POLITRICKING | 'The ANC must shed its dirty skin' - Phosa on the party's renewal and leadership

The ANC will need a lot of money and resources if it is to be truly renewed and revived.

These are the sentiments of Mathews Phosa, a lawyer, activist and long-time party member who once served as its treasurer-general.

Phosa has just released a book, not offering his Afrikaans poetry, but a look at the ANC and his own political career through chapters of his encounters with different party presidents over the years.

The book, titled Witness to Power, is a political memoir that explores his path into the anti-apartheid movement, getting to the negotiation table to deliberate on South Africa’s future, his time as the first Premier of Mpumalanga and the watershed 2007 ANC Polokwane conference, which he described as the death of the former liberation movement.

Phosa, this week’s guest on Politricking with Tshidi Madia, a politics podcast by EWN, reflected on his close relationship with the country’s founding president, Nelson Mandela, and his successors, including Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma and the incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa.

"The ANC must shed its dirty skin," he said.

Phosa was clear in saying he believed preliminary studies that already show his beloved ANC is likely to land at around 26% voter support in the 2026 local government elections, calling on it to act drastically in order to reverse the impending outcome.

"It will take a lot of money and a lot of resources to choose carefully those cadres who must be organising in the ANC, to reorganise the ANC on a different moral basis," he said. 

"It will take fighting corruption in the ANC, removing corrupt elements in the ANC," he added.

The former treasurer-general said the ANC could not afford to have ministers and councillors covered by clouds of wrongdoing serving in the organisation.

He said that drastic action included citizens suddenly feeling safe in the country again and seeing the corrupt being brought to book.

Phosa said he had warned the ANC that it would lose support across some of the country’s metros in 2016 and was attacked. He predicts that more losses will come if the ANC doesn’t address its inefficiencies fast.

"Studies coming from overseas now, I am going to say because those are the studies I have, say the ANC might end up at 26%." 

He said the downward trajectory was likely to continue due to a lack of confidence in the ANC and its leadership.

And while in both the book and in conversations, Phosa has a glowing review of his relationship with Madiba, whom he saw as a father figure, his thoughts on Mbeki, who he once enjoyed a close relationship with, are rather scathing. To some, this stems from his proximity to Mandela. 

He placed the birth of internal warfare, the cancer of divisions, backstabbing and careerism in the ANC at Mbeki's door. He maintained that he still had no regrets for opposing the former president at the 2007 conference, while accepting, along with many others, that Zuma may not have been the right replacement.

"We didn’t understand him, we saw him as a victim and didn’t make a merit assessment. We regret it and are entitled to regret it," said Phosa. 

His book also documents the birth of Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP), which will mark its first year anniversary next month, which Phosa defined as a betrayal.

"He himself called people who would have done [such] traitors of the revolution, he lambasted them," Phosa said of Zuma’s decision to launch a splinter party.

During Zuma’s two terms as ANC president, there were at least two major splinter parties, COPE and the EFF, with the latter still remaining one of the country’s major political parties to date, while COPE failed to make it back to Parliament in the May 2024 general elections. 

Zuma, while launching and campaigning for the MKP, has maintained that he remains an ANC member. 

"What a cheek!" Phosa said.

Phosa said the ANC had coddled its former president, in taking the long route to address the matter. He said that hauling Zuma before a disciplinary process was unnecessary. 

Zuma was found guilty of contravening the ANC’s constitution and expelled from the party. He's since appealed the expulsion and is awaiting a decision from the party’s appeals committee. 

"There are other acts in the constitution which describe extreme action, they should have followed those sections and expelled him," he said.

"It is extreme to form another party."