ANC IS BLEEDING: Youth League Guns For Mbeki After He Tells Ramaphosa To Go

The old guard has turned on the president. The young guard has turned on the old guard. And the movement that once freed South Africa is now eating itself alive in public.

By Mpho Dube, Editor-in-Chief

The Azanian | Truth. Fearless. Unfiltered.  

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JOHANNESBURG - The ANC is no longer bleeding in silence. It is bleeding in public, on camera, in podcasts, in press briefings, in front of the whole country.

A week after its worst election since democracy, the party that once commanded 65%, that once ruled six provinces and six metros, that once needed no coalition partner to govern, has fallen to 30.76%.

It has lost eThekwini to MK. It has lost its lead in five metros. It has lost Buffalo City. It holds Mangaung by a hair's breadth. And now, instead of healing, it is hunting for someone to blame.

The trigger was Thabo Mbeki. The response was Collen Malatji and the ANC Youth League. And the war between them is not just about Ramaphosa. It is about who killed the ANC's former glory.

Former president Thabo Mbeki did not whisper. He detonated.

Speaking on the African Renaissance Podcast, hosted by former EFF MP Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, Mbeki said Ramaphosa would be right to resign if reports that he was considering stepping down were true.

He delivered a verdict so damning it stopped the country: "We are now in 2026. What has happened between 2018 and 2026 of a positive nature, that you can point to, to say during this period, positive, positive, positive, nothing. There's a lot of negativity."Nothing. Eight years. Nothing positive.

He questioned what positive developments could be attributed to Ramaphosa's presidency since he became ANC president in 2017 and president of the country in 2018. "If what is being reported about President Ramaphosa's position is correct, then he is taking a correct position. And maybe the rest of the leadership should take the same position," he said.

Mbeki said the ANC's top seven leaders should consider whether they were still the right people to lead the organisation. The top seven: Ramaphosa, deputy president Paul Mashatile, national chairperson Gwede Mantashe, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, first deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane, second deputy secretary-general Maropene Ramokgopa and treasurer-general Gwen Ramokgopa.

It was the most direct attack yet from an elder of the movement: not just that the ANC lost, but that the leadership has nothing to show for eight years in power.

Mbeki was not just calling for Ramaphosa to go. He was calling for the whole leadership to go.

Ramaphosa tried to shut it down at the IEC Results Operations Centre on Sunday evening. "I do not know where these rumours are coming from; I mean, whoever came up with a rumour like that is preposterous," he said.

He maintained the party had accepted the verdict. "Concerning it might be, we accept that this is how the people of South Africa in our towns, our cities, in our metros have spoken. And this is their verdict. And we accept it with humility."

But behind the cameras, a different story was leaking. According to the Sunday Times, Ramaphosa was willing to fall on his sword after the results. Sources said he raised the idea of resigning as ANC president, arguing that under him and the officials, the party had now lost two elections and there needed to be consequences.

One source claimed he went further: if the top seven leadership did not follow him, he would resign alone. An insider warned: "He can't resign as ANC president and still lead the GNU. It means the GNU collapses. Because, anyway, who supports this arrangement at this moment? How is it assisting us?"

Ramaphosa was reportedly told to calm down, to let the party reflect properly before making decisions, and to consider calling an early ANC elective conference.

Two versions. One party. And a widening trust gap between what is whispered in NEC corridors and what is said to cameras at the ROC. Mbeki chose to believe the whisper, not the denial. And he weaponised it.

The Youth League did not let Mbeki's attack stand for a day. ANCYL president Collen Malatji hit back at Mbeki during a media briefing at Luthuli House on Tuesday afternoon, and he did not pull a single punch. "But our key statement is that the old guard, including President Thabo Mbeki, are part of the problem that we have in the ANC," Malatji said.

It was a generational declaration of war. The young lions were gunning for the old lion. Malatji argued that the party's problems had developed over many years and should not be placed solely on the current national leadership.

"I think it is unfair to want to burden one national collective with a problem that was caused many years ago by the NEC," he said.

He pointed to the arms deal controversy and the involvement of former ANC leaders, including Tony Yengeni, who has since joined the MK Party.

"The first time we dealt with corruption in the arms deal was under them, including comrade Tony Yengeni," he said.

Mbeki served as South Africa's second democratic president from June 1999 until his resignation in September 2008. Yengeni previously served as the ANC's chief whip in the National Assembly and was a member of its NEC before joining the MK Party in October 2025.

Malatji then turned Mbeki's own question back on him, with surgical cruelty:

"He must come and visit the National Executive Committee of the ANC. We engage them at that level. And he must be able to explain to us that when he was confronted with those issues under his leadership, why did he not resign?"

Why didn't YOU resign?

