South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), the once-proud party of Nelson Mandela, on Saturday unveiled an ambitious six-point reform drive aimed at transforming public frustration into votes at local government polls later this year.Founded more than a century ago, the ANC led the struggle that toppled apartheid and held power ever since South Africa transitioned to democracy in 1994. But in 2024 it suffered a bruising setback, losing its parliamentary majority for the first time, forcing it into a coalition government.”We cannot blame our people if they question whether our democracy, our constitution, our economy and indeed the ANC and the Alliance really work for them,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said, referring to the party’s long-standing coalition with trade unions. He was speaking at a ceremony marking ANC’s 114th anniversary in the northwestern town of Rustenburg, where thousands of supporters draped in the party’s black, green and yellow filled the venue with song and dance.”The renewal of the ANC and the Alliance is the most pressing organisational task of this generation,” Ramaphosa said. “We need to act with urgency, determination and courage in making renewal more visible and irreversible. We fully understand that we either renew or perish.”The reform blueprint zeroes in on unemployment, entrenched corruption, worsening inequality and runaway crime, hot‑button issues in the nation of more than 63 million people.Joblessness surged past 30 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic and has stubbornly remained there, despite a string of government programmes aimed at spurring employment. Africa’s most industrialised nation has one of the highest murder rates in the world, with an average of more than 60 people killed each day, according to police data.Ramaphosa said “renewal must be both personal and organisational”, adding that each ANC member “must show in our daily conduct and interaction with society that we represent the best values of our movement”.The ANC won 40 percent of votes in 2024 national elections — a catastrophic slump from the 57.5 percent it won in 2019. It also suffered record losses in the 2021 municipal elections, the first time in the democratic era its support dipped below half of ballots cast nationally.The party will face municipal elections later this year, seen as a key test of its standing.
