With the Western Cape ANC reorganised, Mbalula 'reveals his presidential ambitions'

Political analysts believe that ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula's decision to restructure the party's leadership in the Western Cape and replace it with a task team is a clear sign that he is preparing to run for the party's 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”.

“In the ANC after the reconfiguration that was announced two weeks ago, you would see a conference that we won... We were actually thrown out, replaced by leaders who lost a conference, and those leaders are particularly in the Metro.

“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.

“It hopes that, in the same ANC it has consistently falsely accused of not having quality leaders, it would change its fortunes. It’s a pity that once again, its fishing rod has attracted defects and by-products from the rubble that the renewal process has chinned out.

“The renewal process was always going to separate opportunists and political adventurists from real revolutionaries who are driven purely by the desire to serve the interests of our people in the province,” Mtsweni said.

Several media reports this year have painted the establishments of PTTs in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and now the Western Cape by Mbalula, as him trying to prop himself up amid rumours of a departure by Ramaphosa.

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.

“The fact that you can have people who were long-standing members of the ANC joining the DA, underscores that the ANC is no longer seen as a vehicle for the betterment of the people, which these former members of the ANC represented,” Seepe said.

He said in the Western Cape, the DA is is seen as a political choice because there is no alternative.

"The ANC’s notion of being a leader society is continuously eroded, and it is eroded at the time when Ramaphosa had claimed that the ANC is embarking on a renewal campaign,” he said.

Political scientist at the North-West University, Professor André Duvenhage, said the rumour behind the scenes of the President's secret GNU meeting at the weekend was that 'Ramaphosa is going to leave the scene'.

“He's not the strongest candidate. I think at this point, if you would ask me to make a prediction between (Deputy President Paul) Mashatile and Fikile Mbalula, I think Mashatile is probably the stronger one.”

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".

"We have always been aware of his regressive and narrow ideological posture, which sought to divide our people on the basis of apartheid classification.

"His departure is a confirmation that those who hold these kinds of tendencies in the movement will not survive an ANC that is renewed."

She said Delport had made the decision to join a "right-wing formation that is openly anti-transformation, anti-justice, and indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians exposes the moral and political bankruptcy of those who abandon the cause of equality".

"The ANC’s mission in the Western Cape is to unite all South Africans, black (Africans, Coloureds, Indians) and white; behind one vision of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, and prosperous South Africa.

"We seek a province where the children of Bonteheuwel, Delft, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, and Mitchells Plain can live with the same dignity, safety, and opportunity as those in Franschhoek, Stellenbosch, and Sandton," Bhengu said.

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