By Akani Nkuna
ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said on Tuesday that the party’s rebuilding drive in KwaZulu-Natal was on track, and that it was reinforcing the provincial task team and deploying more organisers.
She said KZN remained a key membership anchor for the party. The midterm organisational report showed the province had 901 branches with 67,248 members, she said.
“The programme of rebuilding the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is still steaming ahead. We are continuing with that work, we will be reinforcing, for example the deployment of organisers in that province,” Bhengu-Motsiri told media at the party’s National General Council (NGC) at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg.
“We will also be reinforcing the work of the provincial task team that was set up to help us to recover in that province.”
The ANC, which has governed South Africa nationally since 1994, suffered its worst national election result in 2024 and fell to about 40% of the vote, losing its parliamentary majority for the first time and forcing it into coalition governance.
KwaZulu-Natal has become one of the clearest signs of the party’s erosion, driven by competition from Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, longstanding internal factional turmoil and voter frustration over jobs, crime and service delivery.
The ANC’s provincial vote share in KZN has fallen sharply over the past decade. It dropped from about 64.5% in 2014 to 54.2% in 2019. In the 2024 provincial election, the ANC fell to roughly 17% of the vote, finishing behind the MK party, which won about 45.3%, and the Inkatha Freedom Party on about 18%.
Bhengu-Motsiri said the national leadership believed work by ANC deployees in the provincial government supported the party’s renewal message.
“We are also quite humbled by some of the work that is being done by our deployees in KZN in the provincial government. For example, the work that is being done in the transport and the human settlement environment.”
She was speaking a day after senior party officials, including President Cyril Ramaphosa and Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula, delivered political and organisational reports that acknowledged the ANC’s setbacks in the 2024 elections and mapped plans to stabilise the party ahead of the 2026 Local Government Elections.
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