How the ANC can save South Africa – and itself - Politicsweb

John Endres

Real transformation hasn’t been tried yet

How the ANC can save South Africa – and itself

The following is the text of my address to the BizNews Investment Conference #2 in Hermanus on 11 September.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

We’ve heard a lot these past two days about everything that is going wrong in South Africa. Everybody wants to know how we can get things back on track. Figuring that out – and helping make it happen – is the purpose of the organisation I lead, the IRR.

The work is not new. The IRR was established almost a hundred years ago, in 1929. Since then generations of my predecessors as well as our current cohort have worked hard to understand South Africa, explain South Africa, and improve South Africa. Our aim is to make South Africa a beacon of freedom and prosperity.

In practical terms, I want to speak to you today about what we’re observing in our politics, about where things seem to be heading – and about transformation.

I will argue that South Africa desperately needs transformation. But the transformation we need is not the fake kind that the ANC is selling.

Instead, we need real transformation. And that hasn’t been tried yet. What’s more, I will argue that by embracing real transformation the ANC can save South Africa – and itself. I will explain what I mean in due course.

The ANC is in trouble

Its 2024 annual report mentions the word “crisis” no fewer than twenty times, including speaking about an “existential crisis of the ANC”. Senzo Mchunu, NEC member and former police minister, recently warned that the ANC was on the brink of collapse.

Two weeks ago, Naledi Pandor, ANC veteran and former international relations minister, said: “We have lost our glory. Let us not pretend otherwise. People look at us with contempt, horror and shame.” Last week, Oscar Mabunyane, premier of the Eastern Cape and ANC chair in that province, said: “We’re fighting for the soul of the ANC, for the survival of the movement.”

Nothing seems to be going right for the party. Once again ANC staff members are going unpaid and the party is being taken to court for not paying its service providers. It is being hounded by its opposition on the left and harried by its opposition on the right. It is under pressure from the Trump administration.

Municipal elections are coming up in under 18 months and opinion polls are showing that ANC support continues to slide. The party dropped by 17 points, to 40%, in last year’s national election.

In the first quarter of 2025 it was polling at around 30% nationally in an IRR poll as well as a poll by the Social Research Foundation or SRF. In June it had recovered to 40% in an SRF poll. But in August DA polling found it at below 30% nationally. The trendlines are pointing down for the ANC.

The economy is tanking

Meanwhile, the economy is tanking. Stories of job losses, of companies downscaling or closing, are coming in fast and furious. ArcelorMittal, Ford, and Goodyear will all be shedding jobs, adding to the unemployment queue.

There are already over 8 million people out of work in South Africa. If you stood them in a line 1m apart the queue would stretch from the Union Buildings in Pretoria to the pyramids of Giza in Egypt. Not surprisingly, South Africans overwhelmingly name jobs when polled on the most pressing priority they want the government to address.

Unemployment is high because growth is low. It has averaged below 1% since 2012 and came in at 0.5% in 2024. The latest GDP figures released on Tuesday show barely any movement, with the economy growing by just 0.6% from the second quarter of 2024 to the second quarter of 2025. The economy is flatlining.

Our economic growth rate is abysmal because our rate of fixed investment is puny. It’s below 15% of GDP where the global average is 26%.

Fixed investment means the money that companies, individuals and the government spend on things like factories, heavy machinery and equipment, roads, rail and ports: the physical assets which an economy needs to produce goods and transport them to their buyers. This type of investment shrunk by 1.4% in the second quarter.

Risk of collapse

Put together, all these factors mean the ANC is now at risk not just of gradual decline but of sudden collapse.

This is because social processes often unfold in a way that is described as a punctuated equilibrium. Things are stable and in equilibrium for a long time. In our context: the ANC keeps winning elections and everybody knows where they stand.

Then the equilibrium is punctuated: all of a sudden things start changing very rapidly. The ANC drops below 40% and keeps dropping.

Think of the fall of communism in the early 1990s. After World War Two Germany was divided into two countries, West Germany – which became capitalist and prosperous – and East Germany – which became communist and poor. It seemed like that was how things were always going to be. Yet on a cold November night in 1989 Germans started tearing down the Wall that had divided them, culminating in the reunification of Germany a year later.

Once a social system is hollowed out in the inside like the East German government was, it collapses rapidly under pressure from the outside. This is an “emperor has no clothes” moment. An institution once imbued with great authority, when stripped of its legitimacy and trappings of power, looks vulnerable and becomes an object of ridicule.

