PREVIEW
Dissolving the provincial leadership boosts Fikile Mbalula’s control, but it stores up electoral trouble in one of the ANC’s key provinces
The African National Congress leadership has suspended the Eastern Cape provincial executive committee and replaced it with a 40-member provincial task team led by Premier Oscar Mabuyane, a close ally of Secretary General Fikile Mbalula.
The move helps Mbalula secure a crucial power base ahead of the 2027 succession battle, but it may also weaken the party before municipal elections in a province where the centre-right Democratic Alliance is already pressing hard in Nelson Mandela Bay
Keeping control of Eastern Cape province is crucial to Mbalula’s ambitions to succeed President Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC’s elective congress in 2027. Mabuyane will be supported by allies Mlungisi Mvoko as deputy convenor and Helen Sauls-August as coordinator of the task force.
The ANC won 45 of the 72 seats in the Eastern Cape’s assembly in May 2024. But the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, which includes the province’s largest city, Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), and the nearby town of Kariega (Uitenhage), saw the ANC and the centre-right Democratic Alliance win 48 seats each in 2024. Nelson Mandela Bay is high on the target list for the DA’s new leader Geordin Hill-Lewis (AC Vol 67 No 5, Zille – the power behind the DA’s throne & 67 No 8, DA triumvirate bets on black votes to break its political ceiling).
Mbalula, who has tried to quash any leadership debate about Ramaphosa before the local elections, knows how the ANC’s local government performance will shape the leadership race. A very bad result could trigger demands for Ramaphosa’s exit before the elective congress next year and undermine the hopes of Mbalula, as the President’s ally, to lead the party.
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