African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said on Monday the ANC National Working Committee (NWC) believes that the multi-party government must take into consideration strengthening of the work of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) as it affects voter morale in terms of eagerness and willingness to participate in the democratic process of elections.

Mbalula was addressing the media on the ANC NWC meeting with the Gauteng Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) in Boksburg, where he pointed out that while the party’s structures were not complaining about the IEC’s conducting free and fair elections, there “were things” that regions were not happy about that they had raised with the NWC.

The ANC's NWC and PEC discussed its performance in the May elections, where the ANC secured 40.18% — a huge drop from the 57.5% it took in the previous election in 2019.

The ANC lost its majority in Gauteng, Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. In Mpumalanga the party’s support dropped from 78% to 50%.

Mbalula said the NWC would head to Mpumalanga over the weekend.

He said governance topped the list of issues that members believed led to the party losing its outright majority in the elections, also noting issues relating to electricity and infrastructure vandalism.

“…to a certain extent, the water crisis in certain areas has also been an issue. [As well as] the question of abandoned buildings, which are becoming a manifesto of crime and illegal immigrants, especially around Johannesburg,” he added.

The NWC met on Sunday with six Gauteng regions to understand what led to the loss in support and to discuss what needed to be done to change this. The NWC discussed the “real state of the organisation” and how it should be consolidated post-elections.

“…what are important areas of intervention that we need to make. We also reflected on the state of governance in different metros and feedback and reports were received from regions in the province,” Mbalula said.

He said the NWC would consolidate and receive reports from structures, to ensure that the ANC retained its majority, especially in the coming local government elections.

Mbalula believes there are positive examples of good ANC leadership in local government, and he urged the party to emulate those examples on the ground and create a barometer to hold public representatives and councillors accountable.

“In Johannesburg’s Ward 133, there is a councillor there called Teboho Marumo, he is an exceptional example of how a public representative must conduct themselves,” he said.

He acknowledged that intra-party organisational challenges, ANC squabbles, and factionalism were also problematic, noting that the party “did not push through as a unit”, in terms of targets the party had set.

He added that the structures had also raised concerns about ANC members who had joined the Umkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) and claimed that some of these members were working for the MKP whilst they were still with the ANC.