Think of the famous scene of Romanian communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, giving his last speech from the balcony of the Central Committee of the Communist Party building. I encourage you to go watch it on YouTube.

He was expecting adulation but got booed instead. He couldn’t understand what was going on. The world had changed and he had missed it. He ended up overthrown and was executed by firing squad on Christmas Day, 1989.

Just this past week, an uprising in Nepal has led to the communist government being chased out of office. There, a Marxist-Leninist communist party and a Maoist communist party have been alternating in power for the past 17 years. Entirely unexpectedly, the result has been massive corruption, nepotism, poor governance and weak economic performance. I wonder what went wrong.

The ANC must be watching nervously. If it weren’t for South Africa’s functioning democracy and protection of civil liberties, the ANC would now be at distinct risk of suffering the same fate. Its authority, its credibility, its legitimacy are being questioned, and the voices expressing their anger at the party are getting louder.

Just take a look at the comments on the ANC Facebook page. Some recent examples: “When I see ANC I just feel like I'm also a foreigner in my country.” Or: “Our brothers and sisters faced Apartheid forces head on, for what maybe? Zero commitment to the country.” Or: “How can you renew an old dead fossil?”

The ANC’s response thus far

So far, the ANC’s response has been bluster and a dogged determination to keep going down the ruinous, fossilised path that has brought it to this point.

The party misses no opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to the National Democratic Revolution, a programme designed to turn South Africa first into a socialist and then into a communist state.

The ANC’s media statement on its August 2025 NEC meeting read: “Successive generations of party leaders have always affirmed that the route to socialism will traverse and be approached through the National democratic revolution [sic] led by the national liberation movement.”

The NGC base document – which sets out the ANC’s thinking ahead of its 2025 National General Council meeting – says: “South Africa is at a crossroads, with the possibility of either renewal and reinvigoration, or decline and total defeat of the revolution.” Ironically, of course, it is only the defeat of the revolution that can halt and reverse the decline of the country.

The NDR programme has been based on the premise that the ANC is the very embodiment of South African society, its anointed leader, its protector and saviour, its responsible guardian and steward.

But what happens if that assumption no longer holds true? The ANC is now a 40% party, and if you measure its share of the vote as a share of all eligible voters, just 16% of eligible voters supported it in the 2024 elections – 6.5 million South Africans out of 35 million potential voters.

So both in terms of public perception and actual performance, the ANC’s view of itself no longer accords with reality. As external belief in the party starts draining away, so does its self-belief. It starts making more and more mistakes. And ultimately it reaches a point where even if it does something well, the public response will be to reject it because the brand has become toxic.

So – what happens next?

The importance of Gauteng

Looming ahead are the local government elections, which will take place in a three-month window between 2 November 2026 and 31 January 2027. This is a make-or-break election for the ANC and here is why.

South Africa’s three leading provinces by population and by economic output are Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.

By population, 25% of South Africans live in Gauteng, 20% live in KZN and 12% live in the Western Cape. In total, that means 57% of all South Africans live in just those three provinces.

Economically, these provinces carry even greater weight. Here, the numbers are as follows: Gauteng 33%, KZN 16%, Western Cape 14%. Cumulatively these three provinces produce 63% of South Africa’s total economic output.

The ANC lost control of the Western Cape to the DA in 2009. In KwaZulu-Natal it was relegated to third place in the 2024 elections but remains in the provincial government as a junior coalition partner in a four-party coalition. However, it is likely to suffer further losses in that province in the local government elections.

Gauteng is where it gets interesting. Here, the ANC remains in control of the provincial government. It holds 28 of 80 seats in the provincial legislature and governs as part of a 32-seat minority coalition with tacit EFF support. It has also wrested control of the metro councils of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni from opposition parties and now governs these three metros.

However, the prospect exists that it could lose control of all three metros in the elections. A recent DA poll showed the DA comfortably leading the ANC in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane.

Of course it is still a long way to go to the elections, but structurally there is nothing that gives any indication that the ANC’s vote share is going to improve.

Service delivery is collapsing in Johannesburg, where I stay. Residents are beyond disgusted with the council’s underperformance, ineptitude and corruption. The frustration is so great that Helen Zille’s mooted candidacy for mayor of Johannesburg was greeted enthusiastically even by habitual critics of the DA.

What this means is that it is not unreasonable to assume that the ANC could lose control of the Gauteng metros and their 14 million inhabitants. This would be a blow from which the party would find it very hard to recover, just as it has been unable to find a path back to power in the Western Cape.

