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ANC’s 5th NGC: Beyond Speeches, South Africa Wants Delivery, Not Another Promise
ANC’s 5th National General Council: A Speech South Africa Has Heard Before
President Cyril Ramaphosa walked into the ANC’s 5th National General Council with a calm tone and a statesman’s composure. His political overview ticked familiar boxes, unity, renewal, corruption, the need to defend democracy. He placed white supremacist rhetoric under the spotlight, warned against factional battles, and reminded the movement of its historic duty in shaping post-apartheid South Africa.
It was a dignified address. But here’s the uncomfortable truth many in the hall quietly acknowledged:
We have heard this speech before.
For more than ten years, ANC gatherings, from policy conferences to lekgotlas, have echoed the same themes. Unity. Renewal. Discipline. Going back to communities. The message remains steady, but the outcomes remain thin. South Africans aren’t hungry for poetic diagnosis anymore, they are starving for delivery.
The Real Crisis Isn’t Just Corruption, It’s the Economy Itself
Ramaphosa highlighted unemployment, poverty and inequality, no surprises there. Yet the elephant in the room remains an old one:
South Africa’s economy is still stuck in a commodity-export, import-dependent model.
Mining out, retail in. Raw materials leave; finished products return. A low-skill labour market cannot absorb the millions of unemployed youth no matter how many oversight committees or renewal campaigns are announced. Until production capacity changes, inequality will recycle itself generation after generation.
Put simply:
If we don’t change how our economy produces, no leadership change will fix the inequality it creates.
Nice Priorities, But Where is the Strategy?
The President mentioned infrastructure plans, the NHI, energy reforms, and industrial programmes. Important ideas but they remain a shopping list, not a national development strategy.
A strategy answers three questions clearly:
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What type of economy are we building?
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Which 4–5 levers will radically shift growth and employment?
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How will the state, labour, business and society align behind them?
Without this, every department pushes its own priorities and every province launches its own “flagship” projects. Coordination becomes meetings and speeches, not implementation.
South Africa doesn’t need more bullet lists, it needs direction, deadlines and trade-offs.
Phase 2 Must Begin, Democracy Exists, Development Must Follow
We are three decades into democracy. Institutions function, courts sit, media exposes wrongdoing, and civil society protests freely. South Africa has democracy, but not yet development.
If Phase 1 (1994–2024) was about winning the vote and building constitutional systems,
then Phase 2 (2025 onward) must become about economic transformation, reindustrialisation and mass employment.
We have defended democracy. Now we must use it.
The State Must Become a Tool, Not a Tender Board
When the President spoke about corruption and weakened ethics, he was right, but morality alone cannot rebuild a state that has been hollowed out by outsourcing, cadre patronage and procurement mafias. A state dominated by middlemen cannot build infrastructure or run power stations, let alone jumpstart industrialisation.
The state needs engineers, planners, coders, welders, not only committees and consultants.
As many citizens say on social media:
“We don’t want tenders, we want capacity.”
Winning the Public Requires More Than Door-to-Door Campaigns
Young South Africans, especially online, see the ANC through viral content, satire, service delivery failures and #Loadshedding jokes. The battle of narrative is being lost digitally, not at community halls.
To inspire again, the party must show visible projects, real development zones, not slogans.
A future-facing message means:
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Jobs in green tech, agro-processing and digital services
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Township industrial hubs, not only SMME workshops
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A state with digital systems, not paper files and queues
What the NGC Could Do Differently
South Africa needs one clear roadmap a National Development Strategy with a few non-negotiable pillars:
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Industrial Transformation & Skills Revolution
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Rebuild Public Sector Capacity
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Township & Rural Industrial Nodes
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Anti-Mafia Procurement Reform
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A Digital Government by Design
Not abstract. Not aspirational. Concrete, costed and measurable.
A Call to Delegates and to the Nation
Delegates in that room have a choice: repeat old songs or chart a new era of delivery. Not another speech, but a turning point.
For ordinary South Africans, exhausted but still hopeful, the question isn’t whether the ANC can renew itself. It is whether it can deliver development at scale.
Because history won’t remember how beautiful the speeches were.
It will remember whether people finally got work, safety, electricity and dignity.
{Source: IOL}
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