South Africa: From National Power to Rural Party? ANC Nearing Its End, Warns Chief Whip Mdumiseni Ntuli

By Nonkululeko Njilo and Suné Payne

The ANC's chief whip and head of elections, Mdumiseni Ntuli, sat down with Daily Maverick to discuss the ANC potentially becoming a rural party, the ANC succession race and maintaining its 40% in the next elections.

The ANC's midterm report at the National General Council (NGC) this week not only confirmed the party's decline but also suggested it is increasingly becoming a rural organisation, with most of its functional branches now concentrated in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape.

This, according to the ANC's chief whip and head of elections, Mdumiseni Ntuli, is an indication that the party is nearing its death.

"If you become a purely rural party, it's essentially a signal that you are coming to an end," he said.

The report, presented by ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, confirmed that the party's decline was not sudden but a slow erosion over many years, starting in 2016. It also shows that ANC membership numbers have dropped by almost 30% since 2019, when they stood at 769,870.

By October 2025, there were 543,524 members in good standing, the report says.

Between 2019 and 2024, the former governing party's voter support dropped by 17 percentage points nationally to 40%, leading to the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) with other parties, including the Democratic Alliance, Inkatha Freedom Party and the Patriotic Alliance. The party also failed to garner majorities in KwaZulu-Nata, Northern Cape and Gauteng....

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