Bend or break

What options does it have? In my view, the ANC now has the choice of bending or breaking.

Bending means giving up some of its most cherished principles and instruments, such as heavy-handed state interventionism, race-based laws, the centralisation of power, cadre deployment, rejection of the merit principle, and a distaste for accountability. These are the bedrocks of the fake transformation the ANC has been pursuing for three decades.

Only by moving away from fake transformation can the ANC create tangible results that will reverse its declining legitimacy, and with that, its dwindling voter support.

The alternative for the ANC is to break. This means holding on to its fake transformation and NDR values. In this case outcomes will continue to worsen and support for the ANC will continue to drop.

As the party writes in the NGC base document: “That our country’s poverty and inequality indicators have moved in the wrong direction is not only a socio-economic crisis – it is a political catastrophe for the ANC.” That is 100% correct.

This means that it is the voters who will break the ANC if the ANC does not change. By the time of the 2034 elections it could be a 10% party. Even before that, by the time of the 2029 elections, the ANC could have dropped so far that it could not even cobble together a majority with the EFF and MK.

There can be no doubt: if the ANC wants to survive, it must abandon fake transformation and embrace real transformation instead. Real transformation is the kind you can read from a steeply rising GDP graph. Real transformation is where incomes are rising, unemployment is falling and where parents know that a bright future awaits their children.

What this means for you

What does this mean for you as voters, businesspeople, investors? It means that in a sense, you can relax. If the ANC bends, South Africa’s policy environment starts improving, the economy starts growing and things start getting better.

If the ANC doesn’t bend, it breaks, and you get your wish: the ANC is removed from power.

But be careful what you wish for.

A collapsing ANC is dangerous for South Africa. The party would resort to ever more extreme versions of the NDR – more state intervention, more regulation, more race-based laws, more threats to property rights – in an effort to reassert its power. It would be more tempted to get into bed with the EFF and MK to shore up its support.

It would leave a vacuum in the place where the DA needs a centrist partner to work with to introduce reforms that can make the economy grow. It would accelerate corruption and looting as cronies and cadres sense that their time at the feeding trough is coming to an end. It would increase factionalism in the party and increase the risk of social instability and violence.

It would leave the central government less able to perform its responsibilities and would make it harder for South Africa to remain a unitary state. Balkanisation would beckon.

It would mean weakening institutions, weaker rule of law, even weaker property rights protections – leading to higher transaction costs and a less competitive economy. It would make it more tempting for the party and its radical peers to abandon democracy, limit freedom of speech and curtail civil liberties.

For all these reasons I believe it is in the interests of South Africa that the ANC bend and survive rather than break and go under. And of course that is in its own interest, too.

What you can do

What can you do?

You can amplify this message. Speak up to explain how the ANC has the choice of bending or breaking. Emphasise how bending is better for the ANC (and the country) than breaking.

If you’re a company owner or CEO, say that you fully support transformation when it is real transformation.

Say loudly that where you comply with fake transformation rules like the harsh Employment Equity Act, you do so under duress and under protest, in the knowledge that you are harming your company and your country.

Express your disgust with fake transformation and proclaim real transformation as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

As Andre de Ruyter said yesterday, our first, second and third priority must be economic growth. That is the IRR’s focus.

Every year, we publish eight Blueprint for Growth papers that explain exactly what policy changes are needed to trigger fast economic growth. You can read them on our website. In many cases these changes are not expensive. They require doing the basics right – as Dawie Roodt said yesterday, protect property rights, enable free trade, and ensure sound money – and taking the brakes off the economy.

We have also drafted a series of laws or pieces of concept legislation that can be passed to help the economy grow.

They include the No More Race Laws Bill that deracialises policy; the Value for Money Bill that places public procurement on a value-for-money footing, as Chief Justice Zondo recommended; the Better Health Bill, which explains how to improve healthcare without going down the disastrous NHI road; the Right to Own Bill, which strengthens property rights; and the Freedom From Poverty Bill, which replaces BEE with the IRR’s non-racial empowerment alternative called Economic Empowerment for the Disadvantaged (EED).

If you want to see a better South Africa, support organisations like the IRR, the Free Market Foundation and Sakeliga, to name just a few. They are fighting for the things that you care about. That investment will be cheap at the price.

John Endres is CEO of the Institute of Race Relations

https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/how-the-anc-can-save-south-africa--and-itself