosa said the renewal of the ANC included, among other things, reviving the party’s branch structures, which have become “weak”, introducing a compulsory course on ethics and integrity in the political education curriculum, and enhancing the quality of membership by overhauling the party’s membership system.

Six key priorities

Ramaphosa announced six priority actions for the ANC for 2025. The actions include: renewing the ANC through “decisive and visible” action; fixing local government, and ensuring water and energy security; accelerating inclusive economic growth and job creation; strengthening the fight against crime; building an inclusive society through holding a National Dialogue; and building a better South Africa and world. DM

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...