The ANC is confronted with strategic setbacks. As the party grapples with its worst electoral performance in decades – declining from 57% to 40% – the internal postmortems have become a familiar, almost ritualistic exercise in self-deception.
ANC head of political education David Makhura called it a “strategic setback”, but nine years after the first signs of decline, the diagnosis remains stubbornly focused on symptoms –unemployment, inequality, poverty, and corruption – rather than the deep structural causes.
This failure of political imagination is why the party is failing to renew itself.
However, while the ANC’s old guard is lost in a fog of denial, a new political energy is emerging from an unexpected quarter: the ANC Youth League (ANCYL). Since its 26th national congress, the league has demonstrated a political and organisational clarity absent in the parent body.
It is in the actions and resolutions of its youth wing that the true path to ANC’s renewal and the salvation of SA’s economic project can be found.
The ANCYL is not merely protesting; it is targeting the structural pillars of entrenched economic inequality.
Consider the march on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). This was not a symbolic gesture but a direct challenge to the “old boy club” that has kept the economy saturated and untransformed.
Central to its manifesto was the demand for the JSE to address R85.6bn in unclaimed assets and R4.5bn in unclaimed dividends – money tied up in banks, insurers, and pension funds.
This was followed by a collaboration with the National Union of Mineworkers Youth Structure protesting at the Mineral Council of SA. The focus was on halting retrenchments that threatened to cast a shadow over thousands of families in December 2024, and challenging the exploitative labour practices of companies such as Samacor, which hires workers on contracts for 40% less pay than permanent staff.
The ANCYL’s clarity stands in stark contrast to the ANC’s paralysis. The parent body’s slow economic growth, 0.8% over the past decade, is a direct consequence of state capture, which has crippled key state-owned enterprises, leading to the decline in the mining and heavy metals industries.
Furthermore, the ANC leadership has failed to grasp the profound shift in the labour landscape. The economy is more than 60% services-based, a global trend that has seen the decline of industrial jobs and the death of trade union power. As manufacturing has declined by 7% between 2001 and 2023, the traditional window of opportunity for workers’ representation has closed.
This vacuum is the critical challenge that has allowed populism to rise.
It is the absence of a strong, unified labour voice that has enabled parties such as the EFF, the PA, and ActionSA to gain traction.
The rise of populism is the political consequence of a structural economic failure the ANC has been too slow to address.
The ANCYL’s response is a pragmatic call for re-industrialisation and beneficiation. It argues this is the only viable strategy to end the cycle of populism. Its national congress called for engagement with China, urging investment in building mineral processing centres.
This is a recognition that we must accept the uncomfortable global reality: manufacturing dominance by a few advanced economies is over. We must adapt, beneficiate our resources, and build a new economy focused on value-addition, not only extraction.
The youth league is not just the future of the ANC; it is the only part of the movement engaged in the now. By focusing on structural economic transformation, challenging corporate power, and offering a clear path to re-industrialisation, the league is providing the classical, measurable identification of causes the ANC leadership has failed to deliver.
If the ANC is to survive, it must start listening to the radical, yet necessary, demands of its youth.
Mabasa is a national executive committee member of the ANC Youth League
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