It was a counter-attack that said: you cannot blame us for a fire you helped start. You cannot lecture us about decline when decline started under you. You cannot call for our heads when you never offered yours.

This fight is bigger than Mbeki vs Ramaphosa. Bigger than Malatji vs Mbeki. It is about an ANC that no longer recognises itself. The ANC fell from 45.59% in 2021 to 30.76% in 2026. The DA followed with 24.64%, while the MK Party secured 9.76%, the EFF received 6.22%, and ActionSA got 5.67%.

The ANC secured outright majorities in 53 municipalities and emerged as the leading party in 128. The DA secured outright majorities in 12 municipalities and led in 32, while the IFP won five municipalities outright and the MK Party secured three.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the ANC dropped from 41.4% to just 20.3%, while Jacob Zuma's MK Party took around 34%. It was, in the words of Mbalula, a "catastrophic disaster."

But Mbalula also admitted something more damaging: the leadership saw it coming. "We are staring at it. The official polls of the ANC told us that we would be at 34%. We knew what we were up against. We put up a fight to push back," he said. He said the party was even upbeat because it expected to be "totally wiped out." He said the middle class had "turned against the ANC."

In other words, the ANC went into an election it knew it would lose badly, and still has no agreed explanation for why. That is what bleeding looks like: knowing you are dying, and arguing about who stabbed you first.

Mbalula and deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane moved quickly to shut down any talk of heads rolling. "There's no fall guy," Mbalula said. "A leadership analyses. I know there are people who are overzealous about this thing that the NEC must fall and all of that."

Mbalula has also rejected reports that Ramaphosa is considering stepping down, insisting there is no such discussion within the party."There's no such consideration in the ANC," he said.

Mokonyane echoed him: "The ANC will have to first identify what has happened. Our own manifesto and our approach towards these elections were not about individual leaders of the ANC. It was about how we work together with communities."

It is the classic ANC playbook: collective responsibility when the news is bad, no individual accountability until the factions decide otherwise.

But Malatji himself broke the playbook. He named the deeper charge. "Accountability must happen, and the National Executive Committee of the ANC must be accountable for this decline," he said.

He also criticised ANC leaders who failed to campaign during the elections, saying those deployed to government and Parliament needed to explain their absence. "If they are not campaigning for the ANC, it means they are campaigning against the ANC. Those people can't continue being leaders of the African National Congress," he said.

He said the party needed a younger generation to drive its renewal, arguing that the problems could not be resolved by those who had been part of its leadership for years. "It needs a younger generation that will be able to implement that," he said.

Outside the ANC, Julius Malema saw the blood and smelled opportunity.

The EFF leader suggested that if the MK Party demands Ramaphosa must go as a condition for coalition talks, the ANC must agree. "If the MK party puts the demand that Ramaphosa must go, the ANC must agree that Ramaphosa must go because we are in this mess because of him. You are losing your organisation because you are protecting an individual. He is gone," Malema said.

He framed coalition talks as a moment for the ANC, MK, EFF and SACP to come together and "reject enemy forces." It is a trap the ANC knows well. Sacrifice Ramaphosa to keep power in municipalities, and risk splitting the party and collapsing the GNU. Protect Ramaphosa, and risk being locked out of coalitions in the very metros it just lost.

Mbalula insists the ANC is in no rush. "We're not in the business of begging for a mayorship," he said. "There is also an option to sit in opposition."

For all the talk about Ramaphosa, Mbeki, Malatji, the top seven, the NEC and early conferences, the real blame is in the streets.

Mbalula echoed that humility. "We cannot ask people to trust us just merely because of our history. It gives us a responsibility to serve, not an entitlement to govern. The ANC must earn the confidence of the people through what it does today and what it delivers tomorrow," he said.

He admitted local governments have failed voters and said residents "have every right to demand better."

The ANC still leads the GNU, holds the presidency, and controls the great instruments of the national state, Mbalula reminded South Africans. He promised national government would intervene where municipalities fail and support all 257 municipalities, "not according to how a community voted, but according to the constitution."

But after a result like this, promises sound like the same script. The ANC once had glory. It had Mandela. It had 1994. It had the moral authority of a liberation movement. It had the love of the townships, the villages, the middle class.

Now it has 31%. It has a former president calling its current president a failure. It has a Youth League calling its former president a failure. It has a secretary-general calling the result catastrophic. It has an opposition leader demanding its president's head as the price of a coalition.

The ANC is not just losing elections. It is losing its story. It is losing its soul. It is losing its former glory, one election, one province, one metro, one insult at a time.

And the question now haunting the NEC is not whether the ANC will blame someone. It is whether it will blame the leader, the leadership, the old guard, or itself.

In the ANC, that is always the most dangerous question of all. Because when a movement starts bleeding, and starts blaming its own elders and its own youth at the same time, the bleeding does not stop. It gets worse.