The African National Congress convened its highest decision-making body on Thursday in Boksburg, tasking it with setting the rules and mandate for how South Africa’s ruling party will bargain for power after its worst electoral performance in history. The result strips away the municipal dominance the ANC has held since the end of apartheid and forces a formal reckoning with how it governs.
The numbers are stark. The party secured only about 31 percent of the national vote in last week’s local government elections, and while it remains the largest party nationally, its support fell steeply in key urban centres, including Johannesburg and Pretoria. Top officials began meeting Thursday to assess the damage and map out a coalition strategy.
The meeting of the ANC national executive committee carries procedural weight beyond symbolism. According to the party, the committee will adopt a framework to guide coalition negotiations and will hear reports on initial talks already underway with other parties. In effect, the body is deciding the rules under which the ANC will operate in the fragmented councils that emerged from the vote.
The party set out its own framing of the task on Wednesday, saying its response would not be reduced to “negotiating for positions” but would focus on improving South Africans’ lives and advancing the party’s renewal. At the meeting itself, spokeswoman Mahlengi Bhengu acknowledged the scale of the rebuke. “We respect the choices voters made and acknowledge the decline in our support,” she said, adding that the ANC had a “clear” plan that can improve the lives of all South Africans. “We are going to this meeting confident in the programme and determined to put it to work,” she said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa cancelled a planned appearance in parliament to answer lawmakers’ questions in order to attend. That decision underscores the gravity with which the party’s leadership views the result, which voters delivered as punishment for corruption scandals and the ANC’s failure to deliver basic public services.
The electoral arithmetic leaves little room for unilateral action. Cape Town was the only one of South Africa’s eight major metros where a single party secured an outright majority, with the Democratic Alliance, the ANC’s closest rival, winning 56.4 percent of the vote there. Everywhere else, fragmented results will mean complex coalition bargaining, and the framework adopted by the national executive committee will shape how those negotiations are conducted.
The stakes are heightened by the party’s recent governing record. Previous local coalitions have been plagued by infighting, shifting loyalties and collapsing majorities, often leaving councils paralysed and basic services neglected. The law adds its own pressure: under South African legislation, newly elected councils must convene within 14 days of the formal declaration of results to elect mayors and other office-bearers, leaving little time for the prolonged wrangling that has hobbled past coalitions.
This is not the first time the ANC, Africa’s oldest liberation movement, has been forced to share power. After losing its parliamentary majority in a 2024 general election, the party entered a government of national unity with nine other parties, a structure that has already tested its ability to govern through compromise rather than majority rule. The long reliance on the political capital of its anti-apartheid legacy has now been eroded at the municipal level as well.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s meeting unfolds against a looming leadership transition. The party is expected in the coming months to choose the candidate who will lead it into a 2029 general election, and the coalition framework it adopts now will shape the terrain on which that contest is fought. Local media have reported that some within the movement want Ramaphosa to step down as ANC president before the end of his term, arguing the party needs a reset after its latest electoral blow. Ramaphosa has dismissed speculation that he intends to resign.
The accountability questions raised by the meeting are direct: whether the framework adopted by the national executive committee will impose discipline on coalition partners who have repeatedly failed to sustain stable councils, and whether the party’s promised renewal will translate into the service delivery its voters say they have been denied. As reported by RFI, further details of the talks are available at https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20261112-south-africa-s-anc-opens-talks-after-election-rout.
The ANC’s answer, delivered through the framework it adopts this week and the coalitions it forms in the days that follow, will determine whether the party treats the election result as a mandate for reform or merely another round of position-taking.