The diagnosis delivered by Fikile Mbalula this week should reverberate far beyond the confines of the national general council (NGC) at the Birchwood Hotel in Ekurhuleni or the internal politics of the ANC.
It is, in essence, a clinical assessment of the single most dominant force in South Africa’s post-apartheid political life. Therefore, the failure or success of the proposed “cure” is not an internal party matter; it is a national imperative upon which the country’s short- to medium-term stability hinges.
We must be clear-eyed. A weak, fragmented, and morally depleted ANC does not create a vacuum for a healthy opposition to fill. Instead, it translates directly into a failing state.
The symptoms Mbalula listed—governance paralysis, municipal collapse, service delivery failure, systemic corruption—are not merely ANC problems.
They are South Africa’s problems. They manifest in our non-functioning municipalities, our crumbling infrastructure, and our crippled economy.
When the ANC is dysfunctional, the country is dysfunctional.
This is why, despite a well-founded cynicism born of countless broken promises, the nation has a vested interest in the seriousness of this moment.
The alternative to a renewed, responsibly governed ANC in the near term is not a smooth transition to a new dispensation. It is a chaotic disintegration of the centre, leading to more unstable coalitions, greater policy incoherence, and a dangerous acceleration of state failure.
For all its profound flaws, the ANC remains the only entity with the national footprint and (dwindling) institutional memory to steward a complex state. Its collapse would be a cataclysm.
Therefore, Mbalula’s document must become more than an internal discussion paper; it must be seized upon by civil society, the media, business, and indeed the opposition as a public benchmark for accountability. Every pledge must be tracked.
Where is the public register of “consequence management” actions? Where are the independently verifiable metrics for “service delivery improvements” in key ANC municipalities? When will the “clear coalition management framework” be published and adhered to?
The ANC has provided its own scorecard. It is now the duty of the nation to hold it to that scorecard with relentless vigilance.
This does not mean giving the party a free pass or abandoning the pursuit of alternative political futures. It means recognising a hard reality: South Africa’s immediate fortunes are inextricably linked to the ANC’s capacity for self-repair. We must hope, for the sake of all who live here, that this diagnosis sparks genuine, painful surgery. But hope is not a strategy. Vigilance is.
The “sick” patient is in the operating theatre. We are all in the waiting room.
We cannot perform the operation, but we must demand transparency from the surgeons, monitor the vital signs, and be prepared to call out malpractice.
The ANC’s cure is, for now, South Africa’s prognosis. The nation must watch, measure, and judge with the sober urgency of those whose own survival is tied to the outcome.
