It is not difficult to understand why ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula was overcome by emotion when the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the ANC in its candidate-list dispute with the Electoral Commission.
Mbalula’s entire political future depended on that ruling. And the court saved his goose.
The man who calls himself the boss at Luthuli House, the ANC head office, has long seen himself as a future president of the ANC and the country.
His campaign gained steam when he was elected secretary-general at Nasrec in 2022, having served as president of the ANC Youth League from 2004 to 2008.
He was elected despite facing serious scandals, including a luxury family holiday in Dubai in 2016, costing roughly R680,000, allegedly partially funded by Yusuf Dockrat, a director of Sedgars Sport. Mbalula was then sport minister, and Sedgars Sport supplied the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee.
There was also the National Lottery scandal, which centred on allegations that R3m in misappropriated National Lotteries Commission grant money was used to fund the purchase of a luxury house for Mbalula in Bryanston, Johannesburg, which he denies.
But in a party where just about all the high-ranking figures have their own “smallanyana skeletons”, none of these scandals could stop his rise.
For months now, Mbalula has been punted for deputy president and even president if Deputy President Paul Mashatile becomes unavailable.
All was well until 5pm on Friday August 28, the deadline for candidate lists for the November 4 local government elections. Inexplicably, someone in the ANC failed to press the submit button after capturing candidates in six municipalities.
The mishap had serious implications for the ANC in the Eastern Cape, where four of the six affected municipalities were: Sundays River Valley, Walter Sisulu, Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns. The others were Mangaung in the Free State and uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal.
In Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns, the ANC would have had no candidates at all.
Mbalula’s internal strife
For the first time, Mbalula found himself in direct conflict with ANC structures in the Eastern Cape, a province that was expected to be the launch pad for his campaign.
Allegations of list tampering intensified the crisis. An internal report identified 34 material changes to the Eastern Cape lists, including removals, insertions, replacements and shifts in candidate rankings. It also found the province’s final list reached the party’s operations centre 29 minutes before the deadline.
The fallout fuelled branch-level revolts, disrupted meetings and calls for Mbalula’s head.
With Jacob Zuma’s MK Party having destroyed ANC structures in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape is now the most influential bloc at an ANC conference.
The Zuma party won 45% of the provincial vote in KwaZulu-Natal in 2024 and is a direct threat to most ANC-run municipalities there, including eThekwini.
The heart of the province is OR Tambo District, which includes Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill.
Without this region and the broader Eastern Cape, it is almost impossible to win an ANC conference.
That is how high the stakes were for Mbalula.
The fallout also turned Andile Lungisa, a mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay, into an enemy after his name was removed.
He took Mbalula and the ANC to court, claiming to have evidence that Mbalula instructed officials to remove his name from the PR list despite NEC approval.
Reasons cited included his criminal record and vetting issues, but Lungisa won in the Gauteng High Court. The court found that the removal was unlawful, as Mbalula lacked the authority under ANC rules to unilaterally override NEC-approved lists.
Eastern Cape provincial secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi corroborated Lungisa’s claim in a letter threatening defamation proceedings against Mbalula.
But had the ConCourt bid failed, Mbalula would have been toast.
Still in with a chance
So how realistic are his chances at a future conference?
Very high, actually. His role as secretary-general puts him at the centre of all preparations for the party’s elective conference. The secretariat oversees all branch, regional and provincial conferences.
The ANC expects its delegations to include 50% women and some young people. The secretariat has powers to intervene to ensure ANC guidelines are met.
In a party that has been taken over by political factions, there are fears that these interventions are driven by factional battles.
So a secretary-general preparing for a conference at which he is also contesting can become very powerful.
Such was the case when Mashatile was left in charge of the ANC secretariat in the run-up to the 2022 conference. Even though President Cyril Ramaphosa’s slate won, Mashatile had enough numbers to secure the deputy presidency.
Outside of potentially massaging numbers, Mbalula is also regarded as the highest-ranking representative of the Xhosa nation in a future ANC top seven.
National chair Gwede Mantashe, who hails from Cala in the Eastern Cape, has also announced he will not contest any position.
The Eastern Cape lobby feels underrepresented in the top leadership and has already put forward its provincial chair, Oscar Mabuyane, for deputy president.
In unofficial slates circulating, both Mbalula and Mabuyane feature prominently.
Mbalula is seen as one of the most powerful candidates in the faction led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who would not be available for re-election in 2027.
Mbalula, who is affectionately known by his Mpondomise clan name, Jola, is not only Xhosa but also hails from the Free State. He would have battled to secure the support of this province had the Mangaung list remained unsubmitted.
Mangaung (Bloemfontein) is one of the metros at risk of falling to a coalition after the November 4 elections. The ANC won it with 50.63% in 2021.
And so Mbalula survives another scare, even though his poor handling of the ANC’s administrative processes should have earned him a well-deserved clobbering.
The Constitutional Court could have disenfranchised more than 200,000 registered voters in Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill municipalities just to punish the ANC for Mbalula’s cock-up.
So when Mbalula broke down in tears — and later collapsed, with Ramaphosa saying this weekend that he is recovering well — it was a major sigh of relief that his campaign would live to fight another elective conference.
