News24 | Mabuyane warns of ‘political project’ to destabilise ANC, reverse gains

• ANC Eastern Cape chairperson Oscar Mabuyane warned of a “political project” by forces within and outside the party to destabilise it.
• He said the forces were also trying to roll back transformation gains.
• He made the comments amid a candidate-list crisis for the ANC in the province ahead of the 4 November local government elections.
• For more political news, visit News24 politics.

ANC Eastern Cape chairperson Oscar Mabuyane has warned party leaders of an internal “political project” to destabilise the ANC.

He made the remarks when he tabled the political overview to the provincial executive committee (PEC) and national executive committee’s (NEC) Eastern Cape deployees on Monday night.

He urged the PEC to cast one eye on a “deeper political moment through which the ANC and our country are passing” while training another on the local government elections.

His comments came amid a candidate-list crisis for the ANC in the province ahead of the 4 November local government elections.

The party’s failure to submit final candidate lists on time in four municipalities – Port St Johns, Ngquza Hill, Walter Sisulu, and Sundays River Valley - deepened factions.

As a result of that failure, 181 nominations across six municipalities were declared invalid by the Electoral Court on 16 September.

Separately, two ANC members, Freedom Jojiyasi and Masande Mambulu, approached the Eastern Cape High Court in Makhanda to nullify the party’s provincial councillor and mayoral candidate lists, due to alleged manipulation and breach of selection rules.

READ | ANC’s administrative failure hands leverage to SACP in six municipalities

On 23 September, Judge Motilal Rugunanan dismissed the urgent application, leaving the contested lists in place.

Their attorney indicated that they would approach the Electoral Court.

The candidate-list saga has also seen NEC members, Andile Lungisa and provincial secretary Lulamile Ngcukayitobi, take – or threaten to take – legal steps against ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula.

Speaking to the Sunday Times recently, Mabuyane reacted sharply, describing the list failures as “anarchy” and a “catastrophic” electoral debacle, and demanding “decisive” action against those responsible for allegedly altering the approved lists.

The list saga came hot on the heels of the failed provincial elective conference, which was successfully interdicted by a faction opposed to Mabuyane’s political ambitions.

READ | ANC’s Ngcukayitobi threatens defamation action against Mbalula over IEC list blunder claims

During the Monday night meeting with high-ranking ANC members, Mabuyane pondered over the ANC’s “actual condition” nationally, provincially, regionally and at a branch level; the party’s strengths and weaknesses; how they relate to a broader “counter-revolutionary” offensive against the party’s transformation gains; and the weakening of the national democratic revolution.

He said: “There are forces, from within and outside our movement, whose political project is not merely to replace the ANC in government but to discredit the transformational content of the democratic breakthrough, fragment the motive forces of change, weaken progressive organisation and roll back the capacity of the state to transform the inherited patterns of poverty, inequality and exclusion.”

Mabuyane said the ANC itself had warned against the fragmentation of progressive forces and intensified anti-transformation narratives.

He warned that the danger was that an external offensive became most effective when it found assistance from weaknesses within the party, adding that a political organisation was vulnerable when its internal contradictions were not managed, and one faction became stronger than the organisation.

“We must therefore have the courage to say that there are members of our own movement who, consciously or unconsciously, may objectively aid a counter-revolutionary agenda. Some may do so consciously, where they place narrow interests above the organisation and deliberately undermine collective decisions,” Mabuyane said.

He added:

Others may do so unconsciously through reckless public conduct, factional mobilisation, leaking internal discussions, attacking the movement from within its own ranks, manipulating organisational processes, gatekeeping, paralysing branches or failing the people in government.

“The intention may differ, but the political effect can be the same: the ANC is weakened, society loses confidence, and those who seek the fragmentation of the democratic movement are strengthened.”

Mabuyane said the 2024 national and provincial elections demonstrated the scale of the political transition confronting the ANC.

He said the ANC’s woeful performance in that election “confirmed that historical legitimacy cannot substitute indefinitely for contemporary political confidence”.

“Voters are increasingly mobile. Communities may continue to respect the ANC’s role in liberation while judging ANC governments severely on present-day performance. The era of assumed majorities has ended. We are operating in a fragmented, competitive and increasingly unforgiving political environment,” he added.

READ | ANC takes IEC list battle for 181 excluded candidates to ConCourt

Mabuyane lamented the fact that the ANC created its own weaknesses, such as factionalism, weak branches, careerism, and the manipulation of organisational processes, among other things.

He said that when service delivery-starved residents of the Eastern Cape see ANC leaders consumed by internal battles, they may conclude that the movement is preoccupied with itself while society is preoccupied with survival.

“Here in the Eastern Cape, we must confront this reality without defensiveness,” Mabuyane added.

“This province remains one of the historic heartlands of the ANC. We possess deep roots, experienced cadres, an extensive organisational footprint and a political tradition stretching across generations. But historical loyalty is not an inexhaustible political resource. Every generation of leadership must earn political legitimacy from the generation it is called upon to lead.”

Mabuyane said strong party structures were the party’s eyes and ears.

“This is also why the candidate-selection rules adopted by the movement matter. They emphasise functional branches, warn against factional revival and gatekeeping, and insist that no branch should become the property of a leader or faction. These are not procedural niceties. They go to the heart of whether the ANC belongs to its membership and communities or is captured by internal networks pursuing narrow interests.

“The difficulties around the submission of candidate information have also moved into a new phase since our previous political overview.”

He said the main battle was now to show that the ANC was able to navigate a post-majoritarian era without losing its identity and strategic purpose.

Mabuyane’s resignation to coalitions is not new. In 2022 and again last year, during an elections workshop in KuGompo, Mabuyane said the party must prepare to be in a coalition government.