Chief Editor of City Report SA, Thys Khiba’s recent contribution, draped in the sombre language of irreversible decline, reads less as sober analysis and more as the lament of a false prophet who has mistaken temporary turbulence for terminal decay.
He pronounces the era of ANC outright majorities in Metsimaholo dead, seals the coffin with references to 2016, 2017 and the AIC mayoral interlude, and invites the reader to accept permanent fragmentation as the new normal.
I reject that verdict with the clarity of one who still walks the streets of Zamdela, Deneysville, Oranjeville and Sasolburg, and who understands that political hegemony is neither gifted nor permanently forfeited; it is contested, renewed and, when necessary, reclaimed through organised struggle.
The fracture Thys elevates into structural permanence is real, but it is neither irreversible nor unique. The independent electoral foray of the SACP in 2017, the lingering scars of the 2013 demarcation protests, and the unresolved grievances of SAMWU-aligned workers represent serious contradictions within the broader progressive movement. Yet contradictions, properly grasped, are the engine of renewal rather than the death certificate of an organisation. The ANC in Metsimaholo is not a static bureaucracy clinging to past majorities; it is a living political instrument capable of dialectical self-correction.
The alienation of sections of the organised working class and the left-leaning electorate was never an inevitable law of history. It was the product of specific organisational failures, cadre weaknesses and a temporary loss of ideological clarity. Those failures are being confronted through intensified branch work, renewed engagement with labour formations, and a deliberate return to the mass-line approach that once made the Alliance the unchallenged vehicle of black working-class aspiration in this industrial heartland.
Khiba’s second pillar, that power now resides permanently with the smallest parties—confuses tactical compromise with strategic surrender. The elevation of an AIC mayor was a product of arithmetic necessity in a hung council, not a voluntary abdication of leadership. The ANC’s retention of the Speakership and significant Mayoral Committee portfolios was not “governing from the backseat”; it was the calculated preservation of institutional capacity while the electorate absorbed the consequences of fragmented opposition governance. Voters are not as naïve as the defeatist narrative assumes. They observe service delivery outcomes, they register the instability of minority-led administrations, and they retain institutional memory of periods when the ANC governed with clear majorities and clearer accountability.
The current arrangement has exposed the limits of perpetual coalition horse-trading. That exposure is already producing a quiet realignment among residents who prioritise decisive governance over perpetual theatre.
The claim that an outright majority requires the simultaneous collapse of both the EFF and the DA is a rhetorical exaggeration designed to render recovery impossible. Electoral recovery does not demand the annihilation of every rival formation. It demands the systematic recovery of the ANC’s historic social base—township communities, industrial workers, and the broader progressive constituency—while containing the disciplined suburban vote of the DA and FF+ through superior organisational presence and credible local leadership.
The EFF’s foothold among the youth and unemployed is real, yet it remains vulnerable to a renewed ANC that articulates a coherent programme of economic transformation rather than perpetual disruption. The SACP’s independent experiment has clarified, rather than destroyed, the necessity of Alliance coherence. Where left-wing voters and organised labour perceive a serious recommitment to working-class interests, the scattering of votes can be reversed.
Looking toward the forthcoming local government elections, the path to an absolute majority is neither closed nor mystical. It is concrete. It requires the consolidation of branch structures that have been rebuilt, the elevation of capable, ethical cadres who can speak to both the industrial worker in Zamdela and the ratepayer in Sasolburg without ideological schizophrenia; and a disciplined campaign that contrasts the instability of hung councils with the possibility of coherent, majority-led administration.
The ANC does not need to “rent” power indefinitely. It needs to earn it again by demonstrating that it remains the only formation capable of aggregating the broadest progressive majority in this municipality.
His analysis freezes a moment of weakness and declares it permanent. History does not work that way. The same electorate that withdrew its absolute majority in 2016 retains the capacity to restore it when the organisation corrects course. The walls he describes are not walls of our own making alone; they are also walls of opposition complacency and of a narrative that confuses temporary setback with structural defeat. We refuse that narrative.
Metsimaholo will not remain a laboratory of permanent fragmentation. The ANC will reclaim its lost ground—not through nostalgia, but through renewed organisational discipline, ideological clarity, and the patient, hard work of winning back the confidence of the people who built this movement in the first place.
The era of single-party dominance is not dead. It is being contested. And in that contest, we intend to prevail.
I remain, Nelson Dieta Motjhapalong Mokoena writing as member of the African National Congress, born and bred in Metsimaholo.
