All eyes will be on the ANC national conference to take place at Nasrec in December that will determine the future of the country and the governing party.
In less than 50 days, the ANC will decide whether Cyril Ramaphosa should return for a second term as president. Many South Africans will also be interested in who emerges as his deputy and what the ANC decides as its policy direction going into the 2024 general elections.
The ANC is walking a tightrope. For the first time since entering the election space in 1994, the party dipped below 50% in the 2021 local government elections, losing all the Gauteng metros as well as key municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal.
The party has also had to contend with rising unemployment, corruption and an economic crisis that continues to put pressure on South African households.
As part of its coverage for this year’s conference, the Mail & Guardian took a journey through time to focus on defining moments that led to the party’s current standing.
In the first episode of the six-part mini-series of podcasts, Mail & Guardian’s editor, Ron Derby, and veteran journalist Paddy Harper take readers back to former president Thabo Mbeki’s downfall, what led to his recall and the fallout thereafter.
Mbeki, then the second ANC president to lead the country since 1994, fell from grace when he failed to garner reelection for a third term as party president. His deputy, former president Jacob Zuma, and his allies, emerged successful from the watershed 2007 Polokwane conference. Mbeki, the man praised for the African renaissance concept, had to relinquish his position as the state’s president.
Harper was responsible for documenting Mbeki’s downfall and the split in the ANC that led to entrenched factionalism in the party.
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