ANC FINALLY LISTENS: DIVORCE THE DA
By Mpho Dube, Editor-in-Chief
The Azanian | Truth. Fearless. Unfiltered.
AZANIAFROCOMEDIA – The Catalyst of Impact
For years, the left warned them. For years, supporters begged them. For years, the branches cried out.
This week, finally, the ANC listened. At the extended National Executive Committee meeting at Birchwood in Boksburg, the movement took a decision that would have been unthinkable two years ago: the DA must now be the last resort in municipal coalition talks.
Not a partner of first choice. Not a natural ally. Last resort. It is the political divorce South Africa has been waiting for. The GNU marriage was sold to the people as stability. As maturity. As nation-building. But on the ground, it delivered something else entirely: confusion, betrayal, and electoral collapse.
The numbers tell the brutal truth. In 2021, the ANC stood at 45.59%. In the 2026 Local Government Elections, it crashed to 30.76%. That is not a dip. That is a freefall. That is a former liberation movement losing its former glory, municipality by municipality, ward by ward.
137 of 213 councils are now hung. Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni — once ANC strongholds — now see the DA as the leading party. Not because the DA became loved, but because the ANC became unrecognisable to its own people.
Why? Because you cannot preach transformation in the morning and govern with anti-transformation in the afternoon.
Supporters watched the ANC share power with a party that opposes its core policies on land, on workers, on the economy, on redress. They watched the ANCYL warn that the DA was “eating what is left” of the ANC in the GNU. They watched the SACP and the left say: this marriage is killing us.
And the voters answered with their feet. They stayed home. They voted elsewhere. They punished the marriage. Now the NEC has finally heard them.
ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bengu confirmed there will be no blanket approach.
Each municipality will be judged on its own dynamics, its own demographics, its own people. But the message from the top is clear: no more automatic ANC-DA deals. No more blessing a right-wing agenda with left-wing votes.
This is not just about coalitions. This is about identity. About whether the ANC still remembers who it married first — the people, the workers, the poor, the left that carried it to freedom.
The divorce will not be easy. The DA will fight. The markets will panic. The commentators will call it reckless. But the alternative is worse: slow death by GNU. The ANC has finally listened. The question now is: will it act?
The people are watching Boksburg. They are watching the councils. They are watching to see if this divorce is real — or just another promise before the next election.
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