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[FILE IMAGE]: ANC delegates during a conference.
ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula says he is confident that the party’s renewal agenda is gaining momentum.
He pointed to the recent decisions by scandal-tainted senior figures, suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and Member of Parliament Malusi Gigaba, to step aside from party duties as evidence that the organisation is correcting its course.
“The ANC has taken decisions that enhance integrity and ethical leadership and we still say even that is not enough. We have move from things like innocent till proven guilty to step aside and even the Constitutional Court has confirmed the correctness of that decision as it is expressed in the ANC’s constitution. And that in its own is renewal,” Mbalula said, speaking on the sidelines of the party’s National General Council (NGC) in Boksburg.
ANC Secretary-general Fikile Mbalula says the party’s renewal agenda is on track and the party is making good progress. He was speaking at #ANCNGC2025 in Boksburg. #SABCNews pic.twitter.com/Lw86qpeJDh
— Sipho King K Kekana (@KingKAzania) December 10, 2025
On Monday, Mbalula presented the organisational report, which highlighted several internal weaknesses that need urgent attention if the party hopes to arrest its declining electoral support.
Political commentator Sandile Swana welcomed Mbalula’s frank assessment but argued that it ultimately illustrates the extent of the ANC’s troubles.
“I think first of all, Mbalula has taken a good reading of the record of the African National Congress since the days of Mandela, till today. All the wrong things that have been killing the ANC since those days, he put them in one washing basket. That basket is a bakkie load that he has dumped in front of the laundry … so, he put that laundry in front of the nation, the dirty laundry of the ANC,” says Swana.
“The fact that an organisation that was formed in 1912 does not have an accurate record of its membership, does not know who is a member and who is not a member, they don’t know which branch is in good standing and which one is not … things are in tatters and disarray. They can’t even pay salaries and suppliers. It’s an organisation whose message and ideology is confused and needs to be reinvented. So, it is difficult to discover which things since 1912 until today they have actually master. What Mbalula is talking about are the things they have failed to master.”
Meanwhile, the commission reviewing the mid-term implementation of resolutions from the last ANC conference is currently under way.
