In the 2024 national election, the ANC took 17.6% of the vote in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, less than a year old, took 45.9%.
The politician perhaps best equipped to win those voters back is former health minister Zweli Mkhize. He is also the last to mount a serious challenge to President Cyril Ramaphosa for the ANC leadership.
The November 4 local government elections fall 13 months before the ANC’s December 2027 elective conference. The result will be read inside Luthuli House as a measure of which leaders can still mobilise voters and branches.
The ANC knows it has a Zuma problem. It has decided to deploy veterans, including Mkhize and former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to counter Zuma’s influence in the province. Recent polling suggests the MK party remains strong in eThekwini, although polls should not be confused with election results.
Mkhize could be the ANC’s antidote to Zuma — but his success could also strengthen his hand against Ramaphosa’s faction.
In 2017, Ramaphosa defeated Dlamini-Zuma by 2,440 votes to 2,261. Five years later, Mkhize received 1,897 votes against Ramaphosa’s 2,476. Both challengers have deep roots in KZN politics. Dlamini-Zuma took 48% of the delegates’ vote, Mkhize 43%.
KZN has gone two national conferences without electing one of its leaders to the ANC’s top positions. Sections of the province’s ANC establishment believe the Ramaphosa faction has progressively marginalised KZN’s old political heavyweights within the national leadership. The treatment of veterans such as Mavuso Msimang has fed that grievance.
Msimang, born in Edendale, outside Pietermaritzburg, is hardly a political lightweight. The former home affairs director-general and veteran of the liberation struggle spent six decades in the ANC and was elected deputy president of the ANC Veterans League in 2023.
He resigned from the ANC in December 2023 and accused the organisation of corruption, nepotism, and incompetence. His resignation came after ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula had publicly warned veterans against what he called “de-campaigning” the ANC. At a rally days later, Mbalula suggested Msimang was vulnerable to a bribe from a new party.
Mbalula later apologised for impugning the veteran’s integrity, and Msimang withdrew his resignation but gave up his veterans league post. He was precisely the sort of elder whose institutional memory should have been an asset to a party fighting for political survival.
ANC’s top KZN hopes fingered
The province’s most prominent figures aligned with the current ANC leadership include police minister Senzo Mchunu, on special leave since July 2025, and former police minister Bheki Cele. But neither is well placed to lead an ANC election campaign.
The Madlanga Commission has heard evidence concerning alleged political interference involving Mchunu. A draft report by Parliament’s ad hoc committee found no evidence proving a corrupt relationship between him and Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, a businessman on trial for attempted murder, but flagged unresolved integrity concerns. Mchunu denies any link to Matlala. The committee’s final report is due by October 30.
The Madlanga Commission has heard of a complaint by National Coloured Congress MP Fadiel Adams, who suspected that money from Crime Intelligence’s secret fund was being channelled to Cele. Matlala told the ad hoc committee in November 2025 that he paid Cele R500,000. Those allegations remain untested, and Cele denies wrongdoing.
This week’s report of a police forensic investigation recommending Cele’s prosecution over alleged benefits from Matlala makes his position even more complicated.
When the ANC needs a heavyweight KZN politician who can speak credibly to voters alienated by Zuma, two of the province’s most recognisable figures are sidelined or tied up in inquiries.
Mkhize offers the ANC an established political base in KZN independent of Zuma’s party. He has been premier of the province, ANC treasurer-general, and health minister. He knows its political and traditional structures and has a family connection to the Zulu royal household.
He has also shown he can win support beyond KZN, as the 2022 count showed.
Inner-party turmoil and distrust
There is no evidence that an alliance between Mkhize and Dlamini-Zuma exists. But if their political networks were to converge around a common candidate or project before the 2027 conference, they could unite constituencies that once challenged Ramaphosa separately.
That would not automatically produce a new ANC president. Alliances that look logical from outside often collapse when delegates begin counting numbers.
The ANC has other veterans it could draw on: former treasurer-general Mathews Phosa, former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale, former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, former finance minister Trevor Manuel, and former president Thabo Mbeki. Their standing was built in the liberation movement and over decades in government and business. Why, then, are they not more visible in a campaign where the ANC needs to reassure business and investors that it remains capable of renewal?
Part of the answer lies in the uneasy relationship between the current leadership and its predecessors. In May, Mbalula told a media briefing that veterans, Mbeki among them, should stop publicly criticising the leadership and give it space to govern “just as they were allowed to lead”. Phosa and Msimang have also criticised the party in public.
Zuma understands the value of political memory. His party has presented itself as the custodian of a particular version of ANC and liberation history while campaigning against the ANC itself. Countering that takes people who can speak convincingly about where the movement came from, why it lost its way, and why voters should believe that it can recover.
In KZN, Mkhize is the most obvious bridge between that history and the present. Ramaphosa needs him to fight Zuma.
If Mkhize delivers on November 4, he will arrive at the 2027 conference with renewed political authority. With that, the ANC’s most effective weapon against Zuma may also be the politician whose political success could most complicate Ramaphosa’s final stretch as ANC president.