It has been a tough week for the ANC.
Its top leadership is meeting in Johannesburg on Saturday to take stock of things.
The bosberaad of the national executive committee comes amid an open rejection of the ruling party by the country's youth.
The meeting is bang on in the middle of SRC elections at universities and colleges that have been under the firm control of the ANCYL's student wing the SA Students Congress for almost three decades.
But corruption, maladministration, poor service delivery and a nationwide collapse of infrastructure are just a few things that make the ruling party unattractive to young people.
The college students will soon enter a job market with already over 4.7 million unemployed young people according to Stats SA.
This week, the ANC-aligned Sasco hosted a siyanqoba SRC election rally at the University of Venda with top musicians and other crowd pullers performing at the local stadium.
Thousands of students attended the jamboree and woke up the next day and voted for the EFF Student Command.
Stung; on Friday morning ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula said:
"Together, we must assure the youth and the people of South Africa that only the ANC carries the aspirations and hopes of all South Africans."
The 87-member NEC also meets amid harsh criticism from former president Thabo Mbeki who once again lamented the failure of the Cyril Ramaphosa regime to begin a process of renewing the ANC.
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Delivering his eulogy at the late Azziz Pahad's memorial service at the University of Johannesburg, Mbeki said the ANC has failed to put into action its 2017 resolution to rescue itself from a moral decay among its members including the looting of public resources by its leaders.
"The fact of the matter though is that we did not do that, we did not renew the ANC following that conference resolution of 2017.
"That resolution has been repeated by the conference of 2022, to renew the ANC. We are now in October, that was ten months ago that the resolution was renewed."
This week, the party lost by-elections to new parties; the EFF and the Patriotic Alliance, both parties are recruiting traditionally ANC voters.
The ANC has also dragged itself right into the centre of another war. The party leadership is expected to make a public declaration of its support for the people of Palestine in the ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflict.
