Ramaphosa And Fikile Mbalula Must Resign Because They Are A Disaster For The ANC, Thabo Mbeki

Former President Thabo Mbeki fired a devastating broadside at the ruling party’s top brass on Tuesday, naming Cyril Ramaphosa and Fikile Mbalula as leaders whose continued presence represents an existential threat to the African National Congress.

Mbeki, 82, pulled no punches during his address, declaring that both men must vacate their positions immediately. “Cyril Ramaphosa and Fikile Mbalula must resign because they are a disaster for the ANC,” the Mbombela-based elder statesman stated, anchoring his indictment squarely on the party’s botched submission of membership lists to the Electoral Commission of South Africa. The IEC received the ANC’s documents past the stipulated deadline — a procedural failure Mbeki characterised as symptomatic of deeper organisational rot.

The ANC’s national spokesperson had not furnished a detailed response to Mbeki’s explosive remarks by the time this article went to publication. Mbalula’s office, reached for comment through party channels, remained conspicuously quiet, while the Presidency directed journalists toward previously circulated statements praising Ramaphosa’s governance track record.

This eruption from Mbeki does not arrive without precedent. Relations between the former head of state and his successors have remained frosty since his controversial recall from Union Buildings back in 2008. Over subsequent years, Mbeki steadily built a reputation as the ANC’s most articulate internal critic, warning repeatedly that administrative negligence and factional warfare were hollowing out an institution that liberated millions from apartheid bondage. The IEC blunder reignited those long-simmering frustrations.

Outside a Johannesburg community hall where supporters gathered to hear Mbeki speak, a young woman clutching a battered green-and-gold membership card wept openly. “This is not the movement my grandmother marched for,” she told those standing nearby, her voice barely carrying above the murmuring crowd around her.

What remains unanswered is whether Mbeki’s intervention will galvanise enough senior ANC veterans to force a genuine accountability reckoning, or whether his words — sharp, specific, and painful — will dissolve into the same factional noise that has swallowed every previous warning. The IEC deadline cannot be undone. The question that haunts every branch meeting, every ward committee gathering, every kitchen-table conversation among ordinary members is this: at what point does embarrassment become irreversible damage.

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