So, the ANC’s highest decision-making body, the national executive committee (NEC), met over the weekend for four days spanning Friday to Monday evening.
And as is tradition, the closing remarks by the ANC President, in this instance Cyril Ramaphosa, provide a summary of the crucial points that would have been discussed during the four days.
Sadly, the closing remarks by Ramaphosa on Monday evening paint a grim picture of an ANC detached from reality. Or one run by a president who is too powerful to be disagreed with.
The salient point of Ramaphosa’s speech was the surface-level regurgitation of the dire state of our economy.
Ignoring the real crisis
The other point was emphasising the continuation of the GNU in its current form despite periodic squabbles and little tangible progress a year after its formation.
The NEC saw no emergency in the rising immigration crisis, especially the one from north of the Limpopo River.
This ticking time bomb has been brought into sharp focus in the weeks leading up to this NEC meeting by the tensions between South Africans and foreign nationals in public primary healthcare facilities in Gauteng.
And as we know it, it always starts small, like wildfire, before spreading to the rest of the country and turning into ugly scenes of violent clashes.
Still, with this history, the ANC NEC saw it fit to discuss everything else that is inward-looking, such as its toxic relationship with the SACP, that they want to remain in the marriage even when the reds are clear they want a divorce.
Reactionary leadership crisis
When so-called xenophobic clashes erupt all over South Africa, the same people who blue-ticked the issue will be acting “shocked” and running around “calling for calm” as if they are surprised.
We have a crisis of reactionary leadership that is allergic to being proactive.
This meeting, which is meant to be a quarterly occasion but did not happen in Q2 of 2025, also postponed the important matter of our collapsing municipalities to some unknown date “later this month”.
One will not be surprised if that does not happen this month as promised.
If there is one thing this ANC NEC collective has mastered, it is its nonchalance about matters of national importance and lack of urgency.
The concerning state of local government has come into full glare with the shenanigans happening at the Polokwane Municipality and Ekurhuleni, among others, where an auditor was gunned down recently.
But to the ANC NEC, that is not a matter urgent enough to warrant their immediate attention. It can wait for an unknown date. But nagging an SACP that wants out of the alliance is an emergency.
Displaced priorities
Of course, some will argue that the issues discussed have been on the agenda for the Q2 meeting that never happened.
But who said the ANC NEC agenda cannot be tampered with to discuss matters by order of priority?
Be that as it may, these, including the issues of endless postponements, have raised serious questions about the quality of this ANC NEC collectively.
The bar is definitely low. Because gone are the days when the ANC NEC used to be an exciting festival of ideas. An occasion that shaped the South African national discourse and set the tone for the political mood in the country.
Some NEC members have secretly complained about the presidential summary that is sometimes not the true reflection of what would have transpired in the meeting.
The height of this was during the contaminated debate over the disbandment of the ANC Gauteng and KZN provincial executive committees.
Culture of disinterest in real issues
This has apparently entrenched a culture of disinterest in contributing meaningfully to discussions with pessimists adamant that whatever they say, the president will announce his own thing at the end of the meeting, which is now an open affair with little room for objection in front of the prying TV cameras.
But this excuse cannot be forgiven. Because those who believe that the head of the organisation elevates his own view in the closing remarks can always raise this in the closed session of the next NEC meeting.
Perhaps maybe Ramaphosa is not the problem here. Maybe the quality of the individuals making up the collective is just not good enough to comprehend the problems that besiege South Africa today and come up with timely solutions.
Or even worse and more frightening, the structure might have become a collective of individuals who are just not interested in anything else other than lining their pockets.
And it is Ramaphosa himself who told us this when he, famously and unprovoked, declared the ANC as “accused number one” in corruption.
Whatever the case may be, one thing is for sure – iANC NEC, ayisafani!
