Mantashe Blames 806 Rival Parties for ANC’s Election Struggles — But Voters Aren’t Buying It

In front of the delegates on Wednesday, the Chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC), Gwede Mantashe, posed a question that halted the conversation in its tracks: how could his party win a democratic contest that was stacked against 806 registered competitors and spread across 26 million voters? Instantaneously, the outburst elicited murmurs, the number of smartphones increased, and within minutes, the video clip was rapidly spreading across South African timelines.

According to reports, Mantashe attacked the logic of multiparty democracy as a threat to the African National Congress’s (ANC) dominance while he was speaking at a party gathering. When there are 806 political parties competing for votes and 26 million people who are registered to vote, how do you think we will be able to win elections? He inquired about it. Critics pointed out that the Electoral Commission of South Africa confirmed both figures as accurate, which led him to direct his frustration squarely at the constitutional framework that his own organization had helped design.

There was a prompt response from the Democratic Alliance. The remarks made by Mantashe exposed a mindset held by the ruling party, which viewed competitive elections as obstacles rather than pillars of accountability, according to the spokesperson Solange Carpenter, who spoke to journalists in Cape Town. The Independent Electoral Commission did not issue a formal statement, but it did direct reporters to its published guidelines, which affirm that every citizen has the right to register a movement that is eligible for national contest.

The context enhances the sting to a significant degree. Between the general elections in 2019 and 2024, the African National Congress (ANC) lost approximately 17 percentage points, which resulted in the party falling below an outright parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994. For a long time, analysts at the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa have attributed that decline to failures in service delivery, fatigue from corruption, and disengagement among young people. None of these factors involve crowding of ballot papers.

After Mantashe had finished speaking, one of the delegates, who was seated three rows away from the podium and was a ward councilor from Emalahleni wearing a faded green-and-gold branch jacket, slowly shook her head before continuing. As she stared at the ground, she folded her program into quarters, tucked it into her handbag, and then folded it again. Around her, there was no applause.

The remarks are currently being considered by the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC), which is under pressure to investigate whether Mantashe was expressing personal frustration or official policy. It is only fair that he provide a direct response to the South Africans who voted in May of last year, many of whom voted for the very smaller parties that he seemed to dislike. The African National Congress (ANC) will either defend the breadth of democracy or quietly lobby to narrow it.

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