09.12.2025
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‘Consistent, credible action over many years for ANC to regain trust’

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  • File Image: ANC logo on display at Nasrec Exhibition Centre in Soweto ahead of the ANC’s Policy Conference.

Political analyst Sandile Swana says recent developments within the African National Congress (ANC) may indicate that the party is finally adopting the “correct language” on renewal and accountability but warns that this alone will not be enough to repair its damaged public image ahead of next year’s local government elections.

With renewal placed firmly on the ANC’s agenda, senior party figures including suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and Member of Parliament Malusi Gigaba have stepped aside amid their respective corruption scandals. Mchunu has been implicated in alleged police corruption involving the disbandment of the Political Killings Task Team, while Gigaba faces corruption charges linked to the multi-billion-rand Transnet case.

“Yes, the language is correct in terms of the moral regeneration of the ANC — what Mandela referred to as the RDP of the soul,” says Swana.

“But over the past decade, the party has allowed individuals to hide behind the principle of being innocent until proven guilty. The organisation cannot operate strictly on the basis of court processes. It must hold members to a higher ethical and moral standard.”

Swana welcomes the recent decisions as a step in the right direction but says they are far from enough to shift public perceptions, even as the ANC deliberates on its electoral decline at its National General Council (NGC) meeting under way at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg.

One of the key issues on the agenda is the analysis of the 2024 general election results, which saw the ANC’s support drop to just over 40%. The party hopes to improve this performance in the 2026 local government polls.

“There is no improving of any image that is going to happen right now,” Swana asserts.

He reflects on the ANC’s early electoral performance, noting that its initial rise to around 70% support was the product of sustained trust-building over time — not an automatic outcome of the 1994 elections. According to Swana, the party’s decline can be traced back to the internal conflicts and leadership battles beginning with the 2007 Polokwane conference, after which its vote share began to fall in every election.

He argues that rebuilding public trust will take the ANC just as long as it took to lose it — and that a single NGC meeting cannot reverse years of erosion.

“It will take a long time, through concrete steps that people experience and accept, for the ANC to rebuild confidence,” he says. “It will not be speeches, press conferences or documents. It will take consistent, credible action over many years for the ANC to regain the trust it has lost over the past 16 years or so.”

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