By Nco Dube | 08 January 2026

There are political parties, and then there are political forces. Movements that shape the soul of a nation, that imprint themselves on the collective imagination so deeply that even their failures cannot erase their mythic stature. In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) occupies that rare and complicated space. It is a party that once carried the dreams of millions on its shoulders, a party that walked out of the shadows of exile and underground struggle into the bright, trembling dawn of democracy. It is also a party that, three decades later, finds itself wrestling with its own contradictions, its own ghosts, its own erosion.

To speak of the ANC is to speak of South Africa itself. Its triumphs, its traumas, its hopes, its disappointments. It is to speak of a movement that once commanded near‑religious devotion, now navigating a slow and painful decline. It is to speak of a glorious past, a fractious present, and a future that feels increasingly unpromising.

I attempt here a frank, layered, and unflinching assessment of that journey.

The ANC’s past is not merely history, it is legend. It is the stuff of struggle songs, of whispered stories in safe houses, of exiles crossing borders under moonlight, of activists who risked everything for a dream they might never live to see.

For decades, the ANC was the moral compass of the oppressed. It was the home of giants: Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Albertina Sisulu, Chris Hani, Nelson Mandela. These were not just leaders; they were symbols of a people’s refusal to bow to a ruthless regime. Under Tambo’s steady hand, the ANC became a disciplined, global force. Under Mandela’s moral authority, it became the embodiment of reconciliation and hope.

The ANC’s liberation legacy is not a myth; it is a lived truth. It mobilised workers, students, churches, unions, rural communities, and international allies. It survived bannings, assassinations, infiltration, and imprisonment. It held together in exile when many movements would have fractured. It negotiated the end of apartheid with a mixture of strategic brilliance and moral clarity.

When 1994 arrived, the ANC did not merely win an election. It inherited a nation’s longing. It became the custodian of freedom itself.

And for a time, it rose to the occasion.

The first decade of democracy was marked by a sense of purpose. The ANC governed with a seriousness that reflected the weight of history. It stabilised a fragile economy, expanded social grants, built millions of houses, electrified townships, rolled out water and sanitation, and created institutions that were admired globally.

The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), though imperfect, laid the foundation for social upliftment. The Constitution, one of the most progressive in the world, was shepherded into existence under ANC leadership. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, though painful and contested, allowed the country to confront its past without descending into civil war.

There was corruption, yes. But it was not yet systemic. There were internal tensions, yes. But they were managed with discipline. The ANC still felt like a movement with a mission, not a machine for patronage.

South Africans loved the ANC not only because it liberated them, but because it governed with a sense of responsibility. It felt like a party that understood the magnitude of its mandate.

But history has a way of turning. And the turn came slowly, then suddenly.

Today’s ANC is not the ANC of Tambo, nor even the ANC of early democracy. It is a party wrestling with itself ideologically, generationally, ethically. It is a party that has become both the architect of South Africa’s progress and the author of many of its crippling crises.

The ANC’s internal machinery once admired for its discipline has deteriorated. Branches have become battlegrounds for patronage. Conferences are marred by factionalism, court battles, and allegations of vote‑buying. Cadre deployment, once intended to transform the state, has often resulted in the appointment of loyalists over competence.

The movement that once prided itself on intellectual rigour now struggles to articulate a coherent ideological vision. The ANC of the present is a coalition of factions held together by history, nostalgia, and access to state power and the looting of those state resources.

South Africans do not need academic reports to understand the ANC’s governance failures, they live them. Load shedding. Collapsing municipalities. Water shortages. Failing railways. Crime. Corruption scandals that read like crime thrillers. The hollowing out of state institutions with surgical precision.

These failures have eroded trust not only in the ANC but in the state itself.

The ANC today is less a unified movement and more a battlefield of competing interests. Factions fight not over ideology but over access to resources, influence, and survival. Leadership contests resemble civil wars. Policy conferences produce resolutions that gather dust.

The party is exhausted. The movement is frayed. The centre struggles to hold.

And yet, and this is the complexity of South Africa, millions still love the ANC. Millions still vote for it. Millions still sing its songs with pride.

Why?

For many, the ANC is not just a political party; it is the embodiment of freedom. It is the organisation that buried apartheid. It is the movement that gave dignity to the oppressed. That emotional bond cannot be undone by a decade of decline.

Despite experiencing setbacks, the African National Congress (ANC) has made notable strides in various sectors. The expansion of social grants has played an important role in mitigating extreme poverty across the country, while increased access to education has opened up new opportunities for many citizens. Efforts toward rural electrification and the development of new housing have also improved living standards, particularly in underserved communities. 

Since 1994, there has been considerable growth in the black middle class, reflecting positive changes in economic participation and mobility. Furthermore, resilient institutions established during this period have helped maintain stability. Collectively, these achievements contribute to the ongoing loyalty that many South Africans feel toward the ANC.

The ANC understands the emotional grammar of South African politics. It speaks to identity, history, and belonging. It knows how to evoke memory, how to frame itself as the custodian of the nation’s soul.

For many, voting ANC is not a political act. It is a cultural one.

The ANC’s future sits in a dim and uncertain twilight. Once a towering force in South African politics, the movement now shows unmistakable, harsh and consistent signs of decline. Its electoral support has thinned year after year, turning coalition governments from unthinkable anomalies into the new political normal. Urban South Africa has largely abandoned the party, and even its rural heartlands, once immovable, are beginning to shift beneath its feet.

A widening generational divide deepens the crisis. Young South Africans, born after apartheid, do not feel the emotional pull of the ANC’s liberation legacy. They judge the party not by its heroic past but by the failures of their present: unemployment, crime, collapsing services. The liberation narrative, once the ANC’s most powerful currency, no longer buys loyalty among those who demand delivery rather than memory.

Inside the organisation, decay has taken root. Factionalism, patronage, and gatekeeping have become the party’s internal grammar, suffocating reform and drowning out visionary voices. Renewal remains a slogan rather than a lived reality, and a party at war with itself cannot govern a country in need of coherence.

If the ANC cannot fundamentally reinvent itself, its culture, its leadership, its purpose; it risks becoming what many liberation movements across Africa have become: a relic honoured for its past but irrelevant to the future. Without deep renewal, the ANC may find that its legacy is the only thing it has left.

The ANC stands at a crossroads. One path leading to renewal, the other to irrelevance. Its past is glorious, its present fractured, its future uncertain. It remains loved by millions, yet distrusted by millions more. It has delivered both progress and pain. It has built and broken. It has uplifted and disappointed.

The ANC is not a simple story. It is a South African story. Layered, contradictory, beautiful, tragic, hopeful, and heartbreaking.

Whether it rises again or fades into history will depend not on nostalgia, but on courage. Not on liberation credentials, but on competence. Not on slogans, but on substance.

The ANC once liberated a nation. The question now is whether it can liberate itself.

(Dube is a noted Political Economist, Businessperson, and Social Commentator whose insights are regularly featured on Ukhozi FM and in various newspapers. For further reading and perspectives, visit: http://www.ncodube.blog)