The party’s packed political calendar
Covid lockdowns and a condensed municipal elections campaign in the latter half of 2021 have meant that the run-up to the ANC’s elective conference in December will be more intense than usual.
The party was unable to have its national general council (NGC) in mid-2020 due to the lockdown. The NGC, at which the party takes stock of its policies and leadership, is now expected to be held during the policy conference, which should take place in mid-2022.
As 4,000-6,000 delegates usually attend a national conference like this, and depending on lockdown rules, the gathering could be a hybrid event, with a video-conferencing link joining members gathered at venues around SA. The party experimented with this model during its final election rally last year.
All the provinces bar the Northern Cape are also due to elect new leaders this year (the Northern Cape held its elective conference in 2021), and the outcomes of these elections will provide an early indication of what the ANC’s national leadership will look like by year-end.
Branch general meetings are set to take place in the first few months, and members with national leadership ambitions have started campaigning (branch members select the delegates for the elective conference).
Tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu has already indirectly put up her hand for the leadership race with her controversial statements about black judges.
But President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is expected to run for a second term, has a head start. As the face of the ANC’s local government elections campaign he toured the country last year, addressing small ANC rallies, which would have given him a chance to interact directly with local party leaders.
Ramaphosa’s supporters used the party’s January 8 birthday rally in his home province of Limpopo to call for his reelection.
“ANC branches are saying that [the president] should have his mandate renewed so that the renewal project cannot be forfeited,” Limpopo premier and ANC provincial chair Stan Mathabatha told a rally in Polokwane.
Most regions in Limpopo recently held conferences, and City Press has reported that Ramaphosa’s lobbyists convinced the regions to support such a pronouncement.
However, the anti-Ramaphosa lobby has complained that any endorsement should only have happened in the weeks before the elective conference.
Fistos Mafela, who chairs the Sumbandila branch in Musina, sent a letter to the party’s national executive committee following the rally, calling the announcement premature.
“The branches are the ones to speak,” he wrote, “not a person using his elected position to pronounce”.
If previous conference years are anything to go by, the ANC’s leaders are unlikely to take action against
Mathabatha.
Apart from the ANC branches, the party’s youth league is planning to have its conference within the next two to three months, while the women’s league leadership conference is also overdue.
The ANC’s alliance partners, the SACP and labour federation Cosatu, are also expected to hold conferences, in July and September respectively. The two formations have been supportive of Ramaphosa, and any change in sentiment could point to a tough challenge for the sitting president.