Mbalula's reconfiguration of Western Cape ANC signals presidential ambitions

ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula's recent decision to replace Western Cape leadership with a task team is viewed by political analysts as a strategic move towards his potential bid for national leadership.

With a similar structure in place in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, all indications are that Mbalula is making strategic moves, especially with suggestions that party leader Cyril Ramaphosa may step down next year.

The decision to reconfigure the Western Cape leadership has had almost immediate ramifications, with the high-profile departure from the ANC of Provincial Secretary Neville Delport, who on Wednesday was announced as a new member of the DA along with three other former ANC members.

Delport said despite winning an elective conference, former PEC members were discarded and replaced by “leaders who lost a conference”.

“Now those leaders do not represent the will of our coloured communities, and that is where we are stuck. Then we took a decision as a collective, and as I’ve said, many (others) will follow, to make sure that we need to find a new political home, and that new political home is the Democratic Alliance,” Delport said.

DA Federal Council Chairperson, Helen Zille said: “This is a milestone moment, and it mirrors the swing in support by South African voters who continue to abandon the ANC to support the DA. This is an example of the realignment of politics in South Africa.

“ANC support is in decline across South Africa and in the Western Cape, it is in terminal decline,” Zille said.

ANC Provincial Task Team spokesperson, Sifiso Mtsweni, said the DA has now turned to the ANC itself in order to try and save its dwindling popularity.

Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and Democracy at Nelson Mandela University, Professor Bheki Mngomezulu, said that a lot is at stake for the ANC nationally. 

“While many political parties are focusing on the upcoming local government elections in 2026, the ANC has its eyes glued on the 2027 elective conference. Leaders who are positioning themselves for that particular election are, in fact, doing anything and everything to ensure that they're in a good position to take over when Cyril Ramaphosa eventually vacates office.

“On many occasions, Mbalula has been projecting himself as a likely candidate. He has not announced it in many ways, but then you can tell from his activities, like the squabbles with the (Gauteng Premier) Panyaza Lesufi, which were unwarranted, and then of course, always being in the media, even more than the spokesperson of the party.

“All those indications tell you that he's positioning himself for the position of president of the ANC and then subsequently running for the elections in 2029.”

Professor Sipho Seepe, a political analyst and higher education consultant, said: “We should always accept that politicians are expedient, and they always act in their own interest, despite the notion of saying that they act in the interest of the organisation."

ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu on Wednesday said Delport's "exit affirms the correctness and necessity of the ongoing reconfiguration process, which seeks to restore the ANC’s integrity, discipline, and ideological clarity".

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